Quick Wear: Men Farming and Women Weaving

After some time, the river water slowly emerged from the riverbed, and several villages began fighting for the water source.

People in the village began to save water, and the village chief also prohibited everyone from using river water indiscriminately.

Song Baoer usually likes to be clean, but now she is trying to save water and can't even wash her face and brush her teeth. She is a little reluctant and still wants to meet her lover clean and tidy.

Mrs. Liu knew her daughter well and saved the water for her.

Whenever Song Baoer had free time, she would give the eggs or food she had saved to Mr. Wang.

The drought has become more serious and various nearby places have begun to suffer from water shortages.

Now the whole village is doing its best to water the crops, hoping to survive the drought until the autumn harvest.

Until the last day, the river completely dried up and the crops in the fields began to dry up due to lack of water. Some old people cried and shouted on the edge of the field, begging God to have mercy and send rain soon.

During this period, Song Yiyue took her sister to find food. The family started to eat one meal a day. Sometimes they would go to bird nests, take out a few bird eggs, and catch sparrows to eat.

Sometimes he would bring some food or roasted sparrows back for Song Hai to eat, and he would also secretly take out some bread or milk from the space to drink, otherwise he would not be able to hold on until the whole village fled famine in the plot.

The novel is mainly from the perspective of Song Baoer. When the autumn harvest was fruitless and the river was dry, the village chief decided to flee to the north based on the advice and experience of the elders. Along the way, Song Baoer relied on the supplies collected in the space to reduce the burden along the way. Wang Xiucai's family relied on Song Baoer to avoid various disasters such as disaster victims and robbers. When they arrived at the fiefdom under the jurisdiction of the King of Wu in the north, which could receive disaster victims, only Song Baoer survived successfully. Wang Xiucai discovered that Song Baoer was abnormal. In order to survive, he did not point it out, but coaxed Song Baoer and listened to him. The ending of the novel did not point out Song Baoer's ending. It only wrote that after Song Baoer married Wang Xiucai, she rarely went out to take care of her husband and children, which implicitly expressed another meaning.

Song Yiyue summarized the disasters encountered while fleeing famine in the novel.

They started with water and food shortages and then fought against each other for food and water. Bandits and robbers robbed people of their property and food with impunity. Countless refugees were killed or injured along the way. Plagues also began to break out, until finally heavy rains came and submerged the entire affected area.

The famine-fighting period lasted for a full six months, from the autumn harvest to the spring plowing season of the following year.

Song Yiyue thought that he only had two days left before announcing his departure to escape the famine, so he filled all the bamboo tubes he had collected earlier with boiled water, put ten of them in his backpack, and put the remaining dozen in the space so that he could replace the water when it ran out.

Each branch of the Song family had different ideas. They all secretly collected food or dug up wild vegetables and edible elm bark.

Song Hai also wanted to follow his sisters to help, but he was too weak to do anything, so he could only wait for them to come back not far from the doorstep.

Song Shan and Song He from the first and second rooms were so hungry that they were dizzy and gnawing on grass roots outside. They saw Song Hai handing them a handful of tree roots and asking them to eat them. They were sweet grass roots that were edible. They searched for a long time from a long distance before they found some.

Song Yiyue checked halfway up the mountain to see if there was an underground river or mountain spring water. When he reached the other side, which was a place he rarely visited, there were cliffs and few plants growing there. He only dug up some edible Platycodon grandiflorum and took it back.

"I'm leaving here tomorrow and heading north to escape the famine."

"Pack up your things and prepare dry food this afternoon," Old Man Song said with a bitter expression.

When everyone in the family heard the news, they immediately panicked. Mrs. Liu ordered her daughters-in-law to prepare the important things, such as dry food, first.

Wait until night time and put away the pots, pans, quilts, clothes and other items.

The wheelbarrow carrying food was packed to the brim, and more things needed to be carried by oneself, including furniture that the sisters-in-law were reluctant to spend money on, and other things.

Mrs. Liu wanted to take this and leave that, and looked at the belongings she had accumulated over half a lifetime in pain.

Song Baoer packed her clothes, bedding and snacks and stuffed them into the car.

He also threw out the bedding from the third room.

Old Man Song and his three sons pulled out all the crops in the fields. They chopped up everything edible and made dry food. The fields were full of dry and yellow plants that the villagers took back home.

When Li saw that the arranged bedding was scattered and thrown on the ground, and the wheelbarrow was filled with all kinds of household belongings, her temper was about to explode, but she held it back and arranged the bedding with a pale face.

He found a relatively large backpack and stuffed it with things, hiding a lot of food.

Song Yiyue and Eryue also carried a basket containing the three rooms' belongings, as well as a bamboo tube filled with water.

The next morning, everyone gathered at the entrance of the village. The village chief led everyone to kowtow to their ancestors in the direction of the ancestral hall and set off towards the north.

The Song family kept walking behind the villagers, looking disheveled, hungry and thirsty. Song Baoer kept getting angry and didn't want to walk, wanting to take the bus.

"Rest when we get to the destination," Mrs. Liu comforted Baoer. She was also tired, but felt sorry for her daughter, so she took the bag from her.

Men, the elderly, the weak, women and children walked with heavy backs and sweat, following the village chief's ox cart towards the north. Not long after leaving the village, many of them could not walk anymore and clamored to rest.

Song Yiyue followed the Song family with her luggage on her back. Seeing that her second sister's lips were cracked due to thirst, she took out a bamboo tube and gave it to her.

Eryue took the bamboo tube, opened it carefully, took a few sips, then quickly covered it and hid it.

The village chief saw that many people could not walk anymore, so he asked people to take a break for an hour.

Song Baoer sat down on a stone by the roadside. Her feet were sore. She had never worked or walked such a long way before.

"Mom, I want some water"

Mrs. Liu took out a clay pot from the cart and carefully poured out half a bowl of water for her.

Song Baoer drank it directly, but didn't feel thirsty and asked for more.

Seeing her children's lips chapped, Mrs. Niu, the eldest wife, went to her mother-in-law tiredly and wanted to pour some water for them to drink.

When Mrs. Liu heard that her eldest daughter-in-law wanted water, she was about to refuse, but then she remembered that she had just poured water for her daughter, so she had to give it to her grandchildren. The water she poured out was just a little bit, enough for two sips.

When Liu saw her eldest sister-in-law going to get water, she also went up to her mother-in-law and told her that she should not be partial to her second grandson as he also lacked water.

Just as Mrs. Liu was about to get angry, she remembered that her second daughter-in-law was her cousin, so she poured her a small half bowl of water.

The selfish Liu took a big sip first, leaving only enough for her son to drink a sip of water, and she didn't care about her daughter's life or death.

Song Yiyue took out a bamboo tube from his backpack and handed it to Li.

Li felt the water in the bamboo tube, carefully looked at both sides, opened the stopper and gave the water to her son next to her first. Song Hai saw that it was water and drank a few gulps.

After seeing him finish drinking, he signaled to his two daughters to drink water quickly.

“We have water”

When she heard that her daughters had water, she took a bamboo tube and gave it to her husband who was not far away, so that he could drink a few sips of water to quench his thirst.

Song Laosan drank two sips and asked his wife to hide it, as he would be very dehydrated and didn't dare to drink more.