Chapter 64p1: A Long Letter
At night, the temperature dropped, and it started to snow heavily again. The three of them were soaked to the bone. Jiang Zao’s teeth were soon chattering, and she was shivering. The top priority was to find a temporary place to shelter from the wind and rain.
Wen Zhao took off her jacket and draped it over her, then helped her up from the ground. “Let’s go. Let’s leave this place first.”
They had drifted downstream for an unknown distance. The map in their bag was also soaked and ruined. Without navigation, they could only walk along the riverbank, trudging through the knee-deep snow.
Jiang Zao’s lips soon turned purple. In addition, she had just experienced a great joy and a great sorrow, and her mind was a little dazed. Her foot slipped, and she fell into the snow.
Wen Zhao turned back to help her up and only then realized that although her hands and feet were cold, her cheeks were flushed with an abnormal heat. She touched her forehead, and it was burning hot. She had started to have a fever.
Wen Zhao’s eyes turned red, and she almost shed tears again.
“Little Zao, I know you’re in a lot of pain… just for my sake… can you hold on a little longer?”
There was not even a hint of a bitter smile on Jiang Zao’s face, like a lifeless porcelain doll. She just nodded numbly.
Wen Zhao had no choice but to take her hand and pull her along, step by step, through the deep and shallow snow.
The wind and snow were also getting heavier. The piercing north wind, mixed with snow pellets, blew so hard that they couldn’t even open their eyes. Wen Zhao’s footsteps also quickly became heavy. Just as both of them were about to run out of strength and were on the verge of despair, the outline of a wooden cabin appeared before them.
She stumbled over. There was a rusty copper lock on the wooden door, and she had also lost her hairpin. Wen Zhao could only slam her shoulder against it again and again. Fortunately, the lock was not very sturdy.
It soon fell to the ground.
Wen Zhao looked around. This seemed to be an abandoned shepherd’s hut. It had not been inhabited for a long time and was covered in dust.
After confirming that it was safe, she pulled Jiang Zao, who had fallen behind, in, closed the door, and finally blocked the wind and snow outside.
Fortunately, things like matches and cooking utensils were in a plastic bag and had not gotten wet. Wen Zhao thought of the things that Jiang Wuni had packed before they left, and her eyes couldn’t help but well up again.
“I’ll go get some firewood and start a fire.”
Jiang Zao glanced at the familiar red plastic bag that Jiang Wuni usually used to pack steamed buns and turned her face away.
“Fortunately, this is a pastoral area. Sometimes the villagers will bring their cattle and sheep to the river to drink water, which is why this shepherd’s hut is here. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have known what to do tonight…”
Although the shepherd’s hut had not been inhabited for a long time, it had simple living facilities. Wen Zhao poked the firewood in the stove to make the fire burn brighter. She turned her head to talk to Jiang Zao, but Jiang Zao just turned over in bed, facing the wall, without even taking off her wet clothes.
The ginger soup was soon ready. Even the ginger was grown by Jiang Wuni herself. Fearing that she would get carsick, she had put it in her pocket in advance.
If she got carsick, she could cut a slice and hold it in her mouth. This was a common folk remedy of hers.
Jiang Zao looked at the ginger slices floating in the bowl and suddenly pushed her hand away. Her arm had been soaked in the cold river water for too long and was already in excruciating pain. Wen Zhao was caught off guard and was pushed. The bowl in her hand fell to the ground.
At this moment, even a clay figure would have a temper.
She forcefully turned Jiang Zao’s shoulder, made her look up, and looked directly into her eyes.
“You don’t want to live, do you? If I had known… if I had known you didn’t want to live… Grandma wouldn’t have had to go to so much trouble to save you!”
No matter what she said or did just now, Jiang Zao had been in a state of not wanting to listen or look, isolating herself from the world. But at this moment, she mentioned Jiang Wuni.
There was finally a slight change in Jiang Zao’s eyes. She gritted her teeth, trembled, and a hint of resentment appeared in her eyes.
