The journey of the only child of a peasant family to take the imperial examination

He knew very well that the three liters of porridge shared by more than 2,000 people every day was probably as thin as water and was just a symbolic means to win over the hearts of the people.

It doesn’t solve the fundamental problem!

Still have to find food!

Relying on the Yangzhou camp to transport food and grass is one thing, but he cannot just sit and wait for death in Ze County.

He thought about it all day today, and suddenly remembered the miscellaneous books "Notes on Mountains and Rivers" and "Compendium of Materia Medica for Famine Relief" that he had accidentally seen when he was in the library of Lin'an Prefecture School.

The authors of these two books are both knights who have traveled all over the country, are knowledgeable and have unique experiences.

It mentions several root plants, which are said to be able to save lives in the wild at critical moments.

The first one is Coptis chinensis, a wild potato that is poisonous in itself. The tuber can be eaten after being repeatedly soaked to remove the poison.

The second type is Cibotium barometz and Rhizoma Cibotii. Both of these plants are used as medicinal herbs, but in fact their rhizomes are rich in starch. They feel crunchy in the mouth and can be eaten.

The third type is konjac and Jerusalem artichoke, which also need to be detoxified before being eaten, especially konjac, which needs to be detoxified repeatedly.

Zhang Ping'an had basically never heard of these foods in his daily life, let alone promoted them, so it is very likely that these edible plants exist in the hilly mountains north of Ze County.

He planned to wait for the fishing team to return tomorrow and then take people out to look for it himself.

Although these foods don’t taste very good, at least they can fill your stomach.

No matter what, we have to at least wait until the first batch of vegetables grows.

It would be best if you could find some more and store them until the bean harvest next spring. That would be the best.

Zhang Ping'an drew a lot of shapes of these plants based on his memory overnight to make it easier for everyone to search together tomorrow.

Liu Sanlang was worried about Zhang Ping'an: "Ping'an, this job is not easy!"

"Of course I know it's not easy. There's no green outside, and it won't be easy to find it then. But no matter how difficult it is, we have to do it to know the result. The court didn't send us here to enjoy ourselves, but to make us work as hard-working oxen to open up new land." Zhang Ping'an shook his head when he heard this, and calmly blew the ink dry.

Then he said, "But looking at it from another perspective, this is both a difficulty and an opportunity. The front line is quite challenging!"

"I don't think that much, and I don't have such big ambitions," Liu Sanlang said naively.

"Okay, I'm done. Take a rest. I have to go to Jigong Mountain in the north of the county tomorrow." Zhang Pingan said with a smile after gently putting down the drawing paper.

……

The next day came in a flash.

Zhang Pingan actually slept quite well last night.

The old bald man also looked energetic and said hello to Zhang Pingan: "I wonder how many fish they can bring back today. If there are any extra, we can dry some fish to have as a snack later, hehe!"

"I guess there will be quite a lot. My medicine is very effective," Zhang Ping'an said as he took two steamed buns and ate them.

Then he talked about his plan for the day: "It's not enough to just rely on that porridge. Today I will take people out to look for something to eat. At least we can get by until the food and supplies arrive."

"Okay!" the bald old man replied readily.

"As for those broken walls and ruins in the city, please take people to find some decent houses, repair them, and sort them out in order by household registration. I'll allocate houses to these people in a few days!"

"Why is that? We just spent a lot of effort to clean them up. Wouldn't it be nice to just live here?" The bald old man was puzzled.

"When there are more people, there's more communication, and it's easier to cause trouble," Zhang Ping'an explained. "Although they're numb now, as long as they're safe and have food and drink, they'll definitely recover after a while. Gathering them together and letting them interact daily is too risky and difficult to manage. It's easy to cause chaos, so it's better to break them up!"

After saying this, Zhang Pingan swallowed the last bite of his steamed bread, drank a sip of water, and continued, "To put it bluntly, the past few years have been too chaotic. The people still don't feel a sense of belonging to our Great Xia, and they are wary of us in their hearts. It's easy for chaos to occur. Once things stabilize, we won't have to worry about these things. This still requires time!"

The old bald man finally understood and sighed: "You scholars still have so many twists and turns in your hearts!"

"There's no other way. The people's hearts need to be nurtured. It's easy to destroy them, but it's incredibly difficult to restore them. It requires ten or a hundred times the original effort!"

After dinner, Zhang Ping'an was about to take people out when the people who went out fishing came back.

They were all exhausted and smelled of fish, but there was joy in their eyes.

After finishing his meal, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and came forward excitedly, saying, "Sir, your medicine is really effective. We have caught a lot of fish with the medicine. Unfortunately, we don't have a boat, so it's too slow for us to go out into the water and use the net to pull them in. We were busy until dark yesterday and only just finished. If it weren't for the dark and difficult road, we would have returned last night to kill the fish while they are fresh and dry them!"

The old bald man pushed aside the others to take a look, then rubbed his hands and said happily, "Wow, this must be several thousand kilograms! I didn't expect there were so many black carp, silver carp and bighead carp in the lake!"

After eating his fill, he replied, "That's right. I guess there's still some left. I can go to the medicine shop once more and try a different direction next time."

Zhang Ping'an was also happy because he could finally add some side dishes to the coarse grain steamed buns.

"We have more than 5,000 troops stationed here, and if we divide it based on the number of people, it's only about one kilogram per person. We should use this fish to make soup, so that we can have more meals," suggested Zhang Ping'an.

The old bald man walked around the cart and said, "It's a waste to make soup. Just drink it to moisten your throat. We have plenty of salt. Why don't we just pickle the remaining fish and dry them in the sun? Then we can steam the dried fish and make steamed bread. It will taste even better!"

"Okay, you have experience, let's do as you say," Zhang Pingan did not insist.

He smiled and mounted his horse, leading his men to the northern mountains.

The people following behind also brought a lot of two-wheeled carts.

Even if we can't find any edible plants today, we have to chop some firewood along the way, as firewood is in short supply now.

Anyway, you can't go back empty-handed!

The mountains in the north are some distance away from the county town, about twenty miles away. Everyone brought dry food and bamboo tubes for water with them, and they arrived in about an hour.

In times of war, places with mountains are treasure lands.

Although the land was now barren, Zhang Ping'an was not discouraged. He distributed the drawings to everyone and said, "These edible plants originally looked like this, but now the vines and stems are probably wilted. You can look for them according to the shrunken appearances drawn on the drawings."

Ruan San scratched his head and chewed some dogtail grass, saying, "This is incredibly difficult!"

"Nonsense, don't you see what time it is now? We should just try our best. If we really can't find it, it doesn't matter. It would be good to bring some firewood back," Zhang Ping'an scolded with a smile.