That tiny amount of coal would never last through the long, bitter winter.
Once the coal ran out, even though the stacks of firewood looked substantial, wood burned quickly and lost its heat quickly, so it would not last. Her firewood would not get her through to spring either.
Beyond the Pass, households began frantically stockpiling timber and coal as soon as autumn arrived, preparing for the long winter.
Jiang Xiao'e seemingly had no other choice. She had stockpiled only that pitiful amount of coal and hoped to make up the rest with firewood.
But she was a woman on her own, and from what she had just said, she also had a child to care for. The difficulty of gathering enough firewood to survive the winter by herself was easy to imagine.
From her earlier words, it also seemed that the household's food supplies were running dangerously low.
For a young widow to summon the courage to let a strange man stay overnight for a mere five jin of coarse grain-the hardship and helplessness behind it did not bear thinking about, nor could one bear to dwell on it.
Still, judging by the layout of the courtyard and the construction of the buildings, her late husband must have had some savings and ability when he was alive.
The property was solidly built. The south-facing main house was tall and spacious, and the side rooms to the east and west were neatly constructed. Even the southern building, usually the least valued and used for storing odds and ends, had walls carefully plastered with mortar, clean and sturdy.
All of this suggested that the family had once lived fairly well. But now... the place remained, while its people had changed.
Cui Jiuyang was not, after all, a sorcerer who specialized in