Feng Caimei has thick eyelashes, a straight nose, and a pair of dimples on her face. She is a woman who still retains her charm.
If you are a cultivator, at her age, there are many beautiful people. But for ordinary people, especially women from commoner backgrounds, it is normal for them to age prematurely due to the hardship of life and overwork.
So when she first saw this woman, Yang Zhen was very surprised at her well-maintained appearance.
After a while, he understood the reason.
This woman has a pair of skillful hands and is good at weaving various bamboo utensils with shamanistic patterns, such as bamboo baskets, bamboo baskets, bamboo chairs, etc., with unique shapes, simple and mysterious shapes. Even dignitaries and even monk families in Chongzhou like to put a few pieces in their rooms as decorations.
There are also rhizome candies. This is a mortal fruit with an extremely hard shell. After being boiled and soaked in sugar water, it tastes sweet but not greasy, sour and astringent with a hint of fragrance. It is contained but not melted and has an endless aftertaste. It is an excellent fruit that is loved by monks and mortals.
However, because the outer skin is too hard, it is quite difficult to chew. Therefore, people often use hard objects to poke many small holes in it. When soaking, it can soften evenly and have a better and longer-lasting taste.
The Xier candy made by Feng Caimei is different.
She never pokes small holes, but uses long needles to carve many patterns of flowers, birds, beasts, mountains and rivers on the shell, which are elegant and exquisite. She instantly transforms this kind of earthly food into a high-end product with great artistic beauty, and the price is It has grown exponentially.
Even Yang Zhen couldn't restrain her admiration when she saw it. She bought more than ten kilograms at once and planned to give it to Yue'er and others to try.
With these two skills at her side, Feng Caimei can live a pleasant life without leaving home. In addition, she has a calm personality and a peaceful mind, so it is not surprising that she does not look older.
But what surprised Yang Zhen even more was her family composition.
"These two girls," she pointed at the two girls in the room: "One is named Azhu and the other is named Azhi. They are the eldest brother's children. They are sixteen this year!"
Yang Zhen looked over and saw two girls in the corner. They looked almost identical. One was wearing green clothes and the other was red. They were lowering their heads and learning to carve rhinoceros peels.
When he heard his mother mention his name, the one in green, who should be called A-Zhu, looked over with a pair of big eyes. After making eye contact with Yang Zhen, he suddenly smiled, revealing a row of white teeth.
"Those two," Feng Caimei pointed toward the door. Outside the house, two boys, one big and one small, were cutting bamboo pieces: "The big one belongs to the second brother, and the little one -"
She hugged a little girl of five or six years old next to her, with a hint of embarrassment on her face: "Like this little debt collector, I don't know if it belongs to the eldest brother or the second brother."
The eldest brother and second brother he mentioned here are two men in the family, and they are not related by blood to each other. Among them, the eldest brother is hunting in the mountains, and the second brother is the deputy captain of the patrol team in the village. He was also among the welcoming team organized by the village chief in the morning.
Is this a matriarchal society? Yang Zhen murmured in her heart. Compare this to the situation at the village chief's house, where the old village chief makes all the decisions and has a wife and a concubine.
It seems that the Black Earth tribe is quite interesting, with both patrilineal and matrilineal families. In other words, whoever makes more money has the final say in the family and is eligible to find more spouses.
Then, Yang Zhen asked about the income and expenditure in the past few years, and even children's enlightenment education, etc. Feng Caimei answered them one by one and was very cooperative.
There are more than 4,000 people in Aishan Village. It mainly produces food, medicinal herbs, animal skins and bones, as well as woven products and rhino candies, as well as a small amount of spiritual grain. Every once in a while, the Kurotsuchi family would send a caravan over to trade. In addition to grain, several other items are local specialties and are very popular in other places.
The Feng family was considered a wealthy family in the village, so after understanding the records, Yang Zhen proposed to visit those poor families.
The guide was the youngest son of the village chief. He thought for a while and led the group to another house at the end of the village.
Pushing open the door and walking in, the house is indeed bare-walled. Apart from the stove and the bowls and chopsticks for eating, there are almost no other belongings.
Hearing the sound, he was greeted by an old man named Jin. There were two boys at home, one ten and one seven years old, looking around the house.
The child's father died in the mouth of a wild beast five years ago, and the mother remarried. Without the strong labor force in the family, life will naturally be tight. Fortunately, there is often financial support in the village. Although it is difficult, the two children are not hungry.
