Yan Baiyu picked up the porcelain knife and stretched out her other hand, holding three roasted chestnuts she had kept. Imitating Li Cunxin, she began peeling the shells slowly and carefully.
Yu Muyang said, “Hey, there’s more.”
Yan Baiyu pried out a chestnut, its surface covered in the scars and pits from the porcelain knife. She lifted her eyelids towards Yu Muyang. The man, who had been about to make a move, froze and sat back down.
Yan Baiyu smiled at Li Cunxin. “I kept two to learn from you how to peel them. How do you get them so intact?”
“Sure.” Li Cunxin let out a couple of smug chuckles. “This is a skill from my childhood.” As a kid, she’d always loved peeling these shelled things completely before eating them all at once.
Yan Baiyu lightly skewered the chestnut meat with the porcelain knife and offered it to Li Cunxin. “Tuition fee.”
Li Cunxin laughed so wide her eyes crinkled into slits. She took it and swallowed it in one bite. While chewing the sweet chestnut, she took the porcelain knife and demonstrated it for Yan Baiyu to see.
Yunxiu called from the other side, “Don’t eat too much. Dinner’s almost ready.”
The dumplings were almost all wrapped. Yunxiu was loading them onto a round winnowing basket. She called to the people gathered by the fire, “Do you want boiled dumplings or wontons?”
Several people got up and gathered around. Yu Muyang looked at the row of small, delicate, thin-skinned, meaty items next to the boiled dumplings in the basket. “Aren’t those just wontons?”
Feng Huai said, “Clearly they’re yuntun.”
“Wontons!”
“Yuntun!”
Yu Muyang jabbed his index finger at the roof. “Even if the sky falls, these are damn well wontons!” Wen Mi nodded in agreement.
Zhao Penglai interjected, “We call them bianshi back home.”
Xia Qing burst out laughing. “We call it baomian where I’m from.”
Yunxiu’s face was full of exasperation. “It’s just a different name.”
“No!” Yu Muyang was stubborn as a mule, determined to get Li Cunxin to settle the dispute. “When you can’t decide, ask the Village Chief. Chief, what do you call them!”
Everyone looked at Li Cunxin.
“Uh… boiled dumplings?” Li Cunxin said.
Yu Muyang wilted. Yunxiu carried the round winnowing basket out the door. “Cooking, cooking now.”
The crowd dispersed in all directions, heading back to the fire pit. “Let’s go, let’s go, back to the fire.”
Li Cunxin, “……” We truly do call them boiled dumplings back home!
The snow lessened, and the sky darkened. Outside was hazy, as if cooking smoke had blanketed the earth. The scent of vegetation brought peace of mind.
Li Cunxin stood outside, watching the branches of the parasol tree, laden with snow, pure white and lovely.
She heard rustling sounds behind her. Turning her head, she saw Taishi Huan walking out alone, not heading to the adobe houses at the back, but toward the site where more houses were planned.
Li Cunxin hesitated a moment, then followed. Her three wolves trotted along behind her.
Taishi Huan heard the footsteps, turned and saw it was her. His face lengthened, and he stopped.
Li Cunxin asked, “Why aren’t you in the house warming yourselves by the fire with everyone, or helping in the kitchen? What are you doing out here?”
Taishi Huan replied in a muffled, gruff voice, “Do I need to report my whereabouts here?”
Li Cunxin tucked her hands into her sleeves. Snowflakes landed on her dark eyebrows. “Well… no, not really.”
Seeing Li Cunxin following him, Taishi Huan’s desire to go look ahead vanished. He turned around to go back inside.
Li Cunxin walked slowly behind him, tilting her head to watch Taishi Huan’s feet stomping heavily into the slushy snow. “Feng Huai and Miao Bing have their houses built. Yours is on hold. Are you upset?”
Taishi Huan’s steps abruptly halted. He wheeled around and glared at her, taking a sharp breath that made his shoulders hunch up. He looked as if he wanted to curse someone, but at the last moment, he forcibly swallowed the words back.
He didn’t dare curse anyone, but least of all Li Cunxin. Cursing someone else at worst got you cursed in return. Cursing Li Cunxin meant being put through the wringer by the entire village for quite a while. His face flushed crimson. He said, “Yes! Feng Huai and Miao Bing getting their house—so be it. You said houses are built according to the order people arrive in the village. Wen Mi and the others came after me, yet their five-person courtyard with Bai Ling got built. But when it gets to me, it gets stuck…”
Li Cunxin saw Taishi Huan’s eyes were red, as if with anger, or as if he was about to cry. She sighed. “It is precisely according to the order of arrival. You did arrive before Wen Mi and the others, but back then, you weren’t willing to join our village. Not only did you refuse, but you caused trouble repeatedly. Have you forgotten you’re still on probation?” Although Taishi Huan had been behaving himself and not causing any trouble for the past year, that didn’t mean the past was wiped clean.
