Don't farm, cultivate immortality!

...

After a morning of weeding, Zhuang Xing still couldn't figure out what the white lotus was all about. Before noon, his father carried him home.

Zhuang Xing has now been weaned, his baby teeth have all grown in, and he eats the same food as his mother and father.

Lunch was similar to usual, nothing special: boiled corn with a small dish of pickled vegetables. Today, my mother also steamed an egg and a sprig of basil.

The so-called "luosu" is actually just eggplant, it's just a different name.

Zhuang Xing scooped up a small piece of eggplant flesh with a spoon, dipped it in the pickled vegetable dish with a little salt, chewed it a couple of times with some millet, and swallowed it.

With a snap, Mother cracked the eggshell on the table. She took an empty bowl, split the egg in half, mashed one half and gave it to her son, and gave the other half to her husband who was working hard outside.

An egg has to be broken in half to eat; this is the current state of life in my family.

Although we won't go hungry, we're living a very frugal life in every aspect.

The most urgent task is to find a way to make money.

As for the white lotus, he thought for a moment and then spoke about it directly.

“Father, I saw lotus flowers by the river this morning.” Zhuang Xing took out the amulet. “They’re the same as the ones on this amulet.”

Clearly, he couldn't handle this matter in a short time, but he was also worried about potential dangers in the river. If he concealed something and something terrible happened, it would be too late to regret it.

Statistically speaking, the white lotus can only represent three possibilities.

One-third is where there is nothing; one-third is where there are bad things; and one-third is where there are good things.

In the first two scenarios, he gains by speaking out about the matter and letting others handle it; only in the third scenario will he lose.

But safety is paramount. People are never satisfied. One should only eat what one is capable of. If he had the ability to turn the river upside down by himself, he could do whatever he wanted, but he doesn't have that ability.

If there really is any treasure, just consider it something that is not meant for you.

This kind of luck-based approach isn't for him.

Gamblers only face certain death; effective management is the real skill.

His father didn't react much to what he said, but his mother took it very seriously.

The next day, Mother brought the old hunter.

The old hunter came to Zhuang Xing's house and asked for details. Zhuang Xing told him everything in detail and even pointed out the specific location at the scene.

The old hunter said he would investigate the matter, and three days later, he brought back news.

Indeed, traces of a monster were found in that riverbed. Sometime during the day, a monster skilled in burrowing had drilled holes everywhere, causing river water to overflow into them.

The true form of the monster is still unknown, as is whether it is harmful or harmless. The old hunter said that he and his hunting team would guard the waterwheel and eliminate the monster as soon as possible.

Zhuang Xing breathed a sigh of relief; thankfully, he hadn't hidden anything.

Otherwise, if his mother were to be dragged into the water while fetching water one day, he might regret it for the rest of his life.

Chapter 27 Lotus Seeds

With the Lotus matter temporarily settled, Zhuang Xing focused his attention on how to make money.

Half a month passed after he first went out with his father, during which time he repeatedly asked his parents to go out with him.

He discovered that in addition to farming and weaving, most villagers had other side jobs, the most common being planting jujube and mulberry trees.

The fruits of jujubes and millet are plentiful for the people. Ripe jujubes are juicy and can be sold off in addition to being consumed by the family.

As for mulberry trees, they were originally used for raising silkworms, but since there were few silkworm farmers in the village, the villagers cultivated mulberry trees to sell mulberry leaves to silkworm farmers. Mulberry leaves are also a traditional Chinese medicine, and mulberry trees can also be cut down for timber.

The villagers have low incomes, are self-sufficient, and rarely spend money.

If you want to make money, you still have to focus on the necessities of life, such as food, clothing, housing, and transportation.

However, there were no conditions to address clothing, housing, and transportation, so after much thought, the only option left was to focus on food.

The villagers' diet is very monotonous and uninteresting, with cooking methods basically limited to steaming and boiling.

If there were more new dishes at reasonable prices, I think everyone would be very willing to buy them.

Zhuang Xing only wanted to improve his family's life a little. It was too early to talk about making big money. He would be content with doing some small business and not having to break an egg in half to eat it.

He quickly decided what to do: he planned to make tofu.

Long ago, there were specialized tofu workshops, and many people made a living by making and selling tofu.

As the ancients said, "A millstone grinds fine liquid, and snowflakes roll in boiling soup." The snowflakes in this story refer to tofu.

This thing has been loved by the people since its inception, and more importantly, the process of making tofu is very simple.

Soaking beans, grinding beans, filtering the syrup, and coagulating the syrup are just four steps. The only key material needed is gypsum. If gypsum is unavailable, vinegar can be used as a substitute.

However, there was no need to look for vinegar. He found a piece of raw gypsum at home, which, according to his inquiries, was a medicinal herb that had just been bought after the New Year.

This plaster is the main ingredient in a prescription called "Baihu Tang," a prescription that seems to have been around for a long time. My mother said she drank it several times when she had a fever as a child.

