Chapter 9

Without Yong-ge's help in speaking, Shanzi seemed very restrained. He walked ahead, leading the way, occasionally glancing back at Cheng Duo secretly.

Cheng Duo was about to talk to him and inquire about the situation when he heard a half-grown child working by the roadside greet Shanzi, "Da Shan, are you going out of the village?"

"Where are you going? Can you take us with you…"

Shanzi would usually explore the mountains and rivers to find something to eat, and occasionally he would take the children from the village along. So whenever they had a chance, they wanted to tag along with him.

Before the words were even finished, these children saw Cheng Duo behind Shanzi, and their eyes widened instantly, as if facing a great enemy. Then, someone screamed, and the five or six children dispersed like birds and animals, with one of them even carrying a large backpack and running so fast that his shoes almost fell off…

Cheng Duo: "…" Quite complicated.

He touched his nose and could imagine his reputation in the village, probably already on par with "child-eater."

Shanzi looked at Cheng Duo's expression and inexplicably felt like laughing. As the saying goes, everything is relative. Seeing those big-headed children so afraid of Cheng Duo, he suddenly didn't feel as scared himself.

"What did the villagers say to them in the end?" Cheng Duo couldn't help but ask.

Shanzi's gaze flickered. "Just… that you punched a cow to death…" There were other things, but he didn't dare say them.

Cheng Duo: "…" Well, he might actually have that ability, and the villagers weren't spreading rumors.

"But Yong-ge explained it to me. He said you didn't kill the cow; you just pinned it down…" Shanzi said while inadvertently seeking confirmation from Cheng Duo, his eyes filled with a faint admiration.

Shanzi had witnessed the scene of slaughtering pigs in other people's homes. Three or four adults would hold the pig down while someone else stabbed it with a knife. Sometimes, when the pig cried out too loudly, those adults would use all their strength to hold it down, their faces turning red…

But Cheng Duo pinned down a cow, a much larger animal than a pig! He did it all by himself. It must have required tremendous strength!

Cheng Duo noticed Shanzi's gaze and hesitated for a moment. "When you grow up, you'll also become stronger."

"Okay." Shanzi nodded, his eyes bright. "When I grow up, I'll go to the twenty-li slope just like my dad and earn a lot of money!"

Cheng Duo's mouth twitched. So your aspiration is to become a laborer? But compared to those people in the post-apocalyptic world who lived like walking corpses, Shanzi's simple wish seemed more substantial…

Cheng Duo smiled in a somewhat complicated manner, not discouraging Shanzi, but quickly changing the subject and talking about the main matter. "Tell me about the place where we need to buy things."

"Oh…" 

Through Shanzi's introduction, Cheng Duo discovered that this ancient village was much more self-sufficient than a big city.

First of all, they grew their own crops and raised livestock. Additionally, some villages had family-based industries such as bean mills, oil mills, and blacksmith shops.

The bean cake Cheng Duo had eaten before was sold at the Yang Village oil mill, one copper wen for a bowl, much cheaper than wheat flour.

Fortunately, there were cotton-pickers in the village, so Cheng Duo acquired several pieces of coarse cloth and two quilts. Fortunately, the weather was getting warmer, so he didn't need to buy cotton to make cotton clothes.

In fact, Wudu County was located in a mountainous area, and most of the people there wore fur clothes. Only a few wealthy individuals would specifically make cotton clothes. Even when it came to quilts, one might only buy them once in a lifetime, such as when getting married.

Of course, there were also those who were too poor and used wheat straw and rice straw directly. Shanzi's family even sold their quilts and laid wheat straw directly. It was actually more convenient because when his youngest brother wet the bed, they could simply remove the wet wheat straw.

Upon hearing Shanzi's words, Cheng Duo gave him two wen and asked him to bring a bundle of wheat straw over. This way, when his ordered bed hadn't arrived yet, he could sleep directly on the wheat straw.

Shanzi was delighted to hear that he could earn two wen just by delivering a bundle of wheat straw, and he immediately agreed.

Originally, Cheng Duo felt that he had bought too many things and couldn't carry them all, so he planned to go back first. Unexpectedly, halfway through their journey, they happened to encounter Zhou Huolang, who was carrying a shoulder pole.

Cheng Duo simply purchased everything except the items for women from Zhou Huolang's shoulder pole and asked him to help with the delivery.

Zhou Huolang, of course, agreed without hesitation. He usually traveled to various villages to sell his goods, and sometimes his luck was bad, and he would only sell two hair ropes in one village. But this big customer had purchased most of his items and even placed additional orders!

Zhou Huolang initially thought that this customer must come from a well-off family, but when he arrived and saw the two dilapidated houses in front of him…

Zhou Huolang: Is he being lured here for robbery?

Fortunately, Cheng Duo paid the money readily and even paid a deposit. Zhou Huolang agreed on the next delivery date and quickly walked away with his empty shoulder pole.

Yong-ge was startled by the pile of goods resembling a small mountain. "Why did you buy so much?"

Cheng Duo rubbed his nose. "It's fine, just buy a little more. We can use them slowly."

In reality, he was just lazy to pick and choose, and since it wasn't convenient to buy anything in this rural village, he decided to buy everything at once.

Shanzi was also shocked by Cheng Duo's generosity. This person had spent nearly five to six taels of silver in one afternoon, including the deposit. His father couldn't even earn forty wen in a day, and what Cheng Duo spent in a day was almost equivalent to his father's four months' wages.

It was no wonder Shanzi was astonished. His father was already considered fortunate for finding work in the twenty li slope, and the people in the village who only knew how to farm were worse off than his father.

