Zha Zhonghe gave a slight nod. "That makes sense. I'll keep that in mind."
Xia Huai'an checked Laowu's wound, seeing that it was no longer infected and had begun to scab over.
Xia Huai'an instructed, "Be careful not to break the scab, and keep it clean to prevent reinfection. It should heal up slowly. Eat some good food to get your nutrition up—you'll heal faster that way."
"Also, there's no need to keep taking herbal decoctions. This is an external injury; it doesn't need herbal tonics. Aside from wasting money, medicine is three-part poison, and taking too much of it will damage your liver and kidneys."
Laowu nodded repeatedly, memorizing every word.
Xia Huai'an stood up to take his leave, and the village head, Laosan, and the others personally escorted him out of the village.
"Third Brother, do you know where I might be able to buy some cheap salt?" Xia Huai'an asked in a low voice.
Zha Zhonghe said quietly, "Times are troubled now, and the channels for private salt were cut off long ago. Government salt is too expensive, poor in quality, and you can't even buy it without connections. To be honest, my own household is running out of salt as well."
"However, a friend over in Wanshàng Village sent me some brine. Although it's a bit bitter and astringent, if you add just a tiny bit when cooking, it gets the job done."
"Brine?" Xia Huai'an's heart stirred. Could it be brine formed when groundwater erodes underground rock salt deposits?
If he could trace the brine back to the location of the salt mine, he could mine the underground rock salt.
However, that usually required drilling deep wells hundreds of meters down, and he simply didn't have the conditions for that right now.
As long as he could get some brine, though, Xia Huai'an could try refining it into edible coarse salt. For a college student majoring in chemical engineering, that should be a piece of cake.
"Third Brother, help me get some brine—as much as possible!" Xia Huai'an said, shoving a piece of silver back into Zha Zhonghe's hand.
Zha Zhonghe nodded. "Alright! I'll have it delivered by tomorrow or the day after at the latest."
When Xia Huai'an returned to the Xia Family, Yufang had already prepared the food.
At last, it was no longer wild vegetable cakes, but a bowl of vegetable noodles accompanied by a few slices of pickled radish.
Xia Huai'an was already hungry, and immediately began to slurp away, devouring the meal like a whirlwind.
Xiaomao stared at Xia Huai'an with a hungry look in his eyes, muttering, "Sister-in-law was afraid Eldest Brother wouldn't have any salt and lack strength, so she specifically went to Auntie Liu's place to beg for half a pickled radish."
"Do you want some?" Xia Huai'an held out a piece of pickled radish right in front of Xiaomao's mouth.
Xiaomao swallowed hard, stubbornly saying, "I'm not hungry. I already ate."
"Eat up!" Xia Huai'an forcefully shoved the radish into Xiaomao's mouth, and the boy happily chewed it down.
"Gluttonous rascal, you haven't even finished digesting that huge bowl of noodle soup!" Mother Xia scolded with a feigned frown.
After Xia Huai'an finished eating, Yufang came over to clear away the bowls and chopsticks, but Xia Huai'an grabbed her by the arm.
"Eldest Uncle, you..." Yufang was both embarrassed and flustered.
"Don't move!" Xia Huai'an noticed that Yufang's arms were somewhat edematous. He pulled up the hem of her trousers and saw that her calves were indeed swollen as well.
He pressed a finger against Yufang's calf, leaving a depression that took quite a while to spring back.
"How long has it been since you've had salt?" Xia Huai'an sighed. "If you don't eat salt any longer, you're going to fall ill!"
"It's fine. Tomorrow or the day after, I'll make sure you all have salt to eat." With that, he fished out the piece of silver and handed it to Yufang.
"Tomorrow you don't need to go chop firewood. Take the silver and go to the township to buy some grain. Remember to buy ten catties of soybeans, and spend the rest on white flour. I'll take care of the salt."
Hearing the words "I'll take care of it," Yufang felt an indescribable sweetness in her heart. The feeling of having someone to lean on in the household was truly wonderful.
Though she had no idea how Xia Huai'an intended to handle it, she inexplicably believed he could do it.