The specific prescription for Baihu Tang is to decoct four medicinal materials: Anemarrhena asphodeloides, gypsum, roasted licorice root, and japonica rice. Drinking it can reduce fever and disperse heat. Almost every household keeps these medicinal materials on hand, especially families with children. Mothers seem to be afraid that their children will suddenly fall ill, so they ask their fathers to buy the medicinal materials for Baihu Tang in advance.

In this way, all the materials are complete.

Even without a stone mill, you can still make tofu.

Although beans are usually ground with a stone mill, with a little more effort, you can press them into soy milk with a stone press. The key is to teach your parents how to do this.

They had no concept of soy milk at all; in the past, they would soak soybeans and then boil them in a pot.

At this moment, Zhuang Xing was drafting a plan. He looked at the flowchart he had carved and nodded.

The next day, he ran to his mother and acted like a spoiled child.

"Mom, I want to eat beans."

"How about Mom makes you bean soup tomorrow?"

"Mother is the best."

His mother has always doted on him, and she would never refuse such a small request.

That evening, Mother soaked the soybeans in a basin of water.

At night, after his mother and father had fallen asleep, Zhuang Xing secretly opened his eyes.

He looked at the bed and quietly climbed out of bed.

He had placed his little rocking horse next to the crib beforehand, and now that it was late at night, he quietly climbed down from the other side.

Because of the crib's railing, even if the parents wake up, they won't be able to see their baby unless they get up.

Even if his parents find out he ran away, it doesn't matter. A one-and-a-half-year-old baby can have many excuses.

All you need to do is innocently suck your thumb, act cute and pitiful, and say you heard a noise outside and want to go out to check, or say you want to go to the bathroom alone, and you can get away with it.

He stood on tiptoe, stepping onto the little wooden horse.

The mother and father were breathing steadily and did not notice their son's little movements at all.

Zhuang Xing was very careful. Ever since he was able to walk, he had been consciously training himself. He had memorized all the movements he learned from Miss Huai'an's sparring with the old hunter. He would often train according to the postures Miss Huai'an had taught the old hunter.

Perhaps for this reason, he had excellent control over his limbs and made almost no sound when he got out of bed.

After getting out of bed, he ran barefoot into the kitchen.

He placed a wooden basin filled with soybeans on the stove, brought over a small stool, leaned against the stove, and scooped out about half of the soaked soybeans.

He squeezed the beans; they felt hard to the touch.

Dried soybeans usually need to be soaked for eight hours to fully absorb water, but they have only been soaked for about two hours and show no signs of softening.

It was barely noticeable that the number of soybeans had decreased. He put the soybeans into a bamboo tube he had made himself and returned to the crib.

The next day, while his mother was working in the yard, he poured the unsoaked soybeans into a basin.

Without noticing anything amiss, the mother threw the beans into the pot to cook. So at noon, when Zhuangxing was eating soybeans, he "coincidentally" bit into those hard beans.

"Waaah..." Zhuang Xing immediately covered his face and burst into tears.

The mother also ate those hard beans, and she immediately understood why her son was crying—he had bumped his teeth.

She held her son and comforted him, then frowned and ate a few more soybeans. Most of them were soft, with only a small portion being hard.

Zhuang Xing cried for a long time before stopping, thus planting a small seed in his mother's heart.

Ten days later, Zhuang Xing asked to eat beans again.

He timidly said that beans were delicious, but biting into them hurt a lot, and asked his mother if she could mash the beans into a paste before cooking them.

His mother really loved him. She patted his head and the next day mashed the soaked beans into a paste.

Zhuang Xing watched from the sidelines, and at his urging, his mother threw the soybean pulp and the squeezed soy milk into the pot to cook.

Then comes the most important step: applying the paste.

This step had to be seen by his mother. Unable to think of a reasonable way, he could only disguise it as an "accident".

In front of his mother, Zhuang Xing put the plaster he had picked up into his mouth.

Kids will put everything in their mouths.

He took two crunchy bites, and his mother saw this and immediately ran over to stop him, trying to throw the plaster in his hand away.

Zhuang Xing refused to let go, so his mother picked him up and tried to snatch him from her hands. In the ensuing struggle, the plaster fell into a pot with a thud, splashing up white water.

"You child." The mother scolded Zhuang Xing for a while, not knowing what to do, but could only put him down and pick up the plaster.

Farmers wouldn't waste food, and gypsum isn't poisonous, so my mother naturally couldn't bear to throw away this pot of soy milk.

Of course, you can't make tofu with just this one bit of gypsum. The correct way is to grind the gypsum into powder to make gypsum water, and then add water to the soy milk in several batches after the soy milk has cooled down a little, stirring well each time.

But Zhuang Xing's purpose was simply to let his mother see the plaster fall into the pot.

After his mother scooped out the soy milk and put it on the table, Zhuang Xingcai quietly added the gypsum water he had prepared beforehand into the bamboo tube.

The rice hasn't been cooked yet, and the soy milk will need to sit for a while.

When my father returned home, the rice was cooked in the pot, and the leftover soy milk had already begun to show some loose tofu-like shapes.

"this..."

During the meal, both my mother and father hesitated as they looked at the bowl of "bean soup".