Xie Yi looked at Ye Yi with her reddened eyes and suddenly didn’t know what to do. She’d been fine just now, how had she started crying? Instinctively lowering his voice, he asked carefully, “What’s the matter?”
Hearing him, Ye Yi blinked and tilted her head up, forcing back the tears about to spill, and answered in a slightly hoarse voice, “It’s nothing.”
With that, she bent her head and went on sorting the supplies all over the floor, picking out the perishable ones, putting them in one plastic bag, and storing it in the system Backpack. She glanced at the reorganized Backpack, inside was a gun, a bag of fish, meat, and frozen food, and the perishables she’d just put in.
Only three slots taken. Looking at the empty slots that followed, she felt an inexplicable panic. She really did need to stockpile more supplies.
At that thought, she tossed the iron boxes Xie Yi had just made into the system Backpack, picked up the flashlight and keys from the coffee table, and got ready to head out.
Xie Yi had been watching Ye Yi the whole time. Seeing her about to go out, he quickly stood up too, and, worried, asked as he walked, “It’s dark out, where are you going?”
Recalling how she’d looked about to cry just now, he worried she’d taken things too hard for a moment and meant to go…
Ye Yi opened the wooden door, put her hand on the iron door, and answered, “Downstairs to get some soil. Coming?”
The sooner she planted the seeds, the sooner she’d get to eat vegetables.
At this, Xie Yi followed her toward the stairwell outside the door, expressing his answer through action.
Ye Yi turned to lock the door and stepped into the stairwell too, dark, no lights inside. She pressed the flashlight switch, made out the way down, and she and Xie Yi reached the first floor smoothly. Pushing the door open, they found it had started snowing again.
Cold snowflakes struck her face, her hands, her clothes. A gust of wind blew past and Ye Yi couldn’t help shivering. She pulled Xie Yi and hurried to an osmanthus tree not far from the entrance.
Crouching down, she took out all the iron boxes, and only then realized she’d forgotten to bring a tool to dig soil.
She picked up the smallest box from the ground, handed it to Xie Yi, and asked him to make a spade. Xie Yi took the box, made a spade, drove it straight into the earth, and briskly began digging. Before long the first box was full of soil.
Braving the cold wind and snow, Ye Yi and Xie Yi dug for about ten-odd minutes and finally filled all 5 iron boxes with damp soil.
Ye Yi put her hand on the boxes and stored them one by one into the system Backpack, stood up, took the little spade from Xie Yi, and got ready to head back. Braving the wind and snow, she curiously looked up at the twelfth-floor window, from outside, the firelight within was clearly visible.
Following Xie Yi, she got back to the living room and didn’t rest for a moment. The first thing she did was hurry to the balcony and draw all the thick curtains shut to block the firelight inside.
The curtains couldn’t be drawn over the iron kang’s smoke vent, and light still leaked from there. Ye Yi stared at the curtains, thought a while, went back to the living room, dug out the clothes-pin clips, and went to the balcony.
With one hand she pulled the join of the two curtains to just above the smoke vent, and with the other clipped them tight with a clip. She did the same to the curtain below the vent, and this way no light would leak out.
Coming out after washing his hands, Xie Yi found Ye Yi busy on the balcony. Glancing at the fire basin and seeing the fire had weakened, he quickly added wooden blocks to keep it from going out.
Finished, Ye Yi turned back and shut the alloy door. By the fire basin, she took out a box of soil and pressed the earth with her finger, thanks to the snow, the soil was very moist.
She got up, brought the 30 bags of vegetable seeds to the fire basin, and, by the firelight, went through the instructions on the back of each packet one by one.
Ruling out seeds for spring, summer, and autumn planting, she found the ones that could be planted year-round: baby greens, chives, lettuce, radish, cilantro, tomatoes, spinach, and so on.
She looked carefully at their growth cycles:
Chives: 3–4 months. Lettuce: 100–120 days. Radish: 60–100 days. Cilantro: 30–60 days. Tomatoes: 110–170 days. Spinach: 35–45 days. Baby greens: about 20–30 days.
In the end, only baby greens could be grown, the other seeds all took too long.
She tore open the baby-greens packet, scattered them finely over the soil, watered the box a little, covered it with a plastic bag, and finally poked a few small holes in the bag with her finger for ventilation.
Together with Xie Yi, she arranged the boxes neatly to the right of the fire basin, where it was warmer, better for the seeds to sprout.
Once done moving them, she went back to the fire basin to warm up.
Looking at the burning wood, then at the wood piled by the cabinet, she thought: this little bit of wood was nowhere near enough to burn for twenty-odd days straight. Once the snow stopped, she’d still have to go out and gather some more.
Thinking that someone would need to keep watch at night to add wood and keep the room warm, she brought it up with Xie Yi. “Um, what are your thoughts on the night watch?”
“I’ll keep watch. You take the day tomorrow.” Xie Yi answered. How could a grown man let a girl keep watch through the night?