Yufang repeatedly stroked the piece of silver and said, "Should we buy a little less white flour and use the rest to raise a few chicks?"
"No!" Xia Huai'an said. "If those chickens accidentally wandered into the greenhouse and pecked at my seedlings, the loss would outweigh the gain!"
"Alright, this humble one will listen to Eldest Uncle in everything." Yufang nodded.
After washing up simply, Xia Huai'an went to rest in the west room.
Before long, Yufang came as well, her face flushed as she said the room was cold and she had come in to warm herself up.
Xia Huai'an didn't mind. He tossed another log into the heated brick bed's stove, then quickly lay down on the bamboo bed and fell asleep.
When he woke up in the middle of the night to tend the fire, he discovered that Yufang had fallen asleep lying right beside him.
Xia Huai'an reached out to test the temperature in the space above the heated brick bed, finding it appropriate. He then picked up a basin of warm water left on the platform and sprinkled it evenly over the fodder.
Using a heated brick bed as a greenhouse made the air prone to drying out, so water had to be sprinkled frequently to maintain moisture.
With that done, Xia Huai'an went back to rest. The bamboo bed wasn't wide, and he and Yufang were squeezed together rather tightly.
Life was quite impoverished, but for wilderness survival, having a house, a bamboo bed, and a heated brick bed was already a heaven-sent opening hand.
Looking at Yufang nestled tightly against him, Xia Huai'an thought her sleeping expression quite cute. He wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek, but was afraid of waking her. He was tired too, and before long he fell back asleep.
When he woke up again, day had broken, and Yufang was no longer by his side.
There was firewood in the brick bed stove, and the temperature was just right, so no additions were needed for the moment. The fodder's moisture level was also appropriate—presumably Yufang had just tended to it.
When Xia Huai'an came to the main room, he found Xiaomao and Mother Xia there.
Seeing Xia Huai'an, Xiaomao said happily, "Come quickly, Eldest Brother! Sister-in-law already rolled out a few flour flatbreads and is just waiting for you to wake up so we can eat together."
"Where's Yufang?" Xia Huai'an asked.
"Sister-in-law went to the township market early this morning with several aunts," Xiaomao said, handing a flatbread to Xia Huai'an, giving another to Mother Xia, and then quickly grabbing one for himself. He wrapped it around some vegetable leaves and took a huge bite.
Xia Huai'an finished his flatbread in a few bites, then grabbed his dagger and some rope to chop firewood in the nearby mountain woods.
Today's plan was to chop firewood, tend to the straw mushrooms, and stay off the mountain.
His dagger was a multi-functional tool with a thirty-centimeter-long blade and considerable heft. Because it was extremely sharp, it was much more useful than an ordinary wood-chopping knife.
When encountering thicker timber, he could even use the saw teeth on the back of the blade to cut through it.
Soon, Xia Huai'an had chopped a large bundle of firewood weighing a good seventy or eighty catties. Xia Huai'an weighed it in his hands and decided it was enough; any more would make carrying it back a struggle. The distance wasn't far anyway, so he could simply make a few extra trips.
A single round trip including wood-chopping took about an hour and a half. After two trips, Yufang had already returned from the township market.
"Eldest Uncle, grain is truly too expensive right now. Soybeans are twenty cash a catty, and white flour is fifteen cash a catty! A full tael of silver was completely used up just buying ten catties of soybeans and over fifty catties of white flour. I originally wanted to save some back." Yufang complained.
Listening to her chatter, Xia Huai'an didn't feel annoyed at all; instead, it brought a sense of peace of mind. Was this what ordinary, peaceful daily life felt like?
"If we don't buy it now, it'll only get more expensive later!" Xia Huai'an said. "Don't worry, though. As long as we get through this period somehow, our family won't starve."
Just as they were speaking, Zha Zhonghe led a peasant in his thirties into the courtyard, saying he had come to deliver the brine.
The peasant was carrying two large earthenware jars, each holding thirty catties of brine—sixty catties in total for the two jars.
"There's no more brine for now. In a few days, I'll send you another sixty catties, and that'll clear the debt!" the peasant said.