Now the eldest brother can work in the fields, and the second child can also help with housework. The family is much better than it was five years ago.
Yang Zhen recorded these situations one by one. Black Earth Moon is already used to this.
Then I visited a few more houses, some living in a well-to-do life, and some living in poverty. But even the poorest families can barely survive with the help of the village.
This made Yang Zhen sincerely respect the old village chief.
When he told Kurotsuchue about his feelings, there was no strange expression on the woman's face.
"Not only Aishan Village, but all the villages in Heiwo Township do this."
On a hillside outside the village, Heituyue looked at the lush green grass field and said lightly:
"In Heiwo Township, everyone is useful and cannot be left alone. Especially in a place like Aishan Village, which is adjacent to monsters, once a tide of monsters attacks, everyone needs to take up arms. Even the elderly , and can also help with cooking and delivering water..."
"Is there a lot of beasts here?" Yang Zhen asked.
"A lot. There will be a wave of small ones in about ten years, and there will be a wave of medium ones every sixty years. As for the large beast tides that swept through several counties, and even the entire Chongzhou, there have been four or five times in the past thousand years..."
The small beast tides she talked about only raged in one village or one township, such as what happened to Tian Tiezhu when he wiped out the village. The most powerful monsters here are only mid-to-high-level first-level monsters. However, due to the large number, the county usually has to mobilize to kill them all.
Further up is the kind of medium-sized beast tide that harms a county or even several counties. This requires the coordination of the state palace and the unified command of the Demon Suppression Palace to dispatch the Master Zifu to exterminate it.
As for the large beast tide, it was a major event that alarmed the entire Yunxiao Sect.
"When was the last time there was a beast tide?" Yang Zhen asked.
"Twelve or thirteen years ago, the disaster was in the north, and Aishan Village was in the south. It was far away, but it was not affected. At that time, almost no one survived in two villages, and the dead were over 10,000. To this day, there is no one in Heiwo Township Fully restored.”
"When we have almost recovered, the monster beasts will also breed countless new ones. At that time, there will be a new wave of monsters."
"For two thousand years," Hei Tuyue said with a sad smile: "Our Hei Tu family, or the entire Chongzhou, has been in this death cycle, struggling to survive without end."
"This is a competition between two populations," Yang Zhen murmured: "a competition for survival, an irreconcilable contradiction."
Kurotsuchue didn't hear what he was saying clearly. The evening wind blew across her cheeks and her long hair flowed with the wind, which also brought her into a sentimental mood. She continued:
"The Aishan Village you see was rebuilt fifty years ago. At that time, more than half of the people in the village died. The Feng family and the Jin family you went to today all moved in from outside."
"In order to survive, our Black Earth clan has always encouraged having more children, even the monks. Only in this way can our clan continue."
"You asked me why the mother of the Jin family abandoned her children and remarried. This is the reason. If the mother does not want to remarry, she will be stabbed in the back in this village."
"How is she doing in her new home?" Yang Zhen asked.
"Two more children were born." At this point, a smile appeared on Heituyue's face.
…
Yang Zhen plans to stay in Aishan Village for a few more days.
That night, he neither stayed at the village head's house nor stayed at Feng Caimei's house, even though the two daughters of this family were pretty and lovely.
He chose to stay at Jin's house. Most of the houses in this village have almost the same layout and size, so it can be seen that they were built in a unified manner. Although the Jin family is poor, they still have a front yard and a backyard. He found a side room in the backyard, which was quite quiet.
The next day, Yang Zhen came to Feng Caimei's house and followed her "second brother" to hunt in the mountains.
Aishan Village is named after the mountain. To the east is a stretch of rolling hills. The highest peak is only three hundred feet. In Xu State, this can only be regarded as hills.
It rains a lot in the mountains and is often surrounded by clouds and fog, hence the name Ai Mountain.
The village organizes several hunting teams every day. Each team has as few as ten people and as many as thirty or forty people. Some go to the wilderness, some go to the mountains, and it is common to spend the night outside.
If she had just arrived yesterday, Yang Zhen would have been very surprised. The wilderness was so dangerous and mortals could not protect themselves. How could they dare to go out and hunt?
After Kurotsuchue's explanation, he already understood that this was the competition for survival. Beasts cannot gather into groups, or are not the mortal opponents of these organized and armed beasts before they are demonized. Each additional beast killed at this time will weaken the opponent by one point, and win one more point when the beast tide comes in the future.
