A Scene Brimming with Life

You could not speak of ice to a summer insect.

Do not casually discuss a future beyond their experience with people constrained by their times and surroundings.

Unless that future actually arrived, they could neither imagine nor understand such a scene.

Force the subject, and you would either be taken for a madman or a liar, or, as just now, start with a joke and end in vagueness, achieving nothing.

Genius on the left, madness on the right.

"It's cold on the mountain! Don't catch a chill!"

Mother Qing called the reminder after him.

By now, his family had grown used to him "going up the mountain to train" every day and often staying there all day long.

They could never have imagined that as soon as Qing He Miao reached the back mountain, he found a familiar secluded spot, made sure no one was around, and entered the instance world with a thought.

In the instance world, Hebei had also grown much colder over the past two days.

But the disaster victims sheltering at the ruined temple were still working as usual.

Though the weather was bitterly cold, they still had to work.

Even so, their present circumstances were far better than before.

In the open space outside the ruined temple, several women Qing He Miao had specifically recruited were scrubbing a few large iron pots with great care.

At the same time, they were tending several makeshift stoves.

They made sure the firewood beneath them retained its embers, neither starting a mountain fire nor going out completely.

It could also provide some warmth for those taking a rest.

Many of the disaster victims clearing rubble and carrying broken stones nearby had only just eaten.

Yet they still worked mechanically, unable to resist looking back again and again, their eyes fixed eagerly on the big pots being washed.

For many poor families nowadays, the usual practice had been to eat only two meals a day, or even one.

Now Qing He Miao not only provided two hot meals of congee a day, but also some delicious, finely prepared pickled vegetables to go with it.

After finishing work in the evening, they could also collect a small portion of grain.

That meant that as long as they did not slack off, they could basically avoid starving to death that winter!

To them, it was an immense blessing and a guarantee of survival.

Of course, precisely because they had this basic assurance against starvation, some problems had also begun to emerge.

Most of these disaster victims lacked decent tools, so they had never worked very quickly to begin with.

Now, thinking that they could make it through the winter as long as things stayed as they were and they had work and food each day, some could not help harboring little schemes.

Do not imagine that ordinary people are all that simple and honest, especially when faced with life-or-death circumstances.

They would instinctively make the choice most advantageous to themselves.

Leaving everything else aside,

even at a regular job, who had never slacked off?

Chapter 43: A Scene Brimming with Life

Without any clear additional incentives, and with worries about an uncertain future,

an unspoken consensus seemed to form among some of the disaster victims.

What if they worked too quickly and too hard, and finished the job before winter was over?

Would the "Daoist priest" decide he no longer needed so many people?

Who would leave and who would stay then?

Besides, even if there was more work afterward, for now it was only the light labor of pulling weeds and moving rubble.

Women and children could do it too, and everyone could earn a bite to eat.

But what if the next stage involved heavy physical labor? What would the women and children do?

Would they be able to earn a bowl of congee?

So, with Qing He Miao deliberately refraining from intervening, many people slowed their work a little by unspoken agreement, maintaining a delicate rhythm.

In fact, to some extent, this was also the state Qing He Miao wanted.

So, though he knew perfectly well what was happening, he turned a blind eye.

As someone from the future, how could he not know how efficient eating from the big pot was?

For now, the main rule was that he needed a reasonable justification to keep this group from starving to death.

Besides, although progress was slow,

under everyone's day-by-day labor, the ruined temple was gradually changing.

Most of the weeds had been cleared, and the scattered stones, bricks, and tiles had been gathered to one side.

The outline of the once-buried foundations was faintly visible.

Some had even begun using firewood and tree trunks to repair the existing walls of the buildings along the cleared boundaries of the courtyard.

The beginnings of a building slowly emerged in the depths of winter.

Just as Qing He Miao had once again finished the day's work alongside the disaster victims and returned to his side room, preparing to exit the instance as usual,

he first released his substitutes out of habit and had them check the surroundings as usual.

His ability to exit the instance was his final trump card, so naturally the fewer people who knew about it, the better.

Yet his substitutes had only just made a sweep when Qing He Miao's brow suddenly shot up. There was an unexpected discovery today.

There's someone up above!

