Chapter 2

Although the woman said she was just hungry and that low blood sugar caused her bodily weakness and dizziness, Li Cunxin didn’t dare take it lightly.

Back at her dwelling, Li Cunxin carried the person down, kicked aside the thatched curtain blocking the door, and laid the person on the bed. The woman was dazed and let herself be arranged.

Li Cunxin grasped the ankle of the woman’s bitten leg, uncovered a small clay jar on the table behind her, and scooped a cup of cold boiled water with a bamboo cup. She used this clean water to rinse the woman’s wound.

The congealed blood dissolved into red threads and dripped onto the floor along the pale, lean calf.

Once she had cleaned most of the blood from the woman’s leg, Li Cunxin put the leg back, covered her with a quilt, and then turned and left the room.

The black donkey was circling the yard, irritable and constantly braying with ear-piercing ah-eh ah-eh sounds.

Li Cunxin grabbed its reins. “Mei Wenqin, stop making a fuss.”

She pinned the reins under the large bluestone. She knew the black donkey was restless and annoyed because of the two wolves. She saw the wolves’ green eyes fixed on the donkey’s rump, their crimson tongues curling over the blood at the corners of their mouths. She was afraid the two wolves, driven by appetite, would take advantage of her inattention and pounce on the donkey again. Wolves were cunning animals.

She walked to the side of the adobe house, where she had fenced off an enclosure. She opened the gate, grabbed with both hands, and hauled out three white-furred, fat rabbits.

Holding them by the ears, she stood about two meters from the wolves and tossed the rabbits to them. Before the rabbits even hit the ground, the wolves pounced and tore into them, rending flesh and skin, feasting ravenously.

Li Cunxin only glanced at it once before hurrying back to the kitchen. She started a fire in the stove, poured the half-bowl of rice into the pot—thankfully there was some left from yesterday’s hulled grain, saving her from having to spend time hulling more rice. She added a ladle of water and covered the pot. Then without stopping, she rushed to the room opposite the kitchen.

This was a storehouse. The room was filled with oddly shaped clay vats, all covered with lids made of various woods, bamboo, and palm leaves. Li Cunxin searched for a while and took a piece of panax notoginseng root from a clay vat against the wall.

This was something she had planted by chance—her only medicinal herb.

She didn’t know what plant could neutralize snake venom, and even if one existed, it would probably have withered in this weather. But she did know that panax notoginseng could stop bleeding and relieve pain; it was the holy medicine for wounds. She’d just do what little she could and apply it to the woman’s wound as an extra safeguard.

The dried root was hard as stone. She used a hammer to smash it and a stone pestle to crush and grind it, but it was difficult to turn into a fine powder. Instead, it became a pile of yellow powder mixed with granules of various sizes.

Li Cunxin carefully separated the fine powder and applied it to the woman’s leg. She mixed the larger granules of panax notoginseng with plant ash and smeared that onto the black donkey’s rump. The donkey, in pain, kicked out and nearly struck her.

The pot gurgled. White steam seeped from the edges of the lid. Li Cunxin went back to the kitchen, sliced some ginger into the pot, sprinkled in a little salt, and added a bit of rabbit fat.

The rich aroma of rice drifted from the kitchen into the main room. The woman opened her eyes. Saliva secreted, and her stomach cramped with hunger.

Li Cunxin came in carrying the bowl, set it on the table, and helped the woman sit up. “How do you feel? Have you recovered a bit of strength?”

Li Cunxin sat down on the wooden stump in front of the bed and handed the bowl to the woman. “Have something to eat first. Right, my name is Li Cunxin. And you?”

“Yan Baiyu.”

Li Cunxin felt that this person’s name perfectly matched her aura and nodded involuntarily.

Yan Baiyu held the bowl and stared at the congee inside for a while without moving her chopsticks.

“You can eat this. It’s rice—rice congee. I added some ginger shreds, salt, and rabbit fat. The taste should be passable. I don’t have a spoon here; you’ll have to make do with bamboo chopsticks.”

