It's really hard to just farm peacefully.

Early the next morning, Jiang Yuan and the young men who had secretly entered the mountains to look for gold sand a few days ago were punished by Jiang Wang to carry food back from the tiankeng cave.

The reason was that he went into the mountains to take risks without permission, and Jiang Yan replaced Jiang Wang to supervise the whole process.

After entering the cave, Jiang Yan took advantage of the fact that Jiang Hu and the others were busy loading, weighing and moving grain, and under the cover of Jiang Yuan, he quietly took a backpack and went down to the plateau, then threw several pieces of ironware and swords he had picked up yesterday into the sinkhole.

The bottom of the tiankeng is unfathomable, with dense forests and few people, making it an ideal place to "destroy corpses and cover up traces."

After throwing it away, Jiang Yan concentrated again and checked every inch of the place where it fell.

After confirming that there were no traces on the top of the trees, he returned to the cave with peace of mind, took a bundle of straw and sat down to weave straw sandals, waiting for Jiang Hu and the others to finish their work and return to the village.

Jiang Yuan also took advantage of the fact that Jiang Yan was out and they were the only ones working in the cave, so no one else would know about it. He relayed to Jiang Hu and the others what Jiang Wang had repeatedly emphasized - for the sake of the village and their own safety, they must never tell anyone else about finding the ironware.

Not many people in the village know about the ironware, so it wouldn't be a pity to just deal with it.

But the gold sand is not a good thing. The villagers treat it as a treasure and will be punished by God if it is lost.

Therefore, Jiang Wang was to notify everyone and then hide it. He would bring it out after a year or two to avoid attracting too much attention.

In order to protect their money, the entire Dongshan Village kept their mouths shut at that time.

-----------------

This spring, the village planted 35 acres of corn, but only five or six plants survived. Jiang Yan looked after them like treasures and kept them for seeds.

Sixteen acres of crops were planted on the mountain. Because of the convenient drainage, even if the yield was severely reduced due to flooding, we could still harvest about 700 to 800 kilograms.

On August 5th, after harvesting the last acre of corn in Tiankeng Mountain, Jiang Shun took Jiang Hu and Jiang Ju into the dense forest.

There is not enough food this year, so Jiang Shunyi, a carpenter, has to switch jobs and do the work of a hunter.

They hadn't been in the woods for a week, and this time they planned to check if there were any wild animals caught in the traps they had set before.

The living ones are brought back to the village for snacks, and the dead ones must be cleaned up in time to prevent them from stinking.

"Huh?" Jiang Ju noticed something strange in the forest. "Several people have been here before."

The traps and snares they set had obvious signs of being triggered by humans, and the footprints left on the ground were of varying sizes...

Several villages settled in the area at the eastern foot of Qinshan Mountain have long since divided the areas under their jurisdiction.

The villagers wouldn't cross the border without permission during their daily picking, and even if they did, they wouldn't rashly enter unfamiliar forests...

Remembering Jiang Wang's previous instructions to keep quiet about Jinsha, Jiang Shun and his companions went to the nearest Hongdao to check, and found it covered with messy footprints.

The last time it rained was the day after Jiang Hu and his men returned with their supplies...

"Some outsiders came up the mountain eight or nine days ago." Jiang Shun estimated the time and said, "Let's go back to the cave first."

……

Jiang Shun and his men returned quickly, but at that time the people who went up the mountain to cut corn had not yet returned to the village.

After hearing the news Jiang Shun brought back, Jiang Wang had some idea what those people were looking for in the mountains.

He was a little panicked, but he managed to keep a calm face: "I don't know what they are looking for, I hope they won't get us into trouble."

Then they arranged for everyone to move the stored food in the cave back home, for fear that if anyone left it unattended, the food would be stolen and taken away by outsiders.

After all, the weather had been good recently and the houses in the village had been almost cleaned up.

In order to make work more convenient, they all moved back and lived there temporarily, leaving two or three people to guard Tiankeng Mountain.