The next day was overcast. Although it wasn’t raining, the cold wind still whistled relentlessly, offering little warmth at all.
Today’s task was to move the stones they had hauled back from the river into the cave—a sizable project in itself, mainly because the cave entrance sat quite high above the ground.
Having a high cave entrance came with both advantages and drawbacks. On the plus side, it was less damp and relatively safer from wild animals. On the downside, getting up and down was inconvenient—especially when heavy items needed to be hauled up into the cave.
To deal with this, Gu Yu had specially made a large basket the day before. It was wide but only about half the depth of a normal backpack basket. He tied long ropes—twisted from an especially tough vine—to both sides, making them long enough to pull the basket up from below while standing at the cave entrance.
To prevent the rope from wearing through from constant friction against the sharp rocks at the cave mouth, Gu Yu also gathered some dried grass and roughly wove it into a thick grass mat, laying it over the edge to reduce abrasion.
After a simple breakfast, they left An’an to play in the bedroom cave with Tuantuan and Yuanyuan, while Gu Yu and Tang Jiao got to work.
Tang Jiao loaded stones into the basket below, while Gu Yu stood inside the cave and hauled them up.
It wasn’t easy at all—it took a lot of strength.
Tang Jiao was reminded of her childhood, when almost every household lived in single-story homes. During the summer and autumn harvests, grain had to be dried. When the yards weren’t large enough, people would spread the grain out on the rooftops to dry faster. She remembered how her parents would pull the grain up bit by bit with ropes, just like this.
She could still picture the sweat dripping from her father’s forehead, the muscles in his arms swelling with effort, veins standing out sharply.
People online often say, “Later on, in places our mothers couldn’t see, we learned to cook like them, and in places our fathers couldn’t see, we learned to work like them.”
Isn’t that, in itself, a kind of inheritance? We unconsciously repeat certain actions, suddenly struck by how familiar they feel—because we once saw them in our parents. And in that moment, we finally understand them.
Gu Yu had clearly seen his own parents hauling grain up to rooftops before as well. That was why, even though the task was exhausting, he worked with practiced focus and steady rhythm.
Pulling something up from below actually required technique. You couldn’t just let the rope rub against the rock edge and drag it straight up. Instead, you pulled once, then swung the rope outward slightly, using the brief moment when inertia lifted it off the stone to haul it upward with force—bit by bit, until the basket came up.
If they’d had proper tools and materials, they could have made a pulley system, or even a simple winch like the ones used to draw water from wells. That would’ve saved a lot of effort. Unfortunately, they had nothing of the sort, so brute strength was their only option.
The two of them were thoroughly exhausted, but they finally managed to haul up all the smaller stones. When it came time for the large ones, it took both of them working together just to move them.
They drank some hot water, played with An’an for a short break, then went back to work.
This time, they worked together below to lift the big stones into the basket first, then climbed up to the cave to pull them together. Even so, it was incredibly strenuous, and by noon they still weren’t finished.
Tang Jiao decided they’d continue the battle after lunch—after all, how could you fight without eating first?
Lately, she’d been craving high-quality carbs—steamed buns, white rice, that sort of thing—even more than meat.
Since they finished the last of the steamed buns, they hadn’t eaten buns or plain white rice again. They still had some dried noodles and flour, and there was rice left as well—but eating white rice for the whole family felt too extravagant. The flour supply was too small, and Tang Jiao didn’t even like noodles.
But today, Tang Jiao decided to indulge a little. She would steam some white rice—not just for An’an like before, but for the entire family.
She steamed the rice together with wild yams. Yams are highly nutritious; eating them regularly helps strengthen the spleen and stomach and improves overall vitality. The whole family loved them anyway, and now it felt like they finally had “yam freedom.”
Tang Jiao put the washed rice and sliced yams together into the inner pot of the rice cooker and added an appropriate amount of water.
Even though she used the rice cooker’s inner pot, actually cooking with the rice cooker was out of the question. The little bit of solar power they had was nowhere near enough to support its electricity needs.
Tang Jiao deeply regretted not being more extravagant back then—why hadn’t she splurged on a high-power solar generator with a battery pack?
Regret was useless, though. She obediently placed the rice cooker’s inner pot into the steamer and steamed the rice instead.
While waiting for the rice to cook, Tang Jiao took out a salted fish she had cured two days earlier to prepare it, then asked Gu Yu to dig up some wild vegetables and wash them clean.
Lunch was still stewed fish, but this time Tang Jiao added a generous amount of wild scallions and planned to throw in some chestnuts as well. Just before it was done, she would add the washed wild greens and blanch them in the broth.
In truth, there was no “plating” involved—since they had no other containers, they ate straight from the pot as usual.
This big iron-pot medley looked very much like a piece of “dark cuisine,” but the flavor was actually quite good.
The fish was fresh and firm, the chestnuts soft and sweet, and the wild vegetables absorbed the richness of the fish broth, becoming deeply flavorful.
Tang Jiao finished the meal feeling utterly satisfied in both body and mind. Plenty of high-quality carbohydrates paired with quality protein—if only there were some good fats as well, it would’ve been perfect.
But clearly, no one in the family cared about that. Everyone ate with gusto. Even Gu Yu, who was usually restrained and frugal, soaked his rice in fish broth and ended up eating an extra bowl.
A meal that warmed the heart, the body, and the stomach naturally made the afternoon’s work feel much easier. They hadn’t worked long before all the remaining large stones were finally hauled into the cave.
Next came digging soil.
Gu Yu and Tang Jiao chose a spot about ten meters away from the already cleared land on the right side of the cave. It wasn’t too far from the cave, but not too close either—otherwise, there would be more mosquitoes in summer, and it would be more dangerous for An’an to play nearby.
Once the location was chosen, they began digging. They planned to start with an area roughly five by five meters, adjusting the depth gradually depending on how much soil they needed.
Since the site was outside the area they had already cleared, they first had to remove weeds, shrubs, and other vegetation. This time, the whole family pitched in—even Tuantuan and Yuanyuan were let out of the cave.
The two little ones had been growing quickly. In just half a month, they had gotten noticeably bigger. When Gu Yu had spare time, he would do some simple command training with them, so they were fairly well behaved.
Because they were usually kept in a cage or confined to the cave, the moment they were released they sprinted around wildly for several laps before finally settling down. In the end, they circled Tang Jiao, Gu Yu, and An’an, pouncing and playing at the weeds and shrubs that had been pulled up and were still wobbling in the dirt.