Chapter 72 Ai Hui Yuanzi
When Lu An and Yao Yuan rushed back, they saw Zhao Xuan, covered in injuries, and Yu Laosan, who had been almost completely eaten by dogs, on the open ground below the village.
Lu An jumped off the tricycle and looked at Zhao Xuan, whose clothes were disheveled. Zhao Xuan's eyes were swollen, and her gums were also swollen. When she saw Lu An and Yao Yuan, who were covered in dust from their journey, she couldn't quite believe it at first. After confirming for a while, tears streamed down her face. She didn't want to cry; she wanted to laugh.
She tried to smile, but blood mixed with saliva leaked from the corner of her swollen mouth.
Lu An's eyes were bloodshot. He abandoned his tricycle and ran over quickly. He took off his clothes and covered Zhao Xuan with them, then his eyes swept over the corpse not far away with a terrifying look.
When Yao Yuan saw Zhao Xuan's appearance, he thought of his wife and children. He drew his axe and roared as he tried to rush back to his village, but Zhao Xuan stopped him and pointed him in a direction. Yao Yuan ran in that direction like a demon.
Zhang Xiaohe's bleeding has stopped, but her leg injury is quite severe, and she also has a concussion; she feels nauseous constantly after waking up. The dog's arm injury isn't serious, though it will definitely leave a scar. However, because it was slapped several times, it has persistent tinnitus, and its vision is also blurry.
The two men returned at a moderate time, seemingly just to clean up the scene.
Yao Yuan took Zhang Xiaohe and the dog home. Lu An also took Zhao Xuan home.
Zhao Xuan was badly injured. Lu An boiled hot water and helped her wash her entire body. Her back and stomach were covered with large, horrific bruises, three of her ten fingers were broken, and her whole face was swollen. She screamed in pain as the towel touched these areas.
Fortunately, her ribs weren't broken. Lu An helped her wash up and then set her bones. Old Dao taught them this skill; many people had suffered fractures or dislocations since the apocalypse, and anyone with a will could learn a little bit of it.
However, Lu An was not proficient in bone setting and had never practiced it. He carefully bandaged Zhao Xuan's fingers, worried that Zhao Xuan's fingers were not as flexible as before.
Zhao Xuan was utterly devastated, both physically and mentally. After washing up, she fell into a deep sleep. Lu An took two cotton quilts from the warehouse, rolled them into long strips, and placed them around her to increase her sense of security. Then, he gently closed the door and went downstairs.
Downstairs, 460 and a group of Paw Patrol members were sitting quietly.
When Lu An came down, all five or six puppies tilted their heads and looked at him with their beady black eyes.
Lu An took out alcohol and a needle and thread and began to clean the wounds of the dogs.
460's head was scratched, and the wound stretched from its eye to the corner of its mouth. Fortunately, its eye was not injured. Lu An held its head and disinfected the wound with alcohol.
460 was in so much pain he was grimacing.
After treating the wound, Lu An held 460's dog head and examined it for a while, feeling that the wound had the same feel as Old Dao's.
The other puppies were badly injured, some with cuts on their backs exposing the flesh, others with minor injuries like losing clumps of fur. Little Yellow, 460's best friend, had its leg slashed and was now limping.
Lu An finished treating them one by one. The dogs were quiet and well-behaved, but they didn't stay long. After their wounds were bandaged, they left in a group. They seemed to know that the two-legged creatures had a lot of things to do at home. They said goodbye to 460 and then left together with light steps.
460 escorted them all the way to the village entrance, then squinted one eye and hurried home.
Two bodies are still lying in the house.
Lu An first threw the body out of the yard, then put on an apron, put on rain boots, and began to scrub the yard.
The hall was still filled with supplies, mostly food. Lu An carefully wiped away the bloodstains and then moved them back to their original places one by one. Next, he emptied buckets of water from the vat and poured them onto the floor, then used a brush to scrub away the bloodstains.
When the water in the vat was used up, Lu An carried a bucket to the well at the bottom of the village to fetch more. Looking at the corpse exposed on the open ground, Lu An looked gloomy.
His teeth were grinding together.
Those bandits should be thankful that they were already dead when he and Yao Yuan returned.
After using up two tanks of water, the bloodstains on the ground were finally cleaned up, but a faint smell of blood still lingered in the yard.
Zhao Xuan woke up once during this time. She had a nightmare in which she screamed and opened her eyes. Lu An quickly went upstairs, hugged her, and fed her some sugar water before she fell asleep again.