Taishi Huan slapped his own face in a fit of self-deprecating fury. “Fine, I deserve it. Are you going to push my house back even further, to be built after the seven newcomers?! Fine, build it. Build it for them all. I don’t want it anymore!”
With that, Taishi Huan kicked at a pile of snow and strode away without looking back.
Li Cunxin just stood where she was and said, “The next house can be yours.”
Taishi Huan halted again, standing there for a long time, as though he wanted Li Cunxin to continue but couldn’t save enough face. After a long pause, he turned around and eventually came back, swallowing his pride despite his words of refusal. A light flickered in his eyes. He asked, “That foundation that’s been rammed down—is that mine?”
“It could be yours. It’s snowing now; construction isn’t safe. We have to wait for clear skies and the snow to melt.” Li Cunxin didn’t answer his question directly, instead musing, “At the latest, it should be finished by the start of next spring.”
Taishi Huan furrowed his brow. “What do you mean, ‘could be mine’?”
Li Cunxin said, “When spring begins next year and the weather warms up, Uncle Xu and the others are going to the mine to fetch salt and iron. You’ll have to go with them then. Your talent is Encyclopedia, isn’t it? On the road, if you see grains, melons, fruits, vegetables, spices, or minerals—bring their seeds back. If you complete the mission well, that house will be yours.”
Taishi Huan was half believing, half doubtful. “Really?”
Li Cunxin said, “You can also refuse.”
This was a matter Yan Baiyu and Xu Yin had come to discuss with her before.
Currently, they had already brought most of the potential of their available resources into play. The village’s resource map now needed not only deepening but also broadening.
Metals like copper, aluminum, tin, and iron; various minerals like niter, trona, and sulfur; crops like soybeans, sorghum, rapeseed, and corn; and various vegetables and fruits like chili peppers, cucumbers, luffa, and tomatoes—listing them all, they still lacked many, many things.
Once a raw material was missing, the various processed products further up the chain naturally couldn’t be made.
Li Cunxin’s grain seeds were found in the wild, and they had secured iron and salt mines. This proved that the things they lacked could very likely also be found in the wild.
To go out and search for seeds and resources, Taishi Huan’s talent was, it had to be said, perfectly suited. This was Li Cunxin’s thinking.
Another viewpoint was raised by Yan Baiyu.
Looking at the combined experiences of everyone wandering here: the farthest north they knew of were the Snow Mountains, separated by vast forests. The east was very likely grasslands. The farthest west they’d reached was the salt lake and open-pit iron mine. The farthest south they’d found was East Lake.
But the finer details within these areas, or the places even farther in any of the four directions—these they didn’t know.
Lu Yiwei’s talent was Cartography, deeply versed in the six principles of mapmaking. If he traveled with the expedition team and drew a map, it would make the features of this world gradually clear before their eyes.
Xu Yin’s perspective was that while the village lit beacon fires daily, the visual range was ultimately limited. Several times before, the group had found fellow countrymen stranded in large numbers in this alien land only when they went out exploring.
Carefully considered, going out to find people actually had a higher probability than waiting for them to find the beacon fire.
Of course, they’d still light the beacon fire. They might as well use this exploration mission to search for people at the same time. Back then, they simply lacked the manpower to even plant all the fields. Now, with more people, they could spare a few hands.
After the discussion, the three of them gained a clearer picture and felt even more determined to go exploring.
A single exploration could carry out three tasks simultaneously: searching for seeds, finding stranded compatriots, and drawing a map.
The preliminary list of personnel included Taishi Huan with his Encyclopedia knowledge, Lu Yiwei for Cartography, Xu Yin for Hunting and security, and Lin Zhao from the seven newcomers, whose talent was Chef, to handle logistics.
The first exploration conveniently coincided with the spring trip west to dig iron ore. For one, they were short on metal. With the increased population, that single small iron wok was completely insufficient for cooking for so many. Yunxiu wanted a large cauldron. And next year, they’d start pressing tung oil, one step of which—roasting—required an iron wok. That couldn’t be mixed with the cooking wok. So they needed to cast at least two large cauldrons. Meanwhile, Xia Qing and the other Carpenters kept complaining about lacking tools, having to share among themselves daily. Tools also needed to increase. For another reason, the route was familiar, making the initial mission easier. The team could use this chance to test the waters, get familiar with each other, and build rapport, preparing for future explorations into unknown paths.
Taishi Huan was overjoyed. His previous demeanor completely changed. Fearing Li Cunxin might go back on her word, he blurted out hastily, “I agree! You said my house would be built by spring. You’re the Village Chief; your word is law!”
