Chapter 15 Soy Sauce
On the day before the start of summer, Zhao Xuan saw other humans besides Lu An.
That day, she and Lu An were inspecting the fields. She was standing on a high point in the dry field, looking at the corn that was growing well. Lu An was squatting by the field pulling weeds. She was bored, so she climbed up the hillside and looked down at the few acres of grain planted halfway up the mountain.
Below the mountain was a winding path leading to another deserted village located below their village. A few rapeseed flowers still grew by the roadside, their blooming season over, so they drooped listlessly, but they still stood out conspicuously amidst the lush green weeds.
Zhao Xuan, wearing a straw hat, stood with his hands on his hips, craning his neck to look down, pondering whether to pick the flowers. Just then, someone slowly walked out from around the corner of the path.
—They seem to be a family.
A couple, a child, a cart, and four sheep.
The man in the couple wore glasses with broken temples taped to hold them together. He was quite handsome, with no aggressive features whatsoever, exuding a kind of intellectual's gentleness and sinister air. He wore a worn-out sweatshirt and rubber-soled shoes with his toes peeking out, and was diligently pulling a cart loaded with daily necessities such as quilts and washbasins.
The woman had a small, oval face and was quite pretty, though she looked a few years older than the man. She was dressed in worn-out clothes, though they appeared clean. She had a long braid and was herding her flock of sheep with a small bamboo stick in one hand.
What surprised Zhao Xuan was not that there was still a woman with long hair in this apocalyptic world, but that her left arm was gone. The silk shirt was already draped, but because her arm had disappeared at the shoulder, her sleeve looked particularly empty.
Both were incredibly thin. The man was so thin that his cheekbones were sunken, making one wonder if his face could even support the glasses. The other boy, however, didn't appear as thin. He was also wearing sportswear, though it was obvious that the two outfits weren't from the same set. He pursed his lips, had messy short hair, and looked about eight parts like the woman. He carried a toy gun on his back—Zhao Xuan could tell it was a fake rather than a real gun because a real gun would be too heavy for a child to carry, and no child would be allowed to carry one.
The child was helping the man push the cart. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he looked very tired, but he didn't stop.
"Xiaohe, Gougou, are you tired? If you are, get in the car and rest for a bit," the man said, turning his head slightly to the other two.
The woman shook her head: "I'm not tired, but you've been doing it for so long, don't you want to rest?" The child immediately added: "Dad, I still have energy!"
The hillside where Zhao Xuan was located was not high, and she met the three people face to face. The wind had been strong for the past few days, and the wind made the trees rustle, thus masking the sound of the three people's footsteps.
They were taken aback when they suddenly saw a clean-cut, spirited young woman standing on the mountainside.
There was a moment of stunned silence between them, then Zhao Xuan's face turned pale, and he shouted as he retreated, "Lu An!"
Lu An hadn't heard Zhao Xuan scream so frightened in a long time. His brow twitched, thinking she had run into some wild beast. He grabbed his hoe and ran over quickly, only to be taken aback when he saw her.
The group of people looked at each other in bewilderment.
The man was the quickest to react. He glanced at the neat dry fields—the turn they had taken earlier had been very sharp, and they hadn't seen these clearly cultivated fields until they reached this point. He immediately knew that there might be permanent residents here.
The people who live here regularly are probably the young couple in front of us.
He wasn't too surprised to see a woman, but the sight of the tall man rushing out immediately made him uneasy. He pulled the woman and child behind him and stiffly nodded to them, saying, "Hello." After a pause, he added, "We're not sick."
Lu An looked wary, and he also shielded Zhao Xuan behind him, gripping the hoe tightly. Seeing that the man seemed to have no ill intentions, he nodded back.
There was no further communication between them. The man picked up the cart again and set off, but he, the woman, and the child would occasionally glance back at them.
Perhaps they were afraid that the other party would do something underhanded?
Lu An and Zhao Xuan stood still, but kept staring in the direction they had left.
In the brutal first few years after the apocalypse, survival eroded trust between people. Zhao Xuan and Lu An had long since reached a consensus on the matter of strangers: ignore them, do not help them, and do not harm them.
The two of them didn't slowly walk down the hillside until their figures had completely disappeared at the other end of the road.
Zhao Xuan held Lu An's hand tightly.
Lu An looked at her furrowed brows and squeezed her hand back: "Don't worry, they seem to be a family, they won't hurt us."
There are people who would commit murder and robbery for a bite to eat, but men with wives and children have too many weaknesses. The two of them are young and strong, and they don't necessarily have to be afraid of the man who is skin and bones.
The most terrifying thing in the apocalypse isn't men, but a group of men without family ties who come together. These men, without relatives or any emotions to protect, will become monsters. Judging from that family's condition, they probably weren't bullying the old and weak—they were certainly being bullied quite badly. On a more optimistic note, perhaps they were just passing through.
Unexpectedly, the family settled down there—downstream from Zhao Xuan's village was another abandoned village, a half-hour walk away. The two villages were separated by a hillside, and both could be seen from the hillside. They were very familiar with that abandoned village; they hadn't missed it when they first came to gather food, and Lu An had even caught chickens there in the spring.
