The Daily Life of Farming and Raising Children in Ancient Mountain Residences

Chapter 7

Sang Luo led the two children over two mountain peaks before finally reaching today’s target – the Six-winged Heavenly Tree.

This thing also had another name, called the “Fairy Tree,” also known as the “Guanyin Chai.”

Before leaving, while Shen An was still cooking porridge, Sang Luo was already considering what food to find.

Suffering from illness and hunger, she had eaten something to regain some strength, but she still didn’t dare to exert herself too much. To conserve energy as much as possible, she needed to plan everything carefully.

She rummaged through her original memories, feeling like she had heard of this thing before, but it had been just a passing thought in her original memories, long faded away. Finding this memory was not easy, and she couldn’t be sure where exactly she had encountered it nearby. So, she could only take Shen An and Shen Ning to search along the mountain paths near several nearby peaks.

Luckily, hard work paid off, and when she was almost exhausted, she finally found it.

Sang Luo was quite happy. She was unable to gather it herself, so she could only instruct the two children to pick the branches with lush green leaves and relatively thick ones.

However, Shen An and Shen Ning were dumbfounded.

They were indeed poor now, but there were many mountains nearby. They could still find wild vegetables. Did it really come down to eating tree leaves?

Shen Ning, with a soft and gentle personality, was closer to Sang Luo. She asked directly, her voice full of doubt, “Big sister-in-law, can we eat these leaves?”

This question echoed Shen An’s thoughts exactly.

“Of course, we can eat them. Not only can we eat them, but we might also be able to exchange them for some grains.”

Sang Luo intended to make something called “Fairy Tofu.” She had heard of it before, but if it weren’t for living in the mountains for several years, she wouldn’t have known about it. However, it resembled another dish, “Fairy Grass Jelly,” which most people had probably eaten before.

The shape of the fairy tofu resembled that of fairy grass jelly, but the ingredients were different, and there were some differences in color and taste.

Of course, Shen An and Shen Ning didn’t know this. When they heard that they could exchange these leaves for grains, they found it even more unbelievable. Who would be so foolish as to exchange precious grains for tree leaves from the mountains?

Sang Luo didn’t explain much. In her original memories, tofu existed during this dynasty, but the method of making it was held by the servants of a few privileged aristocratic families. Like Sang Luo, who was born into a common family, she had only heard of it and never tasted it, let alone the common people.

Most ordinary people probably hadn’t even heard of it.

Sang Luo couldn’t help but sigh. Even though the time and space were different, the privileges of class still existed.

Just like in the Daqian Dynasty, the population wasn’t particularly large, at least not comparable to the later-blooming flower country. In the Daqian Dynasty, one hundred households made a village, and five hundred households made a township. A village like Shili Village only had twenty or so households. It took several villages to make up a township.

The population density in her original memories wasn’t high, and where could the population go in the entire dynasty?

Continuous warfare, natural disasters, diseases, and labor conscription—which one didn’t consume the population?

But most of the land in Shili Village wasn’t owned by the twenty or so households of villagers but was concentrated in the hands of some wealthy households in the township. Except for wasteland and mountains, ordinary people had very little good land they could accumulate, and they could only rent farmland from wealthy households in the same lineage.

The land is like this, and various inheritances, such as books and techniques, are also the same, all controlled by the upper class.

So what she wants to do here can really be considered a fresh idea. As for making a fortune by selling the formula, she doesn’t need to think about it for now. There are no such wealthy people in the village market, and even if there were, it wouldn’t be so fortunate for her to encounter them, and even if she did, they wouldn’t necessarily be interested.

In Sang Luo’s view, it’s more practical to hide this practice for the short term, not to attract attention, and quietly earn a few copper coins to exchange for some food so that she and the two kids can survive.

Although Shen An and Shen Ning were puzzled, it wasn’t difficult to break off some branches from the bushes. The siblings worked together and soon collected two large bundles of branches and leaves.

Back home, she picked up the leaves and washed them clean. She didn’t throw away the branches either; instead, she placed them outside to dry. Dried wood ash from the Guanyin tree is the preferred ingredient for making fairy tofu.