During this time, 460 stayed in the yard the whole time. Even though it was injured itself, it was unwilling to go back to its little nest. It seemed to feel guilty: it had run out to play when Lu An was not around, and it had not protected Zhao Xuan in time. When Zhao Xuan woke up from a nightmare, it ran upstairs with Lu An. When Lu An went into the room, it quietly watched them from the doorway with a droopy expression.
After Lu An went downstairs, it didn't leave. When Lu An went upstairs again to check on Zhao Xuan, he saw that 460 had brought its little blanket and spread it at the door of their bedroom. At this moment, 460 was already curled up on the little blanket and asleep.
Lu An was busy until late at night.
He has always been a meticulous person. After putting things back in their place and cleaning the house, he even re-attached two knives to the bottom of the washing machine.
Zhao Xuan's jar of pickled radishes was smashed to pieces, so in addition to a faint smell of blood, there was also a sour smell of vinegar in the room.
Lu An took some dried mugwort and burned it in the hall.
After burning the ash until late at night, he collected half a basin of mugwort ash, thought for a moment, and then scooped up a few ladles of rice and soaked them in water.
The next morning, when Yao Yuan came over, he saw Lu An sitting in the kitchen making dumplings.
Both men had dark circles under their eyes; they had barely slept all night. Lu An was busy tidying up the house, and after only a few hours of sleep, he got up again to grind rice flour and make rice balls. Yao Yuan took care of the two men all night. That night, Zhang Xiaohe and the dog both developed low-grade fevers, and their conditions only improved slightly by morning. Yao Yuan came to borrow some fever-reducing medicine from Lu An and also herded the sheep back into the yard.
The sheep were also frightened yesterday and stayed in Zhao Xuan's yard all day, leaving droppings and urine everywhere.
Yao Yuan was very loyal. He first drove the sheep back, then came back to clean up the sheep droppings that had been there all night. After that, he and Lu An cleaned up the six corpses.
After a night, the bodies had begun to decompose. Lu An and Yao Yuan carried the bodies a long way in a tricycle. The five men's corpses were chopped up with axes and scattered in the mountains, a tribute to the wild animals of nature. The madman found a quiet place to bury them, leaving no mound, but filling it in. Soon, new grass would grow there again—a mound is meaningless for an unattended grave.
Lu An and Yao Yuan did not intend to tell their families the location where the body was dumped or the madman's grave.
Since it's all in the past, let's let it go completely.
Those people left behind some professional weapons: machetes, daggers, bows and arrows, and the musket. Yao Yuan picked out a machete and took it with him, leaving the rest to Lu An. He knew that Old Dao had taught Lu An how to make musket ammunition, so leaving the musket to Lu An was just right.
It took the two of them most of the day to get back. Then Lu An brought a long bench from the hall, and the two of them sat at opposite ends to continue kneading the remaining dumplings.
Artemisia argyi ash was added to the rice flour batter for making the glutinous rice balls, which gave them a light gray color.
Lu An said: "Ai Hui Yuanzi can calm the nerves. Xiao He and the dog were both frightened, so it's a good opportunity to take some back for them to eat."
In the evening, Yao Yuan left with a large bowl of glutinous rice balls.
Lu An simmered a pot of pork bone soup. After it was cooked, he added some dried bamboo shoots, mantis shrimp, dried scallops, and dried mushrooms. Once the umami flavors of these ingredients had seeped into the soup, he added glutinous rice balls made with mugwort ash. The rice balls would thicken the soup. Before serving, he added a handful of tender bok choy and a tablespoon of shallot oil, and a pot of savory glutinous rice ball soup with mugwort ash was ready.
The shallot oil was made by Zhao Xuan earlier, and the main ingredient, shallots, was brought back by Lu An from the salt fields by the sea. They like to add a spoonful when cooking noodles, rice noodles, or stewing meat to enhance the flavor.
The goods brought back from the salt fields by the sea were very valuable, and they always used them very frugally.
But today, Lu An took out the dried shrimp and scallops they had been saving for a long time to cook salted dumplings. He also took out some dried fruits that he had brought back from the salt field market, such as dried mango that Zhao Xuan liked but had never dared to eat too much of. He took them all out and placed them by Zhao Xuan's pillow so that she could eat a piece whenever she wanted.