Yan Baiyu’s brows drooped slightly. Her slowness wasn’t because she doubted the food in the bowl was edible. Even living a vagrant life in a foreign land, she wouldn’t have forgotten the look of the staple food of her homeland. She remembered it deeply. So when she saw the familiar grains of rice soaking and softening in the rich, thick rice soup in the bowl—this thing that was once easily within reach but now seemed rarer than a priceless treasure—she felt not only a pleasant surprise, but also an indescribable, profound emotion.

Yan Baiyu’s thumb nervously stroked the rough surface of the clay bowl. Her expression was full of feeling as she gave a faint smile. “I just never expected to be able to eat rice congee in this place…”

Li Cunxin was taken aback for a moment, then quickly understood Yan Baiyu’s meaning. Her fast, associative mind could even piece together some of what Yan Baiyu’s circumstances must have been like before this. She adjusted her slouched sitting posture, straightened her back, brought her legs together, and her expression became solemn. “Do you still remember how you got here?”

Yan Baiyu raised her head slightly, her eyes hazy. After a while, she said, “I remember my team and I were climbing a snowy mountain. We encountered an avalanche. By the time I came to my senses, I had been separated from my teammates. I was still in the snowy mountains at the time; the surrounding scenery hadn’t changed noticeably, so I didn’t realize I had changed locations.”

“What happened next?” Li Cunxin was absorbed in the story.

“No rescue came. The GPS on me was gone—or rather, apart from these clothes and the rope harness tied to me, all my other gear had been lost. I had to self-rescue. When I tried to descend the mountain, I realized the route had changed. At first, I thought I had lost my way while fleeing the avalanche, but later I realized I was in another place entirely.”

“At that time, did you feel like an extra thought appeared in your head? Mhm, like a notion, asking you to make a choice, to choose a talent? The options were things like Craftsmanship, Weaving, Livestock, Lacquer, Ceramics, Metallurgy, and many more. After making your choice…” Li Cunxin raised her hands to the side of her head, gesturing frantically. She made a gesture like a firework exploding. “…your head suddenly filled with all the knowledge related to that talent. Mhm… I also feel like it enhances your hands-on ability in that area.”

Yan Baiyu replied calmly and unhurriedly, “Yes.”

“I chose Agriculture.” Li Cunxin pointed at the bowl in Yan Baiyu’s hand. “This rice is what I grew myself. Three years ago, I found rice plants. Isn’t it strange? There are no traces of human activity in this place, yet the rice grows wild. But its characteristics are quite similar to what we had back in our original world. It’s not just rice; many other crops are the same. Look at this ginger… Ah, you eat first; we’ll talk after you finish.” Li Cunxin scratched her ear, slightly embarrassed.

Yan Baiyu picked up the bowl. She didn’t use the bamboo chopsticks, but instead drank the congee directly, her lips pressed to the rim of the bowl. She performed this action very elegantly.

The taste of the congee was rich and full-bodied. The savory, salty congee had a hint of ginger’s spiciness, and a sweet aftertaste of rice after chewing. The hot stream flowed down her esophagus, soothing and comforting her cramped stomach.

After she finished the congee, she broke out in a warm sweat. The blurring vision and headache, the fatigue, had unknowingly subsided. She suddenly greatly admired the young woman before her.

Li Cunxin took the empty bowl and asked, “Do you want some water?”

Li Cunxin scooped a cup of water from the clay jar on the table behind her and handed it over.

“Thank you.” Yan Baiyu took it. It was a section of bamboo. One joint had been cut off, leaving the other end closed, utilizing the bamboo’s hollow, sealed nature to serve as a water cup.

Yan Baiyu also noticed the table behind Li Cunxin. The table wasn’t assembled with mortise and tenon joints or nailed together.

The table’s four legs were buried in the earth, which was how it stood stably. Four horizontal long pieces of wood formed a rectangle, tied to the legs with willow bark, thus creating a rectangular frame with the ground. Li Cunxin then split some wrist-thick logs in half. She placed the curved side on the two horizontal beams, flat side up, covering the beams completely to form the tabletop.

This wasn’t anything particularly remarkable, certainly not as stunning as that bowl of rice congee, but it was still rather interesting to observe.

