The World Turned into Zombies, So I Went Back to the Countryside to Farm 21p1

Chapter 21 p1: The Wheat Field

Jiang Zao did not sleep well that night, plagued by all sorts of bizarre dreams. One moment, she was a child being held down in a chair and beaten by her grandfather for taking a yuan from the table to buy a notebook. The next, she was being laid off, rushing to the HR office to argue, only to be dragged out of the company building by security guards.

The world suddenly spun. It was after the college entrance exams again. She had a severe case of gastroenteritis, and Jiang Wuni had carried her on her back for over ten miles of mountain roads to the clinic in town for an IV drip. It was an equally hot summer. On the narrow bench in the hospital corridor, she was curled up, sweating profusely, muttering in her sleep, “It’s over, I failed the exam.”

Until someone gently lifted her head and placed it on their lap, and then a cool breeze washed over her.

“Zao’er, wake up, wake up, don’t scare Grandma…”

Jiang Zao’s eyes snapped open. Her vision gradually cleared from a blur. The afterglow of the sunset shone through the window onto the table in front of her.

Jiang Wuni was fanning her with a cattail leaf fan to drive away the mosquitoes.

In that moment, Jiang Zao knew that if there really was a god, then Jiang Wuni had once again saved her.

“Zao’er! Zao’er!” Seeing that she was awake, Jiang Wuni quickly put down the fan and picked up the bowl of egg tea from the bedside.

“Quick, quick, drink this bowl of egg tea. After you drink it, you’ll be all better.”

The other two people in the room also gathered around.

Jiang Zao looked at their faces.

“How long have I been asleep?”

“It’s already the afternoon of the second day.”

Wen Zhao came over and put a pillow behind her back.

“How did you get in? I thought I…”

Before she could finish, Jiang Zao put her hand to her forehead. She had forgotten that Wen Zhao could pick locks.

Jiang Wuni pulled her hand away and gently placed her rough palm on her forehead.

“The fever’s gone. It’s good that the fever’s gone… Quick, quick, drink this bowl of egg tea.”

Jiang Wuni put the bowl in her hand and urged her, “You’re a grown-up now. Don’t tell me you still need Grandma to feed you.”

Perhaps every child who grew up in the countryside would get a bowl of egg tea from their elders when they were sick, but Jiang Zao disliked the eggy smell that even brown sugar couldn’t cover up. At this moment, looking at the bowl of egg tea in her hand, she picked it up and drank it all.

Seeing that she had finished it, a smile finally appeared on Jiang Wuni’s face.

“You must be hungry. There’s food warming on the stove.”

The little girl stood up and said crisply, “I’ll go get it for big sister.”

After the little girl left, Jiang Zao found an excuse to send Jiang Wuni away as well, then looked at Wen Zhao and said, “Can… can you help me check the wound on the back of my head?”

Wen Zhao nodded. “Alright. Are you suspecting something?”

“If I were infected, after so long, the wound would probably have festered. And vice versa.”

Jiang Zao’s room had alcohol and other supplies. Wen Zhao disinfected her hands and put on gloves. Jiang Zao also sat up in bed.

They unwrapped the gauze from her scalp layer by layer. At the last moment, both of them held their breath without realizing it.

Wen Zhao took a deep breath and removed the last layer of gauze. Seeing that the skin around the stitched wound showed no signs of festering, she let out a huge sigh of relief.

“Thank goodness, it’s just a little red and swollen. The fever was probably caused by the wound being infected. I’ll take a picture for you to see.”

Wen Zhao took Jiang Zao’s phone, pressed the shutter, and handed it to her. As Jiang Zao was looking at it intently, she gently pressed the wound.

Jiang Zao immediately hissed. Just as she was about to turn around and curse, she was met with a harmless, smiling face.

“It still hurts, so don’t worry. It’s definitely not a viral infection.”

That dusk was the only sunny day for more than a month. After that, the sun never came out again.

Jiang Zao also tacitly accepted the fact that the little girl and Wen Zhao were staying at home and never mentioned them leaving again.

For more than a month, they never went out again. The stitches on Wen Zhao’s wound were also removed, and the splint on her left hand was taken off. Even the hair Jiang Zao had shaved off had grown into a stubble.

One morning, it was finally clear for a while. Jiang Wuni was tilling the soil in the courtyard. During the last storm, even though she and Jiang Zao had put up a shed in time, the few patches of vegetables she had planted in the spring were still rotted to the roots by the rain.