The family then settled there.
Surprisingly, it was 460 who first discovered it. As a local tyrant, 460 discovered the presence of other humans while inspecting its territory. It quickly ran back, tugging at Lu An's clothes and pulling him to look. When Lu An stood on the hillside and saw the smoke rising from the village opposite, he relayed the situation to Zhao Xuan.
Zhao Xuan responded with a worried sigh: "Ah?!"
Lu An said, "Maybe they're just taking a short break there? Those three people look so thin; they'd probably die if they kept going."
Zhao Xuan thought it made sense. When the two of them were wandering, they would stay in a place temporarily when they couldn't hold on any longer, and only leave again after collecting enough supplies. So she waited with a half-hearted heart, waiting for the unfamiliar family to leave - until the two of them found that the family had cultivated several acres of land next to their own field.
Zhao Xuan was good at choosing fields; his several acres of paddy fields and dry fields were all in good and fertile conditions. The people there weren't stupid either; they knew this land was good, so they started cultivating it next to their fields.
A few times I ran into him, but it was always that bookish man. He was still excessively thin, wearing a ripped t-shirt and a straw hat with a chipped brim, diligently hoeing the ground. When he saw Zhao Xuan and Lu An, he would stop what he was doing, nod slightly to them, and smile very sincerely.
Zhao Xuan doesn't interact with others much anymore; Lu An always steps in front of him and responds with a polite smile.
The man diligently cleared the land without disturbing their fields. Zhao Xuan calculated that if he planted the crops now, they could be harvested in late autumn. However, it would be too tiring for him to cultivate the land alone. He estimated that he would die if he tried to plant nearly ten acres of land under the scorching sun.
But soon, the little boy reappeared in the field. The eight- or nine-year-old boy held a hoe almost as tall as himself with a serious expression and dug very diligently. His fierce appearance would only result in a small pit being dug in return.
Sometimes Zhao Xuan almost laughed when he saw the child walking in the field, wobbling and about to fall. But his smile would only falter a little before Lu An pulled him back, stopping him from laughing.
The woman with the missing arm never appeared. Zhao Xuan thought about it and realized that it made sense; one hand was simply not enough for farm work.
She had been in a bad mood for days. The fruit trees in the neighboring village that she had recorded last year probably didn't belong to her anymore: a few orange trees, a few loquat trees, a few chestnut trees, and a grape trellis were all gone.
Lu An was puzzled: "Besides grapes, our village has other fruit trees. We also have jujubes here."
Lu An's words could not soothe Zhao Xuan's anxiety about losing a lot of stockpiled goods.
But life goes on.
Zhao Xuan remembered that the weather was already very hot that day. She had to wrap herself up in long sleeves when she went out in the morning and evening, otherwise the little black insects in the fields would bite her all over. She didn't sleep well at night either, as the bites from the spotted mosquitoes would take several days to heal.
They rarely went out during the sweltering midday heat. That day, Zhao Xuan was taking down the mosquito net she had washed and dried. She was on the third floor, looking out into the distance. Amidst the annoying chirping of insects, she seemed to sense something moving in her peripheral vision. Turning her head, she saw a man walking towards her, holding a child's hand in one hand and carrying something in the other.
He looked around, seemingly unsure of something, but by sheer coincidence, he turned his head, and Zhao Xuan turned his head as well, the two staring at each other awkwardly.
The man's eyes lit up, then he lowered his head again and strode towards him. Just as Zhao Xuan was carrying the mosquito net downstairs, there was a knock at the door.
This was the first knock on the door they had heard since moving into the deserted village six months ago.
For Lu An, who knew nothing about the situation, the sudden knocking was undoubtedly a horror story. He went downstairs without saying a word. When Zhao Xuan came to the hall, he saw Lu An looking for a machete. 460 was also grinning with a fierce look on his face.
“It’s that family from the next village.” Zhao Xuan suddenly calmed down. Although he didn’t know what the man was doing here, he had a child with him, so he probably didn’t mean any harm.
She opened the door and met the two people outside. The "hello" she had prepared ultimately came to an end. She raised her hand, made a few "uh" sounds, but still didn't say anything more.
Sure enough, such a long period of living alone had deprived her of social skills.
It was the man who spoke first: "I... I'm from the next village... We've come to visit our neighbors today." As he spoke, he tugged at the boy: "Doggy, say hello to Auntie."
"Auntie—" Although you could hear the reluctance in the child's voice, the child still called out obediently, drawing out the last syllable.
Zhao Xuan gasped, suppressing her eyes from rolling upwards, and forced a smile, saying, "Just call me sister."
Lu An poked his head out from behind, looking completely bewildered. Then 460 also peeked out from between his legs, his head as black as charcoal, revealing half a mouthful of teeth in a menacing manner.
The man paused for a moment, then handed over what he had been carrying: "This is a gift my wife prepared for our meeting. She made it herself! It's very clean! We haven't been able to eat it on the way here, so I don't know if you'll like it..."
A gift for meeting someone? Zhao Xuan almost forgot how often he used that word.
