The rice was beautiful, its golden color giving people a sense of hope. Our group was incredibly excited when we saw the rice in front of us.
Chen Jian grabbed me so tightly that he almost jumped up on the ground.
"Brother Sihai, are we going to have rice to eat soon?"
Wang Ping, standing to the side, looked at Chen Jian with a smile on his face but shook his head.
"Even after these rice grains have grown, they still need to be milled to become polished rice, which is the kind of rice we eat in the city that has already been processed. But how are you going to remove the outer husk from these rice grains?"
After Wang Ping finished speaking, Chen Jian, who had been extremely excited, suddenly frowned.
"What should we do? We can't just sit here watching this rice and not be able to eat it, can we? I've been craving it so much lately. I never imagined rice could taste so good when I was in the city. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water. I can't do this. Sihai, what do you think we should do?"
I looked at Chen Jian and then at Wang Ping, and shook my head: "I don't have much experience with this. After all, I've never done anything like grinding rice before. And although my family is from the countryside, I've never experienced anything like this before... But many hands make light work. I believe we can all figure out a way. After all, we can find rice even under such difficult conditions, so grinding rice shouldn't be too difficult, right?"
Wang Ping, who was standing to the side, looked at me and said with a smile, "I think we shouldn't be too anxious about this. As long as these rice grains can grow completely, we'll always find a way."
Liu Jiaojiao came out of Chen Jian's and Chen Jian's room at this moment.
Liu Jiaojiao has been looking great these past few days, and her good appetite and thirst have made us all quite happy.
Wang Xiaoxiao and Xu Wei have been searching for a lot of wild rabbits these past few days, washing all their fur clean so they can make baby clothes for Liu Jiaojiao's newborn child.
Now that the women had something to do, they quieted down considerably.
Liu Jiaojiao leaned closer to look at the rice stalks and swallowed hard. "I've seen this in a movie before. It seems like they used stone mills to grind the rice. But we have plenty of stones here. How can we make a stone mill?"
Chen Jian now considers Liu Jiaojiao his precious darling. Hearing what Liu Jiaojiao said, he quickly went over and patted her hair with a comforting expression.
"Honey, don't worry, Sihai and I will figure something out. I think this stone mill is just a round stone, right? Let's think about it and see if we can get a rounder stone and make a simple stone mill. Anyway, the rice will take another ten or twenty days to ripen, so we have enough time. Go and rest for a bit. I've made some steamed egg custard for you in the pot, go and try it."
Liu Jiaojiao followed Chen Jian, and the two walked away chatting and laughing. Wang Ping watched Chen Jian's back with envy on his face.
"Hey, sometimes I think this kind of peaceful life is much better than in the big city. At least there's no backstabbing here. Although there might be occasional misunderstandings, things can always be easily resolved. It's much better than the immense pressure in the big city. Chen Jian's arrival here can be considered a blessing in disguise."
I nodded in agreement with Wang Ping's words. Perhaps Chen Jian was the only one who benefited from this misfortune, and so was I. Otherwise, in a big city, I probably wouldn't even be able to handle Xu Wei, let alone Xiao Qiang. But thinking about these things now is useless. I should focus on figuring out how to make a graphite.
We immediately went down the mountain to look for suitable stones. Wang Ping said it would be best if they were bigger, because if we could successfully breed this rice, we would have to grind rice to eat regularly in the future.
Therefore, making a larger one will save trouble later.
I agree with Wang Ping's statement, but the problem is that we have no way of finding such a round stone right now, and even if we did find one, we wouldn't have a way of carrying it to the top of the mountain.
After some discussion, we decided to place the graphite at the bottom of the waterfall cave. At first, we used a large rock, but it was uneven. We used other rocks to bump against each other, which smoothed it out a bit, but the effect was still not very good.
Wang Ping said that for now, this was the only option. Then, they found a rounder stone and, after more than ten days of working, finally achieved the desired effect.
Although it's not perfect, it should be fine for grinding rice.
We found a very thick tree trunk, tied it with vines, and then used it as a fulcrum.
Although they were oddly shaped, they were still quite good. After waiting for more than 20 days, our rice finally ripened.
The seeds that Wang Ping and Chen Jian selected were carefully stored away, and we didn't waste a single grain of the remaining rice; we ground it all into rice.
Although the rice we milled wasn't as good as the rice you can buy in the city, we were still very excited when the rice porridge was cooked.
Chen Jian immediately ladled out a bowl and handed it to me. I took a sip and thought it was the most delicious thing in the world.
The last time we ate rice was from the sunken rice found on the ghost ship. Although the rice we have now is not perfect, it has grown to this point through our own efforts.
Moreover, our rice mill was quite good, so we harvested a large jar of rice that evening.
This amount of rice isn't much for us, but it gives us hope because we still have seeds.
This year's harvest is just one jar, but next year we might harvest a dozen jars, or even more.
In this way, even if the search and rescue team can't find us and we can't get out, we'll still have some staple food to eat. This is truly exciting news.
In the evening, we didn't eat rice, but just drank some brown rice soup.
Everyone was very happy, and even the dried seafood that we usually don't like to eat ate quite a lot.
Liu Jiaojiao, her face beaming with joy, touched her belly and said that even if the child couldn't return to the city after birth, he would at least know that there is a food called rice in this world.
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