Find Another Place

The camp was not large. Apart from two wooden huts for the soldiers, laborers like Zhou Ye could only squeeze into thatched sheds. The sheds were exceedingly crude, barely able to withstand heavy rain or strong winds. On the other hand, several tents stood nearby, piled with daily supplies.

Without a doubt, wretched laborers were worth less than even those supplies.

Besides that, there was a small vegetable garden beside the camp, providing a supplement to their food. A hundred paces away stood a charcoal kiln, where charcoal was burned.

Interestingly, despite the boar herd's charge, the camp's fence had held up quite well. It was only because everyone had been working out in the wilderness and had been caught completely off guard that they were wiped out to the last man.

Never mind all that for now. After adding the points, Zhou Ye felt waves of heat washing through his entire body, while his bones and sinews crackled and popped. His stomach rumbled like thunder, and an unbearable hunger seized him.

It was not merely because of the added points. More importantly, he had probably been hungry for far too long, hadn't he? Whatever. Filling his stomach came first.

In the original owner's memories, this camp had been built in a little over half a day after entering the mountains. Even if someone had luckily escaped and gone to seek help, it would take at least a day. There was still plenty of time.

But it was even more likely that no one would come to rescue them at all. A whole day had already passed; the yellow daylilies would be cold by now.

Besides, human lives here were as cheap as grass. There were plenty of wretched laborers serving corvée. What was the harm in secretly picking a few more people?

Especially since the area was surrounded by forests. Even if this camp was abandoned, they could still chop wood and burn charcoal elsewhere. And with a boar herd here, who but a fool would risk his life fighting those boars?

With that thought, Zhou Ye got up from the ground. Yet before he could steady himself, dizziness swept through his mind, and with a slap, he fell flat on the ground again.

He sat quietly on the ground and waited with difficulty for the dizziness to pass. When he stood up again and tried to move his limbs, his arms and legs unexpectedly lost control once more, and he crashed straight to the ground again.

With a bitter laugh, Zhou Ye finally understood. He had added too much to his agility all at once, and his body could not yet adapt. His mind had caught up, but his limbs had not, leaving his body utterly uncoordinated.

It taught him a lesson. In the future, he needed to add points little by little, and after doing so, he would need time to adapt...

Thus, Zhou Ye began familiarizing himself with his "high agility." He progressed from shuffling slowly to walking with great care. Half an hour later, he found that walking was no longer much of a problem, so he slowed down and made his way to the camp's cooking area.

After searching around, he discovered that food had already been prepared. There were five or six white-flour flatbreads for the soldiers and over twenty dark-flour flatbreads. Although they were roughly the same size, each flatbread weighed nearly half a jin. But those dark-flour flatbreads contained large amounts of mixed beans, so they were really mixed-bean cakes.

Here was a joke: although wretched laborers like Zhou Ye ate poorly, they were guaranteed one flatbread per meal, more than they had eaten back when they farmed the land. Because the laborers were needed to work themselves to the bone, they were not treated badly in that regard.

But now, he would definitely choose the white-flour flatbreads. In the corner, he found two strips of salted meat hanging there. One weighed six or seven jin, while the other weighed more than ten.

Zhou Ye could not stop himself from drooling. He nearly wept with joy. Heavens! How long had this body gone without even a trace of meat?

Seeing that the fire in the stove had not gone out, Zhou Ye set an iron pot over it and cut two pieces from the smaller strip of salted meat, each about two or three liang.

He put the chunks of salted meat into the heated iron pot. Soon came a sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, like celestial music, as little blossoms of grease rendered from the meat.

At last, the salted meat was fried. Zhou Ye was unwilling to waste even the oil at the bottom of the pot. He put two white-flour flatbreads into the pot to warm them, determined to have them soak up every last drop of oil...

Wrapping a piece of salted meat in a white-flour flatbread, Zhou Ye took a savage bite. Oil flooded his mouth, and he trembled with happiness.

After wolfing down the first one and gulping several mouthfuls of water, Zhou Ye finally felt like he had come back to life.

By the time he began eating the second one, Zhou Ye had returned to a normal pace and finally began considering his plans for the future.

Going back was out of the question. Only someone with water in his brain would continue serving corvée.

Chopping wood and burning charcoal were indeed dangerous, but was digging river channels any safer? The authorities did not treat commoners as human at all. He had heard they squeezed every last drop from the laborers, and casualties could even exceed twenty percent.

Going home was even less possible. That would make him a corvée fugitive, and the authorities would throw him into prison. That was another path with nine deaths and one life.

In any case, once winter came, the river-dredging project would come to a temporary halt. Even if he ran home then, there would be no danger of being arrested by the authorities.

Besides, there would be no good days waiting at home either. Was he supposed to go back to being a wretched laborer, starving and freezing as before?

He might as well go somewhere else and simply live in these mountains. After all, this was only the outer edge of the mountain range, and the danger was not too great. The deep mountains lay more than ten days farther in. As long as he was careful, it could not possibly be worse than serving corvée or going home to farm.

Once Basic Chopping reached a high level, he would at least have some ability to protect himself. Then the road ahead would widen.

One had to know that the outside world was even more dangerous. In the original owner's memories, when he had first begun serving corvée, he had personally seen an officer straighten an overturned cart by himself. That cart had been loaded with goods and must have weighed several hundred jin.

If Zhou Ye had guessed correctly, that officer had to have been a martial master. That kind of strength was simply monstrous. If he offended a martial master, he would be just as unsafe.

Of course, staying in this camp was absolutely impossible as well.

What if some unlikely event occurred and someone really came to take a look? Was he supposed to obediently go back with them?

Having made his decision, Zhou Ye no longer hesitated. Once he finished the second meat-filled flatbread, he sprang into action...

He was grateful for the hiking experience from his previous life. Back then, Zhou Ye had been an outdoor enthusiast. He had not only watched Bear Grylls's and Ed Stafford's wilderness survival shows, but also countless wilderness survival videos.

That was why, when Zhou Ye had first crossed over, he had stripped all the corpses scattered around him clean and thrown them deep into the forest far away. It was to prevent the smell of blood from drawing other carnivorous beasts over.

As for the clothes, shoes, and the like, whether they were useful or not, it was always better to keep them. He would not encounter anyone else in the mountains. If he needed something later, there would be nowhere to buy it.

Of course, what he carried the first time was especially important. He could not bring too much. To find a place to build a new camp, he might have to travel a long way. If he carried too much weight, his stamina would not be able to bear it.

But he might never be able to return, so he also had to take everything that should be taken.

Thinking of this, Zhou Ye immediately busied himself...