What's more, the hunted wild beasts can also bring food and money to the village!
Yang Zhen's hunting team only has ten people. This is naturally because there are three monks among them. They are strong enough and there is no need for more candidates.
Their destination is Aishan.
The team set out early in the morning, stepping on the morning dew and facing the morning glow, and entered the misty, quiet and quiet mountain forest.
Feng Caimei's second brother is an experienced hunter. Under his leadership, the team quickly found traces of the beast.
Those herbivorous beasts pose little threat to humans even after being demonized. In this way, if they encounter cubs or pregnant females, they will usually be accommodating.
As for those ferocious beasts, no matter how big or small they are, they will kill them upon seeing them and never let them go.
With the assistance of several monks, the hunting team soon gained a harvest, killing twenty or thirty animals of various kinds.
What made them even more happy was that Yang Zhen took out a few storage bags and put all the prey in them, allowing them to continue traveling lightly.
It was gradually reaching noon. If it was normal, with such a harvest, I would have gone home long ago, but today I still have more to say.
"Let's go catch some rattle snakes." A burly young man named Ahu suggested in the team.
The rattle snake is a low-level demon snake, two feet long. The tail is very powerful and can be thrown out like a long whip. With a whip, the prey is often stunned or even killed directly, and then becomes the prey of this monster.
However, the meat of this demon snake is delicious, tender and refreshing, and it is often a delicacy on human plates.
On normal days, few hunters in the village would dare to pursue this demonic snake. Aren't there three monks present today? Everyone became bolder.
"Well," the second brother said in deep thought, "it is late spring now, which is the mating season of the demon snakes. I heard that every time at this time, there will be thunder from Thunder Mountain. If you are not careful, you will be killed. Hit by lightning——"
He looked at Heituyue and then at Yang Zhen: "Even monks are not immune."
Heituyue suddenly lost interest, but Yang Zhen's interest came back.
"Thundering?" He looked up at the sky without any clouds: "Is it thundering even on a sunny day?"
"Fight." The second brother was very sure.
"Besides Tianlei Mountain, are there any other mountains with the thunder you mentioned?"
"Never seen it."
"I'm afraid that's not a thunder from heaven," Yang Zhen thought secretly: "Extraordinary things must be extraordinary. Could it be that there is some kind of treasure in that thunder mountain?"
"I'm going to take a look." He said immediately.
"Master," Heituyue guessed what he was thinking: "That day in Leishan, I heard that the uncle from Baoyuan Palace and the Immortal Chief from Chongyun Palace came to check, but found nothing."
"I still want to take a look." Yang Zhen was determined.
The intensity of the thunder and lightning between the sky and the earth was at most the level of the late stages of Qi training, so it did little harm to him.
Under the tempering, or ravage, of Yiyi, his body was able to withstand lightning strikes in the middle stage of Foundation Establishment, far exceeding his ability to withstand other mid-stage Foundation Establishment spells.
After his repeated insistence, the team finally split into two. The second brother, as the guide, led Yang Zhen and Heituyue towards Leishan that day, while the others returned the same way.
…
There were only three people left in the team, so Yang Zhen simply took out the flying boat. This time Heituyue no longer refused and boarded the bow of the ship with the second brother.
This place is quite close to Tianlei Mountain. After crossing a mountain top, you can see a dark blue bare mountain peak. There are exposed rocks everywhere, and occasionally there are clusters of weeds, and small animals such as hares appear among them.
The second brother guided Yang Zhen and landed on a flat ground. As soon as he got off the boat, he looked around nervously, ready to run away at any moment.
"Don't be afraid," Yang Zhen comforted him: "I'll deal with just a few whip snakes."
"It's not a demon snake, it's thunder and lightning," the second brother explained: "This thunder and lightning has no trace. It might explode around you, making it difficult to prevent it."
"Is it so powerful?" Yang Zhen frowned, her consciousness spread around, but she didn't find anything strange, and there was no special smell in the air.
But under the feet, there was a kind of black moss. This kind of moss is very common in black soil, and the locals call it black moss.
As for the surroundings, his consciousness gradually extended into the distance, but there was still nothing unusual.
At this time, I heard Yiyi, who had not spoken for a long time, shout: "Brother, there are two snakes fighting behind the boulder in the distance!"
"Fight?" Yang Zhen took out a gourd and asked Gululu as he drank some water.
"Well, just like you and sister Yue'er."
"Puch!"
Yang Zhen squirted out all the water and almost choked to death.
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