Since arriving here, the ripening time of the fruit and the changes in temperature have been disrupting their most basic judgment. Jiang Xi has no way of figuring out what stage of summer it is. The temperature in the valley is not much different every day. It is cool in the morning and evening, but as soon as the sun comes out, people are made restless by the heat.
Yan Zheng focused on chopping and collecting firewood, as firing pottery was a major undertaking that required sufficient dry firewood to maintain the kiln temperature.
Not only is cutting wet wood difficult, but it also requires a lot of tools, so Yan Zheng tries to choose dry, dead wood whenever possible.
He worked for two days until he had piled up a large stack of firewood in a sunny spot on the mountainside. Only then could he relax. For dinner, he even caught a large yellow croaker from the river, cut the fish meat into strips about the thickness of a mahjong tile, skewered them with wooden sticks, and grilled them over charcoal.
Fish cooks quickly. As soon as it comes into contact with the bright red charcoal fire, the originally translucent fish meat quickly turns white. Under the catalysis of the heat, the fish skin keeps oozing fish oil, sizzling, until the outer skin gradually becomes crispy and has a bright reddish-brown sheen.
Fresh fish doesn't need much seasoning. Just a sprinkle of salt is enough to bring you immense satisfaction, both physically and mentally.
Jiang Xi savored the fish meat, her eyes fixed on the fish still grilling on the charcoal fire. Something came to mind, and a bolder idea formed in her heart.
Legend has it that in ancient times there was a creature called "mermaid." Mermaid oil was extremely flammable, and just a drop could burn for several days. Even more extreme rumors say that the eternal lamps in Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum were fueled by mermaid oil and could burn for thousands of years.
Of course, legends are just legends, and there are no mermaids here, but they have large yellow croakers. The flesh of these large yellow croakers has a layer of fat. If you make a ceramic lamp base and use fiber rope as a wick, wouldn't that be a perfect fish oil lamp? It would be perfect for lighting at night.
Since arriving here, they can't work without lights after dark. Burning firewood for lighting is an extremely luxurious and uneconomical thing, so they have to lie down and rest early. Even if they can't sleep, they can only stare blankly at the cave ceiling.
Jiang Xi felt her heart beating faster than ever before, excited about the upcoming oil lamp. The next day, she stopped rubbing fibers and instead pulled Yan Zheng to start working with kaolin clay.
When making pottery, Jiang Xi demonstrated to Yan Zheng how to remove impurities from the clay little by little. After adding water and kneading, the clay becomes soft and eventually becomes a fine and easily shaped clay body. The finer the clay, the less likely the pottery will crack.
Finally, the clay blanks are rolled into various strips and discs, and then assembled little by little.
Pottery shaping is a technical skill. The clay cannot be too thick or too thin. If it is too thick, the pottery will look heavy. If it is too thin, it will easily crack during firing.
It took three whole days. Jiang Xi's fingernails were worn down by the clay. They made a large wok, a frying pan, two cups, four bowls and four plates, two lamps, and finally Jiang Xi also made two large earthenware jars to store salt and oil.
At first glance, there seem to be quite a lot of things, but if you look closely, the frying pan looks like a large pizza, the two bowls have uneven bottoms and look like roly-poly bowls, and the handles of the two earthenware pots are also uneven.
Although the quality varied, Jiang Xi was already quite satisfied with these. She would make these to use first, and then work on more refined products once the immediate problem was solved.
The next step is to let these pottery blanks air dry naturally, so that the fired pottery will not easily crack.
After admiring her handmade masterpiece, she turned around and found that Yan Zheng was gone. She couldn't find him in the cave either. Jiang Xi thought he had gone to the back mountain and called out twice, but there was no response. Just as she was wondering, she heard a sound coming from the woods on the hillside.
Yan Zheng slid out of the slope in the woods, holding a rabbit in his hand—no, it was the two-legged rabbit they had seen some time ago. The rabbit was half-dead, and he was holding it by the ears, its two hind legs dangling limply, twitching from time to time.
Jiang Xi's attention wasn't on the rabbit; she only saw a gash on Yan Zheng's waist and abdomen, running diagonally from his abdominal muscles to the side, with the skin turned outwards and blood seeping out—a shocking sight.
Jiang Xi admitted that she was scared. This was the first time she had felt this way. In the past, when she went out to find food, fishing alone, she was worried but not scared. This time, she truly felt fear.
She staggered over, avoiding his wound, and took his arm to lead him towards the cave entrance, her voice trembling slightly: "Wh...what happened?"
Yan Zheng hissed, seemingly having stumbled upon something: "I lost my balance, tripped, and got scratched by a dry branch."
As he finished cleaning the pottery and washed his hands, he happened to see a two-legged rabbit running through the woods. The animal was limping, so he immediately chased after it. When he reached a steep slope, he stabbed the rabbit with his sword, but he lost his balance and fell down. His waist and abdomen were caught by a dead tree, which is how he was injured.
Afraid that she would worry, Yan Zheng forced a smile and then lowered his head to explain, "It's nothing, it just looks scary, but it's not deep. It'll be fine after washing it off."
Jiang Xi looked at his wound, her face expressionless, but her voice trembled slightly: "It's not worth it. This is a jungle. People can die like this."
“I don’t want to eat rabbit, and I don’t have to eat meat, or we can set a trap, but you shouldn’t take that risk.”
From the moment they came into this world, they first encountered snakes, then bears; he should know the dangers of this jungle.
She was a little angry, angry that he had risked his own safety to chase a rabbit.
"Please take care of yourself." Jiang Xi's voice suddenly turned cold and hard: "You said you would take me out of here, and I don't want you to get hurt because of unnecessary risks."
