The pork was a bit tough, the roe deer meat was tender but had a flavor she wasn't quite used to, and if the chicken pieces could have had a bit of salt, they would have been a delicacy.
What a pity.
Li Jiang, who had been paying close attention to his little wife, was busy picking through the fat in his bowl, but as he lifted his chopsticks, he saw his little wife pushing the fat from her own bowl to the side.
Suddenly, he remembered his master's words about how rich people don't eat fat. After observing her cautiously for a while, he picked out the remaining lean meat from his bowl and moved it to hers.
"The fat is what nourishes you, why are you giving her the lean meat?" Granny Li, who had picked out most of the fat from her own bowl to give to the old man and the little girl, was full of grievances toward Li Jiang.
When Jiang-shi and Zhang-shi heard the voice and looked up, they felt a pang of bitterness in their hearts.
In a farming family, the man is the primary laborer; usually, even if the women can't eat their fill, they must ensure the men are full. It was normal for the Fourth Son's wife not to look after him, and it was common for the Fourth Son to give his wife extra food, but to have his meat rejected by his mother-in-law was a bit much.
What was wrong with lean meat? Lean meat is still meat. Even the Fourth Son had given his meat away, yet she was still unhappy.
Just who exactly are you a mother to!
Under the gaze of the family's various envious, jealous, and disapproving looks, Qin Wangshu silently moved her bowl toward Li Jiang's, and with one sweep, pushed more than half the meat over to him.
The bowls of farming folk were not small; a bowl containing over a jin of meat was only half full. The mouthful Li Jiang had just given her was at least two or three taels. If she ate all that meat, she was afraid she wouldn't want to see meat again for half a year.
Besides, she truly couldn't stomach the fat; it hadn't been sautéed much, and the meat was brimming with oil.
She had been struggling with it just now.
Pretending not to notice everyone's expressions, Qin Wangshu scraped the bottom of her bowl and pushed the oil aside as well: "I don't like eating things that are too oily."
Everyone:...... As expected of a wealthy official's daughter, she actually dislikes oil!
Zhang-shi lowered her eyes, silently casting a glance at Granny Li.
After a moment of daze, Granny Li began to eat without saying a word.
The elder Li brothers, Li Er and Li San, suddenly felt envious.
Even after giving most of the meat to Li Jiang, Qin Wangshu still felt greasy; when only a few slices remained, she truly couldn't take another bite.
Thinking that among these people, only Li Jiang could eat her leftovers, she pushed her bowl toward him again.
Li Jiang, who had been carefully observing his little wife, was certain she truly couldn't eat any more, so he began to eat heartily.
The direct result of a very full meal might be a good sleep, but the direct result of a meal heavy in meat was poor sleep. Not long after they lay down, after a period of tossing and turning, everyone began to climb down from the trees.
Qin Wangshu hadn't eaten much oil, so she didn't feel uncomfortable, but since she had made a pact with Xiao Hei, she naturally went along for the trip.
Pan Dalin was indeed a skilled hunter; he understood the terrain of the mountain forests thoroughly. At the end of this mountain stream, there was indeed a spring.
"This... this couldn't be a tiger, could it?" By the edge of the pool, some chickens and ducks fled one after another due to the large heat source swaying toward them, and the posture of that heat source looked more and more like a tiger.
"Based on data analysis, it should be—"
"And based on *your* analysis?"
"It should be—"
"You've seen it?" Scanning the entire scene, she discovered two more by the mountainside: "Zoom in on this image area."
Xiao Hei, who was just about to close the imaging system, obeyed reluctantly.
"Look, there's another one over here. Could this happen to be a family of four!"
......
In the following days, because everyone had stomach issues, Pan Dalin stopped digging traps and instead used that time to set up tents, so the group changed locations every other day.
While the men went out to scout the path, the women and children huddled in the tents, and when the men returned, everyone gathered dried goods together.
For eight consecutive days, they wound their way from the Qingwa River back into the territory of An County.
"What are we going to do? There's actually less in the mountains than outside," walking in quietly, Jiang-shi shook her cloth bag toward Granny Li and said, "Brother-in-law has great skills, and Fourth Uncle has plenty of strength; our family is at a loss being with everyone else."
Ever since their first big feast, Jiang-shi had become more active. She felt that the Li family was being dragged down, and seeing so few dried goods now made her feel even more that her family shouldn't be supporting others.
Granny Li didn't even lift an eyelid and didn't respond.
"Mother, our family has so many children. The adults can go hungry, but the children can't. Why don't you talk to Father about it?"
Granny Li shot Jiang-shi a cold look and said irritably, "I don't usually see you being this stupid, why are you being so short-sighted now? Don't you know your brother-in-law is a skilled hunter? Don't you know the Fourth Son has strength? Your father knows all that. It's precisely because he knows that he cannot take risks."
"We hunted wild boars and roe deer just by entering the mountains slightly, yet the supplies are already gone. What does that prove? It proves there is even more in these mountains, and there might be big ones. Dalin is a good hand, but if he has to face a starving beast, or several big ones, can our men really fight them to the death?"
If he hadn't wanted to find more people to join them, why would Old Man Li have spoken to the village chief and brought so many people along? In moments of life and death, selfishness is only natural; the old man understood that perfectly.
Truly, a couple of ounces of meat had clouded their eyes.
Ignoring Jiang-shi, Granny Li focused on collecting. After finishing work in the evening, she even swapped their staple chestnuts for walnuts and pine nuts.
On the way into the mountains the next day, the Li family had no more softened chestnuts, but rather shelled pine nuts and walnuts. That night, when everyone boiled chestnut porridge, the Li family had pine nut and walnut porridge.
Everyone was used to Granny Li arranging everything; except for Jiang-shi, no one in the Li family knew that this was Granny Li's precautionary work for their future survival.
Thinking of the apples and oranges in her storage bag, Qin Wangshu suddenly felt like telling the Li family not to take risks. In just over four months, these people had tolerated the original host's various tantrums, and Granny Li had been openly biased, yet looking at these people who were so thin they were practically skin and bones, she couldn't bring herself to speak.
Setting up the tent, she took out the scissors and pulled Li Jiang to the side.
If, if there truly was a space within this space stone—even if it wasn't as magical as in books—Li Jiang would have an extra way to protect himself.
She didn't know why she was suddenly so afraid of Li Jiang getting hurt at this moment, but she could say for certain that from the moment she thought this, she never considered that Li Jiang would do anything to her.
She instinctively believed that this young man would not harm her.
Gesturing with the scissors, Qin Wangshu found she couldn't bring herself to do it. Every finger had its use, and the thick calluses on every finger made her feel at a loss.
She tried to steady her mind, attempting not to feel the softness of those slender fingers, but her eyes simply could not look away.
These two hands were so thin they made his heart ache; the scabbed blood stings and the dirt under the fingernails made him feel even more pained, and also stirred a surge of emotion he had never felt before.
His heart... it ached, it hurt, and it swelled.
"What do you want to do?"
"Blood." She didn't notice the tremor in Li Jiang's voice. She spoke instinctively and wanted to explain, but in an instant, Li Jiang took the scissors and slashed them into his palm.
Bright red blood dripped down. Qin Wangshu's first words were: "Are you stupid? I only wanted a few drops of your blood, why did you cut yourself so deeply!"
(End of Chapter)