An orphan girl from a farming family: Everyday farming in the mountains during natural disasters

A man walked up to the bare-chested man who was riding a horse alone, raised his head, and said with a flattering smile, "Brother Datong, there are a total of forty packages of good goods. Excluding the dead horse, there are still nine horses. The number is correct."

Zhou Datong nodded, feeling happy and joyful, and said loudly:

"Our team has brought back such good stuff this time. The village chief must be very happy. Tonight, we can live in a first-class room for at least three months. We will have meat and wine every day. Except for the village chief, everyone in the village will respect and obey us. We can sleep with any woman we want!"

The lackeys cheered with excitement.

"Brother Datong, in this case, that woman is far inferior to you, so you can complain as you please.

She is just a little girl who relies on her body to deceive people. She can fool the village chief for a while, but if she always fails to bring back good stuff, how can the village chief tolerate her?

In the final analysis, it is Brother Datong who is a man of great talent and real ability!" The man complimented with a smile.

"Humph." Zhou Datong sneered, "That woman is not worth mentioning. What's important is that we have achieved a major victory. It's worth it for us brothers to spend so much effort to gather intelligence from all sides, wait for half a month, set up traps in advance, and get the good stuff in one fell swoop. Let's go back to the village!"

"Hey, Brother Datong, aren't you going to take the dead horse back with you?"

"Why bother with all that? It's just a dead horse. Nine horses plus so many good stuff are enough!" Zhou Datong was radiant, spurred his horse and ran to the front.

The remaining people, those who were thin, had to squeeze three people on one horse, or two people on one horse.

The tapping sounds were getting farther and farther away.

Silence returned to the surroundings.

Xia Qingyue squatted in the grass, her eyes empty, her mind quickly sorting out the clues she had learned.

A group of bandits living in a village on the mountain robbed a batch of goods and killed the deliveryman.

This group of bandits lived in the mountains in small teams, relying on robbing goods to make a living and killing people at a loss.

In their base camp, there seems to be competition. Those who bring back more goods have a high status and receive preferential treatment. Otherwise, life will be difficult.

Originally, she only knew about the bandits in the mountains through the original owner's memory and Chen Yuzhen's oral narration some time ago. Today, she had close contact with them in person and truly felt how dangerous it was to meet these people.

The sky was overcast and the sun was covered by thick dark clouds. A cool breeze was blowing, and the grass leaves moved in the wind, slapping her face again and again.

The beating was so painful that she raised her hand to touch her red face and tried to stand up, but her feet were numb and cramped because she had been squatting for too long.

The cramping feeling was so painful that she slapped her legs and accidentally kicked the hard sack.

What on earth is that?

Driven by curiosity, Xia Qingyue opened the sack and was shocked to see the white stuff inside.

She reached in and grabbed a handful, rubbed it between her fingertips, put it under her nose and sniffed it; it had a light salty taste.

Oh my god, it’s actually refined salt!

No wonder the bandits were so happy that they didn’t even want the horse meat.

A sack contains about 50 kilograms of refined salt. If one horse carries four sacks, ten horses will have more than 2,000 kilograms.

More than two thousand kilograms of refined salt, worth hundreds of taels!

Xia Qingyue exclaimed, "Oh my god."

It was probably one or two o'clock in the afternoon. She was afraid that the bandits would turn back, so she carried the bag of salt out of the bushes. Five corpses and a horse carcass were still there.

Seeing the corpse, she was still a little scared. She clasped her hands and bowed, "I just passed by unintentionally. I hope you won't blame me."

Heihei kept sniffing around the horse carcass.

Xia Qingyue looked at it and touched it. The horse had just died and its body was still warm. There were many cuts on its body, the most serious of which was on the neck. The wound was so deep that the bone was visible. There were marks of ligatures on its front paws.

Based on the marks left by the ligatures, she guessed that the bandits must have been lying in ambush on the deliveryman's route, pulling the rope to trip the horse unexpectedly, and then rushing out to attack.

In the melee, the surviving deliveryman rode his horse and fled in panic, and accidentally ran to the place where she was picking deer ear leeks.

"Poor horse, what a pity."

The horse was fat and strong, and the blood from the wound was bright red, which did not seem to be caused by poisoning.

Xia Qingyue had an idea. A horse has a lot of horse meat, plus she got several dozen kilograms of salt. Why not cut the horse meat and take it back to pickle it, which would be enough for her to eat until next year.

Horsehide has many uses after being cut and nitrated, and can be made into shoes and leather coats.

It would be a waste if you don't take advantage of the existing loopholes.

She was worried about not having a good weapon to cut the meat, but then she remembered that they had weapons in their hands when they fought before.

It was a pity that the long sword was taken away by the bandits. Finally, she found a sharp sword under the body of the man who fell off the horse and died. While searching, she found a dagger fell out of his sleeve with a clang.

The dagger is about 30 centimeters long. The tip of the sword is willow-leaf-shaped, thin, bright and sharp. The blade and handle are cast in bronze. Overall, it is short and powerful.

At first glance, Xia Qingyue fell in love with the dagger. She held it in her hand and practiced with it for a few times, and found it very handy.

With a sharp sword and a dagger, she began to skin the animal. Due to her inexperience, not all the skin was cut off intact, and some corners were not cut off. It took her an hour just to cut the skin.

She first removed the four horse hooves. A sword is not a machete after all, so it took some time. Then she cut the meat and opened the horse's belly, causing blood and internal organs to pour out.

The fishy smell was so strong that she retched and held her breath, forcing herself to cut the meat. After cutting three pieces, she filled the wooden barrel that was originally intended to hold crabs and river shrimps.

After dark, ferocious beasts often appear at night. Horse and human blood smell strong, and they will follow the smell at any time.

After careful consideration, Xia Qingyue decided to go back to the pine forest to put the basket of mushrooms into a sack and use the backpack to carry the horse meat and salt.

Fortunately, she had the habit of carrying a sack with her when she went out every day.

She cut a few more large pieces of horse meat. She chose good places to cut, such as the abdomen and buttocks, as these are areas where the horses move frequently and the meat is of superior quality.

She cut until the horse's back basket could no longer hold the meat, so she cut as much as she could. She was afraid that the horse's blood would drip on the way back and attract ferocious beasts to the tiankeng, so she scraped the blood off the horse's flesh onto the surrounding weeds.

When everything was done, she hurried back to the tiankeng carrying a basket and a bucket of horse meat, took the meat back first, then returned with a machete to continue cutting the meat.

It was already past four o'clock when she returned. The machete made things much more convenient. She chopped a basket and a bucket of horse meat and cleaned up the horse blood as usual.

Before she knew it, the light had dimmed. Xia Qingyue did not dare to delay any longer, so she hurried to the tiankeng, carrying the horse meat, a basket of black fungus, a basket of leeks, and a sack of mushrooms.

The sky was becoming darker and darker, and the stars were twinkling in the night.

Xia Qingyue returned to the tiankeng in the dark. If Heihei hadn't led the way, she would definitely not have been able to find her way back.

Today is the first time in history that I came back from outside so late. I didn’t have time to collect the fish cages, so I have to collect them tomorrow.