During the day, Ma Peng began to rally the remaining laborers to cut wood and build houses.
The women and children continued to busy themselves with the crops.
Gou Bao and his group maintained their shift-based watch over the water source.
With everyone so occupied, and a group of people having departed, the place suddenly felt much emptier.
Upon learning that the men had gone hunting, Cai Lihua eagerly anticipated some game meat. She spent her days with Lu Huifen, figuring out how to prepare meals with the simplest wild vegetables and limited rabbit meat to feed hundreds of people.
The two women were close in age and both cooks, so they got along very well.
No one knew where Granny Wang had gone to pursue her breakthroughs, and old Peng Zhao had searched all over the mountains for her, but it was unclear if he had found her.
Only A Jiu, with nothing else to do, was in the dry grass, studying how to grow vegetables.
She felt that this season wasn't suitable for growing tomatoes and other vegetables.
Yet, she wanted to try.
At that moment, she sat cross-legged in front of the newly planted vegetables, lost in thought.
The wind blew through the dry grass like a yellow tide, completely concealing A Jiu's body.
Not long after, A Jiu's pupils gradually dilated. Wow, the soil was being pushed up by a tender sprout, it really could germinate.
After a while, the two tender sprouts, still bearing their seed shells, stretched out lazily.
It wasn't until noon, when the sound of her mother calling everyone for a meal echoed from the distant settlement, that A Jiu hurriedly stuffed the last few tomatoes she had picked into her embrace, storing them directly into her space.
She quickly pulled out the withered branches and returned.
"Jiu'er, you must be hungry. Come and try the wild vegetable steamed buns my mother made. There's some minced meat in them."
Cai Lihua happily grabbed two steamed buns and blew on them repeatedly.
"Wow, there really is minced meat."
"There's salt in here, it smells so good. Sister Cai, your cooking is truly superb."
Everyone praised them. Over there, Lu Huifen was distributing spring water to each person. It wasn't much, at most a few sips, otherwise, it wouldn't be enough to go around.
At this moment, she was also beaming: "Of course, sister-in-law's cooking is even better than the imperial chefs I've seen."
"You've eaten imperial cuisine?" Everyone chatted enthusiastically, as if they had long forgotten the wars and famine outside.
"Of course. When Prince Nanming got married, the Emperor specifically sent imperial chefs to oversee the arrangements. Cooks like me were only fit to help chop vegetables."
Lu Huifen spoke with great animation, pouring the last drop of water from the wooden bucket into a ladle.
"Sister Lu, is all the water for today distributed?" Cai Lihua asked while eating her steamed bun.
"Yes, the water for steaming the buns was also distributed. The mountain spring is strange; it flows less during the day and more at night. I don't know how much we can collect this afternoon, whether it will be enough for tonight."
"Oh." Cai Lihua finished speaking and walked to the base of a tree, squatting beside Jiu'er:
"We don't lack water, don't worry."
A Jiu chuckled. What was her mother thinking? If they truly ran out of water, A Jiu wouldn't just stand by and do nothing. Her mother, however, was preparing in advance.
"By the way, have you seen your grandmother?" Cai Lihua finally remembered her mother-in-law who had been missing for a long time.
"She's fine, she went to the mountains to meditate." A Jiu didn't know exactly which mountain she had gone to.
"That's good. I thought she had starved to death." Cai Lihua took a big bite of the steamed bun: "I wonder if your father can bring back some meat from his distant hunting trip. We used the meat of one wild rabbit for everyone to have a bite of meat this time."
A Jiu sighed. A single wild rabbit for the rations of over two hundred people; she wondered if she could even get a shred of meat with three bites.
However, what A Jiu found heartening was that despite their hardship, they hadn't considered their own sheep for food.
Even when Gou Bao changed shifts, he still led the sheep around to graze, and he even spared a bit of water for them.
Lu Huifen had said that if the sheep had lambs, and those lambs grew up to have their own lambs, they would slowly build up a flock. If they ate them now just for immediate gratification, they would be cutting off their own future.
In this way, the four sheep became precious treasures in people's hearts, and some children even brushed their wool.
Thinking of this, A Jiu suddenly felt that this must be paradise.
"Zhang Mazi, you people are the laborers building the houses. Everyone can have an extra one." After eating her fill, Cai Lihua quickly picked up her basket to distribute the steamed buns.
Not long after, Cai Lihua finished distributing the steamed buns and returned. She kept looking at the items in her basket, her brows furrowed.
"Mother, what's wrong?" When A Jiu approached, she saw that her basket contained a large rock, the kind of ugly stone that even ginseng wouldn't want to live with:
"Why are you carrying a rock?"
"Jiu'er, this isn't an ordinary rock. This is a meteorite."