The night Lu An returned, Zhao Xuan vomited blood once. At that time, Lu An's hands were trembling. He was afraid that Zhao Xuan would not be able to survive this time, so he gathered out all the good things he could find at home and put them in front of Zhao Xuan so that she could eat them.
Zhao Xuan's fingers were wrapped up tightly. Her two index fingers and one middle finger were broken, but she didn't want Lu An to feed her, so when she picked up the spoon to eat, it looked like she was making a "V" sign.
Zhao Xuan ate a bowl of generously tossed Ai Hui Yuanzi with great delight.
Perhaps the ash really worked, because Zhao Xuan didn't have any nightmares that night and slept soundly until dawn.
Early that morning, Yao Yuan appeared at Lu An's door again.
Lu An and Zhao Xuan's four pigs were already plump and healthy, and their original plan was to slaughter one of them in the middle of the year.
Live livestock are sold at the saltworks market, but the prices are not cheap. The merchants selling live livestock are also very shrewd; the male piglets are all castrated. But coincidentally, Zhao Xuan's own family has male piglets, so he can go there to exchange them for a few female piglets during the off-season this year.
The meat stored in the refrigerator before the Lunar New Year was almost gone, and both families' wounded soldiers needed to replenish their nutrition. So, Lu An and Yao Yuan discussed it and decided to slaughter a pig and split it in half. The Yao family would use futures-purchased goat milk to exchange for half a pig.
So early in the morning, Yao Yuan arrived with a pig-slaughtering knife, a large basin, and a bucket to help slaughter the pig.
The pig was slaughtered in the yard, which Lu An euphemistically called "using pig's blood to cover up the smell of human blood."
When they slaughtered the pig again, the two of them were already very skilled, and they were proficient at bleeding, scalding, and cutting.
The pig's blood was divided equally between the two families, as both families' wounded members needed to replenish their blood. Other offal and other ingredients were taken as needed by each family.
Yao Yuan not only helped slaughter the pig, but also helped wash the yard. Water usage had increased dramatically in the past few days, and he even carried water several times. Around noon, he put the divided pork into a large basin, put the pig's offal into an iron bucket, said goodbye to Lu An, and prepared to go home.
He had to go back and cook. He said that Zhang Xiaohe's leg injury looked serious, but it hadn't actually hit any vital organs. However, she was still very dizzy and had vomited several times. The dog was also covered in injuries, and it seemed to be deaf in one ear.
Lu An called him back and gave him some more anti-inflammatory medicine. Yao Yuan thanked him and hurriedly rode off on his tricycle.
Zhao Xuan has been lying in bed for two days.
She was in pain all over, and even touching the bruises at night would wake her up screaming in pain. Lu An had removed the hard bamboo mat and put on a thick mattress, but it was the height of summer, and she would be covered in sweat after sleeping on it for a short while. So Lu An picked a long winter melon from the vegetable garden, washed it clean, and let Zhao Xuan sleep with the melon.
Zhao Xuan had already woken up when Lu An and Yao Yuan were slaughtering a pig in the yard. She was extremely bored, so she quietly leaned against the windowsill to watch.
Lu An has been spinning like a top these past few days, taking on all the farm work, plus all the housework.
After Yao Yuan left, Zhao Xuan prepared to start a fire and cook. He saw Yao Yuan carrying a basket and hurriedly going to the vegetable garden, then rushing back. While the rice was still cooking on the stove, he sat on a small stool in the yard and began picking vegetables. After picking the vegetables, he continued to divide the meat, some of which was frozen directly into the freezer, while others needed to be cured. Zhao Xuan then watched him clumsily begin to cure the salted meat. Then, when the rice was cooked, he hurriedly stood up to turn off the fire, almost tripping over the kitchen steps in the chaos.
Zhao Xuan laughed out loud on the windowsill.
Unable to find Lu An, Zhao Xuan could only lie back down on the bed and hug the winter melon to sleep. He was woken up by Lu An in a daze, and a large bowl of fragrant stir-fried pork slices soup and a bowl of rice were placed in front of him.
Lu An wasn't good at cooking, so he often cooked one-pot meals, such as a bowl of fragrant and flavorful mugwort dumplings, or a bowl of stir-fried meat in a broth with both vegetables and meat.
460 has also been staying at home for a long time, which is unusual. It often comes upstairs and quietly sticks its black head out from the door frame to see if Zhao Xuan is alright.
Zhao Xuan knew 460's good intentions, but she was still often terrified by its head.
Lu An's stew was very nourishing, and both Zhao Xuan and 460 gained weight.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
