Yun Zhen was absolutely thrilled, but the most pressing issue at hand was how she would get home.
Recalling that the wooden bracelet she had found had absorbed her blood to bring her to this place, did she need to let it absorb her blood again to return?
She focused her mind on going home.
Suddenly, a flash of white light appeared.
Yun Zhen closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, a vast expanse of white stretched out before her.
The piercingly cold wind drilled into her bones, and the driving snow sliced across her face like a knife cutting into flesh.
Not far away was the bleak, dilapidated village, a stark contrast to that neat and clean place.
She was back!
But before her joy could fully set in, she suddenly froze.
The cotton quilts!
She hadn’t brought the cotton quilts back with her!
She was holding a small bag in one hand and a large box in the other, but her quilts had been left sitting on the ground.
Yun Zhen’s heart bled with ache; she was absolutely gutted with regret!
Filled with remorse, she lowered her head, only for three conspicuous large bags to catch her eye.
Her eyes instantly lit up.
“The cotton quilts!”
The cotton quilts had followed her back!
A powerful surge of joy at recovering what she thought was lost flooded her heart.
Suddenly, the wooden bracelet on her wrist vanished.
Yun Zhen was startled.
“Where is my bracelet?”
If it weren’t for the items in her hands and the three large bags on the ground, she would have thought everything she had just seen and heard was merely a hallucination.
She opened her palm and discovered a new red mole there.
“Zhen Niang!
Zhen Niang!” Frantic, despairing cries, tinged with sobs, echoed from afar and drew closer.
Yun Zhen heard her parents calling out to her.
She hurriedly called back, “Dad!
Mom!
I’m over here!”
“Zhen Niang!”
A limping Old Dad Yun and a shivering Yun Old Lady hobbled over, supporting each other.
Seeing that their daughter was safe and sound, they let out heavy sighs of relief.
“You child, you said you were going to look for your father, but he ended up coming back before you did.
You were gone for almost two hours, and your dad and I were worried to death!” Yun Old Lady brushed the snowflakes off Yun Zhen, her face full of lingering fear.
“Where did you go?
Thank goodness you came back safely.
If anything had happened to you, what would your father, Little Bao, and I do!”
Old Dad Yun looked her up and down.
Seeing that his daughter was unhurt, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Zhen Niang, the snow is too heavy.
Let’s go home first.
I found some grass roots.
We’ll boil the edible ones and use the rest to build a fire for warmth.
Tonight will definitely be a bit easier to get through.”
“That’s right.
Your father found some grass roots, so our family has something to eat now.
He also went up the mountain, gathered firewood, and got a fire going.
We’ll boil the roots tonight.
Once you and Little Bao drink some hot soup, you won’t be cold anymore,” Yun Old Lady added, her face full of gratitude.
The heavy snow had sealed off the mountain, making it easy to lose one’s way back home.
Nearly every household in the village had run out of rations, and more and more people were venturing out to forage for grass roots.
Word had it that some villagers had already resorted to stripping and gnawing on tree bark.
Her old man had been quite lucky to bring back edible roots and even gather some firewood.
Tonight, their home would be a little warmer.
They could only hope to dig up more edible roots tomorrow.
Yun Zhen nodded, then remembered the cotton quilts she had brought back.
“Dad, Mom, let’s quickly take these things home.”
The old couple had been so focused on fussing over their daughter that they completely overlooked the bizarre items she was holding in both hands, as well as the three massive, bulging bags resting by her feet.
They had no idea what was inside them.
“These…
these aren’t things that belong in our village!” Old Dad Yun exclaimed in surprise after staring at them for a long while.
In his youth, he had been a *Tongsheng* scholar who knew how to read and had seen something of the world.
Yet, let alone in the village, he hadn’t even seen such peculiar things in the town or the county city.
He looked at his daughter, his face full of bewilderment.
Yun Old Lady also asked, “Zhen Niang, where did you get these?”
With the heavy snow sealing off the mountain, the villagers couldn’t leave at all, let alone enter the town or county city.
These items that didn’t belong in the village couldn’t have just appeared out of thin air, right?
Yun Zhen shivered violently from the cold.
