In Songlin Village, Liu Cheng stood on the ridge of the terraced fields, looking at the lush green sweet potato vines and corn cobs he had never seen before, his expression changing repeatedly.
He has been living in this secluded village for more than half a year. His injuries have completely healed. He wanted to leave a few months ago because there are still many things waiting for him to do. He wonders how worried his father is because he hasn't heard from him.
Unfortunately, his men couldn't find a way out. Not to mention leaving the mountains, they often got lost even when hunting, due to the complex terrain, so they remained trapped there.
Then he witnessed firsthand how the villagers of Songlin Village produced 50% more crops than outsiders, from tilling the land to sowing and finally harvesting, especially sweet potatoes and corn, which had particularly high yields.
He often eats both of these things, which are given to them by the villagers at half price. When they first arrived, the villagers would give them food, but that couldn't go on for long, as they couldn't afford to feed them.
They also had to be self-aware, so they later used silver to buy grain from the villagers.
Yes, they buy rice or wheat, and then the villagers will give them some sweet potatoes and corn. The sweet potatoes taste good, but eating too many will cause flatulence, which is very unseemly.
Corn tastes best when it's young; if you harvest it a few days later, it becomes too old and tough to eat. You can only pick it, dry it, grind it into cornmeal, and then make porridge or pancakes to eat.
There are plenty of game in the mountains, and the guards would occasionally go into the mountains to hunt a few rabbits and pheasants to improve their meals. Sweet potato leaves are also good to stir-fry, but they use a lot of oil. However, they had nothing here and nowhere to buy them, so they could only buy them from the villagers. How much oil could the villagers have? They had saved up from hunting wild boars.
Oh, and there are also the dozens of pigs raised by Song Zhuiyan. Nowadays, every household in the village raises a pig, but pigs can't be slaughtered casually. They have to be kept for the New Year or other festivals, and if they weigh less than 200 jin (100 kg), no one wants to slaughter them.
Songlin Village is mysterious and peaceful. It has everything, including many things that are not found outside. When you ask the villagers, they say that these things were found in the mountains, even the big white pigs were found in the mountains.
Liu Cheng was very skeptical, but he had visited the Song family's pig farm, where they also raised a lot of wild boars, as well as hybrid pigs born from the breeding of domestic and wild boars. This made him think that perhaps the big white pig really was hunted from the mountains, after all, anything is possible.
The villagers said that people used to live here. Their pigs ran away to the mountains and turned into wild boars. After a group of people fled here, they caught the pigs and raised them.
"So, do you know why the western hills are covered with poisonous flowers and weeds, and why the villagers don't go there?" Having stayed in Songlin Village for so long, Liu Cheng knew the area around Songlin Village very well.
However, because many places are planted with poisonous flowers and plants, people dare not approach them easily for fear of being accidentally poisoned.
"The villagers are really tight-lipped; it took us ages to get any information out of them," the guard said, somewhat frustrated. He and two other guards had been secretly trying to find out information from the villagers every day, but they just couldn't get anything useful out of them. Even the children were very clever.
However, they did manage to find out some information. For example, they found out about the situation in Xishan: "The young master's place is a graveyard, full of buried women."
"Hmm, how so?" Liu Cheng raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised.
The guard was a little embarrassed, probably because he had been asking around and everyone in the village knew he was looking for information. Then yesterday he "bumped into" Village Chief Lin, who took the initiative to chat with him.
"Don't ask around anymore. I'll tell you. There's nothing special about West Mountain, except for a lot of dead people, all of them women who died tragically..." Then he told her all about how the flower thief harmed people and how he collected female corpses.
"After we fled here, we accidentally discovered the Water Curtain Cave one day. Then we found dead bodies in a box inside the cave, so we kindly carried them out and buried them." Lin Fuhai omitted the part about the flower thief bringing his men back and being killed by them. Anyway, he kept things ambiguous and didn't want people to know too much about Songlin Village.
This was what Zhong Qingyi and Song Zhuiyan told him when they left: one should always be wary of others. Even if Liu Cheng wasn't a bad person, one should still be cautious and not be foolish enough to indulge him in whatever he wanted to do.
"If it's a burial site for the dead, why plant so many poisonous weeds and thorns? Planting so many around the edge of farmland is understandable, to prevent wild beasts and boars from disturbing it, but what's the reason for planting them around a graveyard?" Liu Cheng still found it strange.
"Village Chief Lin said it was to prevent the village's young children from running off to play on the edge, where the terrain is treacherous and accidents could easily happen. The reason the dead were buried there was because the villagers didn't like going there, so it wouldn't disturb each other or take up space." The key point is the last sentence: "takes up space."
The reason is actually this?
Okay, that makes sense.
Song Tantan and his three companions had been traveling for more than twenty days and would arrive at Songlin Village in a few more days. At this moment, they were sitting under a tree cooking something to eat. They had simmered "Dragon and Phoenix Soup" in a clay pot. They had just caught a snake weighing more than three pounds and two pheasants, and then picked some mushrooms to stew together.
Ye Moxun was holding a bowl, about to scoop some soup, when he heard the system say, "Host, I'm giving you a notification, consider it a bonus."
"Speak quickly, stop dawdling." Ye Moxun put down his bowl and decided to eat later, thinking that danger was approaching again.
"The Liu Cheng that your uncle saved is actually the son of the Prince Xian, the eldest son of the legitimate wife. His full name is Liu Chengyu. The Prince Xian was the eighteenth son of the late emperor. His fief was in Jiangnan. Because his mother was favored, he was also favored by the late emperor and was able to be enfeoffed as the Prince of Jiangnan, that prosperous land..."
"Stop, I know the rest, you don't need to tell me." The system suddenly became so attentive for some unknown reason.
Ye Moxun told Zhong Qingyi and the other two about Liu Chengyu's identity. The three of them didn't react much. Whether he was Liu Cheng or Liu Chengyu, as long as he wasn't as ruthless as Duke, there was no need to eliminate him.
“Host, I haven’t finished yet. The women Liu Cheng brought with him were actually the wives and concubines of his uncle, Prince Duan. Those three children were Prince Duan’s last three children. He originally had many wives and concubines and more than a dozen children. The adults were all killed by Duke and others, and only three of the young ones survived.”
"Were they all rescued by Liu Chengyu?" Ye Mo asked.
"No, Liu Chengyu hadn't been in Xifeng for long. Duan Wang's concubines were quite capable, which is why they were able to escape with their children when Duke came to arrest them, and they were able to hide for almost a year without being found. Liu Chengyu also ran into those women by chance."
In fact, one was in Xifeng and the other in Jiangnan, so the two princes rarely met. Liu Chengyu had only met Prince Duan less than five times in total.
It was as if fate had given him a way out. Two years ago, Prince Duan went to Jiangnan to handle a matter, taking a concubine with him. At that time, Prince Xian hosted a banquet to entertain him, and Liu Chengyu happened to have met this concubine once.
No wonder Prince Duan favored this concubine so much, taking her with him on his business trips to Jiangnan. She was indeed a clever woman; it was she who led the other concubines and children to escape Duke's pursuit.
Moreover, she had a good memory. Even though they had only met once and two years had passed, she was able to recognize Liu Chengyu at a glance. It took Liu Chengyu quite a while to remember her identity.
Later, Liu Chengyu and his female relatives tried to send him away from Xifeng, but Duke discovered his whereabouts and sent people to chase after him, determined to cut off his head. However, he was not destined to die, and was saved by Zhong Qingyi and Song Zhuiyan at the critical moment.
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