Thanos's biological daughter in period fiction

Liu Fangmei plans to go to the town in the next couple of days after the spring plowing is finished to see if the primary and junior high schools in the town are open. If they are, she will consider sending her children to the town.

Both of her sons are doing very well in school, and she wants them to continue their studies no matter what.

“Mom, don’t go. Since classes have been suspended here, the county town must be the same. After all, there have only been two light rains since last year, so no crops have grown. How can anyone go to school without food…” Shi Tou felt that there was no point in them making the trip, since it was destined to be a wasted trip.

Actually, the three cowherds had quite a lot of fun, and sometimes other children would join them. Although they hadn't managed to find any wild vegetables, they had collected quite a few dry branches over the past few days.

If there were no wild vegetables, they would gather firewood; having done chores meant they wouldn't get scolded when they came home. However, this meant they consumed food even faster, and the feeling of being hungry every day was truly indescribable. At first, they were very excited, but fewer and fewer people went up the mountain to find wild vegetables.

Normally, the only people you see on the mountain are the three siblings. Occasionally, one or two other people will come out to help them gather firewood on the mountain.

This made things easier; the siblings picked grass and wild vegetables from their own mountain to feed the two cows. Looking at the barren mountain, they even secretly planted some wild vegetables there.

I just hope that when my friends go out, they can bring some home to add to their family's meal.

When they first started clearing the fields, they didn't need the old ox's help. The three siblings, including Shi Tou, would drive the ox up the mountain to secretly feed it fresh wild vegetables and grass. After a couple of days, when they needed the ox's help with the work in the fields, they only needed to feed the ox well in the morning and then teach the team leader how to work.

After they brought the calf out, someone went to clean up the trash in the cowshed. They took the calf for a walk, fed it, and then put it back in the cowshed.

The old ox had grown accustomed to the fresh wild vegetables that the siblings enjoyed, and it no longer wanted to chew on the dry, tough grass. There was nothing they could do but secretly bring the old ox some more tender grass after it returned to the shed, thus ending its day's work.

Xia Yutang originally thought they would be cowherds for a month or two, but who knew that they would spend the entire first half of the year as cowherds in the village.

It wasn't until a sudden downpour in the summer of 61 that the nearly three-year drought ended. The crops were finally able to grow, and their school closures came to an end.

However, when they returned to school, they found that very few people had come. Those who could return to school were all extremely pampered children at home. A class that normally had twenty or thirty students only had ten attend; although they all looked thin, they seemed to be in good spirits.

After exchanging greetings, the teacher gave them a test. This teacher was also very thin, practically skin and bones. After the test and class, the two brothers wandered around the school, seeing fewer than 50 people.

This was the only school in the surrounding dozen or so villages before the disaster. There were nearly 200 children in the school, mostly boys, but it was a very lively place back then.

Who would have thought that less than a quarter of the children had returned after two years of school closures? The whole school was deserted. There's no such thing as a kindergarten anymore; the children in the village just work in the fields and mountains.

Occasionally, some pampered children don't have to work all day, doing nothing but staying at home and playing in the mountains with their friends. Those who are truly motivated to study are very rare, and those like Xia Qingshu and his brother are even rarer.

Although the two brothers still had to do chores at home, there was really very little work for them after Lao Zhai left. The two brothers were strong; what would take others half a month to gather firewood, they could finish in just one or two days.

They knew exactly what to do inside and outside the house. Every morning, the two brothers would get up early and start working together. One of them would go to the backyard to water the vegetable garden and pull weeds, while the other would sweep the yard, carry firewood, and boil water to prepare breakfast.

After finishing these tasks, the two went to the front and began practicing military boxing. After completing a set of boxing techniques, even though the weather was very cold, both of them were covered in sweat.

Just then, their mother got up, and they went back to take a shower. Fortunately, there was always hot water in the space, and a washing machine to wash clothes; otherwise, they would have to wash countless clothes every day.

Since bathing and washing clothes became easier, they have to take a shower every morning after practicing military boxing. After resuming work, people occasionally come to visit in the evenings. Their yard is spacious, with a stone mill and a set of stone table and chairs.

As the weather gets warmer, mosquitoes are becoming more prevalent. There's a patch of mugwort on the slope of the space. Now, they use the mugwort to repel mosquitoes on that slope.

Once the mugwort is cut, it will dry in an hour if you place it on a cement floor. If you want to turn it into mugwort sticks, you only need to leave it for an extra half hour. They discovered this feature after they had left the mugwort out of the drying time.

They wanted to repel mosquitoes, so they used dried mugwort. As the weather gradually warmed up, there were more and more mosquitoes, and several aunties who came to visit their relatives used some of the mugwort they found at home.

No one was greedy. Several aunties picked the ones that had already produced seeds, planning to put the paper in the ground when they went back to see if it would stop the plants from growing too long.

The water level in the well has been gradually increasing, something everyone who goes to fetch water every morning knows. Before, it took several buckets to fill one bucket of water for their house; now, only two buckets are needed. Sometimes, two and a half buckets are enough to fill one bucket.

The older villagers were aware of this change; they only noticed it when they wanted to fetch water to irrigate their fields after spring planting.

After discovering the availability of water, everyone began cultivating their own private plots. For nearly a year and a half prior, much of the land had been abandoned and left fallow.

The thought that having water would allow them to plant crops made everyone feel that putting in extra effort was worthwhile. Looking back at the two or three years of famine, not a single person in the village had starved to death.

After swimming slowly in the village well, the brigade leader even rode his old bicycle around the surrounding villages. During this ride, he discovered that only his village had survived.

The bark and roots of most of the trees on the mountain near Kaoshantun have been stripped away. Standing halfway up the mountain and looking up, the whole area is bare, revealing what was once a dense forest below.

Even so, many people still died trying to survive, young and old alike, with girls being the most numerous. Their village had more than 170 households, divided into three production brigades. A total of 11 girls and 23 elderly people died in the village.

There were a few young ones as well, but the captain ran off without asking any questions.