Chapter 6
Sang Luo watched the whole process silently and thought to herself: He is so sensible.
But it's also too much to bear and it's very hard.
In her previous life, she grew up in an orphanage, was busy studying and making money in college, was busy saving money to buy a house during her working year, and later fell ill and lived alone in the mountains for five years. The last part of her life was spent in the hospital.
So there were only a few days of true peace.
When Sang Luo looked at Chen An at this moment, it was like seeing herself as a child.
Unable to bear the heavy look on the little fellow's face, she smiled and stood up, picking up two empty baskets in the corner: "I promised to take you to find food. I have some strength now. Let's go and take a walk."
…
Qiyang County is mountainous, and Shili Village is a small village nestled in the mountains.
The place where other people in the village lived was to the east. Although there were mountains, they were not that close to the mountains. The place where Sang Luo brought Shen An and Shen Ning to live was a little far from the area where the villagers lived. To get to the village and the nearest house to them, they had to climb three hills to the east.
Of course, many hills close to the village are owned by others, and each family would often go to their own hill to collect firewood. The hill where Sang Luo and her family lived was one of the two hills allocated to their family by the village government after they settled here. Therefore, these hills close to the village are often visited by people, and there are trampled paths, so they are relatively safe.
As for the west, there are endless mountains. At least in the original body's memory, few people in Shili Village go too deep into the mountains.
Of course, part of the reason is that Shili Village is now mostly inhabited by the elderly, the weak, women and children. Most of the young and middle-aged men have been conscripted to the front line. Some have not returned for several years and are still in the army, but at least they are still alive; some are unlucky, like Chen Lie, who never come back once they go to the battlefield.
Conscription has been the norm in all dynasties of this time and space, but it was even worse in the Dagan Dynasty, especially in recent years when the new emperor ascended the throne and loved to wage war. Almost every family had soldiers conscripted to the front line. The conscription more than two years ago was not the first time, nor would it be the last.
Therefore, with such a group of elderly, weak, women and children, no one in the village dared to go deep into the mountains.
At this moment, Shen An and Shen Ning were each carrying an empty backpack, and the two little siblings followed the mulberry basket hesitantly.
Shen Ning hesitantly advised: "Sister-in-law, your health is still not good, why don't you rest at home for a few more days? If we save on food, it will still be enough for us to survive for a while, and my second brother and I can go find wild vegetables."
This was because he was frightened by Sang Luo's previous appearance.
Chen An looked at the direction Sang Luo was heading to the west, wondering: "Sister-in-law, didn't you forbid us to enter the mountain before? Brother also didn't allow us to enter the mountain before."
Of course Sang Luo didn't dare to go into the mountains, what's more... She glanced at the brother and sister's pants, which were as short as cropped trousers, and the exposed part of their ankles. She didn't dare to lead the two little ones into the depths. If they were really bitten by insects or snakes on their ankles, it would be ok if they were non-venomous, but if they were poisonous, she would be committing a great sin.
"We won't go deep into the area. We'll just walk around the periphery."
Chen An's shoulders drooped noticeably: "There's nothing outside. Don't we go around every day?"
Why had he been so foolish as to believe that his sister-in-law had a solution? Had she had a solution but hadn't used it for so long that she almost died of hunger?
Chen An felt that he was really stupid at this moment. It must be because the white rice porridge in the morning was too fragrant that it made his brain muddy.
While feeling annoyed, he was also glad that he had at least grabbed some rice and put it back into the bag, and he was also glad that he had saved half of the porridge for Aning.
It turned out that he was right to save half of the porridge. Although the sister-in-law was nice to him and his sister, she was really not very reliable. Especially after she woke up from her illness this time, she seemed even more unreliable.
At least they knew to save food before, but now he was worried about the food he was using. With his sister-in-law eating like this, how many days would the food that Grandma Chen borrowed last? When they were done, who else could they borrow food from?
After only a few steps out of the thatched house with the backpack on his back, Shen An was already extremely worried.
He was thinking about saying that he was just walking around and why would he need two backpacks? But he thought that his sister-in-law had just recovered from a serious illness and had just boasted about Haikou, so he didn't want to embarrass her. He held back, because the backpacks were not heavy anyway.
But he had secretly made up his mind that he would not let his sister-in-law arrange the meals tonight.
My sister-in-law is sick, so let her eat a little better food alone, but it can’t be too thick. Make her portion separately and put less wild vegetables in it, so that she can survive for a few days.
He and his sister should just do the same as before, dig up more wild vegetables, then go to their third uncle's house to beg for help, and they will be able to survive if they can hold on.
They must not do as they did this morning, with three people cooking such thick rice porridge together. This would waste food, and they would have a hard time surviving the autumn, let alone the winter.
Shen Ning also looked at her second brother. The brother and sister looked at each other with the same worried look on their faces, obviously they were thinking the same thing.
Sang Luo didn't know that she had been labeled as extremely unreliable by the little brother and sister. She smiled confidently: "Whether there is anything, just follow me and you will know."
