I have never seen rice before, so naturally I don't understand it.
But seeing how excited Chen Jian was, it was clear that he knew him.
Chen Jian trembled slightly, his ecstatic expression making him appear somewhat foolish.
"Brother Sihai, if we can grow this rice, then we'll have rice to eat in the future! Let me see if there's any more around here!"
As he spoke, he lunged towards the haystack.
I stood aside watching Chen Jian stare in disbelief, but I also knew that if this really was rice, then we would indeed have rice to eat.
Although we didn't go hungry during this time.
But the fish in the sea tasted so fishy that it was impossible to eat them.
I was getting a bit tired of eating shellfish meat.
We've eaten most of the wild game we hunted before.
For the past few days, we've been sharing the python we caught.
I could manage the python meat the first time, but I couldn't stand eating it all the time.
So at this moment I also got a little excited, and followed behind Chen Jian to that patch of grass.
Chen Jian carefully looked around, then squatted down in a slightly dug pit and peered inside, his eyes shining.
"Brother Sihai, look, it really is rice!"
A few green seedlings, about thirty or forty in total, have sprung up sparsely in this small puddle.
"Brother Sihai, we can finally have rice to eat!"
As Chen Jian shouted excitedly, his eyes reddened. I was infected by his emotions and couldn't help but feel happy too.
“Finding these seedlings is much more useful than those ores. After all, no matter how valuable those ores are, they can’t fill our stomachs. Let’s move all these seedlings and plant them at the foot of our mountain. As long as we harvest the grain, we’ll have food to eat here.”
I nodded: "That's fine, but what are the soil requirements for rice? Is it too shady down here? Won't it be okay if they don't get any sunlight?"
I didn't quite understand. After I asked, Chen Jian's expression turned rather grim. Clearly, it wouldn't be possible to move the seedlings away.
Chen Jian was just excited, but now he's completely deflated.
He sat on a stone stool to the side, sighing.
"But I'm really uneasy about letting them grow here. This place is full of herbivorous and carnivorous wild animals. What if some foolish creature eats all these rice seedlings? Then we won't get anything."
Chen Jian's consideration is correct, but we have no way to transport these rice seedlings away now, so we can only leave this place. If the rice seedlings die on the way, we will still end up empty-handed.
"Here's what we'll do. You stay here and guard our things. I'll leave you the food and water. I'll go back and find Wang Ping and the others. Let's see if we can build some fences here to properly enclose this place. That way, we can reduce some losses. Then we'll come and check on it every two days."
Chen Jian nodded after listening and urged me to hurry up and leave.
I was a little worried about leaving Chen Jian alone here, so I left the revolver in my hand to him.
"There are still a few bullets in the gun. You must make good use of them and not waste them unless absolutely necessary. But if you encounter a life-threatening situation, you must prioritize saving your life, understand? Liu Jiaojiao is still waiting for you at the camp."
"Brother Sihai, why are you dawdling like this? Hurry up and go back. I'll wait here. It's broad daylight and nothing will happen."
I nodded and quickly turned around to go back the way I came. But when I finally made it back to the campsite after trekking through mountains and rivers, I found a huge argument going on on the mountaintop.
"You say you didn't take it, but who can testify for you? We put this thing in here, everyone saw it, and now it's gone. You're just shirking responsibility."
Wang Xiaoxiao angrily yelled at a male colleague.
Xu Wei stood behind Wang Xiaoxiao with red eyes. Xiao Qiang was nowhere to be seen. A large group of people were gathered together, their faces flushed.
When she saw me return, Xu Wei rushed to me and grabbed my hand: "Brother Sihai, we've lost all our short-legged birds!"
I was extremely anxious to go back and find Chen Jian first, and then tell everyone the good news that we had discovered rice.
But when I heard Xu Wei say that, I was stunned: "How is that possible? We've already built a fence, and those short-legged birds are inside the fence, aren't they?"
At this moment, Wang Ping walked up to us, and his expression was somewhat unpleasant as he looked at me.
“Just now, Accountant Wang said that your short-legged birds were dead and came to our camp to cause trouble. But the two male colleagues on guard duty this afternoon didn’t see them at all. But Accountant Wang insists that we stole them. How is that possible? If we really stole them, there should be some feathers or bloodstains of the short-legged birds in the camp. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have eaten the birds. Besides, this mountaintop is only so big. Do you think we can just make these birds disappear out of thin air?”
Wang Ping seemed a little angry, but I had no idea what had happened from beginning to end, so I quickly looked at Wang Xiaoxiao.
Wang Xiaoxiao looked at me, took a deep breath, and said angrily, "Not long after Chen Jian and I left, Xiao Qiang and the others wanted to go into the woods to pick some mushrooms and dry them."
The short-legged birds had remained inside the enclosure without anyone touching them. Before they left, they even changed the water for the birds and threw in some shellfish. Not a single bird was missing. However, when they returned, they found that all the short-legged birds were gone.
There were even a few broken eggs inside, and the water basin had been overturned, with fur all over the floor.
After Wang Xiaoxiao finished speaking, she looked at me, and then at Wang Ping.
"If they hadn't taken those short-legged birds, how could they have grown wings and flown away on their own? We've been raising them for so long on the top of the cave. I don't believe they would have escaped. Besides, if they really wanted to escape, they wouldn't have done so back then, but instead ran away here."
"Besides, the three of us went to the camp, and Liu Jiaojiao went down the mountain to wash clothes. There were only Bai Wei and his group on the mountain. I can't think of anyone else who would let these short-legged birds take things away quietly right under my nose. I wanted to check their treehouse, but they wouldn't let me. Don't you think that's just a guilty conscience?"
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