When the Jiang brothers returned home, they sat in a circle in the eldest brother’s room, remaining silent for a long time.
The fourth brother, Jiang Xie, had been on this isolated island since he was seven years old. To him, affairs on the mainland were merely vague memories, long impossible to distinguish as real or false.
The third brother, Jiang Lou, had left his native land at eleven. As nineteen years passed, he only occasionally missed the noisy hawking along the old streets and alleys.
Only the second brother, Jiang Ting, who was sixteen back then, and the eldest brother, Jiang Song, who was twenty at the time, had both left home in their youth. In their hearts, a obsession with returning to their homeland had always remained.
“Eldest Brother… can we really go home?”
The second brother murmured, not truly expecting an answer.
The eldest Jiang sister-in-law wiped her tears and said, “Home? Where is our home? Luoyang fell into the hands of the Xiongnu long ago. What could possibly be left of that home?”
Jiang Song kept his eyes closed, with Shi Yin’s words echoing in his ears: “The Great Jin is almost done for.”
He recalled his family being exiled back then, the children and mother who died along the way, and his father who died unjustly.
His heart was filled with grief and bitterness.
The righteousness his father had defended to the death and the loyalty he had adhered to back then ultimately resulted in the entire clan being exiled.
Yet the Great Jin to which he swore allegiance was now nearing the end of its line.
At that moment, he suddenly felt that everything the Jiang family had gone through was absurd and laughable.
On the other side, Shi Yin carried the dried fish sent by Jiang Song, pacing back and forth in the room.
There were no cupboards or tables inside, and rats ran rampant outside; nowhere felt safe.
Later, she scraped out a gap in the wall above the stove, found a wooden stick, and used the iron shovel to hammer half of it in. After testing it to ensure it was sturdy, she hung the dried fish up, freeing her hands.
“Finally, we don’t have to eat that millet porridge anymore. Tonight, I’ll switch up the flavor for you with some salted fish.”
Looking at the salted fish, Shi Yin recalled the salted fish stewed with Chinese cabbage and tofu, salted fish stewed with eggplant, braised salted fish, and the steamed salted fish praised in the saying, “Salted fish with porridge makes all worldly troubles fade.” Just thinking about them made her crave them terribly.
Although she lacked those seasonings right now, it didn’t mean she wouldn’t have them in the future. Wasn’t life made better bit by bit like this?
However, salted fish had a strong flavor and high salt content, so it had to be soaked in fresh water for half a day first. Otherwise, it would taste harsh and salty, making it difficult to swallow.
Yet at present, there wasn’t even a single basin in this house!
This place had clearly been nothing more than a nest for Sun Da to sleep in when he returned, lacking any resemblance to a proper household.
Having no choice, Shi Yin turned to clean up the courtyard, hoping to dig up some surviving old utensils under the messy pile of firewood.
Outside the courtyard, Chengzhou led Rong’er and Wangshan, the three of them leading the lamb out the door, intending to go up the mountain to cut grass to feed the lamb.
“Brother Chengzhou, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a live sheep.”
Wangshan leaned forward curiously, touching the lamb’s soft fleece with eyes full of novelty.
“Then have you ever eaten mutton?” Chengzhou asked.
Wangshan nodded.
“My father and youngest uncle sometimes bring back some mutton, but I don’t like eating it. It has a strange odor.”
Wangshan wrinkled his nose in slight distaste.
Chengzhou shook his head and said reminiscingly, “Mutton is very fragrant. The mutton pot my mother makes is the best flavor in the world.”
Back when life was still stable, his mother often took him to a secret little courtyard, where she set up a small stove to stew a pot of mutton. The broth was white, delicious and fresh to the palate, with a hint of spiciness. He had eaten two whole bowls of steamed rice in one go.
“The vegetables in that mutton pot were all delicious. My mother said white pepper was put inside, which she had dried, peeled, and ground herself. It wasn’t sold anywhere outside.”
Recalling that fresh and fragrant taste, Chengzhou couldn’t help but crave it.
Listening to this, Wangshan couldn’t help swallowing his saliva either, asking eagerly, “When will Auntie make it again? Can I have a bite too?”
Chengzhou shook his head: “I don’t know. Even if we have the mutton, we don’t have those seasonings anymore, and that flavor won’t come out.”
Wangshan felt a bit disappointed. Looking at the little lamb in front of him, he involuntarily imagined a steaming mutton pot in his mind, his craving welling up.
Before he could daydream for long, the little lamb bit onto a grass root and yanked twice without pulling it up. Then, it shook its head violently, and without missing its mark, headbutted Wangshan right onto the ground.
Wangshan fell squarely on his bottom. Annoyed and angry, he raised his foot and kicked the lamb twice, saying huffily, “In the future, I am definitely going to eat your meat!”
