The Time of Harvest

Zhou Ye woke groggily, having indulged in a rare long sleep. Breathing in the fragrant scent of wood in the room, he finally overcame the laziness in his heart, gritted his teeth, and crawled out of bed.

Yet as soon as he got up, he felt a chill in the air. By his reckoning, autumn had arrived without him noticing.

There were still half a month until the harvest. In the original owner's memories, winters here were rather cold and exceptionally long. Even early spring had a stretch of bitter cold.

He needed to prepare for a rainy day and begin making arrangements for winter. Since he had already discovered rock salt, food preservation would not be much of a problem.

Thus, over the following days, Zhou Ye dug up a great deal of rock salt and ultimately extracted more than three hundred jin of salt.

Then it was time to hunt.

He first went to the bamboo grove and caught a large number of bamboo rats and bamboo pit vipers. Most of them were kept at home for breeding.

However, with all that hunting, both bamboo rats and bamboo pit vipers had noticeably dwindled. More than two hundred bamboo rat hides were piled up at home, along with over fifty snake skins.

After that, he headed to the great river. Zhou Ye also intended to catch more prey...

On the mudflat, Zhou Ye propped up a huge sheet of canvas at an angle. He held it up with a long pole, the bottom of which was tied to a long rope. Beneath the canvas, he scattered quite a few wheat grains. The grains had been stir-fried in lard, giving off waves of enticing fragrance.

Once he was done, Zhou Ye grabbed the rope and swiftly ran off, hiding in the reeds nearby.

Sure enough, once the birds here caught the scent, they could hardly wait. At first, a few were quite cautious, after all, there was a huge canvas hanging overhead. But once they began fighting over the food, the birds surged forward one after another. Before long, a huge flock was packed beneath the canvas.

Suppressing a laugh, Zhou Ye gave the rope a hard yank. With a whoosh, the huge canvas fell, covering most of the birds beneath it.

As for the few birds that escaped from the edges, Zhou Ye could only shake his head with a wry smile.

A large net would have been best, able to sweep up nearly all the birds in one cast. But under these conditions, what else could he do?

Still, even though quite a few escaped, he had caught plenty of birds.

He tied up all the birds' wings and hung them from one end of his carrying pole. From the other end hung two large baskets of freshly gathered bird eggs. Now that he had salt, he might as well make a batch of salted bird eggs.

After returning to Little Homestead, Zhou Ye covered the birds one by one with wicker baskets. He did not recognize some of them, but others were wild chickens and wild ducks. It seemed... they could be raised too, right?

There were still plenty of building materials left in the courtyard. Without much effort, Zhou Ye built a chicken coop and a duck coop.

It was already afternoon, but seeing that there was still plenty of time, Zhou Ye shouldered his things and continued hunting.

This time, he changed locations. The process, however, was much the same, and the birds remained just as foolish.

When the huge canvas dropped, most of the birds had nowhere to flee. Only a few at the edges took fright and flew up.

But Zhou Ye had gained experience. He had prepared a throwing spear beforehand, aimed at a wild chicken in the air, and with a whoosh—!, ended up bringing down a swan beside it? Experience +3.

That night, Zhou Ye ate a huge basin of stir-fried goose offal with seasonal vegetables. That swan had long since been pickled into salted goose.

But while eating, Zhou Ye suddenly realized that he seemed to have plucked quite a lot of goose feathers?

Since catching birds was so easy, and he had already caught around ten wild chickens and wild ducks each, he would not lack feathers in the future. They could be used as materials for arrow shafts. There were also no shortage of fish in the great river, so he could save their swim bladders and boil them into fish glue?

As for arrowheads? He could sharpen bamboo poles and make bamboo arrows in one piece.

Wouldn't that let him grind Basic Archery experience in the future? He could hunt along the way too, and would not feel bad even if he lost a few arrows.

Yet the next day, Zhou Ye discovered in surprise that catching fish was even easier than catching birds. It was already the migration season, and many fish had entered their spawning run. There was no need to catch them at all. Just picking up the stranded fish yielded quite a haul? He did not even need to leave home that afternoon, spending the whole time killing and salting fish.

Thus, he caught birds every other day and fish on the days in between. Before long, the courtyard was full of birds and the storehouse full of fish.

By the final day, Zhou Ye could not even be bothered to keep catching them. He went to the apple tree instead and picked several large baskets of wild apples.

Wild apples were not particularly tasty. They were not very sweet and rather sour. But when cooked into apple stew, they had a unique flavor.

At last, it was time for the harvest.

Zhou Ye busied himself for four entire days, harvesting beans, gathering vegetables, turning the soil, sowing seeds, fertilizing...

In the end, after taking stock, he had more than three hundred jin of soybeans, around one hundred jin of peas, and several dozen jin of black beans. They would greatly replenish the household stores.

There were also more than two hundred jin of potatoes. There were over two hundred cabbages that could be stored for a long time, and around one hundred jin of radishes and carrots. There were various other vegetables as well. Though these vegetables were not so easy to preserve, they could be made into pickles...

Once everything was finished, Zhou Ye finally let out a sigh of relief.

There was currently nothing left to keep him busy. The next stage of his task was to find a way out of the mountains, preferably to make contact with the outside world.

The most convenient route would naturally be through Old Camp, then out of the mountains by way of the road used to transport charcoal.

But that route could only serve as a backup. After all, Zhou Ye was a fugitive laborer. What if someone recognized him?

Then he would have to go around the sheer cliffs, pass through that unfamiliar stretch of mountain forest, and find a way out.

He glanced over his status panel. After this period of grinding himself to the bone and hunting, he found that his—Basic Chopping (Unranked): Major Mastery (352/500); Basic Throwing (Unranked): Minor Mastery (31/200)

Together with his proficiency in Basic Movement, he should have some ability to protect himself... right?

But he could not leave the mountains empty-handed, or that would easily arouse suspicion. At the same time, he could not bring anything too heavy or too valuable. If he encountered danger, he needed to be able to throw everything away at any moment.

In that case, he would bring one hundred bamboo rat hides. To be honest, fur did not smell all that pleasant, and there truly were too many bamboo rat hides at home. He would bring some snake skins as well!

Meat had already flooded the house like a deluge, so he would take a smoked wild boar haunch too. That should be about enough.

As for weapons for self-defense, he definitely needed to bring his knife, as well as the dagger in his boot. This time, he would bring his bow and arrows, along with five throwing spears. Naturally, there was also that machete.

Since there were many people near the prefectural city who ventured into the mountains, even woodcutters carried weapons for self-defense. This sort of outfit would not stand out much.

Lastly, there was food. He would bring five days' worth of rations!