Jiang Xi didn't understand his reaction. Was it okay or not?
He had done a lot of mental preparation before making this decision, so Jiang Xi was puzzled by his sudden attitude.
He wasn't as indifferent as he is now, whether he was acting like a monster in bed or when his eyes were glazed over in the water.
Unpredictable weather.
Her definition of this man was indeed correct.
But after a while, her mind was drawn to something else.
She clutched her injured foot, inwardly grumbling, while glancing at the riverbank where she had fallen. She noticed that there was a lot of silt on both sides of the river, probably from the mud and sand washed down from the mountain after the river rose a few days ago due to the rain.
After the weather cleared up, the river water gradually receded, exposing the silt. After being dried by the sun, the surface looked dry, but it was still slippery inside, and people would inevitably slip when they stepped on it.
Seeing these things, Jiang Xi suddenly thought of clay. The biggest ways to obtain clay, besides swamps, are riverbanks or dried-up rivers.
High-quality clay is free of sand, air bubbles, and impurities, and has a smooth texture.
She picked through it with her hand and found that it contained a lot of sand, which was not ideal.
Jiang Xi moved forward a little further, found a branch, and dug away the surface layer of mud and sand until she saw the grayish-white soil underneath. She felt her heart trembling with excitement. In disbelief, Jiang Xi hurriedly dug out a piece; it was indeed clay, or more accurately, kaolin.
With clay, you can make a lot of pottery, including jars, cups, and even woks.
She quickly called out to Yan Zheng, her voice filled with surprise and excitement: "Come quick, there's clay here."
When Yan Zheng came over, Jiang Xi held up her hands and said, "Look, this is all clay, also called kaolin. This stuff has many uses. It can be fired into pottery, and we can make bowls and pots."
Yan Zheng stepped forward, took a piece of soil from her palm, rubbed it between his fingertips, thought for a moment, and then asked, "Can this soil be used to make a clay stove?"
Jiang Xi was stumped by the question, but after thinking about it carefully, she said, "It would be a waste to use this soil to make earthen stoves. The dried riverbed soil could be used to make earthen stoves."
She seemed to have thought of something else, and her eyes brightened: "It can also be used to make pottery kilns to fire pottery. The clay can be mixed with straw shreds so that the earthen stove will not crack."
This is something she learned while working on-site with her mentor. Making a clay stove requires more than just soil; it also requires mixing in a certain amount of chopped dry straw to increase the stove's stability and wind resistance.
After a simple lunch of leftover duck eggs and fruit from the morning, the two discussed their options and got to work. Because of her leg injury, Yan Zheng didn't let her do the digging of clay. Instead, he gave her a dagger and had her dig through the withered weeds in the field.
Yan Zheng dug out the soil from the dry riverbed on both sides of the river. Some of the less fine soil mixed with sand was used to make earthen stoves, while the rest, which was grayish-white soil without obvious flaws when waded through by hand, was used to make pottery jars and utensils. Each type was specially wrapped in banana leaves and folded into large square bags to prevent it from drying out.
As dusk fell, Yan Zheng had already shoveled down twenty large bags of soil. Only when the afterglow of the setting sun shone into the valley did Jiang Xi remember that she hadn't brought in the dried fiber. Ignoring the wound on her foot, she hurriedly ran to the front of the mountain.
Seeing her anxious, Yan Zheng joined in to help, stacking the fibers one by one, and finally managed to pile them into the cave before sunset.
When only a sliver of light remained on the horizon, Jiang Xi realized that she had been so busy cutting grass and digging clay all day that she hadn't thought about dinner at all. Now it was already dark, and there were only two duck eggs and some fruit left in the cave. They had been busy all day, but they would be hungry tonight.
Jiang Xi sat at the entrance of the cave, her wrists aching from exhaustion, and she had no interest in preparing food. Yan Zheng, however, optimistically comforted her, saying, "Not eating at night helps your stomach rest."
"I'll go fishing tomorrow morning and collect some duck eggs to make egg drop soup."
Even though her stomach was empty, she instantly felt less hungry when she heard Yan Zheng say that. Now, just hearing the word "duck egg" made her throat dry. She didn't consider herself a picky eater, but she really couldn't stand eating duck eggs for every meal for several days in a row.
"To be honest, I feel full just hearing the word 'duck egg' now, don't you think?"
Yan Zheng thought about it seriously: "I'm used to it. Before, we would eat compressed rations when we went into the mountains. We would eat them for a week straight, and when we got hungry, we stopped being picky. I'll look for other food tomorrow."
Jiang Xi rarely heard him bring up his life over the past two years. She had many questions in her mind, so she asked casually, "Back then, why did you think of joining the wilderness rescue team? It's so far away and so remote."
