A few minutes later, Xia Huai'an received a reply: "We confirm that the production team has made no special arrangements whatsoever. Your signal source has been precisely located. Experts have discovered an irregular spatial fissure approximately 0.5 millimeters in diameter and 65 centimeters in length at the location where you vanished. The electromagnetic wave signal emitted by your mobile phone was transmitted through this very fissure."
"Regarding the issue of time travel that you mentioned, our production team will consult with leading international experts to discuss it thoroughly."
"At present, your safety has drawn intense concern from multiple quarters. Please maintain contact with us at all times!"
"The WeChat contents between you and the production team will be kept strictly confidential. Regardless of whether you ultimately return safely, your insurance beneficiary will receive the full ten million in accident insurance payout due to this major incident."
Xia Huai'an drew a sharp breath. "It wasn't arranged by the production team! No way, did I really travel to a parallel world?"
"Let's go to the village to scout things out first. There's no way they'd hire an entire village of actors!"
Xia Huai'an pulled out his dagger and helped the young woman chop some firewood.
This dagger was forged from Damascus steel, featuring a beautifully patterned blade and a razor-sharp edge.
The back of the blade also had a row of fine, sharp serrations that could be used as a saw. It counted as a multi-purpose tool, perfectly capable of cutting tree branches or slicing vegetables.
"What a wonderful knife!" the young woman praised repeatedly. "Blacksmith Zhao in the village could never forge such a fine blade!"
Xia Huai'an smiled and said, "It's nothing difficult. If I get the chance, I'll teach him. Maybe he can forge a firewood chopper that suits you well."
Though he had never forged a blade in his life, he had watched plenty of forged-in-fire competition videos!
"The young master knows how to forge blades too?" The young woman's eyes lit up with deep admiration. "If you know this trade, it's quite a good livelihood. Could this humble one learn it?"
Xia Huai'an smiled and shook his head. "This is hard labor. Even if you learned it, you wouldn't have any use for it!"
The young woman instantly looked deeply disappointed.
Xia Huai'an helped the young woman strap the firewood basket onto her back, causing her to repeatedly cry out, "I couldn't possibly let you do that!"
"It's no trouble!" Xia Huai'an said. "You're taking me to the village, and I have some things to ask about. Along the way, could you tell me a bit about the general situation in the village?"
The young woman sighed a few times and slowly filled Xia Huai'an in on the village's circumstances.
The nearby mountainous region was called Xiaoyu Township, consisting of seven villages. The village they were currently in was called Zushang Village.
Amidst the chaos of war and heavy taxation, the villagers already struggled through a hard life, barely managing to keep themselves fed, when they were struck by a raid from mountain bandits.
Half a month ago, a band of mountain bandits rushed into Zushang Village under the cover of night, harming quite a few people and robbing the villagers of all their food.
It was currently early spring. Even if they borrowed seeds for planting, it would take at least half a year to harvest. During this gap between the old crop and the new, the villagers' lives would be excruciatingly difficult.
The more Xia Huai'an listened, the tighter his brow furrowed. He had come prepared; even in famine years, he figured he could sustain himself. But if there were mountain bandits, then all his plans became unreliable!
He had made his preparations strictly according to the rules of *Solitary Wilderness*. The so-called solitary living meant, of course, that he would have no contact with outsiders. Therefore, he had made all sorts of preparations, except for any plan to deal with outsiders.
If the times were peaceful, surviving would not be difficult. But the times were too chaotic; without a safe haven, one could die a violent death at any moment!
He was neither a warrior capable of fighting a hundred men alone, nor a martial arts master with extraordinary superhuman abilities. He was just an ordinary person—if just two or three ruthless bandits showed up, there was a high probability they would take his life!
The young woman looked Xia Huai'an up and down and asked, "The young master wears such strange clothes and speaks with an unfamiliar accent. Exactly where are you from?"
Xia Huai'an shook his head and said, "Don't ask too much; even I'm not entirely sure!"
If he simply said he came from the Dragon Kingdom in a parallel world with an extremely high level of technology, he feared the young woman would never believe it no matter what. He needed to make up a story that would be easier for her and others to accept.
The young woman said, "If the young master is unwilling to say, this humble one won't ask further. It's just that for the young master to wander about all alone like this is extremely dangerous. Encountering bandits is one thing—they generally only plunder wealth and don't take lives! But if you run into government soldiers, I'm afraid you'll be seized as forced labor and dragged off to the army, with your life and death uncertain!"