However, living outside meant higher expenses. Combined with debts and having many children, his family still lived a tough life.

Cheng Duo originally had no concept of money. He had even thought the amount given by Meng Ji was too little, but when he bought a pile of things and took a look, he realized that money was actually quite difficult to spend.

It seemed like he had missed out on that guy, the soldier. Soldiers weren't poor either.

Back at the main camp, Meng Ji could only force a bitter smile. When he went to the enemy camp before, the general had asked him to bring a little extra, just in case there was a need to bribe someone. 

In fact, the silver was not only borrowed from the treasury but also from his personal savings over the years. After being scraped by Cheng Duo, it felt like returning to pre-liberation times.

Of course, Meng Ji didn't know what "pre-liberation" meant. He just wanted to use the captured enemy and the roster he risked his life to protect to make the general forget about borrowing silver from the treasury.

With the money, Cheng Duo went to find Village Head Li and bought some wheat flour, soybeans, and cornmeal as grains (he didn't want to eat sorghum, as it was too coarse). To his surprise, it seemed that Great Xia didn't have sweet potatoes and potatoes yet. And there were too few paddy fields in Wudu County, not even at Village Head Li's house, so he couldn't buy rice.

Of course, Cheng Duo didn't buy a large quantity of grains. He didn't even have a roof to shelter from the wind and rain yet, so buying so much grain and letting it go bad didn't make sense.

Speaking of roof tiles, Cheng Duo finally realized what he had forgotten.

That night, as he lay on the wheat straw and cloth, gazing at the starry sky, he belatedly remembered that he had forgotten to inquire about roof tiles.

However, the previous owner had used wheat straw as roofing, and it seemed that not a single household in Yang Village had tiles. During his time here, the only relatively decent house he had seen belonged to the slaughtered Niu family.

He wondered where they had gotten the roof tiles from. It couldn't be from that distant market, could it?

When Cheng Duo woke up in the morning, Yong-ge had already arrived and saw him extravagantly using a whole piece of cloth as a bed sheet. Yong-ge thought he was wasteful.

Cheng Duo yawned and sat up, saying, "You're here? Help me make breakfast, I'll go wash up…"

Without waiting for Yong-ge's response, he went off on his own.

Cheng Duo squatted by the creek to wash up and caught a glimpse of Yong-ge obediently going about his business. A smile crept onto his face. It wasn't that he was avoiding cooking; his culinary skills were just terrible. Finally, after managing to obtain an iron pot and buying oil from the bean shop, he indulgently made pancakes last night, only to accidentally burn them…

Yong-ge looked at the burnt pot and the layer of oil in it, cursing Cheng Duo as a spendthrift in his heart.

He poured the oil from the dough into a bowl, washed the pot, and then steamed a pot of wheat and cornmeal buns for Cheng Duo. Seeing some cabbage nearby, he stir-fried a bowl of it, using up the remaining oil.

But Cheng Duo was dissatisfied, saying, "It's too bland. Put more oil next time when stir-frying vegetables."

He had bought such a big jar of oil, so why be so stingy with it?

How could it be bland with so much oil? And he was talking about next time…

Yong-ge was infuriated and gritted his teeth, "There won't be a next time."

Perhaps he couldn't stand Cheng Duo's wastefulness anymore, so Yong-ge stood up to him for the first time.

"What?" Cheng Duo didn't react for a moment.

Yong-ge glanced at him, his momentum slowly receding, and muttered in a low voice, "I came here to help you with farming, not cooking."

Cheng Duo paused in his actions of eating the buns and vegetables. This young man was quite clever; it seemed he couldn't continue deceiving him…

He pondered for a moment and tentatively said, "I can pay you."

"One meal for one… two wen, what do you think? And you can eat with me, you eat what I eat… until the house is built, after that, I'll cook for myself."

Yong-ge was a little tempted. One meal for twenty wen, and it included food. There was no better-paying job than this.

"Then… you're responsible for preparing the ingredients."

"Of course," Cheng Duo nodded. With this guy's stinginess, he was afraid to let him prepare the ingredients. If he relied on him, he would end up eating vegetarian every day and turn into a rabbit.

"Alright, until the house is built," Yong-ge said somewhat sheepishly, but he was actually thrilled. Even if Cheng Duo only ate two meals a day, he could still earn four wen and save his own food.

Food is the most important thing for people, so Cheng Duo's first priority was to set up a kitchen. Since he didn't know where to buy roof tiles, he extravagantly nailed a row of wooden planks on the kitchen roof and then covered them with thick wheat straw.

Although it couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't leak when it rained, at least it was much better than the luxurious roofs in the village.

In fact, it was also thanks to Cheng Duo's enormous strength that chopping trees was no big deal for him. There was a whole stretch of forest behind his house, and although Cheng Duo didn't know much about tree species, he deliberately chose those that were thick and robust to use for making wooden planks.

After marking the lines and opening both ends, one swing of the axe would create a smooth wooden plank.

Yong-ge had finished cutting the weeds in the field, and while he was digging the ground with a hoe and clearing out the roots, he took a break and watched Cheng Duo effortlessly cutting the wooden planks, feeling envious of his daily skills.

Cheng Duo was almost done with his busy work. He put down what he was doing and picked up a hatchet, saying, "I'm going up the mountain, don't wander around."

Yong-ge responded with an "Oh." After two days, he had already gotten used to it.

This man was a carnivore, and every time he went up the mountain, he would definitely bring back something. Yong-ge couldn't help but lick his lips at the thought of the braised rabbit meat they had eaten yesterday.

The food here was too good, making him wish that Cheng Duo's house would take a bit longer to be repaired…