It was no illusion.

There really was someone above him.

Through a substitute's vision, he saw a figure lying motionless on the roof of his side room, pressed close to the shadowed side of the ridge!

The person was small and thin, dressed in worn clothes no different from those of the disaster victims. He had deliberately covered himself with yellowed thatch as camouflage, and his breathing was suppressed to a slow, shallow rhythm as he spied on Qing He Miao.

If not for the substitute being insubstantial and able to float onto the roof, the man would have seemed almost like an inanimate object.

When he suddenly found the man right in front of him, even Qing He Miao got a fright.

Who is this?

Qing He Miao was startled, then felt a surge of anger and lingering fear.

He immediately abandoned the idea of exiting the instance and, without hesitation, shouted:

"You sneaking rat, get down here!"

The moment the shout left his mouth, the substitute [Red Hot Chili Pepper], which had long been waiting beside the man, sprang into action!

The substitute's arm, invisible to ordinary people and wreathed in faint sparks, seized his collar with the precision of an iron clamp, then yanked him down without mercy!

"Crash—bang!"

Thatch and bits of stone flew, accompanied by a short cry of surprise and the dull thud of a heavy body hitting the ground.

A gaunt, filthy man had been forcibly yanked from the not particularly high roof and slammed onto the earthen floor of the side room, raising a cloud of dust.

Almost the instant the substitute seized his collar, a system notification flashed through Qing He Miao's mind:

[You have dealt minor physical damage to LV6 Bandit...]

"Ow! Grandfather, spare me! Grandfather, spare my life!"

The man, dazed from the fall, had not even seen who had attacked him. He had only felt an irresistible force pull him down.

He immediately gave a remarkably professional response.

Ignoring the pain, he skillfully shouted, "Grandfather, spare my life!"

His response was so clean and practiced that anyone could tell at a glance this was not his first time doing something like this.

Qing He Miao's gaze swept over the word "Bandit" in the system notification, and he fell into thought.

He immediately stepped forward and unceremoniously planted a foot on the man's chest. With a little pressure, he pushed the upper body the man was trying to raise back down.

Through his foot, he could feel the fear and trembling in that frail body.

"Speak!"

Qing He Miao's voice was not loud as he first tried asking:

"What are you here for?"

"Grandfather! Daoist grandfather! This lowly one... I was just driven mad by hunger. My family really has no way to survive, so I found the heart of a thief and the gall of a leopard and wanted to sneak a little food... Please spare your grandson this once! I'll never dare do it again!"

The bandit had trouble breathing under Qing He Miao's foot, his face flushed red. He rattled off his words at great speed, looking pitiful, tears and snot streaming down his face.

After that came more pleading for mercy.

No matter how Qing He Miao questioned him, the man kept repeating the same story, stubbornly insisting that he had simply been starving.

If not for the system's clear designation, Qing He Miao would almost have believed him.

By then, quite a few disaster victims, alarmed by the commotion, had gathered outside the room.

They watched from a distance, whispering among themselves, but no one dared enter.

Seeing this, Qing He Miao pondered briefly, then bent down and seized the bandit by the back of his collar, dragging him like a dead dog.

Ignoring the bandit's exaggerated howls, he dragged him straight out of the room.

Disregarding the gazes of the surrounding crowd, Qing He Miao looked around, found a somewhat familiar young man who was usually fairly quick-witted, and beckoned him over.

The young man hurried over at a trot and stood respectfully with his hands at his sides.

"Sorry to trouble you to run an errand."

Qing He Miao pointed in the direction of the Huang Family Fort at the foot of the mountain.

"Please ask Steward Huang Liu to come over. Tell him there's something I'd like his help with."

"Yes, Daoist priest!"

The young man did not dare delay. He nodded, turned, and raced down the mountain, his figure soon disappearing along the mountain path.

Qing He Miao paid no further attention to the bandit's ceaseless pleas beneath his foot. He simply kept him firmly pinned and waited patiently.

At the same time, he left one substitute beside him for protection and sent the others out again

to see if there was anyone else suspicious nearby.

Seeing that pleading was having little effect, the bandit tried to struggle or explain himself, but the pressure on his chest kept him from moving.