She rubbed the rotten roots in her hands, a hint of sadness in her eyes. “I didn’t buy many seeds this year in total. They were all for us to eat. I don’t know how long this rain will last. If it’s like this in the courtyard, the potatoes and sweet potatoes in the fields are probably all going to rot…”

Jiang Zao poured the rainwater collected from under the eaves into a large vat. There were five such vats for pickling vegetables in the house, and three of them were already full of collected rainwater. Wen Zhao was helping her.

“How many potatoes and sweet potatoes are still in the fields?”

Hearing Jiang Zao’s question, Jiang Wuni turned her face.

“About five hundred pounds in total. Although we still have some grain left at home, there will come a day when we’ve eaten it all…”

Not to mention that there were now two more mouths to feed.

Since Wen Zhao and the little girl were there, she didn’t say this out loud.

Wen Zhao looked at Jiang Zao, as if seeking her opinion.

“I can help. Many hands make light work.”

Jiang Zao looked at her, then at Jiang Wuni, and finally couldn’t resist the temptation of five hundred pounds of food.

“Get the tricycle. We’ll be quick.”

Hearing the noise, the little girl poked her head out of the kitchen.

“Big sister, let’s eat before we go. I’ll help too.”

In the few nights after her brother’s burial, Jiang Zao would occasionally hear her crying in her quilt when she went to the third floor to get something. The little girl had always been very sensible and never showed her sadness to them.

Although all three of them were very good to her, and Jiang Wuni was especially fond of her, not wanting her to feel like she was living under someone else’s roof, the little girl still felt that they had saved her, given her food and clothes, and felt bad about it, so she always rushed to do the work. At such a young age, she was also very good at making fires and cooking, almost driving Jiang Wuni out of the kitchen.

This morning, they had noodles. There were still no vegetables at home, so the little girl could only stir-fry some salted vegetables and make salted vegetable noodles.

It was fragrant, but without vegetables, her mouth felt tasteless, and it was also difficult to go to the toilet.

Jiang Zao drank all the soup in her bowl.

“It would be great if we had some green leafy vegetables.”

“Don’t even think about it. In this damn weather, even if there were any, they would have been drowned,” Jiang Wuni said.

But the little girl’s eyes suddenly lit up.

“Big sister, I know where there are still vegetables.”

The few of them all turned their heads.

“Where?”

“On the slope. Rainy days are the best for picking mushrooms.”

Seeing that everyone was looking at her, she added sheepishly, “Does… does that count as a vegetable?”

Jiang Wuni slapped her thigh. “It counts! Of course it counts! How could I have forgotten about this!”

***

The group put the farm tools and baskets on the tricycle. Everyone was wearing a raincoat. The little girl was wearing Jiang Zao’s childhood rain boots, which fit her surprisingly well.

Of course, Jiang Zao didn’t forget to bring her bow and arrow.

Wen Zhao carefully pushed open the courtyard gate and poked her head out. Seeing no zombies nearby, she pulled the gate open a crack, and Jiang Wuni immediately followed with the tricycle.

Jiang Zao’s family was small, and their land was not large. After her grandfather passed away, the village had even taken back some of it on the grounds that there were no male heirs in the family. Fortunately, Jiang Wuni had gone to the village committee and thrown a tantrum, and they had managed to keep a little over an acre. But the location was not good. Besides a few plots of wheat fields, all the arable land was on the slope, with high mountains and steep roads.

From the small courtyard, they followed the dirt road on the left, turned at a fork, and entered the mountain.

After the traces of humans disappeared, the plants began to grow wildly. The mountain path that had been trodden out was now overgrown with weeds.

Jiang Zao led the way with a sickle, and Jiang Wuni followed closely behind with the tricycle, with the little girl by her side.

Wen Zhao brought up the rear.

After climbing for about forty or fifty minutes, the road that could accommodate the tricycle also disappeared. They could only park the tricycle at the bottom of the slope and climb up with their hands and feet. The little girl was familiar with the path.

“We’re here. This is the pine needle forest. I used to come here with my mom to pick mushrooms,” the little girl said, her eyes dimming slightly.

Wen Zhao patted her head. “Let’s see who picks the most.”

Only then did she smile again. “Then big sister will definitely not be able to beat me.”

Jiang Zao said coldly, “Don’t pick the poisonous ones.”

Jiang Wuni had already started working. She knelt on the ground and used her hands to part the leaves until she reached the root of the mushroom. She patted it, then gently pulled it out by the root, and she had a perfect mushroom.

She held it up to show them.

“Exactly, only ones like this are edible. The more brightly colored they are, the more you should avoid them. It’s best to pat them before you pick them, so the spores fall off, and then you’ll have an endless supply of mushrooms.”