Yan Zheng shook off her hand, threw the two-eared rabbit onto the riverbank, looked at her, and a hint of helplessness flashed in his eyes: "I just saw that this beast's leg was broken."
He said softly, "I think I can handle it. The fall was just an accident. Don't worry, I value my life."
After saying that, he knelt down by the river, supporting himself with his strength.
Jiang Xi washed her hands in the river, tore off a piece of fiber, knocked away his hand that was about to splash water, took some cooled boiled water that had been boiled at noon, rolled the fiber into a cotton ball, dipped it in the cooled boiled water, and cleaned his wound.
The wound was over 20 centimeters long and looked shocking. Fortunately, it wasn't very deep, but its location was unusual, so it was easy to aggravate the wound when someone stretched out their arms or kicked their legs.
Jiang Xi said, "Fortunately, the wound isn't deep. Don't do any work for the next few days, or it will get infected and won't heal properly."
This is the same thing he said last time: it's hot in the jungle and people are more likely to get infected.
"It's nothing, this minor injury will heal in a few days."
Jiang Xi chuckled, somewhat exasperated: "A minor injury?"
“This wound is 20 centimeters long. If it were any deeper, you would have lost your life. Besides, there’s no way to stitch it up here; it can only heal on its own.”
"You underestimate your man. This little injury isn't serious."
After these words were spoken, both of them fell silent.
Jiang Xi paused, the atmosphere becoming somewhat awkward. If he had said such things before, Jiang Xi wouldn't have thought anything of it, but his previous attitude made his words ambiguous now.
She lowered her head, pretending not to hear, took out iodine from her backpack to disinfect his wound, and then took out the strips of cloth she had made earlier to bandage his wound. Yan Zheng's backpack also contained a box of amoxicillin and antipyretics. After feeding him the amoxicillin, she helped him sit on the steps at the entrance of the cave.
Yan Zheng was still thinking of dealing with the two-legged rabbit, but Jiang Xi stopped him in the end.
She held the dagger and brandished it for a long time, but didn't know where to start.
Yan Zheng was also interested in training her, so he leaned against the cave entrance and watched her demonstrate, without intending to make a move.
Finally, unable to bear it any longer, he said, "Use an axe."
"A short pain is worse than a long one; a quick death might be a mercy to it."
Jiang Xi thought it made sense, turned around to find the axe, washed it in the river, found a good spot, did some mental preparation, closed her eyes, mustered her courage, and brought the axe down.
Yan Zheng was somewhat surprised. Looking at her swift and skillful cutting technique, he raised an eyebrow and praised her generously, "Not bad swordsmanship."
Jiang Xi opened her eyes, her hands trembling, and looked at the "crime scene" on the ground. She had finally crossed the hurdle she once thought was insurmountable. She was still shaken, but she clearly understood that this was the path she had to take. In the desolate jungle, ruthlessness was a necessary condition for survival.
She also had to thank Yan Zheng for not throwing her a lively creature, since there's a difference between harming something that's about to die and harming a living being.
Because Yan Zheng was injured, no peppercorns were added to the rabbit soup for dinner. Only salt was added to make a thick soup. Earlier, Yan Zheng had caught a lot of lotus roots and put them in the reservoir in the river to keep them alive. Jiang Xi caught another one, cut it into pieces, and put it in the soup to cook together.
They've been here for almost a month, and every day it's been fish and duck eggs. But the flavor of the two-legged rabbit has exceeded their expectations and unexpectedly suits their tastes.
Although the soup for dinner was only salted, the rabbit meat was thick and low in fat, with a texture between chicken and beef, making it a rare delicacy for the two of them at that moment.
Jiang Xi needed some time to process what had happened, and because of her own actions, she didn't have much of an appetite. After giving Yan Zheng his medicine that evening, they went to bed early.
The next morning, Jiang Xi went to the lake to collect wild duck eggs. Yan Zheng wanted to come along, but Jiang Xi stopped him before he could finish speaking.
She deliberately emptied her hiking backpack to carry with her, because injured people cannot get enough nutrition from wild vegetables and fruits alone, which is not conducive to recovery, so she had to prepare more.
Perhaps because of Yan Zheng's injury, she always felt inexplicably uneasy and could only comfort herself by working.
Perhaps if they had prepared more food reserves, they could have lived a little longer.
So she searched for duck eggs in the morning and dug for wild vegetables after lunch, making more than a dozen trips back and forth. The wild vegetables she dug up were piled up into a small mountain in the cave, which made Yan Zheng both laugh and cry.
She didn't put down her tools and finish work until the sun had already set, a gentle breeze was blowing in the air, and all the birds were returning to their nests. She looked up and saw the orange glow gradually appearing on the horizon.
Yan Zheng spent the whole day recuperating in the cave. Because there were no painkillers, he endured a lot of pain, unable to lie down or sit properly, with cold sweat constantly dripping from his forehead. He didn't eat much of the lotus root and poached egg that Jiang Xi had specially cooked.
After dinner, Jiang Xi observed the clouds for a while longer. She sat on the stone steps at the entrance of the cave, looking at their home in the valley.
On the grassy hillside, there were piles of firewood and hay stacks, and next to them was a pottery pottery pot supported by banana leaves. The lotus roots encircled in the river had sprouted some tender green shoots, making the green area look like a specially enclosed pond. The soap pods she was drying on the stones had completely lost their color and turned black.
If the cave had been transformed into a wooden cabin, then this place could be considered a "separate world, not of this earth" as described in Li Bai's poem.
In the evening, perhaps because of Yan Zheng's injury, she felt inexplicably uneasy.
But she still prepared the tools and food outside the cave in advance, and kept the hot water warm on the embers of the earthen stove. The weather was sunny, so she only covered the pottery with a thin layer of banana leaves and closed the wooden door of the cave early, propping it up with stones.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com