An Jiaxin felt a throbbing pain on her head as she looked away, trying hard to set her mind off of him as she again crouched down and engaged herself with lighting fire.
Mo Xuan only remained silent as he continued to stare at An Jiaxin, his eyes never didn't left her as she gathered straw, branches, and woods to burn them.
After a long nerve wracking dark night, the sky seemed to have started to get clear little by little. Which made her sigh in relief.
A little more, she needs to hold on for a little more before everything is finally over.
The sun came up soon to her surprise, so was the burned swarm of insects that remained on the ground.
Tired, An Jiaxin's body fell down on its own as she felt dizzy, her vision turning blurry.
Mo Xuan was startled by her fall all of a sudden, but her body didn't move after.
"Ms. An, what's wrong?" He quickly bent down as he grabbed her arms and shaked her.
"An Jiaxin, wake up! What happened? You—" Mo Xuan was anxious as he thought maybe she fainted due to overworking herself, so he wanted to take out the medical kit.
But before he could move, a sound came in his ears.
Snoreeee…
'So, she is asleep?'
"It seems that I was worried for nothing." A sigh escaped his mouth as Mo Xuan picked up her and started walking back towards the village.
After the first nerve wracking and heart wrenching night, everyone turned normal as they started to adjust themselves with the circumstances.
Since the subjugation continued for ten days, they covered their sleep during the day and strolled around the village at night.
After working hard for ten days, the counting of danger times finally stopped while a beautiful smile bloomed on all the tired faces.
The hard time they faced was finally gone, now it was a time of revival.
Although the people were alive and well, now the problem was this deserted area.
Because they managed to save the crops, but the plants and forests outside the village have all gone extinct.
There isn't even a drop of water to drink, much less to cultivate land.
The well that served as a way to get clean water was nowhere to be found after the storm, and even if they did find it out it's of no use. The water was already gone.
They can't use the water down to the ground, because it was contaminated with sea salt. And thus they were unusable.
It was the disaster of last ten days, and a new way of suffering was opened which would torture them to death.
"It's the drought, a natural disaster. Even if we were able to take care of the insects, how are you gonna cope with it?" Mo Xuan said as he looked towards the vast sky that didn't have any sign of rain.
Although it does seem like he was talking to himself, it was not an option where An Jiaxin was standing by his side, her expression was of a person deep in thought.
She looked at the barren land that broke in pieces here and there, there was no sign of life that could be seen.
What to do, what to do…
Suddenly, it occurred to her that they were actually standing in the middle of a island.
"Bingo!"
An Jiaxin screamed out in excitement as she ran out of her hut.
Mo Xuan also heard the scream as he walked out and followed the girl to see what she was doing this time.
Since the supply of water she had wasn't enough and they needed to survive for ten days, why not just give them a permanent solution to cope with it?
An Jiaxin crouched down as she started to dig the ground with a sickle she borrowed from the villagers.
The easiest method she could think of was the distillation process of seawater.
Sea water is heated until it boils. The salt remains in the liquid, and the steam is pure water. The steam is cooled and condensed to make potable water.
Although it requires a lot of energy to boil the water, and also to cool the steam down to condense it. The wastewater is very salty and can be difficult to dispose of in a sustainable way which does not harm marine ecosystems.
For this, she needed to make an experiment at first, if she were to succeed somehow, then she could save all these people.
After making a smooth hole within the water surface, she went back and forth a lot of times to get the required things one by one.
Even if An Jiaxin's knowledge were all bound within a book, she tried her best to make them work out in real life.
"Here is the water, you need it now don't you?" Mo Xuan handed her a pot of salted sea water he fetched earlier after he saw how seriously she was working and running around the village.
For him, it doesn't matter if she failed. At least she tried to do something which was more than enough.
"Thanks, Mr. Mo." An Jiaxin smiled as she took over the pot from his hand.
She put the pot over the fire as she started to do the process carefully, but everything in this world has a minimal price to pay.
And she was not an exception.
An Jiaxin failed to distillate the water in one go.
It was actually quite a shock that blew up her confidence as she lowered her head and started to pull her hair in anger, screaming like a madman.
"Hey, snap out of it. Pull yourself together, Ms. An! It's only your first time, it's natural for you to fail. You can just do it again." Mo Xuan was anxious when he saw her reaction.
She was quite a strong and clever girl, enough to rival his friends even if all she had was only some bookish knowledge.