He looked up and said, "Back then, I didn't know what I could do. I saw a job posting online and went there, thinking that it was a good deed."
Jiang Xi nodded and replied, "You have indeed changed a lot."
"Is it the same as what you thought?" Yan Zheng suddenly asked her.
"What?" Jiang Xi was confused.
"You said before that you didn't know what I would be like at twenty-five. Now that you've seen me, is it the same as you imagined?"
Jiang Xi thought of the past. Yan Zheng in the past was no exaggeration to say that he was a prodigy. When she was a teenager, the thing she did most often was to lean on Yan Zheng's shoulder, look at him carefully, and trace his eyebrows, nose and lips with her fingers, imagining what he would look like at twenty-five.
She might have a beard, and she might have grown taller, but she never expected it to be like this.
Jiang Xi thought of this and laughed: "It's different. I imagined you weren't this dark-skinned, nor this... big."
Yan Zheng understood her teasing tone and a smile appeared on his lips.
The wind picked up, and the trees on the mountainside rustled in the breeze.
Jiang Xi seemed to remember something, tidied a stray hair by her ear, turned to Yan Zheng and asked, "What about me? Do I think the same thing you used to think?"
Upon hearing this, Yan Zheng's eyes swept over her delicate eyebrows and then over her earlobe. Jiang Xi felt as if a feather had brushed against her heart, very lightly, making her earlobe turn red with a ticklish sensation.
After a long while, accompanied by the crackling of the firelight, he spoke: "Yes, same."
Just like he had seen in countless dreams, it was sunny and bright, shining in her world.
Jiang Xi couldn't help but ask, "What does it look like?"
Yan Zheng thought of something and didn't answer immediately. His heart skipped a beat. The rustling of the leaves continued, and the sound of the flowing water in front of the cave seemed to have grown louder. His originally smiling eyes dimmed a little.
He chuckled softly, suppressing his turbulent thoughts: "The wind is picking up, let's go inside."
The voice was cold and devoid of warmth, instantly shattering this brief moment of friendship.
Jiang Xi's initial sense of relief vanished completely. She cursed herself inwardly for forgetting the pain once the wound healed. The events of the day were still fresh in her mind, so what was she still hoping for?
The two parted on bad terms, and even the air around them seemed unusually quiet when they went to sleep that night.
The next morning, when Jiang Xi woke up, the person next to her was no longer warm.
Yan Zheng went to the lake early in the morning. He wasn't there to catch fish. Earlier, on their way here, they had found a wild fruit tree by the river. The fruit was slightly whitish and felt green and firm, but he hadn't paid much attention to it.
Yesterday, when Jiang Xi complained that the duck eggs were dry and hard to swallow, he remembered that there was this fruit tree. This morning, he walked downstream along the river for half an hour and finally saw it at the edge of a thorny thicket.
The fruit looks a bit like a mulberry, but it is much larger, resembling a slender, finger-shaped grape. Some of them are already ripe, with a yellow, glossy sheen.
He only felt comfortable picking the fruit after seeing the bird-pecked marks. The fruit was sweet and refreshing with the unique flavor of mulberries, and the ripe ones were especially sweet.
The tree was about three or four meters tall, and there weren't many ripe fruits. He climbed up and down and spent the whole morning picking only half a backpackful. By the time he headed back, the sun had already risen completely, and the morning light pierced through the heavy clouds, illuminating everything in the mountains and forests.
Worried that Jiang Xi would be anxious if he couldn't find her, he quickened his pace.
Jiang Xi stepped out of the small cave and found that the wooden door at the entrance was closed. Remembering what Yan Zheng had said yesterday about going to the lake to find food, she felt relieved.
It took some effort to move the door open, boil a pot of water, take out the fibers and arrange them in rows, then drizzle them with river water.
Just as they were almost finished, Yan Zheng appeared downstream.
He carried a hiking backpack, held a large yellow croaker in his hand, and rolled up his trousers to his knees. The golden sunrise in the distance shone on his wheat-colored face.
Jiang Xi suddenly remembered a painting she had seen in Western art history during her university years, Monet's "Haystacks".
Passionate, vibrant, and full of life.
Her heart skipped a beat, as if a heavy stone was pressing down on her heart, making her feel sore and sad.
His three-year disappearance seems to have been returned in another form.
Despite his current disheveled, rude, and unpredictable nature, she still felt that Yan Zheng was Yan Zheng, unchanging regardless of his appearance or his past.
He would still be the first to rush to her aid when danger arises, and he would still overcome all obstacles because of her words.
"So what if I'm stupid?"
Jiang Xi comforted herself by saying that one should accept one's imperfections and moments of being blinded by lust at the right time.
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