Chapter 9, the first page of the data collector is the shopping mall...
The first page of the collector's shop still has 19 matches left to exchange. There are 20 matches in a box, which should last her for a while. There are also 89 steamed buns left to exchange, two at a time. Hmm, that seems like a lot, but it won't last her very long. She's also exchanged 88 pottery jars for water, and has already exchanged for hoes, sickles, and axes.
After changing all the clothes on the second page, there's still a shuttle left. You don't need to change it for now since you don't need it. Iron pots, pans, and chopsticks are also limited-purchase items, so there's only one shuttle left on the second page.
Cang Li clicked on the third page and immediately saw that the first item was salt that could be exchanged 99 times. Each exchange yielded a 500-gram bag, and one exchange was required per gathering point. Cang Li was so happy that he immediately exchanged for a bag. How could fish soup be without salt! It seems that this gathering device really does refresh the shop according to the owner's wishes.
The second slot contains a kitchen knife, and the third slot contains a large spatula. Both are limited to one purchase each, and each costs 2 collection points.
The three in the second row were seeds. Cang Li clicked on them and was surprised to find rice seeds. That's great, now he had a staple food. The remaining two were potatoes and sweet potatoes, which were things that Cang Li couldn't find here.
Cang Li changed her spatula and kitchen knife first. She wasn't in a hurry to plant the seeds; she hadn't even cleared the land yet, so what was the point of planting?
The third page of collection points is unlocked when you accumulate 200 points. After deducting the points that have been used, Cang Li still has 120 collection points left.
The fish soup was almost ready. Cang Li took out the spatula. The salt they had exchanged was in a bamboo tube. After adding some salt to the soup, the fish became even more fragrant.
Cang Li sprinkled some more salt into the pork cracklings, then put the fish meat in a bowl. Luckily, the pig's blood had been scalded before frying so it wouldn't take up much soup. There were six full bowls of fish meat, and a large soup bowl was also filled. There was still some left in the pot. Cang Li used a leaf to scoop out all the fish meat and put it into his backpack. After washing the pot, he stir-fried some wild bok choy with pork fat.
With the salt, Cang Li felt like she had finally come back to life. She ate her fill of steamed buns and left the dishwashing to Da Zai. She still had to process the remaining fish. She ate one and gave one to the collector. There were four big fish left, and Cang Li planned to pickle two of them into salted fish.
One bamboo tube of salt was clearly not enough to pickle two large fish, so Cang Li exchanged it for four more jars of salt. He then coated the fish inside and out with salt and hung them aside to air dry, planning to take them back to the cave later.
The cleaned dishes and chopsticks were neatly arranged by Da Zai to the side. Cang Li walked over and put the dishes, chopsticks, and pots into his backpack. Then he cleaned up the ground and threw all the remaining trash into the river, since it would be carried away by the water and become nutrients for the earth.
After finishing these tasks, Cang Li lay down on the grass to rest, pulling her five cubs down with her. Anyway, it was still early, and they would go home after the sun went down.
Cang Li crossed her legs, humming an unknown tune. She had been in this world for almost a week, and she could finally relax for a little while.
Um?
Cang Li stared at the mountain across the river with some confusion. She had always felt that the shape of the mountain was a bit strange. Now that she was lying down and looking at it from the side, the mountain looked like a woman lying on her side.
Thinking about it this way, the more Cang Li looked at the mountain, the more it seemed to resemble a person lying on their side. The head was a head, the waist was a waist, but the legs didn't quite look right. They were stacked together, and even the position of the head and facial features were clearly visible.
Cang Li propped himself up to sit up and looked at the screen more carefully, but after a while he lay back down, looking completely indifferent.
Isn't it just a mountain shaped like a person? There are plenty of mountains that look like people in modern society, and even some that look like tigers or lions. Although she has never seen one in person, she has seen many pictures of them.
After leisurely lying down for an afternoon, Cang Li led the cubs back home after the sun went down. She didn't plan to go up the mountain for the next few days, fearing that she might encounter a family of wild boars seeking revenge. In the next few days, she laid stone slabs and pebbles inside the cave, and also laid them at the entrance of the cave. Then she cultivated two plots of land to grow crops.
From the cave entrance to the riverbank, there's a large open space where burning down the weeds would be the easiest solution.
But Cang Li was not a lawless outlaw, nor did he have a penchant for setting mountains on fire, and he certainly didn't want to burn himself, so he could only resort to writing and weeding.
Over the next few days, Cang Li and his children diligently cleared the land and weeded. They ate fish, meat, and bok choy at every meal, which was delicious, though a bit monotonous. But the children didn't mind and ate with great relish every time.
Thanks to Cang Li's efforts, the one-acre plot of land in front of the gate was cleared. Cang Li planned to plant rice on the left half, and to facilitate irrigation, he even made furrows along the edge of the plot. After tilling the other half, Cang Li divided it into four sections: one for potatoes, one for sweet potatoes, one for transplanted bok choy, and the remaining section for half-dead wild onions and ginger.
A month has passed since all of this was done. Cang Li doesn't know if it's too late to plant now, but something is better than nothing.
The cave was also cleaned up by Cang Li. It was covered with stone slabs that he had picked up not far from the right side of the cave. They looked like they had fallen from the mountain. They were very flat, and each slab was about four or five square meters in size. Cang Li picked up a dozen or twenty slabs and covered the entire cave floor. He filled the gaps with pebbles.
Cang Li also picked up some smaller ones and covered the entrance to the cave with them. He also placed stone slabs on the steps so that even if it rained, the cave wouldn't be dirty. He also set up a clothesline on the left side of the cave entrance, where the family's clothes were hanging to dry.
