Early the next morning, when Bai Ruozhu and her companions were leaving, nearly the whole village came to see them off. There weren't many people in the village, yet they filled the entrance of the village to the brim. Bai Ruozhu, looking at each sincere face, felt both warmth and a touch of sorrow in her heart.
West Mountain Village was in poor condition, far worse than Mountain Village where she had once lived. The farmland here could hardly grow anything, and due to the peculiar soil quality of West Mountain and its abundance of rocks, even planting fruit trees did not yield good harvests. The villagers' clothing was very thin and quite tattered; the clothes worn by Shanzi and Xiao Liu to the city were considered to have the fewest patches.
They say to live off the mountain if you depend on it, but few people could venture deep into the mountains to hunt, and chances of catching game were even rarer, not to mention the risk to life.