However, since there wasn’t any dried Guanyin tree wood ash at the moment, other plant ashes would suffice. She didn’t need to search for them either; there was a ready supply on her simple stove. The ashes left over from cooking rapeseed stems in the morning were suitable for making fairy tofu.

Sang Luo grabbed a handful of flour on her face, put it in a bowl, and poured cool boiled water from a jar into it, stirring before letting it settle.

Shen An and Shen Ning just watched, not making any comments.

Their sister-in-law first said that the tree leaves were edible, and now she was messing around with stove ashes… The siblings felt a mix of skepticism about life and a strange calmness. They couldn’t help but be curious about what exactly their sister-in-law could come up with, and they found themselves watching her intently.

Shen An felt like this was all quite absurd.

However, he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was wrong with their sister-in-law today.

Shen An couldn’t say what was wrong; after observing for a long time, he could only attribute it to the illness from the past two days, especially yesterday, when she had been unconscious for such a long time.

In fact, if it wasn’t for Sang Luo seeming quite resourceful earlier with catching fish, Shen An would have suspected that his sister-in-law might have suffered brain damage from fainting yesterday.

Of course, this thought only crossed his mind for a moment; it was impolite and inappropriate. He quickly suppressed and extinguished that thought in his mind.

The plant ash water was left to settle, and now the issue of dealing with the “fairy leaves” arose, but there was no gauze…

Sang Luo, despite having developed a tolerance for years of illness in her previous life, couldn’t help but sigh inwardly at this moment. They were too poor!

They had nothing they needed.

After thinking for a while, she washed the only handkerchief in her baggage that could barely serve as a substitute and sterilized it by boiling it in a jar. She used it as a makeshift filter cloth.

While sterilizing and filtering with the cloth, Sang Luo directed Shen An and Shen Ning to pick and wash the tree leaves. The siblings then watched the entire process of how Sang Luo first blanched the pile of leaves with boiling water, then turned them into fine fragments, and finally filtered them into two bowls of soup with a greenish color.

Yes, two bowls; besides the one with the plant ash water, the other two bowls contained a little bit of porridge saved by Shen An and malt sugar placed by Mrs. Chen. Sang Luo handed the former to the two kids, telling them to share it, while the latter had been moved to the stone platform earlier during breakfast, placed on a clean bamboo sheet.

So poor, just one jar and three bowls…

When Shen An and Shen Ning shared the little bit of saved rice porridge, they couldn’t help but feel heartache. Which family skimps on food like this? Nowadays, everyone only eats two meals a day. Look at their family—they drank a bowl of sugar-salt water in the middle of the night, ate thick rice porridge as soon as it was light, and now another meal in the late morning. Who skimps on food like this?

Although the amount of this meal was pitifully small, the siblings had been eating meager meals like this for the past few months, so they didn’t feel that it was unusual.

The majority of the porridge ended up being fed to Sang Luo, the patient, by Shen Ning, but of course, that’s beside the point.

Once the bowl was rinsed, Sang Luo filtered the remaining liquid from the jar into the second bowl until both large soup bowls were about seventy percent full.

Shen Ning looked at the pleasing greenish liquid and asked Sang Luo, “We just drink it like this?”

“Of course not,” Sang Luo smiled and poured the previously settled plant ash water into the tree leaf juice, stirring it in front of the astonished siblings until the quantity was enough. She didn’t stop stirring in one direction until she felt a change in her hand. Then she stopped and treated the other bowl in the same manner.

Both Shen An and Shen Ning were dumbfounded. Although they didn’t believe the tree leaf juice was drinkable, pouring in the plant ash water made it absolutely undrinkable…

Amused by their expressions, Sang Luo said, “It’s done. Wait for an hour and then see.”

Seeing the two kids looking puzzled at the contents of the two bowls, she chuckled, “Don’t just stand there staring. Let’s go do something else.”

The attention of Shen An and Shen Ning was quickly diverted, and they asked in unison, “What are we going to do?”

Sang Luo grabbed a small sickle from the wall, which was the only iron tool allocated to the main branch of the Shen family among the farming tools: “We’re going to cut some wild hemp.”