She looked at the empty baskets on the two little ones' backs and felt a little regretful. It would be great if they had a few more baskets like this. There were still too few belongings.
One adult and two children, with two completely different thoughts, walked towards the mountain path next to them, holding sticks and bamboo branches in their hands.
…
Sang Luo did as she said and did not go deep into the area with the brother and sister. She just found a stream near the hilltop west of their home.
Chen An looked at the small fish swimming in the clear stream, and finally realized what his sister-in-law had planned: "Sister-in-law, these fish are very agile and difficult to catch. Aning and I have been here before, but we couldn't catch a single one in half a day."
Shen Ning testified: "It swam too fast and was slippery."
Sang Luo laughed: "It's not easy to catch them with your hands, but let's not catch them with our hands. Let's set a trap and wait for them to swim in by themselves."
As he said this, he reached out to take the backpack from Chen An's back, broke off some grass leaves by the stream, grabbed a few handfuls of pebbles and threw them in, put a stone bigger than his fist in, took off his shoes and socks, picked up the backpack and waded into the mountain stream.
The mountain stream was full of running water with excellent water quality. It was crystal clear and the deepest water was not even above Sang Luo's knees. She placed the backpack diagonally in the deepest part of the water, picked up a few stones with a little moss on them from the bottom of the water and put them in. Then she returned to the river in a few steps.
Shen An and Shen Ning were stunned.
"Is that how you can catch fish?"
Sang Luo nodded: "If we have bait, we should be able to lure more fish. Unfortunately, we don't have any now. However, there are a lot of fish in this stream. Let's try it first. If there are not enough, we can change a spot and cast twice more."
As he said this, he was about to use the backpack on Shen Ning's back to make a second nest.
Shen An was a little excited.
"Sister-in-law, let me do this!"
"Okay." What child doesn't like to play? Besides, the water was very shallow. Sang Luo didn't hesitate and agreed with a smile. She taught them some simple techniques and let the brother and sister have fun while she just watched from the side.
Chen Ning was her second brother's little tail. She followed him happily, sometimes helping to catch pebbles and sometimes helping to fish stones out of the water.
The brother and sister discussed and chose another location, followed Sang Luo's method, and then went ashore excitedly. Chen An's eyes were shining, and he looked up and asked Sang Luo: "Sister-in-law, when can this backpack be lifted?"
Finally, he looks a bit like a child.
Sang Luo smiled: "Wait until evening comes, now we can get some branches to catch shrimps."
In fact, it is better to retrieve such a nest the next day, so that the harvest will be greater, but this is like waiting for something to satisfy your stomach, so you can only shorten the time.
The words "fishing shrimps" immediately attracted the two little ones: "How do you fish shrimps?"
The shrimp trap was very simple. Sang Luo and her two children broke some leafy branches by the stream, tied them into bunches, and then pressed the leafy branches into the water with stones a little distance away from the two fishing traps.
This method was novel, and the two children had a lot of fun playing with it. They were satisfied only after they set seven shrimp traps in different sections of the stream.
After getting ashore, I still felt a little unsatisfied. "Sister-in-law, what next? What should we do now?"
"Do we have to wait until evening to fish for shrimp?"
Each of them spoke a sentence, and then looked at Sang Luo with bright eyes.
After setting several traps, although no results of catching fish or shrimps have been seen yet, Sang Luo’s reliability has obviously increased in the eyes of the two children.
Sang Luo looked at the two children who were smiling and in better spirits today compared to the panic and frustration they had shown in the middle of the night last night, and laughed, "We have to wait. Let's go get something else first."
He said goodbye to the two little ones and left.
Chen An couldn't move his feet anymore, so he looked back at the spot where he had placed the backpack in the stream: "Sister-in-law, are we just going to leave like this? What if someone takes the backpack away?"
After the joy of playing passed, the little housekeeper's attributes immediately returned. Whether it was fish or not was another matter at this moment. There were only two backpacks in their family. Not only backpacks, but the fact is that all the belongings in their family are rare items now. There are really too few things.
If he didn't catch the fish and lost the few belongings in the house, Shen An would have no place to cry.
Shen Ning stopped moving and turned his head to look at Sang Luo.
Sang Luo was not that worried and said with a smile: "It's okay, you can look for yourself, the position under our basket is so low that you can't see it if you stand on the shore without paying attention."
The brother and sister looked at the place where the backpack was placed. It was indeed not obvious, so they gave up the idea of guarding here.
Sang Luo rubbed Shen Ning's little head: "Let's go, I'll take you to get other food."
When they heard there was a way to get other food, the brother and sister's eyes lit up!
"What is it?"
The author has something to say:
I would like to add a note about place names. This article is fictional, so do not associate it with reality. The county where the protagonist lives is named Qiyang because I took dozens of place names and found that they all exist in reality after searching on Baidu. They are either homonymous or have the same characters. In the end, I had no choice but to leave it alone. The state names in the back should also use historical place names, and the state names will not be too different. But please do not associate the places in the novel too much with reality. It is fictional, fictional, fictional, and there are private settings. For example, the mountain behind Shili Village will not match it with reality.
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