Sold immediately after wearing it? I took my family and fled the famine.

That evening, after Dr. Gu finished treating the wounds on Jiang Xing's arms and legs, he tied the cloth strips in a knot and carefully checked them again to make sure the medicinal mud was applied properly.

He stood up, patted the dirt off his knees, and looked at Jiang Xing's expressionless face. The words "rest more and move less" that were on the tip of his tongue were swallowed back down. It wouldn't make a difference if he said them; the girl would just keep doing what she was doing.

Over the next two days, the patients in the cave gradually recovered.

Dr. Gu gets up early every day to take everyone's pulse. Most people's pulses have stabilized, and only a few older people are still taking medicine to regulate their condition.

The bruises on Zhang's knees have mostly faded, and she can now walk a few steps on her own without a cane, although she still limps a bit when she walks fast.

Third Uncle's knee swelling had completely subsided, and his gait had returned to its former steady, ox-like steps. Every morning, as soon as he got up, he would first go to add hay to the old ox, and then come back to start a fire and cook, as if he wanted to make up for all the work he had missed in the past few days.

Each household's grain reserves gradually increased.

Every day before dawn, people spontaneously go up the mountain to dig yams, carrying hoes and sacks. No one needs to organize or shout. Those who get up early reserve good spots, while those who get up late venture deeper into the mountains. After all, Nanshan is very large, and there are plenty of yams further in from the yam slope.

Jiang Xing also went up the mountain with the team twice. Each time, he carried back more than half a basket of yams. Like the others, he squatted on the ground, dug the soil, bagged them, and carried them back.

Two young men from Zhoujiazhai saw Jiang Xing dragging a wild boar out of the forest and were so envious that they gathered a few braver men and sneaked up the mountain together.

Unfortunately, they ran into a fully grown male wild boar. The two men were pierced through the stomach by its tusks and were carried back after bleeding to death. They were wrapped in straw mats and placed at the entrance of the cave.

The others who went with him were terrified, and from then on, no one dared to mention hunting wild boars again.

That same afternoon, another group of people who went up the mountain to dig for yams also discovered something.

They found the bodies of the Yongzhou refugees who had robbed Jiang Xing wild boar a few days earlier, behind a thicket deep in the forest.

The body had been gnawed by wild animals in the mountains and was unrecognizable. A machete and a hoe were scattered around it.

"This was also killed by a wild boar." Someone squatted down, looked at the wound, and shook his head.

No one objected. They buried the body on the spot, and when they returned, they told the people at the cave entrance about it. Everyone sighed a few times and then dispersed.

With food and their illnesses cured, everyone was ready to set off.

The rain finally stopped, though the sky remained overcast and dry, with a cold wind blowing from the north that felt like knives on the face.

The further southwest you go, the more mountains there are. The official road is lined with rolling pine forests, with dead branches and fallen trees everywhere. If you pick up a handful of trees while resting, you can burn them for half a day.

With a source of heat and yams and pickled wild boar meat to fill their stomachs, life was still tough, but it was no longer the kind of life where they felt like they could die at any moment.

This trip lasted five days.

By the evening of the fifth day, the official road was no longer just a narrow crevice between two mountains.

The terrain ahead suddenly opened up, and a gray outline of a city wall appeared on the distant horizon.

"Nanping County!" Ma Dadan reined in his horse and shouted back to the group behind him, "Nanping County is just ahead!"

A suppressed cheer erupted from the crowd. After nearly three months of travel, this was the first county town they had reached in the southwestern region.

Ma Dadan arranged for everyone to stop and rest on a piece of wasteland about a mile from the city gate.

Some refugees have already sporadically settled on the wasteland, building simple thatched huts, and some have simply laid out quilts to sleep on the ground.

The city gates were tightly closed. Outside the gates, there were two or three gray-white tents and a few makeshift thatched huts. Under the huts, soldiers in uniforms were walking around. There were more soldiers stationed at the city gates than expected.

When Ma Dadan saw the officers and soldiers in their uniforms, he treated them like family. He immediately arranged for everyone to rest on the spot and led two constables to walk briskly toward the thatched hut, his steps much lighter than when he was leading the way on the mountain path.

The villagers each found a place to sit down and rest.

Uncle San drove the oxcart to the bottom of a dead tree. Zhang got off the cart to stretch her legs, while the calf squatted on the ground picking up small pieces of firewood.

Jiang Xing stood beside the oxcart, his eyes scanning the surrounding terrain. Outside the city gate was an open area, with a row of low hills to the east and north, and a dry riverbed to the west. There were several gullies eroded by rainwater at the base of the city wall.

She looked in several directions before squatting down to drink water.

Several refugees who were already there saw a new group of people arrive and gathered around to ask for information.

A man in his forties walked up to Jiang Xing's oxcart, squatted on a rock, and took the initiative to start a conversation.

"Girls, where did you come from?" He was wearing a patched gray cotton-padded jacket, his face was dirty, his fingers were short and thick, and his fingernails were full of mud. He looked no different from the refugees he had seen along the way.

When he spoke, he spoke fluent Southwestern Mandarin.

Jiang Xing paused for a moment in his hand holding the bamboo tube.

She was very familiar with that accent; in her previous life, she was from Qianzhou in Southwest China, and she heard and spoke this kind of Mandarin every day.

In this unfamiliar dynasty, this was the first time someone had spoken to her in a language she was familiar with.

The feeling was peculiar, like having traveled a very, very long way and suddenly hearing a greeting from home by the roadside.

She remained expressionless and replied in fluent Southwestern Mandarin, "Jiangjia Village, from the north."

"Are you also from the Southwest, young lady?" The man narrowed his eyes slightly.

"No," Jiang Xing said, "I learned it from someone."

The man didn't press her for details and started chatting with her warmly.

He pointed to the city gate and said that Nanping County had originally accepted refugees, but there was a village with a particularly large number of people among the refugees. After entering the city, they took advantage of their numbers and robbed several shops, which even caused an internal strife in the city. It took the soldiers a lot of effort to deal with that group of people.

From then on, the county magistrate ordered the city gates to be closed and refused to allow any refugees into the city.

"However, the magistrate has clearly underestimated these people." The man pointed to the scattered refugees behind him, his tone laced with barely concealed sarcasm: "These people have been staying at the city gate for half a month, planning to keep the magistrate occupied. Anyway, they have the mountains behind them; if they need food, they can just go into the mountains to find it, they won't starve to death."

Jiang Xing subtly probed for information, and the man didn't hold back, answering all questions in great detail.

After listening, Jiang Xing thanked him, stood up, turned around and walked towards the oxcart. After a few steps, he looked back at the man, who was still squatting on the stone, talking to another refugee next to him. His expression was simple and warm.