Looking at the newly renovated cave, Cang Li was deeply moved. No wonder so many people love watching videos of old house renovations; she loved watching them too!
After finishing the cave, Cang Li went to check on the wood she had been collecting for a month. She went to check on it every few days, afraid that if she didn't go for a long time, the wood would be washed away by the water. She had worked so hard to cut it, and she couldn't let it go to waste.
After pulling the wood out, Cang Li stopped soaking it and put it directly into his backpack. He took it back to the cave entrance to dry, planning to split it with an axe later. He wished he had a saw, hoping the shop would refresh and release one, preferably an electric one.
"Big sister! We found an egg!"
The eldest child's voice came. After a month of Cang Li's efforts, the eldest, second, and third children had all learned to express themselves fluently. The fourth child was three years old and could not express himself very clearly yet, but he could speak. Only the fifth child was babbling incoherently.
Cang Li then walked back, and every now and then he would see the excited cub following the path he had trodden out, followed by two, three, four, or five more cubs. The cub was holding a leaf in its hand, and inside the leaf were about ten eggs. Cang Li casually tossed one to the collector—a wild egg that was about to hatch. Cang Li patted the cub's head:
"Great, these eggs are going to hatch into chicks. Go back and build a chicken coop, and when they grow up, we'll have meat and eggs to eat."
The eldest cub nodded repeatedly. Cang Li secretly used the hair of several cubs to identify the collector, and it was successful. Thus, she learned what her own body looked like when it was seventeen to eighteen years old: the eldest cub was eight years old, the second cub was seven years old, the third cub was five years old, the fourth cub was three years old, and the fifth cub was one and a half years old.
In general, it can be confirmed that the five children were not hers, and she was incapable of giving birth to them.
It's strange, though. There were six minors in total, but where were the adults? Even if something had happened, Cang Li hadn't seen any graves, let alone any corpses. A month had passed, and Cang Li hadn't seen a single outsider. Sometimes she would go up to a high place to look upstream, but she hadn't even seen a wisp of smoke. Even in primitive society, surely people would know how to make fire?
However, Cang Li never saw them. Even if we take a step back, primitive people lived in tribal communities. Even if the original body and the five children were exiled by the tribe, the tribe couldn't have been too far away. After all, the productivity was there, and no tribe would abandon its children. These children would all be laborers when they grew up.
But Cang Li didn't see a single person.
Cang Li found it particularly strange. He couldn't get any answers from the cubs, since they had only just learned to speak and their expressions were sometimes quite confused. Asking them was pointless, so Cang Li had no choice but to put the matter aside for the time being.
Back in the cave, Cang Li took out the wood and laid it out at the door to dry. Then he selected some thick, dry branches and fenced off a section of the field. He wrapped the branches with vines and stuck them into the ground, and a rough chicken coop was ready. Cang Li also covered it with leaves to keep out the rain, put a pile of dry grass on the section against the wall, and then put the eggs in.
Anyway, you can't eat fertilized eggs that are about to hatch, and there's no loss if they don't hatch. If they do hatch, you can just chop up some bok choy or wild vegetables and feed them.
After arranging the eggs, Cang Li went to the rice field where the rice seeds had been sown and put the water from her backpack into the field. In her mind, rice was paddy rice, and there had to be water in the field.
She also watered the vegetable garden next door. Cang Li went back to the cave to drink water, and then went to the cave entrance to start a fire and cook. She moved the stove from inside the cave to the cave entrance because it was too hot to start a fire inside the cave. She would move it back in winter.
Cang Li stewed pork ribs today, and added some leftover mushrooms. It was very delicious. She also stir-fried some wild vegetables and gave them two steamed buns. Since they're always this late, the children have visibly gotten fatter. Their little faces are chubby and feel wonderful to the touch. Cang Li loves to pinch the cheeks of the fourth and fifth children.
Cang Li painstakingly threw back the large tree root from the mountain, trimmed it with an axe, and placed it at the entrance of the cave to serve as a dining table.
A row of earthenware jars was placed next to the stove, all filled with river water. The water exchanged by the system was stored in the cave. After drinking it, the empty jars were used to store river water. However, Cang Li had seen that the river water was very clear when it didn't rain. It was drinkable after boiling and quite sweet.
So once the system's water exchange was complete, they used river water to refill it.
The two kids went to wash the dishes together, while Cang Li added water to the pot. They would take a bath after it was boiled.
With her strong hands-on skills, Cang Li dug a small cave next to the main cave, two meters high, two meters wide, and three meters deep. She lined it with stone slabs and pebbles, and put a curtain made of grass at the entrance for bathing.
The edge of the small cave had a drainage ditch that connected to the fields, so the bathwater could be used to irrigate the land directly, which was very convenient, but it was laborious to set up.
Cang Li waved his straw fan, watching the three, four, and five cubs playing. Seeing that the eldest and second cubs had finished washing the dishes, he beckoned them over, smiling as he said:
"None of you have names, so let me give you names."
The two kids immediately looked at Cang Li. They knew the name; their eldest sister had said that her name was Cang Li. They didn't have names, but now their eldest sister was going to give them names! The two kids looked at Cang Li with bright, sparkling eyes.
Cang Li smiled and waved his fan, remarking with emotion:
"Haven't seen anyone else for so long, could we be the first humans in the world? Hey? I have a great idea!"
As he spoke, Cang Li looked at the children with a slightly mischievous expression.
The children looked at Cang Li with confusion, wondering what good idea he had.
A note from the author:
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