I'm involved in poverty alleviation in a primitive tribe.

Jiang Ning had never seen chili peppers in the tribe before. She guessed that the people who gathered them tasted them outside and found them inedible, so they never brought them back to the tribe. That's why Jiang Ning had never seen them before.

Although gathering teams don't face the same dangers as hunting teams, they still take risks in search of new food. When food is scarce, they will look for plants that have been eaten by birds and animals, and taste them to see if they are still edible.

However, food that is harmless to wild animals can be deadly to humans.

Children of the tribe are not allowed to leave the tribe's territory. Even the places that the gathering teams go to are scouted by the hunting teams in advance. This continent is full of dangers.

Jiang Ning reached out to grab the branches and leaves of the chili peppers, plucked a branch and started picking peppers, both green and red, intending to taste if there was anything different about the peppers here.

Because I had told Hongye before that I was only picking leaves for fun, I couldn't pick too many this time. I only picked a small half basket before reluctantly stopping.

Hongye has finished picking the raspberries and has started picking the fruit from the vines on the nearby hillside. Unlike chili peppers, which bloom individually, this vine produces flower spikes. Its leaves are wider at the top and narrower at the bottom, and the fruit is oval, about the size of a fist, with a yellowish-brown skin. The tribe uses it to make soup.

Jiang Ning asked the system, "What did Hongye pick?"

"You're too far away; I need to get closer so I can see you clearly."

Jiang Ning then walked over to Hongye and started picking leaves with her. This time, the system saw her clearly and said, "These are called yam beans, also known as yam beans. If you liked candied hawthorns before, you should have eaten them, but they weren't this big."

Jiang Ning thought for a moment, "I don't like sweets, I've only ever eaten candied hawthorn berries. So this is yam bean. Where is the yam?"

"In the soil, yam is a vine plant belonging to the Dioscoreaceae family and the Dioscorea genus. Yam is its underground rhizome, while yam bean is its above-ground rhizome. They can be considered as brothers. It has both edible and medicinal value. You can plant it if you want, as the soil here is sandy, which is very suitable for it. However, I do not recommend that you plant it."

"why?"

"With your current planting techniques, even if you manage to grow them, the harvest won't be good. You might as well plant more sweet potatoes. You can try digging one up first and you'll see."

Jiang Ning picked up a hoe and went forward. He first rummaged through the vines to find the roots, and then started digging. Hongye asked in confusion, "Jiang Ning, what are you digging for?"

"I'm digging up its roots to see if there are more edible parts underground, like with sweet potatoes."

"How can that be the same? Its fruit has already grown on the vine, while the sweet potato vine has no fruit growing on it."

"Let's give it a try, just in case."

Hongye thought about it and agreed. Anyway, Jiang Ning often came up with new things, so she picked up a hoe and dug with Jiang Ning.

The roots of the yam are very deep. Jiang Ning and Hong Ye dug a big pit in the mountain wall and finally found a section of rhizome wrapped in mud.

Jiang Ning excitedly went over and carefully dug away the soil next to her with a hoe. She was so tired that her back ached and she finally dug out a wild yam that was as long as her arm. It was different from the iron yam she had seen before. Iron yam is a regular cylindrical shape with a very smooth surface. This wild yam grew very randomly, with a flat and bumpy surface.

Hongye exclaimed in surprise, "There really is! Should we still dig it up?"

Jiang Ning looked at the large pit she had just dug and felt a headache coming on. "Forget it, it's too time-consuming. We're not even sure if these are edible. Let's pick the yam beans first." She then said to the system, "It's really not worth it."

The system replied: "The yam beans here are very large. You can plant yams and then harvest only the yam beans. The yield of yam beans is also very high."

Jiang Ning also thought it was feasible, "It's good to have more ingredients to enrich the recipes."

The yam beans grew very densely, and soon a basket was full. Some of the faster tribesmen carried the harvested food on shoulder poles and took it back to the square to process it, then brought the empty baskets back, while the others continued to gather.

The autumn harvest season is tough, and every day is hard work. Jiang Ning even asked someone to help send some chili peppers back to the square so that people there could help dry them.

