She hurried to the edge of the pit and used her hands to scrape away the loose soil. At the bottom, the earth was dark brown, cold to the touch, and clearly damp.
But it still wasn’t enough—only moist soil, not water.
Ye Qing panted heavily and leaned against the edge of the pit to rest for a moment.
Then she kept digging. When she reached about a foot and a half deep, the damp area became larger and more saturated. She could even squeeze out a bit of muddy slurry.
This is it!
Recalling the science videos she had watched in the past, Ye Qing began building a filtration layer.
A magnetic-sounding voice seemed to explain beside her: “This is the key. One wrong step, and what you get won’t be water, but a jar of muddy soup.”
First, she pulled a pile of withered grass from the riverbank and laid it thickly at the bottom of the pit. This loose material would filter out large particles of sediment.
On top of that, she added two layers of fine sand and one layer of coarse sand, stacking them carefully to form a natural filtration bed.
She still needed a layer of coarse cloth. Ye Qing looked around, then tore off one sleeve from her tattered clothes and spread it over the sand. She pressed the edges down with stones to prevent surrounding wet soil from collapsing into the filter.
After finishing, Ye Qing drank the last sip of water from her small clay jar. Then she dug a shallow pit beside the filtration site and placed the jar there.
She still needed a diversion tool. Her eyes scanned the riverbed and landed on a complete dried leaf—a poplar leaf, wide and clearly veined.
She rolled it into a funnel shape, pointing the tip toward the jar’s opening, with the other end resting on the edge of the cloth layer.
Only after finishing all this did Ye Qing collapse to the side, staring unblinkingly at the clay jar. She forced a hopeful smile.
“This is life or death. Whether I survive depends on you.”
A crescent moon hung high in the sky. The heat in the air gradually faded, and the distant mountains loomed dark and oppressive.
Time passed slowly. Just as her eyelids grew heavy and she was about to lose consciousness, she suddenly heard a soft “tick.”
She snapped her eyes open.
A clear drop of water rolled down the leaf’s veins and fell into the clay jar.
Then came a second drop, and a third… slowly dripping in sequence.
The water, filtered through layers of dried grass and fine sand, was so clear she could see the patterns at the bottom of the jar, with only a faint earthy scent.
As the water slowly accumulated, Ye Qing’s eyes turned red.
When there was enough for a single sip, she could no longer hold back. She carefully lifted the jar and drank it all in one go.
The water was slightly cool, instantly extinguishing the burning dryness in her throat and soothing her all the way down.
After that, she sipped it slowly, savoring each mouthful. “This isn’t ordinary water,” she muttered, “it’s imperial jade liquor worth 180 a cup.”
After drinking, her strength gradually recovered.
She quickly placed the jar back to continue collecting water. Now that water was secured, the next step was food—her stomach was already numb from hunger.
She searched through the original owner’s fragmented memories and recalled a wild chestnut grove on the back hill of Liuye Manor. Every autumn in previous years, village children would go there to gather chestnuts.
It was also close to the Ye family estate, which would save her a lot of energy.
Now, after three years of severe drought, most trees had died. But chestnut trees had deep roots—perhaps some fallen nuts from previous years had survived underground without sprouting.
It was still dark before dawn, so it was inconvenient to go to the back hill now. Ye Qing decided to stay overnight by the riverbed. In this weather, the mud pit might hold water for several days, and she needed to collect as much as possible.
She dragged her injured body to a sheltered spot and curled up.
Her stomach was empty again, and the little water she had drunk was already gone. She hugged the pickaxe tightly.
Looking up at the sky, the Milky Way shimmered brilliantly, a cruel contrast to the dead, barren earth.
In both her past and present lives, her existence seemed filled with hardship. But in her previous life, she could still struggle to survive. Now, she was in a true dead end.
“No… I can’t give up.”
She murmured to the sky, more like encouraging herself. “I wasn’t crushed in my last life. I won’t be in this one either.”
At dawn, there was indeed half a jar of water in the clay pot.
Ye Qing drank a couple of mouthfuls and left the rest there. She had no other container.
She picked up her pickaxe and headed toward the back hill based on memory.
The so-called back hill was just a raised stretch of hills behind the village, now equally barren and yellow.
She carefully identified the location of the wild chestnut grove from memory. Only a dozen or so black, dead tree trunks remained.
Hope was slim. Still, she refused to give up and dug carefully around the roots.
The soil was hard and dry, extremely difficult to dig. After searching around three or four trees, she found nothing.
During the process, she fainted twice from exhaustion but woke up again and kept digging. Finally, she struck something that wasn’t a rock.
She carefully brushed away the soil, revealing a shriveled wild chestnut—small, dry, and almost unrecognizable. Though as hard as a stone, it was edible.
Her spirits lifted instantly, and she continued digging.
Perhaps because the area was slightly shaded and had deeper soil, or because many fruits had fallen in past years, she managed to unearth more than a dozen similarly dried chestnuts.
There were also several hard, shriveled tubers resembling wild yam roots. Their surfaces showed insect damage, suggesting they were likely edible.
She bundled the small harvest in the hem of her torn clothing like a treasure.
Step by step, she returned to the river camp. She wanted to cook them—but there was no fire.
Rubbing sticks? She had only seen it on TV and lacked both experience and proper materials.
Eat them raw? Her stomach likely couldn’t handle it.
Then she looked at the wet soil and collected water and suddenly had an idea.
She placed a chestnut between two flat stones and smashed it with another stone.
The chestnut was extremely hard. After repeated pounding, she finally got a small amount of rough powder mixed with shell fragments.
She poured it onto a concave stone and added some water from the jar, stirring it into a murky paste.
She closed her eyes and swallowed it in one gulp.
The taste was awful—gritty and muddy—but once swallowed, her stomach finally had something real inside it, something with calories instead of hollow pain.
The crushed roots were also soaked in muddy water, then the clearer upper layer was drunk after settling, making it easier to consume and providing more energy.
Her strength slowly recovered. At least she no longer blacked out so easily.
As the pit got deeper, more water flowed in. But now her small jar was no longer enough, so she needed to find more containers in the village.
To avoid wasting the precious water, Ye Qing had no choice but to set out immediately.
Night had fully fallen. The nearby village was eerily silent, with no lights at all—only the wind moaning through the eaves of empty houses.