Calculated that way, one tael of silver had bought one hundred and twenty catties of brine—not cheap at all. It seemed even brine was a rare commodity.
Xia Huai'an nodded and asked the peasant his name. Zha Zhonghe said he was a villager from Wanshàng Village surnamed Yuan.
The Yuan fellow asked for a bowl of water to drink, then he and Zhonghe bade farewell and left.
After they departed, Xia Huai'an first poured out all the brine into a large vat to let it settle. The brine was yellowish, and when he dipped a finger in to taste it, it was bitterly salty and astringent.
"It's yellow brine alright!" Xia Huai'an thought to himself. "This kind of brine has a high salt content of 15-18%, and lower ones are around 10%. Let's see how much salt we can extract from sixty catties of it."
The steps for extracting salt from brine weren't overly complicated.
Xia Huai'an first soaked a catty of soybeans in warm water to get them ready. Making private salt was a serious crime, so it had to be done quietly.
When night fell, Xia Huai'an had Yufang close the courtyard gate and stationed Xiaomao and Mother Xia to keep watch in the central room, while he and Yufang began the extraction in the back kitchen.
First, he poured a portion of the settled, clear upper layer of brine into a large pot and brought it to a rolling boil.
At the same time, he used a small millstone to grind the soaked, swollen soybeans into soybean milk.
When about a third of the brine in the pot had evaporated, Xia Huai'an began adding the soybean milk, stirring gently as he poured.
Before long, layers of yellowish flocculent matter surfaced on the brine.
Xia Huai'an used a ladle to skim off these yellow flakes, and the color of the brine instantly became much clearer.
This was the most crucial step in refining coarse salt. The protein in the soybean milk could adsorb divalent ions in the brine, precipitating out many impurities. The purity of the salt extracted in the end would be much higher, and its toxicity and bitterness would be greatly reduced.
After adding the soybean milk several times, the brine grew increasingly clear, and its volume gradually decreased.
Some tiny particles began to appear around the rim of the pot—some white, some yellowish or brown.
Xia Huai'an used a spatula to scrape away and discard the particles along the rim, as these precipitated bits contained too many impurities.
Suddenly, he caught a pungent, burnt odor. The fire was too high; the crystals precipitating at the bottom of the pot had scorched, giving off a strange smell of unknown composition.
"It's fine, we can still use it!" Yufang hated to throw away these black salts, but Xia Huai'an firmly discarded them. "No worries, we still have well over half our brine left. This time we'll be more careful and take it slow."
The two of them started over from scratch. This time, once the brine boiled, they turned it down to a low flame and exercised more patience.
After using the soybean milk to clarify the brine, they simmered it on low heat for over an hour until signs of crystallization began to appear. Xia Huai'an started tapping the iron pot with his dagger.
It was said that such vibrations helped the salt crystallize evenly; he had no idea if it would work.
A little while later, snow-like white crystals appeared—the salt had crystallized.
Xia Huai'an pulled two logs out of the stove to lower the heat further, maintaining a state where small bubbles only occasionally surfaced.
Before long, large flakes of snow salt appeared.
The final half-catty or so of brine had a very high salt content, but the very last impurities were in there as well. Xia Huai'an scooped out that remaining brine and threw it away.
Yufang watched this scene from the side, repeatedly calling it a pity.
The fire went out, and the salt was successfully refined. Packed into bamboo tubes rubbed with beeswax, it filled a full three tubes—at least three or four catties of salt!
The salt grains were relatively coarse, qualifying as coarse salt. Xia Huai'an tasted a bit: it was salty, without any obvious bitterness, and didn't smell of sulfur or iron—a successful refinement.
"Mission accomplished!" Xia Huai'an was quite satisfied with his handiwork.
Yufang pinched up a few grains of salt, placed them in her mouth, and savored them carefully.
A moment later, tears welled in her eyes, and she covered her mouth and began to cry.
"This humble one must be dreaming! Just two days ago we were starving with no hope in sight, and now we not only have dozens of catties of white flour, but this much salt as well!"
She looked at Xia Huai'an full of gratitude. It was the appearance of the man before her that had changed everything!
Her gray world finally had color.