If you get hungry at noon, just pick whatever you can and eat it; you won't go hungry in the mountains during autumn and spring. Nature always generously provides abundant fruits and plant resources.

Whether it's wild fruits, wild vegetables, or the occasional small animal, you can always find some food here to satisfy your needs.

By evening, the tribespeople had already made several trips back and forth, and the gathering team was preparing to return home. Today, Jiang Ning was busy picking chili peppers and yam beans and didn't pick anything else.

Jiang Ning returned to the tribe and first went to the square to check on the chili peppers that she had asked the tribespeople to dry. The autumn sun was very strong, and they were already a bit wilted after only one day of drying. Jiang Ning planned to dry them into dried chili peppers, then grind them into powder to roast meat, and use the remaining fresh chili peppers to make a stir-fried chili pepper dish.

The weather was exceptionally clear today, and Wu and the hunting team that remained in the tribe were harvesting sweet potatoes. The tribe had cultivated a lot of land on the plains beside the river, all for growing sweet potatoes. This land was like the tribe's hope, nurturing abundant food.

As soon as the sun rose, Wu had already arrived at the sweet potato field with the hunting team. They carried simple equipment and began their intense work.

Harvesting sweet potatoes is no easy task; it requires patience and care. Each sweet potato needs to be carefully dug out to avoid damage, thus ensuring their quality and taste.

In the afternoon, Wu and the other members of the hunting team rested under the shade of a tree, enjoying a simple meal. Although the work was hard, their faces were filled with satisfied smiles.

Because they know that the fruits of their hard work will bring abundant food to everyone in the tribe, making their lives better.

After dinner, the two returned to the cave together. Jiang Ning brought back some yam beans, intending to learn how to cultivate them. Wu, seeing this, asked curiously, "Aren't you full yet?"

Jiang Ning was speechless and didn't want to pay him any attention. The system said that the best time to plant yam beans was in April in spring. Jiang Ning had counted at first that there were about fourteen months in a year here, but later she became too lazy to remember.

After asking the system, it said that there are actually sixteen months in a year here, with four months in each quarter. However, the seasonal transitions are not very obvious, so Jiang Ning remembered it wrong.

It's currently mid-autumn, so planting isn't an option. Jiang Ning rinsed the yam beans and the yams she'd dug up that day, took a wooden bucket, added water, and soaked the yam beans in it before washing up and getting ready to rest.

Today was her first time gathering, and she already felt quite tired. When she was a minor, she would help out with some things in the tribe, but those were all easy tasks, unlike going out to gather, running up and down, carrying things on her back, and digging up yams.

Suddenly, a rhythmic horn call rang out. It was being blown by the sentries on guard duty; the horns were made of buffalo horns. Upstream of the Tianlang River, right in front of the tribe, buffalo would occasionally come to drink.

Wu also quickly ran out of the cave, because they all knew what the three short and one long horn sounds meant: the hunting party had returned. Their parents were in one of the two hunting parties, and they had been away for five or six days before finally returning.

They quickly walked down the mountain, and then they could see that the square, which had been dark, was now lit with torches. There was a type of pine tree here, and the resin produced on the pine tree could be made into torches that could burn for a long time.

Some giant wolves slowly walked into the plaza entrance. These wolves resembled enlarged versions of North American gray wolves. Adult wolves could grow to three or four meters long, with two bulges on their backs near their necks. Their fur was mostly gray, mixed with brown, black, and white. There were also solid-colored wolves.

The wolves carried prey on their backs, while their owners walked on the ground. Because wolves are not good at carrying heavy loads, the prey they carried was already very heavy, and the owners did not want their wolves to suffer.

Upon reaching the plaza, some of the tribespeople who had remained were already unloading their prey from the backs of the wolves. This prey, undoubtedly the result of hard-won hunting, would be properly processed and distributed to become provisions for the tribe's members.

Just then, someone rushed to Jiang Ning, "Jiang Ning, quick! Go to the center of the square to find the witch, someone is injured!"

After hearing this, Jiang Ning immediately walked over there. In her previous life, although Jiang Ning had not yet graduated, she had barely mastered some external injury treatment. When she was young, she had bandaged her injured father, which was seen by the shaman. From then on, the shaman would ask Jiang Ning for help whenever there was a problem.