“Even if you die now, Grandma won’t come back. Or, do you want to see her become—”
Before she could finish, a loud slap landed on Wen Zhao’s face. Jiang Zao was gritting her teeth, her eyes red, and she was panting heavily, like a small, wounded, and desperate beast.
Jiang Zao’s slap was not light.
But Wen Zhao just tilted her head, spat out a mouthful of blood, and served her another bowl of ginger soup, handing it to her.
“Grandma… actually left something for you. If you want to know what it is, change out of your wet clothes and drink this.”
Jiang Zao took the bowl from her hand and, without caring about the heat, raised it and drank it all.
Wen Zhao took out the notebook in a plastic bag from her backpack and handed it to her. Jiang Zao took it, trembled, and carefully opened the somewhat wet title page.
Common Crop Planting Methods and Pest and Disease Control
A few crooked large characters came into view. Jiang Zao’s fingers slowly traced them, as if she could still see Jiang Wuni wearing her broken-legged reading glasses, writing stroke by stroke under the lamp with a dictionary.
Her handwriting was not good, even a little clumsy. Occasionally, when she encountered a rare character she didn’t know how to write, she would use pinyin instead, so it looked a little obscure. But Jiang Zao still read it word by word.
As she was browsing through the notes, scenes from the past also appeared before her eyes.
“You’re not concentrating. You’re talking while you’re writing. This character is wrong. Rewrite it.”
“That’s enough. I’m already this old! It’s good enough that I can recognize all the pinyin!”
“Let me see what you’ve written…”
Thinking of the times she had bickered with Jiang Wuni, a smile unconsciously appeared on Jiang Zao’s lips, but it stopped abruptly when she turned to the next page.
“The average growth cycle of potatoes is about 90 days. When the hot summer comes and the temperature exceeds 25°, the underground tubers of the potatoes will stop growing, so the planting time should be early rather than late. The best planting time is around mid-to-late February to early March every year (the planting time can be appropriately advanced or postponed according to the weather conditions of each year, but it should not exceed late March).”
“Before planting, you have to sprout them about 10 days in advance. Put the potatoes in a plastic bag like this, then put them in a cardboard box, and put them in a place in the main hall where there is fire but no light…”
It was not enough to just tell her. Jiang Wuni was afraid that she would not remember after she was gone, so she had written it all down. And what had she said when she had first wanted to learn to read?
“What? Are you going to a university for the elderly?”
“Pah, I was just thinking that you don’t know how to farm. I have to write down these agricultural planting methods. In the future, there will be fewer and fewer people who know how to farm. With grain at home, you won’t panic.”
So, from that time on, she had known that this day would come. Compared to being afraid of death, Jiang Wuni was more afraid that she would not have food to eat after she was gone. After all, the former Jiang Zao was so averse to returning to the countryside and being a farmer who faced the loess and the sky.
Besides the most basic sweet potatoes and potatoes, there were also many green leafy vegetables, some they had grown, and some they hadn’t because of limited conditions. Jiang Wuni was afraid that it was not detailed enough and had recorded everything.
These notes might not be scientific in modern agriculture, but they were the experience of a genuine old farmer who had relied on them for survival.
Finally, there were rice and wheat.
Jiang Wuni wrote: “I had originally wanted to personally experience the process of planting rice and wheat with my children in the limited time I had, but due to objective reasons, I was never able to realize it.”
“I have written down all my previous experience in planting rice and wheat, but compared to planting other crops, planting rice and wheat is obviously much more complicated. The quality of the seeds, the weather, the soil, the fertilizer, the pests and diseases, and the timely field management… will all affect their yield. Especially after the apocalypse, the soil fertility of the uncultivated fields has decreased, and it is also difficult to find pesticides and fertilizers, which are all great challenges for the planters. This can only be left to my children in the future.”
“Below, I will list some methods of making and obtaining fertilizer under limited conditions, such as plant ash, which is a pure natural potassium fertilizer, and also using kitchen waste and excrement to make compost…”
Jiang Zao flipped through the pages one by one. They were all her dense reminders and the worry that was revealed between the lines.
At the very end, Jiang Wuni wrote in the signature:
This notebook is for my dearest Zao’er. May she be well.
