The stomach rumbled like distant rolling drums; the first step to survive was to fill it. Xiangbei looked at her visibly younger arms and legs, thankful that the mountain girls' constant labor had developed them healthily. She shouldered the medicine basket, crossed the stream towards the oasis. The water surface was about thirty meters wide, not deep enough to cover her calves. Perhaps no one had ever been here; the wild chickens and water birds on the shore completely ignored the intrusion of a human, busy with their own foraging and egg-hatching.
From a distance, the lush green grass looked like an ordinary meadow, but up close, it turned out to be a treasure trove of medicinal herbs. Yams and beans were stacked high, goji berries hung red on the branches. Ah, goji berries! She couldn't wait to pick some and savor the sweet and moist taste from her tongue to her mind. Happiness was indeed simple. While eating and looking around, she discovered galangal, kudzu root, and Solomon's seal emerging from the ground. Near the water, rice plants of various colors were bending under the weight of heavy grain. There were also salt frost cypress, Chinese sumac, tung oil tree, red kapok, and more. Trumpet flowers, also known as datura or mandrake, were in full bloom, and oh my God, they were spreading like wildfire. There were also loquats and autumn pears, some flowering, some bearing fruit. What kind of season was this? The sulfuric mist in the gorge and the merging streams hinted that this place might be a hot spring valley without distinct seasons. No wonder the wild chickens were so fat they could hardly walk.
After eating various fruits, Tong Xiangbei began serious harvesting. She collected sheaves of grain, fresh turmeric, and prickly ash. Optimistically, she envisioned a delicious dinner. She dug up several clumps of yams with great effort. In the grass, she found bird eggs scattered about; she picked more than ten of the larger ones. Sneaking up behind a group of plump mountain chickens, she gently stroked their backs, fingers prying open their necks, and two hens about to squawk were hung on the edge of the backpack before they could make a sound.
The most abundant harvest was the salt frost cypress berries, a precious source of plant-based salt. Gathering a large bundle of rice and hemp stalks, Xiangbei returned to the camp. She walked in the direction of the hot spring, estimating it to be the source of the warm water. The flowing water split into two branches; on the left, a snowy white calcium carbonate pit with a lemon-yellow natural sulfur stone around its periphery, and on the right, a spring with a bubbling stream almost boiling. They converged at a flat area where she decided to set up camp for the night.
Carefully avoiding scalding rocks, Xiangbei approached the spring. From the salt-alkali pits and some glassy sodium carbonate crystals on the periphery, it seemed there was not only a sulfur spring but also a soda soup spring here. Two such different springs were indeed mysterious. Xiangbei shrugged; well, there was nothing more magical and eerie than taking over another's body. The ground at the confluence of the water flow was flat, making it a suitable camping spot for the night. The hot stream was shallow, and numerous charred logs and branches spanned across it. Some were covered with moss and ferns, and others with wood ear mushrooms. While picking bamboo shoots on the opposite bank, she found several covered with bamboo worms—a good find. She brought them back to the campsite with the cold fungi she had picked under the pine trees.
As the saying goes, "If you want to eat well, do it yourself." Thankful for her years of solo outdoor experience, Xiangbei, dropped in this vast natural treasure trove today, decided to treat this night like a weekend.
She stripped the bamboo and made several sections, each with a hole the size of a cup cut with the machete. After preparing five or six, she brought over the backpack and spread the grain on a flat, warm boulder. Using straw to string the eggs, she walked closer to the hot spring, carefully using the medicine hoe to clear two circles of stones, creating two pools filled with boiling water.
Xiangbei filled a bamboo tube packed with salt frost cypress berries with water. She placed several bunches of eggs into the smaller pool upstream, while two chickens boiled in the lower pool. Grabbing the chicken in her hands, she walked to the clear water stream to wash and gut them, cutting them into small pieces. She combined the fatty oils with salt frost cypress berries, green peppercorns, and bamboo worms, then filled an open-ended bamboo section with the mixture.
In a corner of the camp, she built a furnace with stones, using charred branches from a wildfire to suspend it. After covering the bottom with pine needles and fallen leaves, Xiangbei took out the cotton fluff she had collected from the oasis, mixed it with the charcoal powder scraped from the burnt wood, and found a few pieces of flint on the riverbed. She began vigorously striking the machete against them until sparks flew and smoke rose. It took almost half an hour, but the fire finally ignited.
The bamboo tube filled with bamboo worms and wood pulp hung on the side of the fire to slowly roast, and the fragrant smell of yellow chicken oil wafted through the air. Adding the soaked saltwater to the bamboo tube with chicken meat, she propped it diagonally above the fire until it turned charcoal black on the outside. The chicken was tender and flavorful, the hot spring eggs were crystal clear, and eating them with the fragrant bamboo worms, Xiangbei felt very satisfied. She lay down by the blazing bonfire, gazing at the towering cliffs to the west. Listening to the occasional fluttering of wings in the night wind, she thought about her parents, whose souls might have already departed far away. They couldn't reunite in life and death, could they? Except for this piece of ancient jade. Xiangbei's subconscious hand reached toward her chest, but where was the jade?