Time passed day by day.
Qingjiang County still showed no sign of rain.
Day after day, the blazing sun hung high in the sky, scorching the earth until the fields cracked open in vast stretches.
To survive, many ordinary common folk from the Ten-Mile Eight Villages nearby could only sell their fields and land in exchange for some rations, hoping to endure this drought.
As for Qingjiang County Town—
Each jug of clear water had risen from one copper coin to ten, and the price still showed signs of climbing.
Because countless fruits and vegetables grown in the farmlands and mountains had withered to death, the prices of fruits and vegetables sold in the county town had likewise increased tenfold.
Everything else was much the same.
Dongxi Village.
The Xu Family was bustling like a raging fire.
They built waterwheels and hollowed bamboo tubes, joining them into long water pipelines that continuously carried river water from afar to irrigate the paddy fields and farmlands.
As for the mountains, they were too far away and the terrain too complicated, so people could only carry water there by hand.
There, light-blocking black gauze stretched across the sky and covered vast orchards.
Thus, they did not need watering every day; once every ten days or half a month was enough.
As for manpower, the Xu Family was not too short of it.
Many of the Xu Family's medicinal fields had also been covered with a layer of black gauze to prevent the medicinal herbs from being baked to death by excessive heat.
Besides absorbing heat, when temperatures dropped at night, this black gauze would condense droplets of water that fell into the medicinal fields, easing some of the pressure on their water supply.
With people keeping watch over them at all times—
After