“Let’s talk about it when we get back.”
She recalled her miraculous encounter.
That world was truly beautiful!
The bitterness of struggling for a livelihood was entirely absent from people’s faces.
There was a little clock that spoke the human language, cotton quilts as precious as gold tossed aside casually, and a kind-hearted young woman with a saintly heart who had become her noble benefactor.
For a fleeting moment, she felt like a mouse that had stumbled into a rice granary.
“Dad, you carry two bags, and Mom, you take the remaining one,” Yun Zhen instructed as she held her small bag and the large box, leaving the three sets of bedding for her parents to carry.
“Alright.”
The old couple had a mountain of questions, but since their daughter had said they would talk about it when they got back, they didn’t press the matter.
The family of three dragged their assortment of bags and boxes back to their dilapidated thatched cottage.
Yun Zhen and her daughter’s room was separated from her parents’ room by a single door.
Her daughter was currently asleep on the bed, so upon arriving home, she brought the items directly into her parents’ room.
She took out the bedding.
There were three sets in total.
One had a blue cover decorated with exquisite patterns of kittens and puppies.
One was a solid gray without any patterns.
The last one was pink and covered in prints of various pastries that looked so realistic they made one’s mouth water.
All three quilts were exceptionally thick and heavy.
Yun Zhen placed the quilts on the bed and said with profound solemnity, “Dad, Mom, these are cotton quilts.”
“Cotton quilts!”
Old Dad Yun, who held the scholarly title of *Tongsheng*, was utterly astounded.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head.
Breathing heavily, he reached out a trembling hand to touch the blue quilt.
“These are cotton quilts?
Are they stuffed with the very same cotton where one tael of it is worth one tael of gold?”
“That’s right, they are quilts stuffed with cotton!” Yun Zhen replied.
Yun Old Lady had heard of the term before.
Covering her mouth, she gasped, “The cotton quilts that only high officials and nobles can afford to use?”
Yun Zhen nodded.
“Dad, Mom, this gray one can be laid on your bed.
I checked; aside from the quilts, there are also thick mattresses and two pillows in each set.
With these cotton quilts, we definitely won’t freeze to death this winter.
“Little Bao and I will use this blue one.”
The cotton quilts were incredibly thick, and so were the mattresses.
The pillows were plump and round, feeling exceptionally soft yet firm when pressed.
“We’ll put this pink one away for now and only take it out if it gets unbearably cold,” she said, carefully packing the pink bedding back into the large cloth bag.
“Zhen Niang, where did you get these cotton quilts?
Did you manage to leave the village?” Old Dad Yun and Yun Old Lady stared at her with burning gazes.
Yun Zhen didn’t hide anything and recounted her miraculous encounter to her parents in full detail.
She told them everything: how she had gone out to look for her dad, fallen, and scraped herself; how the wooden bracelet she had found absorbed her blood and transported her to a bizarre world; everything she had seen and heard in that world; and how she had met a kind-hearted young woman who had given her these cotton quilts because she no longer wanted them.
“And it’s not just those three cotton quilts worth a thousand pieces of gold.
That kind young woman gave me all of these, too.” Yun Zhen brought out the large white bag and the large box.
She hadn’t even looked inside them yet, so she emptied the contents out.
The characters printed on the packaging were missing strokes and parts, but Yun Zhen still managed to recognize them.
Inside, there was bread, jelly, pork floss cake, spicy strips, instant noodles, dried fruit, braised eggs, sausages, chicken feet, fruit candies, chicken legs, potato chips…
the names were all extremely strange.
Braised eggs?
Were they chicken eggs?
Why were they black?
And how could chicken feet possibly be white?
Yun Zhen had never seen a single one of these things before.
But these were all life-saving treasures!
Such a massive bag of food would last them a very long time.
Old Dad Yun had yet to recover from the shock of the large cotton quilts, only to be completely floored once again by the massive pile of food.
“There’s meat, eggs, noodles, and even big steamed buns!
What wealthy household could be so lavish?
Zhen Niang, you couldn’t have run into a mountain goblin, could you?!” As she listened to Yun Zhen list off the names of these items, Yun Old Lady grew more and more alarmed.