She also put two cabinets and a shelf into the space.
The three shelves were placed side by side, creating a small partitioned area—just enough for her to lay out bedding and sleep on the floor.
If the space had been bigger, she would have even wanted to move her comfortable bed in when she was raiding the house.
Gu Shiyi yawned, feeling sleepy. Just as she finished laying out her bedding and was about to sleep, she remembered Cui Shi’s locked chest.
So she found an axe and smashed the lock open.
Inside the cabinet were two wooden boxes, along with three bolts of silk fabric.
She didn’t expect Cui Shi to have such fine fabric, though the colors and patterns weren’t to her liking.
Gu Shiyi decided to keep them for now—if she ran out of money later, she could sell them for silver or trade them for fabrics she liked.
She then opened one of the smaller wooden boxes, which was filled with gold and silver jewelry.
“Wow, Cui Shi is actually this rich? I couldn’t tell at all!”
The two large gold bracelets alone were worth quite a bit, not to mention the many silver ornaments.
Gu Shiyi couldn’t wait to see what was inside the larger wooden box below.
She set the smaller box aside and opened the bigger one.
“Whoa…” Her mouth fell open in shock.
At the top were some loose pieces of silver, which she barely paid attention to. She quickly set them aside and began counting the large silver ingots underneath.
“One, two, three… a total of thirty. That’s three hundred taels of silver. Haha… I’m rich!”
At that moment, she almost felt like she liked Cui Shi a little—what should she do?
Most of the three hundred taels came from Cui Shi selling her former husband’s property, while a smaller portion came from Gu Shiyi’s father.
She also counted the loose silver pieces, which added up to six taels.
At the very bottom were the property deeds for the Gu family’s house and land, along with their household registration documents.
Cui Shi would definitely go to the authorities to replace the deeds, so they were useless. Without hesitation, Gu Shiyi tore them up.
The household registration, however, had to be kept. In this era, without it, one could hardly survive.
With more than four hundred taels of silver in hand, Gu Shiyi briefly considered going down the mountain to buy a courtyard, relying on her space to grow grain and vegetables to make a living, and even selling produce.
But she quickly dismissed the idea.
In this era, as an orphan, she wouldn’t be able to survive well outside. It was safer to stay in the mountains.
When she grew older, she would go down the mountain. As for where to settle, she would decide later—but definitely not in Jinniu County.
She couldn’t let Cui Shi find her. Although she wasn’t afraid of Cui Shi now, it was better to avoid unnecessary trouble.
After putting everything away, Gu Shiyi lay down and slept soundly through the night.
The next morning, when she woke up, it was already around ten o’clock. She stretched lazily, suddenly feeling a strong wave of hunger as her stomach growled in protest.
She washed up inside the space. The ginger she had planted had already matured—lush and green, with each plant growing strong.
She harvested it, filling a basket with fresh ginger that gave off a light fragrance.
Gu Shiyi then remembered the seeds she had bought the previous day and took some out.
Using her mind, she planted them into the soil.
The land was limited, so she could only plant one or two of each crop. She just wanted to observe their growth cycles.
Soon, the stone tablet displayed the growth times for each crop.
Some took twenty-four hours, while others took forty-eight hours.
“Huh? Why isn’t there rice? I clearly planted rice.”
She carefully checked the tablet but couldn’t find any growth information for rice.
She had definitely taken rice seeds—could it be that rice couldn’t be grown in this space?
The thought made her a little disappointed.
Just then, noisy sounds came from the courtyard outside.
It seemed the dogs and chickens were hungry and making a fuss.
Gu Shiyi quickly left the space and went into the courtyard. The dogs looked at her eagerly, drooling.
She quickly took out three meat buns from the space and threw them to the dogs to quiet them down.
Then she chopped some vegetables and mixed them with rice bran to feed the chickens.
The rice bran was also taken from the Gu family the day before—two large sacks, enough to feed the chickens for several days.
At this awkward time of day, it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch.
Gu Shiyi didn’t feel like lighting a fire to cook.
She ate a few pastries she had bought the previous day to fill her stomach.
Since she hadn’t gone to the most famous pastry shop in the county, the pastries weren’t very tasty. It seemed she would need to visit the best shop next time.
Now she had more than a dozen chickens, all crammed into a few small cages, which was quite crowded.
But she didn’t know how to build a chicken coop. It seemed that next time she went to the market, she would have to buy a large woven bamboo coop.
Sigh—she really lacked essential survival skills for someone who had traveled through time.
It felt like she didn’t know how to do anything.
If it weren’t for the sinkhole courtyard left by her father and the mysterious space she possessed, she probably wouldn’t even survive a month in this ancient world.
Gu Shiyi finished organizing everything she had moved back the day before.
She stored all the valuable iron tools into her space.
Then she arranged the wooden rack she had taken from the house, placing all the oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar neatly in their proper places.
Everything looked orderly.
When she opened the cabinet she had taken from the Gu family’s kitchen, a faint fragrance of rice drifted out.
On the bottom shelf was more than half a jar of white rice and nearly half a jar of white flour.
The other shelves were filled with various seasonings, all neatly arranged and in considerable quantities.
These supplies would last her a long time.
The stone mill sat quietly in a corner of the courtyard. She had no use for it for now, so she left it there.
At noon, the kitchen was filled with the tempting aroma of food.
Gu Shiyi skillfully steamed a pot of white rice, each grain plump and glistening with steam, fragrant and inviting.
She also carefully prepared a dish of braised pork, rich and mouthwatering.
Finally, she made a refreshing stir-fried napa cabbage with vinegar, adding a touch of green to the meal.
One person and three dogs sat around the table, enjoying this hearty lunch together.
The dogs wagged their tails happily, occasionally letting out satisfied little whines.