81 Who Were They?
The fire in the wooden building only started to die down the next day when the sky was bright.
As the wooden building was quite a distance away from the surrounding buildings, the fire did not spread to other places.
Initially, Su Ying had planned to look for a water source today, but after thinking about it, wouldn’t it be much more convenient if she could find a water source nearby instead of elsewhere in such a big place like this?
She remembered that when she went to the wooden building to look for Bai Shuang yesterday, she saw a well in the courtyard of the wooden building. So after breakfast, she took a shovel to the wooden building that had been burned to ruins.
Hea Shouyi finished his work and followed Su Ying to the ruins.
“Mistress, what are you looking for?”
“A well. I saw a well here yesterday. Let’s look for it and see if we can still use it.”
“Alright. It will be much more convenient if it can be used.”
“Mm-hmm. Go and round up a few more people to come here and look for it together.”
“Alright.”
When the mercenaries arrived, they moved the totally charred wood to one side. When they unveiled the ground, they found a large number of bones.
Although they didn’t see it with their own eyes, Hea Shouyi and the others still shuddered when they thought of what Su Ying said.
Su Ying remembered the location of the bones. The well should be at the back. She straightened up and walked forward. She found a piece of boulder that had been burnt until it was totally black.
After she moved the boulder away, she found the well.
“I found it. I found the well.”
When everyone heard this, they all came over. At a glance, it was indeed a large well.
As the top of the well was covered by something, the water in the well was not contaminated even though there was such a big fire last night.
Su Ying raised her head and looked in the direction of the open space. She felt that the distance between the wooden building and the open space wasn’t that far. Perhaps they could extend the land area for their houses to this side.
With that thought, Su Ying put the stone cover back and asked the mercenaries to clean all the debris out of this place. They would bury the bones in a pit they dug in the back of the mountain.
“Tian Mu, let’s expand the land area for the houses.” Su Ying walked to Tian Mu’s side.
Upon hearing that, Tian Mu stopped what he was doing and listened carefully to Su Ying’s plan. There was a water source over there, and if they didn’t take this free basic necessity for themselves in time, it could be taken by someone else.
“I understand, Mistress. I’ll make a new drawing tonight. The original design will remain the same. I’ll see how to deal with that piece of land under the wooden house.”
“Alright.”
Now that the water source problem had been solved, the next step was to speed up the construction of the houses.
For the next ten days, Su Ying and the others worked in a frenzied state. As Su Ying was able to bring out some extremely convenient tools from time to time, the speed of construction was much faster than Tian Mu had imagined.
In a short ten days, the preliminary structure of a two-story wooden building had taken shape. Although some details still needed to be improved upon, it was enough to shelter them from the wind and rain.
Aunt Zhao’s eyes became red-rimmed as she looked at the wooden building. Ever since they were exiled, what they yearned the most was a stable place to settle down. Now, it seemed they were getting closer and closer to what they had been hoping for.
Su Ying was also very pleased with the wooden building that was almost completed. Even if there was nothing inside, at least they didn’t have to use the ground as their bed and the sky as their blanket.
Tian Mu also knew how to make furniture, so it was only a matter of time before they got furniture.
After the house was completed, Su Ying had to think about how they would continue to live here in the future.
Although she had the corresponding supplies in her interspatial store, these supplies would not regenerate. Once they were used up, they would be gone. If she wanted to replenish them, she would have to spend a lot of money. Although she still had some gold in her hands, she would run out of it sooner or later without any income.
For the past two days, Su Ying had been pondering how they could sustain a long-term continuous development.
Early one morning, Su Ying gave an excuse that she wanted to go up the mountain to see if there was any prey and went to the back of the mountain.
On the mountain, Su Ying found a place with no one around and entered her interspatial store.
When she had gone shopping in the various cities earlier, she had bought everything that she thought was useful. Those things were still piled up in her interspatial store, and she didn’t know if she would be able to put them to use.
Su Ying noticed that there were many small vegetable seeds on the shelf. If she recalled correctly, the shop owner of the rice store had given them to her for free when she bought rice. He said that he wanted to bring in some seeds to test the market demand. After Su Ying emptied the rice store, the shop owner threw in a bag of seeds for free.
She put the seeds in her bag. She would take out the livestock she had bought and kept in her interspatial store today. This old hen could still lay eggs for the children.
Su Ying took out her stuff and walked one round through the mountain. She caught a few wild hares and went down the mountain.
“Rabbit and chicken. Mother, it’s rabbit and chicken.”
When the older toddler Ji and younger toddler Ling saw Su Ying carrying the chicken and hares back, they pounced on her excitedly.
Su Ying placed the chicken and hares in the livestock enclosure Tian Mu had made.
“Mistress, if this wild hare was caught in the mountains, then where did this hen and duck come from?” Aunt Zhao followed the children over and was very surprised to see the poultry.
Su Ying said with a straight face, “Oh, this. I bought it from an old man I met on the mountain. There’s also this.”
Su Ying passed the bag of seeds to Aunt Zhao, who opened it but couldn’t recognize it.
“What… what is this?”
“Oh, this is the seed of a leafy vegetable. It’s good stuff!” Aunt Jiang, who was helping out, saw the seeds in Aunt Zhao’s hands and walked over happily.
“Seeds? Vegetable seeds?”
Aunt Jiang nodded. “That’s right. Let me take a look at this seed…” She grabbed a small handful of seeds and looked at them. Then, the wrinkles on her face deepened as she smiled. “They’re live seeds too. They can be used, they can be used. I’ll tidy up an empty plot of land in the next two days to plant some of these seeds. Soon, we’ll have fresh vegetables to eat.”
When she saw how confident Aunt Jiang was, Su Ying knew that she was telling the truth. “Alright. I’ll leave these seeds with you. If you can plant them, then plant them. Ask Number one and the others to help you plow the soil.”
“Sure, sure.”
Aunt Jiang was about to leave with the seeds, but Su Ying stopped her. “Aunt Jiang, are you able to grow anything?”
Aunt Jiang stopped in her tracks and paused momentarily before saying with a laugh, “Yes. Ming’er and I have been working in the fields for many years. As long as it’s not a particularly rare species, we can grow it.”
On the way here, Su Ying never asked about Aunt Jiang and Cheng Ming’s background because Xiao Jin had asked her to save them. Now that she knew what Aunt Jiang could do, she couldn’t help but be curious.
After she sprinkled a handful of corn in the chicken pen, she walked to the side of the carriage. Xiao Jin was sitting inside the carriage.
Although the house was almost finished, Xiao Jin still insisted on sitting in the carriage every day. He said that the view was better from the outside, and he could find out in time if anything happened.
“Xiao Jin, what exactly is Cheng Ming’s background?”