Leisurely mountain village

As Ye Huan calmed down, he led the able-bodied men in the village to begin renovating the villagers' stone houses, building heated brick beds and stoves. The weather was already colder than yesterday, and the snowflakes were even larger, indicating that more severe weather was on the way. Ye Huan didn't have time to think about anything else.

Let's focus on getting the villagers through this harsh winter first.

In three days, the village's firewood piled up like mountains, and the meat was divided into pieces of different sizes according to each household and frozen in the freezers that Ye Huan had taught them to make at their doorsteps.

The daytime temperature has dropped to around minus fifty degrees Celsius. "Goose feather snow" is no longer enough to describe the snowflakes now, and "snow disaster" doesn't seem appropriate either, since they don't have anything else affected by the snow disaster.

The old priest and the village chief have given orders that everyone stay home unless necessary, and to come out and assemble when they knock on the large tree trunk by the door.

"All the food has been distributed, according to the number of people. If we're frugal, it should last for four months." Zhu Han sat in Ye Huan's warm little wooden house, while Hou Tu and the little white fox played on the heated kang, and Niu'er lay there dozing.

Gangzi and the others also sat by the fireplace, chatting idly.

"Did you feel like there was a lot of food before, but after it was divided up, it seemed like there wasn't enough?" Ye Huan asked with a smile.

“Yes, I’ve seen so much before, and according to my previous thinking, I should have been able to get through at least half a year.” Zhu Han nodded.

“That’s normal. It’s the difference between an estimate and a precise calculation. We can only know the exact result once the food is distributed to everyone. But four months should be enough.” Ye Huan nodded.

"How's the preparation of fodder for those captive wild deer, wild sheep, and wild boars going?"

“These aren’t hard to get. Even if the snow is heavy, we can get them anytime. They’ll eat the leaves too.” Zhu Han nodded. These were considered prepared food.

"Then just relax and hibernate. You've worked so hard for so long, it's good to take a break. It's not good to be on edge all the time," Ye Huan said with a smile.

Zhu Han nodded again, but his face was still full of worry and he didn't relax. Ye Huan didn't know how to persuade him and told him to figure it out slowly on his own.

In Ye Huan's outer room, a large stove was eventually built, placed in the middle of the room. Gangzi and the others would come over to play from time to time, and the children would play in the outer room. The inner room was really small; a kang (heated brick bed) took up half of the room, and with an ox, it could barely seat five or six people.

“When I have nothing to do, I go to smelt charcoal or forge iron. It produces iron blocks and keeps me warm,” Ye Huan said.

“Other villages won’t be coming; Father has already blocked the village entrance,” Zhu Han said.

“No one will go out in this kind of weather. Last night I thought it could be minus seventy or eighty degrees outside, so I warned the villagers not to go out at night.” Ye Huan nodded. In this weather, only a fool would run outside.

"Yes, as I said, it's still possible to get out and about during the day, but at night it's not only cold, but there's also a biting wind." Zhu Han nodded.

"The monkey wine is filtered. Except for half a jin each for the old man and Uncle Village Chief, it's all here. We'll divide it up later and save it. This stuff is hard to come by these days," Ye Huan said with a smile. He had filtered the monkey wine three times before finally finishing.

"Great! The smell of it every day makes my mouth water!" the young people said happily.

"It's not realistic to share it with the whole village. Let each person have a taste. If we have the chance in the future, we'll brew our own wine." After Ye Huan finished speaking, everyone divided up the remaining less than 200 jin of Monkey Wine after filtering.

Other villagers were notified and brought earthenware jars or bowls. Each person received only a small amount, but those with elderly family members took two or three ounces back with them. The distribution was completed quickly.

Everyone went home, and it was getting dark. Each family used large stones to barricade their doors from the inside. The cold night wind howled, carrying whistles.

Ye Huan chose a very good location. In addition to the two large trees, he also inserted huge logs into the ground in the north and south directions to serve as windbreaks.

So his cabin wasn't much exposed to the cold wind, but he still blocked the outer door with a large stone before going inside and closing the door.

There was a lot of firewood inside, leaving only a place for the cow to sleep. The little white fox always slept on the heated kang with Ye Huan.

More firewood and hay were placed in the outer room, and the stove was turned off to avoid wasting firewood. Some of the food was also placed on the table in the outer room. Even without a stove fire, the temperature in the outer room was more than minus thirty degrees Celsius, so there was no worry about the meat rotting.

Most of the rest were stored in the freezer next to the big tree outside the door.

Looking at the light outside through the blurry, three-story window about twenty centimeters wide, Ye Huan began preparing dinner for herself and the little fox.

He used a type of resin to solidify the glass for this type of window. It wasn't very clear, but it let in light, so you could at least tell whether it was day or night outside.

The iron pot was made by Ye Huan himself. The Fallen Mountains were not short of iron ore, and even had gold and copper mines. However, Ye Huan only had the hunting team collect some gold dust after finding it in a mountain spring ditch, and then he didn't care about the rest.

Iron ore is currently the most useful resource, as it can be used to craft weapons and armor.

Ye Huan had no choice but to work on the armor; it was too troublesome and difficult. He could only make patches one by one for now, and then see if he could use beef tendons or deer tendons to connect them together later.

In contrast, rattan armor is much simpler. It's made from the tough outer skin of tree vines and woven into something like plate armor, offering quite good defensive capabilities.

Ye Huan estimates that now, women in every household who have nothing to do are using the tree bark they've collected beforehand to weave rattan armor, giving their men more protection and a greater chance of survival.

The staple food was pitifully scarce. Ye Huan alone could only get ten wild potatoes weighing less than twenty pounds in total. The main food was meat.

But Ye Huan couldn't stand eating meat at every meal, so he went into the mountains alone and brought back a lot of wild vegetables.

"We're having mutton stew with wild vegetables today. This thing looks like a carrot, I don't know if it is, but it's definitely non-toxic, so it should be edible~" Ye Huan said to the little white fox, feeling like she had become the babysitter.

Water is simple; a pot of snow, placed on the stove, quickly becomes a pot of water. Cut the mutton into chunks, put them in the pot, and blanch them first. Anyway, there's no question of waste.

After more than ten days of careful searching, Ye Huan has found a variety of seasonings that are similar to ginger, resemble cinnamon, taste like chili peppers, include Sichuan pepper leaves, wild garlic, and resemble white peppercorns. In short, these are enough to stew mutton.

The things that look like white peppercorns were ground into powder and put into an earthenware jar. Other seasonings were also ground into powder, and finally we didn't have to eat boiled white meat anymore.

While stewing the meat, Ye Huan grabbed a handful of wild vegetables to clean them, then suddenly picked up a stalk of wild vegetable and looked at it in surprise: "This is..."

"Stevia? Where did you pick this?" Ye Huan looked at the thing with suspicion. It wasn't that the wild vegetable was poisonous, but rather that this kind of wild vegetable called stevia could be used to make sugar.