Xia Huai'an nodded repeatedly. This was also what worried him most. All the wilderness survival knowledge he had frantically studied over the past few months was completely useless on a battlefield. If he went to the battlefield, he doubted he would survive two chapters.
As for systems, golden fingers, or god-of-war combat techniques, he didn't have a single one.
Seeing the worried look on Xia Huai'an's face, the young woman said, "If the young master wants to avoid military service, you could hide in the village. Our village has already had men conscripted twice, and everyone who could be taken has been drafted. The government won't come back."
"Allow me to consider it!" Xia Huai'an said noncommittally.
The young woman continued, "Nowadays, there are quite a few orphans and widows in the village, and many households lack a pillar of support. Since the young master is a man of handsome and dignified bearing, if you are willing to stay, many families would consider it a dream come true!"
"Take my family for instance: with no man in the house, we won't be allocated any good fields this spring. If I can't take in a son-in-law by the end of the year, we'll have to pay triple the taxes, and there will simply be no way to survive!"
At this, the young woman glanced furtively at Xia Huai'an, a blush spreading across her face.
*Oh, men are still a scarce resource?* Xia Huai'an thought to himself. It seemed the turmoil of war had been going on for many years.
"What is the young master's honorable surname?" the young woman asked.
"Xia, like the summer season," Xia Huai'an replied.
The young woman was startled, then pleasantly surprised. "My late husband's family also bore the surname Xia. I wonder if we might be of the same clan?"
"That would be quite a coincidence," Xia Huai'an smiled. Sharing a surname was very common. Although Xia wasn't a major surname, he had encountered many people with it before and didn't find it strange.
"Is it a coincidence?" The young woman kept her head down as she walked behind Xia Huai'an, her face turning even redder as she wondered what to think.
More than half an hour later, the two arrived before a gray-tiled house by the fields.
White walls and dark tiles, flying eaves and vermilion doors, front and back courtyards enclosed by a fence, with side rooms on the left and right—at least three or four rooms in total.
"Young Master Xia, this humble one has arrived," the young woman said.
Xia Huai'an was somewhat surprised. He had originally thought the young woman's family was impoverished, but the house turned out to be quite nice; it must have belonged to a well-to-do family in the past.
The young woman led Xia Huai'an into the front courtyard, then called out loudly, "Mother, Xiaomao, we have a guest."
Immediately, an eight or nine-year-old girl helped an elderly woman walk out from the western side room.
The elderly woman was perhaps only around forty years old; she had few wrinkles, but quite a lot of white hair, making her look rather aged.
She was likely blind, as she couldn't see where Xia Huai'an was standing and instead addressed the empty air in front of her, "May I ask why the honored guest has come?"
"Granny, I..." Xia Huai'an had barely uttered a few words when the elderly woman lunged forward like a madwoman.
"Damao, Damao! Is that you? Mother recognizes your voice! Damao, you've finally come home!" Tears streamed down the elderly woman's face in her agitation.
The young woman and the little girl hurriedly supported the elderly woman from left and right. Then, letting out a sigh, the young woman whispered apologetically to Xia Huai'an, "Please forgive me, Young Master Xia, my mother's illness has flared up again. Damao is my eldest brother-in-law, who left home in his youth and hasn't returned in all these years. Recently, yearning for her son, Mother's illness acts up constantly, and whenever she sees an outsider, she mistakes him for Damao."
As Xia Huai'an placed the firewood down in the courtyard, he comforted them, "It's quite all right, it is I who am intruding. Could I trouble you for a bowl of water?"
Having gone without water for over two hours, Xia Huai'an was genuinely thirsty.
He planned to drink some water, head into the village to continue gathering information, and then make his next move.
"Please wait a moment, Young Master Xia. This humble one will go boil some water right away." The young woman helped the elderly woman lie down in the western room, then invited Xia Huai'an into the main hall, pulled up a chair for him to sit on, and went off to the back kitchen to boil water.
Xia Huai'an didn't dare drink unboiled water anyway, so waiting a bit was fine.
He looked around the main hall and spotted a spirit tablet bearing the inscription: "The Spirit Tablet of the Late Husband, Lord Xia Ping'an."
Connecting this with the strips of white cloth worn in the hair of both the young woman and the little girl, Xia Huai'an immediately understood that this household had just lost its male master.
