After attaching the wheels, they moved the luggage toward the center. They lifted a three-foot wooden plank from each side—it turned out the planks were connected underneath by hinges and could be folded at any time. This transformed it into a ten-foot-long, four-foot-wide cart with side rails.
Fang Youwei took out a thick hemp rope, tied it to the crossbeam underneath, and pulled the cart along. Although the road was muddy and difficult to walk on, it was relatively flat and not too steep. Jiayin and Fang Zhiyuan were placed on the cart, while the old lady and Li helped push from behind.
Before long, they climbed up a small earthen slope. Looking around, aside from the small slope they were on, there was a slightly larger one to the left. On it stood a not-too-dense grove of trees, all of which had been stripped of their bark, revealing pale wood cores that looked especially bleak.
Beyond the grove, the path led up the mountain. The outer edges of the mountain looked much the same as the grove, but deeper in, they could see lush greenery—likely home to wild animals that even starving people wouldn’t dare approach.
The other three directions were now vast expanses of water. It seemed the floodwaters wouldn’t recede anytime soon. So they decided to climb higher, to the larger earthen slope. It offered a better vantage point, but still, there was no sign of their fellow villagers. They had indeed taken the wrong direction.
Fang Zhiyuan looked at his father and asked, “Dad, now that the rain has stopped, should we go back to the village?”
Fang Youwei shook his head. “Fangjia Village is too low-lying and too close to the mountain-top lake. The water won’t go down anytime soon. The whole village must already be completely submerged. Going back would be useless.”
They had never experienced such heavy rain here before. Huaiyang Commandery had never been a region with much rainfall. Being close to the northwest, the climate was mostly dry. Although it hadn’t been as severely dry as the past two years, it had never been a land of fish and rice either.
Fangjia Village was actually one of the less water-scarce places in Qiyang County, because there was a natural lake on the mountaintop that usually had a small stream flowing down. But this time, the heavy rain flooded their village first—every advantage has its disadvantage.
“We still need to find the other villagers. We can’t act alone. After two years of drought and now this flood, even if there aren’t corpses everywhere, it’s close. In times of disaster, all kinds of people emerge. Everyone is at their limit. If the government distributes grain and provides relief, that’s fine. But if they do nothing, there’s a real danger of refugees rioting. If that happens, we’ll be in danger with so few of us. It’s safer to stay with the villagers. After all, we share the same surname. Even if we’re not from the same branch, we’re still the same clan, and we’ll help each other.” As long as they were from the same village, at a time like this, even people from different clans would huddle together for warmth.
Jiayin understood this. Although the dragons were spread across the four seas, when something happened, they would come when summoned without a second thought. That’s why no one dared to provoke them—first, because they held grudges and were vengeful, and second, because they were very strong. But above all, they were extremely united. No matter what internal conflicts they had, they would deal with outsiders first. Besides, there weren’t many dragons, so conflicts rarely occurred.
Her mother’s phoenix clan, on the other hand, had plenty of internal disputes. Two of them might fight each other to the death at home, burning each other’s feathers off, but if one was bullied by an outsider, they would risk their lives to help.
Her two cousins, Feng Tian and Feng Ming, couldn’t stand each other. They would start fighting the moment they met, battling until the sky turned dark. But as soon as they left their territory, they immediately became brothers united at heart. Sometimes even their family felt exhausted for them.
…
Fang Youwei found a relatively flat spot in the grove, on higher ground. There were four trees as thick as a thigh, arranged in a square around an empty space. The ground there wasn’t too muddy. They swept away the dead leaves, revealing surprisingly firm soil underneath.
They spread the dead leaves in the sun to dry—they could be used to start a fire later. Fang Youwei unloaded the oilcloth that had been covering the luggage on the cart, shook it off to remove the water droplets. The mat that had served as the canopy was left to dry in the sun first; they would take it down once it was dry. “We’ll camp here for the night. First, let’s build a fire and dry out the ground.”
Old Madam Yang gathered dead leaves nearby to see if she could find any mushrooms. Li and Fang Zhiyuan collected firewood in the vicinity, trying to pick branches that hadn’t been soaked, otherwise the smoke would be too thick. Jiayin joined Fang Zhiyuan in gathering wood, watching him break dead branches off the trees. Some branches were too thick, so he hung his whole body on them to snap them off.
After watching for a while, Jiayin started looking for such dead branches on her own. The little chubby figure reached out her small, pudgy hand, gently snapped a dead branch thicker than her arm—and it broke cleanly. And so it went. In less than the time it takes to brew a cup of tea, she had amassed a large pile beside her.
When Li returned, she jumped in surprise. “Jiayin, did you do all this? How are you so strong! Let me see if you hurt your hands!”