“What is your talent?” Li Cunxin licked her lips. Her curiosity was being scratched by a cat. It had truly been too long since she’d seen a living person. Right now, she adored every single strand of Yan Baiyu’s hair.

“Domestication.” Yan Baiyu said, “My situation on the snowy mountain wasn’t good. I encountered large predatory beasts. Surviving in that environment requires dealing with animals. There were two similar talents for me to choose from: Domestication and Hunting. The latter requires tools and carries a higher risk, so I chose the former.”

“So that’s why the two wolves outside listen to you so well.” Li Cunxin’s eyes lit up. “The place you were at was a snowy mountain. How did you get here?”

Yan Baiyu said, “I knew that place wasn’t the one I was familiar with, but I still clung to a sliver of wishful thinking, hoping to find a rescue team or return to a city inhabited by people.”

“This is not any place on Earth.” After saying this, Li Cunxin suddenly felt a little unwilling to be the bearer of such news.

“I know.” Yan Baiyu’s voice was soft. “After I left the snowy mountain, I searched eastward for a while. I saw a grassland. Once I understood the situation, my only thought was to find a suitable place to survive, or to find a way back. I kept heading south, crossed over mountains into a forest, and beyond the forest was this plain.”

“You’re really amazing.” Li Cunxin praised her sincerely, with the admiration one would give a warrior who fought against storms. Even though Yan Baiyu’s words were an understatement—summing up rugged roads and harsh living conditions in one sentence—Li Cunxin could understand just how dangerous and difficult it was to survive in snowy mountains, forests, and mountains. That Yan Baiyu had managed to reach here was proof enough of her strength.

Yan Baiyu lowered her gaze and smiled.

“How long did it take you to get here?” Li Cunxin asked.

“About two years, I think.” Yan Baiyu couldn’t be entirely certain.

Li Cunxin said, “I arrived earlier than you. It’s been almost five years since I got here.”

“Did you build all this on your own?” Yan Baiyu looked around the room. The bed she lay on was against the earthen wall, with stones as a foundation, covered with a layer of clay that had been dried hard, providing a flat surface, much like a heated brick bed.

“Yes.”

The room was a little over three meters deep. With this bed and a table, there was very little space left. Apart from the door on the southern side of the room, there was a small door on the eastern inner wall. She didn’t know what was on the other side.

But at this moment, Yan Baiyu was more interested in the white candle standing upright in a ceramic dish at the corner of the table. “Is this candle made of animal fat?”

“This is insect white wax. It’s a secretion of the white wax insect. Ancient people also used it to make candles. Its lighting effect is even better than animal fat. Let me light it and show you.” As Li Cunxin spoke, she took an object from the pocket of the denim jacket under her animal hide. She held it in both hands and struck it. Sparks flew and landed on the moxa punk. The charred end of the punk glowed red. She cupped her hands before her mouth and gently blew on the red spot, coaxing out a delicate flame that lit the candle.

But Yan Baiyu paid no attention to the candle. She stared intently at Li Cunxin’s hands and asked, “Is that a fire striker in your hand?” Her voice quickened slightly, carrying a hint of delight.

During her long wilderness survival, making fire had always been the most troublesome, thorniest problem. Even after she became proficient, she could never do it this quickly.

“Mm.” Li Cunxin opened her palm to show her. In her left hand was a long piece of flint with one edge sharpened to a certain bevel, along with some black moxa punk. In her right hand was a piece of black iron, one end wrapped in cloth, the other end sharp.

Yan Baiyu’s eyes widened slightly. Earlier, in her hazy state, she had seen an iron axe tucked behind Li Cunxin’s waist and thought she had imagined it. Because in this world, without any means or tools, finding iron ore, smelting metal, and even forging it into a tool was extremely difficult. Now, it seemed that thing maybe was indeed an iron axe.

Yan Baiyu was silent for a long moment, gazing deeply at Li Cunxin. “You are also very impressive.”

Yan Baiyu’s praise was heartfelt, and her tone made Li Cunxin embarrassed, yet it also ignited her enthusiasm. She grinned brightly, as if presenting a treasure. “I have other things here too. Would you like to see?”