Chapter 2 Taoyuan Village

This mountain village had no name.

Because the villagers here saw no need for a name.

However, not long after Shu Guan arrived, he named the village Taoyuan Village.

Of course, he didn't tell the old cripple about this.

After all, he was only three months old at the time, and a speaking baby would frighten many people.

Especially since he was covered in boils at the time, looking very ugly, Shu Guan feared that the villagers would consider him a demon and drown him in the stream outside the village.

Truly, the villagers here believed all these things.

One day, Shu Guan sat at the edge of the grain-drying field at the entrance of Taoyuan Village.

It was a spring afternoon, just a few days after the Waking of Insects. The seedlings in the field had just been transplanted, so there was no grain to dry.

But the drying field wasn't empty, lots of ferns were being dried on the compacted yellow mud ground. The dark green leaves, when dried, produced a leathery sheen, like a carpet on the yellow mud.

These wild vegetables grew wildly in the woods under the cliffs around the village after the rainy season, and every household in Taoyuan Village would pick some, dry them, pickle them, and store them in big and small jars.

This was an essential dish on their tables for the coming year.

Shu Guan used to hate eating ferns, but in this lifetime he's eaten them for more than three years. At first, he had no choice but to eat them, then he slowly got used to them, gradually came to like them, especially when stir-fried with chili and bacon, he could eat two bowls of rice.

Ferns, chilies, bacon.

In the beginning, it was because of these things that Shu Guan preliminarily deduced that this small mountain village should be in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, possibly in Hubei or Hunan.

However, this was just Shu Guan's initial judgment. As he lived in this small mountain village for a few years and learned more about the village, he was no longer sure where the village was.

But what does it matter even if he figures it out?

It's meaningless.

Sitting on the edge of a sea of dark green fern leaves, smelling the strong scent of vegetable being carried by the early spring breeze, Shu Guan sighed.

He sat on a long bench, his hands propped on both sides of his body.

Shu Guan looked up at the sky, like a frog looking up from the bottom of a well.

Because the sky he could see was really small.

Even in the best place in the whole of Taoyuan Village, there were more towering cliffs within his view.

Those cliffs were very steep, with some trees and vines at the bottom, but the higher up, the fewer trees and plants there were. After the middle part of the cliff, only smooth, mirror-like cliff rocks were left, which even the most agile monkey would find hard to climb.

Taoyuan Village was surrounded by these high cliffs, like a deep well.

With Taoyuan Village at the bottom of the well, the surrounding cliffs were the wall of the well.

It also resembled a prison.

The only connection between Taoyuan Village and the outside world was the small stream where Shu Guan had floated into the village.

The stream flowed out from a crevice between two cliffs. At its narrowest point, it was only wide enough for a newborn baby, and the water there was deep and swift, so it was impossible for anyone to stand in it. The rocks on the cliffs were so hard that even the most cruder iron tools couldn't carve out a bigger crevice in the cliff.

So people living in this mountain village couldn't leave.

At least a normal person would not be able to climb those steep cliffs.

And those who lived in Taoyuan Village were all ordinary people.

Shu Guan was very certain about this.

As for the situation outside those cliffs surrounding the village, Shu Guan had already seen it clearly when he fell from the sky.

Mountains, beyond mountains.

Stretching for hundreds of miles.

So their village hidden deep in the mountains was unlikely to be discovered by people from the outside world.

This was why Shu Guan named this village Taoyuan Village.

"When the woods thinned, they came to a mountain with a spring flowing from a small opening, resembling a beam of light. They left their boat and entered through the opening."

In his previous life, although he didn't do very well, Shu Guan was a genuine top student, with outstanding results in all subjects and a wide range of knowledge, like someone who knows a little bit of everything.

Otherwise, there was no way he could know that ferns only grow in the Yangtze River Basin and northward, then deduce the general whereabouts of this valley based on the surrounding plants.

And the "Taohuayuanji" (Peach Blossom Spring) that he recited in high school, he still remembers most of it.

The village he was in now was very similar to the one described in "Taohuayuanji."

The landscape was even quite similar.

Like on the hillside by the stream outside the village, there was actually a peach grove, and when spring came, it seemed as if there were pink clouds floating above the clear water.

Taoyuan Village was a pastoral idyll, full of poetry and dreams.

For those who live in modern cities, it eternally resides in a corner of one's heart.

But have someone used to city life try staying for a month in a remote place without a phone, wifi, games, gossip, Weibo, WeChat moments, or parties and see what happens.