“That’ll be too hard on your body. I’ll take the first half of the night and call you for the second half. Oh, and go change your wound dressing quickly, then rest.” Ye Yi refused his kindness. She hadn’t been awake long and truly couldn’t sleep, and besides, leaving an injured man to keep watch alone didn’t sit right.
Xie Yi wanted to say more, but Ye Yi cut him off with a wave of her hand.
Once she’d decided something, nothing anyone said mattered.
Seeing this, Xie Yi could only slip into the bathroom to change his dressing. Ye Yi looked in, pitch-black, nothing visible. How was he supposed to see to change the dressing like that?
She dug a candle out from beside the cabinet, lit it over the fire basin, went to the bathroom doorway, covered her eyes with one hand, and said, “Here.”
Hearing her, Xie Yi turned, saw the light, walked to the door, took the candle, and said, “Thank you.”
Ye Yi, covering her eyes, said nothing, turned around, only then lowered her hand, and went straight back to the fire basin.
Watching the wood slowly dwindle and the layer of charcoal fallen beneath, she picked up the little spade, carefully shoveled out the useless charcoal at the very bottom onto a board, and shoveled the still-glowing charcoal back into the fire basin.
She worked carefully for a while before shoveling out all the useless charcoal.
Looking at the half-empty fire basin, she had a sudden idea: could the honeycomb briquettes be burned on the fire basin’s grate for warmth? That way she’d use less wood, and it would burn longer too.
Just then Xie Yi came out of the bathroom with his dressing changed. Ye Yi carried some briquettes over to the fire basin and asked him, “Say, can I put briquettes in to burn?”
“You’ll know if you try.” Xie Yi crouched, picked up the pliers beside him, turned them straight into tongs, gripped a briquette top and bottom, and set it on the grate, putting three in one after another.
Seeing Xie Yi about to add more, Ye Yi quickly stopped him. “That many’s enough. Briquettes on the left, boards on the right, let’s test how it works first.”
“Sure.” Xie Yi stopped and looked ready to stay a while and chat.
Seeing Xie Yi still crouched there, Ye Yi hurried him along. “Go to sleep. I can handle the rest myself.”
At this Xie Yi could only get up, gather the bedding from the sofa, and prepare to go back to the room to sleep. Ye Yi saw something was off, she’d forgotten to tell him, and quickly said, “Not that room. You sleep on the southernmost end of the iron bed, I’ll sleep on the north end.”
With that, she wiped the soil off the spade and handed it to Xie Yi, now over by the alloy door. “Here, this is for you, make a partition down the middle of the bed.”
Then, not waiting for Xie Yi’s reaction, she went back to sit by the fire basin.
Before long, Xie Yi had made the partition on the iron bed. Lying on the south end, he closed his eyes, he’d thought it would be hard to fall asleep, but soon drifted off.
Sitting by the fire basin, listening to the wood burn, Ye Yi idly opened the wristband:
Time: Day 5, 10:52 p.m. Location: Yudu Town, Jincheng Complex Weather: Unknown Temperature: Unknown Humidity: Unknown
Name: Ye Yi
Sex: Female
Age: 26
Survival Points: 150 (100 points frozen)
Current Map: Extreme Cold Blizzard
Random Teammate: Xie Yi (Teammate successfully rescued, double points to be settled after the map ends.)
Ability: Gathering-and-Crafting System (Lv1: 22.9/50)
The Gathering System’s experience was only half short of leveling up. She wondered whether she’d complete the level-up by the time this map ended.
She looked a while longer but couldn’t make anything more of it. She closed the wristband and kept staring at the fire basin, spacing out, adding boards when they ran low, and when the briquettes were nearly burned out, moving them to the right and putting fresh briquettes on the left.
After spacing out like this for a few hours, she felt the number of boards used really had gone down.
Alone in the silent night, after keeping watch for a few hours, she checked the wristband, about 3:30. She ran to wake Xie Yi and switched places to sleep.
The next day, Xie Yi cooked the meal. After Ye Yi got up and ate, she checked on the baby-greens seeds, then went to the balcony to observe the blizzard. At noon Ye Yi was in charge of cooking and eating, in the afternoon she spaced out, in the evening she cooked, ate, kept watch, and slept.
Five days passed peacefully like this. On the map’s tenth day, Ye Yi went to the balcony to observe the blizzard as usual and found it had stopped.
The snow had fallen for five straight days, and there wasn’t a single figure outside. When it first started snowing, some people hadn’t been able to resist going out, but Ye Yi never saw them come back. She didn’t know what had happened to them out there.
Looking down at the snow, about the height of a grown man, she couldn’t help feeling relieved it had stopped. If it had kept snowing, it would have buried the first floor of the building.
Of the thirty-day survival period, only a third had passed, and the snow was already this deep. She couldn’t help worrying about the final days, what would they do?
Were Sister Ma and the others all right?
Although the wood indoors had been used sparingly these past days, only half was left. A third of the briquettes were gone too. If she didn’t go out soon, the wood she gathered wouldn’t last thirty days.