The man was holding a well-worn plastic bag, inside which two small jars could be vaguely discerned.
Zhao Xuan instinctively tried to refuse, but it was forced into his hand.
“My surname is Yao, and my name is Yao Yuan. I live in Xiaxi Village. If you need any help in the future, you can come there to find us. I won’t bother you anymore now. Say goodbye to the dog and... and to the sister.” The man blurted out three sentences without any follow-up, which he must have memorized on the way.
Zhao Xuan was still in a daze when Lu An called out, "Brother Yao, don't rush off, come in and have some water?"
The man waved his hand, saying, "No need, my wife wants me to go home early." As he spoke, he tugged at the frozen child, whose attention was drawn to 460. The child was about to reach out and touch 460's head when the man pulled his hand away before he could even raise it halfway.
The boy glanced back at 460 at the end, and 460 returned a disdainful look before sauntering back into the hall.
Zhao Xuan and Lu An looked at each other in bewilderment.
Cicadas chirped outside the window, and the electric fan in the living room hummed. Lu An and Zhao Xuan sat on either side of the small dining table, both staring at the things on it.
Those were two bottles of soy sauce.
The soy sauce was a small bottle, small enough to hold in one hand, in a glass jar that had once held sesame oil—the outer packaging, stubbornly clinging to the bottle, still vaguely identified it as a well-known brand of sesame oil. Zhao Xuan unscrewed the soy sauce and took a sniff; a salty, savory aroma filled his nostrils.
Soy sauce and vinegar can be eaten long after their expiration date, but it's easy to tell if vinegar has gone bad, while it's not so easy to tell if soy sauce has gone bad. They searched the entire village and only found two unopened bottles of soy sauce stored in a cool place, but those two bottles had been used up long ago—once opened, soy sauce needs to be consumed as soon as possible, and there are many foods that need to be pickled.
Zhao Xuan asked, "Lu An, they wouldn't have poisoned him, would they?"
"What reason would you have to poison us?"
Zhao Xuan thought for a moment and said, "We're a big family now, we have pigs and fields."
Lu An countered, "Isn't making drugs more troublesome than brewing soy sauce these days?"
Zhao Xuan thought it made sense and nodded: "How about... we try it on 460 first?"
460, who was curled up on the sofa with its tongue sticking out, suddenly turned around as if it understood, its black bean eyes looking at its owner incredulously.
In the end, Zhao Xuan and Lu An decided to try a chicken first.
Lu An took some broken rice, mixed it with half a spoonful of soy sauce, and then picked up the chicken that had been chosen by heaven. He put it in the cage and fed it separately. Watching the chicken eat happily, Zhao Xuan felt a little sorry for it.
If there's something wrong with the soy sauce, she'll feel bad for the chicken; if there's nothing wrong, she'll feel bad for the half spoonful of soy sauce.
By evening, the chicken in the cage was jumping around lively.
Zhao Xuan happily put away one bottle of soy sauce, and solemnly placed the other on the stove. She was going to make two bowls of rice with lard.
This simple dish is so easy to make: simply put a bowl of hot rice in it, bury the rice in the snow-white lard with cracklings, and then pour half a tablespoon of soy sauce over it. If you want to be more particular, you can sprinkle some chopped green onions and sesame seeds on top.
The steam from the piping hot rice melts the lard. When you stir it with chopsticks, the rice absorbs the oil and sauce, turning each grain a glossy reddish color, showcasing how perfectly soy sauce and lard complement each other. Add a touch of chopped green onions and pork cracklings, and it's a total nostalgia trip.
Zhao Xuan was worried that the lard rice would be too greasy in the hot weather, so he also prepared a separate dish of refreshing cucumber shreds. It turned out Zhao Xuan was overthinking it; the two of them, facing the fan, kept devouring two large bowls of rice with their chopsticks.
The days dragged on and on. Even after dinner, it was still barely light. Zhao Xuan was washing dishes in the kitchen, while Lu An took out a gauze curtain that had been washed earlier. After tapping and banging on the hall door, he put the curtain up so that they wouldn't get bitten by mosquitoes while eating in the hall.
The mosquito net and mat on the second floor have already been set up. Zhao Xuan had previously tucked the edges of the mosquito net under the mat to ensure there were no gaps.
As Zhao Xuan was falling asleep, he touched his still slightly rounded belly and asked Lu An, "If we don't get poisoned to death tomorrow, shouldn't we give them something in return?"
Lu An stroked her hair and said softly, "Don't worry, you'll be fine tomorrow. I think they're good people. Look, they're so thin, but they didn't touch our crops."
Zhao Xuan thought for a moment and said, "Yes, that's true."
Even after the apocalypse, they still met some kind people. There was Sister Lu next door in the camp, and the righteous Lao Dao. Even after they left the camp and wandered around, they still met some warm-hearted people.
Good people are almost extinct in this world, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Zhao Xuan reached out and hugged Lu An's waist, buried his head in his chest, sniffed, and whispered, "Lu An, I don't want to meet bad people again."
He gently stroked her back and whispered, "I know, with me here, you won't run into bad people again..."
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