Most likely, it was the young woman's husband, Xia Ping'an.
At that moment, the little girl poked her head out from outside the doorway, curiously looking Xia Huai'an up and down.
Xia Huai'an smiled slightly. "Your name is Xiaomao?"
The little girl nodded.
Xia Huai'an pointed at the spirit tablet and asked, "Is this your older brother?"
Xiaomao nodded again. "It's my second brother. The one boiling water is my second sister-in-law."
*I guessed right indeed!* Xia Huai'an thought to himself, then asked, "Are there no other members in your family?"
Xiaomao shook her head and lowered her gaze, clearly feeling quite sad.
"Why did your mother mistake me for your older brother? Do our voices sound alike?" Xia Huai'an asked.
"I don't know!" Xiaomao said. "Older brother left home before I was born. Mother said he was only seven or eight years old back then. Some people in the village said he was taken away by the river god, while others said he was kidnapped by human traffickers. But if my older brother were still alive, he'd be in his early twenties, about the same age as the young master."
Xia Huai'an's heart stirred. That being the case, if he really went along with the mistake and hid in the village under the identity of "Damao," he could probably manage to pass himself off as him.
Seeing that Xiaomao was clever and cute, Xia Huai'an pulled out his dagger and wrote characters on the dirt floor. "Xiaomao, do you know how to read? Let me teach you."
"Okay! I want to learn to write my name." The little girl immediately walked over.
"Uh, Xiaomao is your childhood nickname, what is your formal given name?"
"I don't have a formal name. My second brother said that when I'm ready to get married, we'll pick a propitious given name together with the groom's family during the betrothal."
"Well then, how about I give you a name first? Your second brother is called Xia Ping'an, so you can be called Xia Yuhe." Xia Huai'an casually made a joke. If she were an actress arranged by the production team, she would most likely be amused by this running gag.
"Xia Yuhe? What a pretty name! Thank you, young master!" Xiaomao nodded excitedly again and again, even mimicking an adult's formal bow toward Xia Huai'an.
The little girl's delighted expression made Xia Huai'an feel a bit embarrassed, so he began teaching Xiaomao to write the three characters for Xia Yuhe stroke by stroke.
Fortunately, the simplified and traditional forms of these three characters were the same. If he encountered complex traditional characters, even if he recognized them, he probably wouldn't have been able to write them!
As the two of them were writing, the young woman walked over carrying a bowl of hot water.
"Sister-in-law, the young master is teaching me how to write. This is my name, Xia Yuhe." The little girl pointed to the characters on the ground.
"Many thanks to the young master for giving Xiaomao a name!" The young woman placed the water on the table and bowed to Xia Huai'an. "Since the young master is skilled in both letters and martial arts, you must not be from an ordinary background. I imagine you wouldn't be willing to lower yourself to live in a rural backwater like Zushang Village."
Xia Huai'an blew on the hot water and casually replied, "This place is quite nice, no worse than the city."
Hearing this, the young woman's heart stirred; she seemed to want to say something, but hesitated.
Xia Huai'an was extremely thirsty. Blowing and sipping, he quickly finished a large bowl of water. The young woman poured him another.
After drinking two bowls of water in succession, Xia Huai'an burped, expressed his thanks, and stood up to take his leave.
Seeing that Xia Huai'an was about to leave, the young woman clenched her fists, growing extremely anxious. She seemed to want to say something, but lacked the courage.
Xia Huai'an noticed it too and asked curiously, "Does the young lady have something to say?"
"N-no, nothing!" The young woman's face flushed red, and she grew even more flustered.
Xia Huai'an nodded and cupped his fists. "I've intruded! Many thanks, young lady!"
With that, he shouldered his backpack and walked out of the main hall.
Just as he was about to leave the courtyard, the young woman suddenly grabbed the little girl, rushed out of the house, and blocked Xia Huai'an's path.
Xia Huai'an was startled and said somewhat awkwardly, "Do I have to pay for the water? Um, I don't have any money on me right now."
"It's not that!" The young woman shook her head repeatedly.
"Then why won't you let me leave?" Xia Huai'an asked.
Gathering all her courage, the young woman pulled the little girl down to kneel before Xia Huai'an together with her, and said, "Could the young master please stay? With the three of us—an orphan and widows—having no man to support the household, we won't survive this coming autumn! We beg the young master, out of consideration for our shared Xia clan lineage, to help us!"