Xianyu asked

Chapter 23
It has been one month since that day.

The green hills are still there, but it’s snowing today.

In the twelfth lunar month of winter, the weather gets colder, and the whole mountain forest seems to be covered with a sliver of silver, and the birds and animals are completely silent, except for the hut in the forest on the mountainside, there are still waves of cooking smoke.

Nothing to do today, smoke Chen Shisu.

Huaying knocked a few pieces of ice lumps from the mountain pool in the back mountain and came back with a bucket. It was frozen for three days, and the stream was cut off.

It has been three months since the master of the two went out, and the Chinese New Year is approaching, and it is not yet known when they will be able to return.

Huaying put the bucket of ice under the eaves of the corridor, brought a wooden basin, spent a little time hammering the ice into small pieces with an axe, put them in the basin, picked it up, and walked to the stove. .

The room was very warm, and there was a busy figure in front of the stove. Seeing her walk in, he immediately said:
"It's back. Melt the ice quickly. After the porridge is cooked, you can start eating."

Qin Xiangzhi is still today's head chef. Recently, she has become better at cooking, and has become more and more proficient in cooking.

In the past when it was just her and the master, the daily food and tea were very meager, but since the younger junior sister went up the mountain, the food has improved a lot, although it is not so meaty, but it is much better than before.

After busy work, the meal was finally ready, and the two sat at the dinner table as usual.

"Junior Sister, today's food is relatively poor, you can eat as much as you can, and I will go up the mountain to find something to eat another day."

The meal was not very rich. Most of the vegetables in the vegetable garden had been frosted, and the wild animals in the mountains were extremely difficult to hunt after the cold weather, so the source of food was greatly reduced.

Qin Xiangzhi couldn't help worrying about this every day, and sighed.

Fortunately, there is still half a tank of old rice left in the rice tank, and the two of them also stockpiled some bacon for the Chinese New Year in advance two months ago, so there is no need to worry about food.

It's just that if you don't use it sparingly, it may be difficult to last until the beginning of spring.

Huaying has gained a lot of weight in the past three months, and her face has become much rounder than before going up the mountain. If she hadn't exhausted too much energy from practicing martial arts, she might have become a round ball by now.

Qin Xiangzhi's credit is indispensable for this matter. Seeing her junior sister being raised white and fat by herself little by little, she felt very happy in her heart.

When the master comes back, a compliment will definitely be unavoidable.

While swallowing the hot porridge, Huaying ate the salty fried bacon, gobbling it like a starved ghost reincarnated, after a meal, her mouth was full of oil, and she practiced praise.

"Senior sister cooks so delicious, I like to eat senior sister's meal."

After all, she is getting older, and her appetite will inevitably increase. After she ate this meal, she ate a full adult's portion.

Holding her full stomach, Huaying wiped her mouth, looked at the happy and sad senior sister, suddenly her eyes lit up, and she suggested excitedly:
"Senior sister, let me go up the mountain to look for food from now on. You can just rest at home. Anyway, I have nothing to do when I am full every day. I have nothing to do except practice. It is better to go to the mountain for a stroll. Maybe I can hit it." What kind of wild animals come out to look for food?"

"But, aren't you afraid of those two blind bears?"

Of course Qin Xiangzhi was happy about this, but seeing that Huaying was young, she couldn't help but feel a little worried.

"It's okay, Blind Xiong must be hiding in the cave for the winter sting. It must be very safe to go up the mountain at this time!" Huaying has become more and more daring recently. Before, she would not dare to run into the mountains alone. .

"That's true."

Qin Xiangzhi nodded, and immediately said with a smile, "If that's the case, I'll be hard on you."

After the meal, the two cleaned up briefly, and then Huaying put on thick winter clothes and ran in the direction of the mountains, diving headlong into the snow-covered mountains.

This trip is said to be foraging, but in fact it has another purpose.

Huaying walked away on the snow, and the mountain was quiet at this time, there were no beasts or birds, everything was silent, the whole mountain forest seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep, and there was no other sound except the crunching sound of stepping on the snow.

When she found the valley that day, she found that there was not much snow in the valley, and there was still some green life, so she couldn't help being surprised.

"It's much warmer in this valley than outside. If you live here, you won't be afraid that you won't be able to grow vegetables when it's cold." Huaying muttered to herself, but she didn't care too much.

Afterwards, she found a more suitable place, sat down cross-legged, closed her eyes and meditated silently in her heart.

call out.

Huaying's figure disappeared all of a sudden, replaced by a quaint jade pendant that appeared out of thin air, fell heavily, and fell to the ground beneath her.

At the same time, Huaying, who disappeared, opened her eyes in another unknown space.

With the gorgeous starry sky above her head, the white mist all over her body, and the solid ground under her feet, she once again came to this mysterious place.

However, it is completely different from before, the originally half-acre square of empty land is now full of trees with red fruits.

One, two, three. There are more than a dozen red fruit trees here.

The fruity fragrance was tangy, Huaying took a deep breath, the strong smell almost filled her chest, and she immediately felt intoxicated.

In just a few months, she has worked tirelessly to cultivate fruit trees one by one, and now it is finally the harvest season.There are more than a dozen red fruit trees, each of which is full of red fruits, and the number cannot be counted.These alone are enough for her to eat for several years.

Huaying climbed up the tree, picked out more than a dozen fruits, and prepared to take them back for her senior sister to eat.

After picking, I came to a small green vegetable field next to the fruit tree, squatted down, and gently stroked the crispy, juicy vegetable leaves, feeling even more pleasantly surprised.

This vegetable field was planted by her a few days ago, and it was unexpectedly full so soon, somewhat beyond her expectations.

"It seems that in addition to fruit trees, other crops can be successfully planted on this land, which is exactly what I thought."

Huaying originally thought that the green vegetables in this vegetable field would not mature so quickly, because from the planting experience in the past few months, she observed that at the beginning, the saplings of the first few red fruit trees planted grew faster. It was very fast, basically two or three days to grow to fruit, but the second and third batches of saplings planted did not achieve the effect she expected.

The second batch of saplings took five days to bear fruit, and the third batch took seven days. In the end, it became slower and slower. When the last batch was planted, it took [-] days to bear fruit.

For this reason, she took great pains and thought of various ways to increase the growth speed of the saplings.Watering, loosening the soil, fertilizing, unfortunately, no matter what method, it seems to have no effect at all.

The water poured into the soil does not absorb at all, and does not even seep into it.Loosening the soil was useless, not to mention fertilizing. Hua Ying thought that the slow growth of the saplings was caused by the gradual lack of soil fertility. For this reason, she specially borrowed some farming fertilizer from Lijia Village and her familiar friends.

But what I never expected was that fertilization didn't work. It was inconvenient for the saplings to maintain their original growth momentum, and it didn't have any effect until the fertilizer completely dried up.

Because of this incident, Huaying was so worried that her hair turned gray a lot. Seeing that the field was developing toward the abandoned field, she had no choice but to stop planting fruit trees and start studying other crops instead.

The small vegetable field in front of her is the result of her recent efforts.

(End of this chapter)