Rong’er immediately stepped forward and hugged the little lamb, pouting her little mouth: “It’s Rong’er’s! Don’t eat it, it’s Rong’er’s!”
Chengzhou instantly stepped forward half a pace, extending his arm to block Wangshan, his expression losing all smiles:
“Whether its meat can be eaten isn’t certain either. Maybe my family will just keep raising it.”
Looking at Brother Chengzhou whose face had instantly changed, Wangshan felt a bit scared in his heart.
When Brother Chengzhou was angry, he didn’t raise his voice like his mother, nor did he have an angry face like his father when he was about to spank his bottom.
It was just those few sentences spoken in a flat tone, yet Wangshan felt afraid inside. He turned around and ran home.
Chengzhou merely glanced at him, patted Rong’er’s head, and said softly, “It’s yours, no one can snatch it away.”
Only then did Rong’er brighten up, leading the little lamb to look for green grass patches.
Once the sheep was mostly full, Chengzhou brought Rong’er back. By this time, the courtyard had been largely tidied up by Shi Yin.
The coarse branches and thick trunks originally scattered all over the ground had been sorted by thickness, leaning against the fence and stacked into neat firewood piles.
Underneath that messy branch pile, many things were indeed buried: clay basins, wooden buckets, a broken jar, and several sturdy pine poles.
Of course, quite a few rats were also hidden there, scurrying all across the courtyard.
Fortunately, she had closed the house door tightly, preventing these rats from slipping inside.
Shi Yin cleaned these clay basins and wooden buckets thoroughly with plant ash.
She used them only after scalding them with hot water.
She placed the salted fish inside a clay basin, soaking it in fresh water and changing the water frequently, which would remove the excess saltiness so it would taste good when cooked.
In the courtyard, the oyster shells discarded everywhere had also been shoveled clean and piled on one side outside the courtyard gate.
Shi Yin did not plan to throw them away; these shells were of great use. Crushed oyster shells mixed with yellow mud to ram walls created sharp edges that could prevent outsiders from climbing over.
If roasted in fire and refined into ash, it became lime—called shell lime in the Western Jin.
Mixed with water into limewater, it could disinfect, repel insects and ants, and prevent rat infestations.
If mixed with mud to plaster walls, it could prevent moisture, salt, and alkali, and crucially, it wouldn’t shed dirt.
The interior of this house was plastered with mud mixed with straw, which kept shedding dirt crumbs from time to time. No matter how much Shi Yin swept, it could never be swept clean.
She planned to paint the interior walls with shell lime early on, so they wouldn’t have to guard against dirt crumbs while eating later.
By now, the courtyard looked quite presentable, lacking only the cleanup of the pile of loose stones in front of the house.
Leaving them there was truly unsafe; if Chengzhou could climb them, others could as well.
However, as the children had returned and Shi Yin happened to be tired, she decided to leave it for tomorrow.
After the little lamb came back, it quite consciously ran into the room. Since there was no sheep pen in the courtyard yet, it was indeed unsafe outside, so she let it be.
Fortunately, Shi Yin’s nose had already adapted to this gamey smell.
“Mother, I took a loop up the mountain. No family lives on the mountain, nor are there wild animals, but there are sounds of seabirds in the back. Taking Rong’er along, I didn’t dare go.”
Chengzhou had observed carefully on his way up the mountain and brought back quite a bit of wild grass, which his mother had specially instructed him to look for.
Shi Yin nodded: “Tomorrow I’ll take you two up to see if we can find a couple of bird eggs.”
She then took those wild grasses and identified them carefully. Among the weeds, there were indeed a few edible ones, such as wild amaranth and dandelion.
However, what Shi Yin actually wanted to find was purslane.
Not for eating.
Wild vegetables on the land conveyed a lot of information. A abundance of dandelions on this land indicated hard soil; if plantains were abundant, it meant plenty of water and moist land.
If purslane was abundant, it indicated the soil was soft and fertile—a good land capable of growing crops.
However, Shi Yin hadn’t expected much fertile land on that rocky mountain anyway; it was merely meant to teach Chengzhou more about wild vegetables.
Shi Yin washed the two wild amaranths. These wild vegetables contained plenty of vitamins, serving as rare nutrition on this barren island.
Then she scooped out the soaked salted fish, chopped it into segments with a firewood hatchet, and threw them into a clay pot. She still added some millet and wheat grains inside, though today she put more wheat grains.
The wheat grains absorbed the flavor of the salted fish, making it taste delicious. Once it was stewed almost ready, she would throw in the wild amaranth to preserve its nutrition.
As dinner was stewing in the pot, Chengzhou helped his mother burn the pile of oyster shells.
His mother said she needed to build a kang bed before winter arrived, which required this shell ash.
He didn’t know what a kang was, but everything his mother spoke of was the absolute best. Chengzhou looked forward to it immensely.