36: C36

C36

When he woke up again, it was already noon. I glanced at the little girl beside me, who was still sleeping soundly. Without scratching her, I got out of bed first. When he got out of the house, he brought pumpkins and winter melon to the vegetable garden and started a fire to cook. I was good at it, and in less than an hour I had three dishes and a soup: boiled pumpkin, braised winter melon, fried bitter melon with green pepper and purple sugared, and pickled soup with garlic. Thinking that the bamboo bowl of rice was about to be cooked, I stood up to wake the little girl up for dinner. When I looked up, I saw that she was standing in front of me with a sleepy look on her face.1

I motioned for her to wash her face and wait for lunch. She did as she was told and quickly sat down. Maybe she was starving, or maybe I was good at cooking, but she had eaten a lot. I ate a lot too. After lunch, the little girl and I rested for a while. After we boiled some spring water and drank it, we felt much more relaxed.

Only then did I feel that I had once again merged into this mountain. Obviously, it would have been easier to live the rest of my life alone, but now that I had this little girl, I had to think of ways to live it. In my opinion, when the conditions are met, I must send the little girl home. I had a hunch that this little girl's mute could be cured, because I was sure she was going to become like this the day after tomorrow; but here in the big city, this wish would not come true.

However, the most important thing right now is to find a way for me to live a good life with her.

After making up my mind, I decided to use my own two hands to raise the living conditions of the two of us. And one of the prerequisites of all this is that I have to prepare enough food. To me, who was familiar with the mountains, food was a piece of cake. With that in mind, I took a bag, prepared two bamboo canisters of water and some cold potatoes, and set off with the little girl.

There are so many fruits on the mountain that I don't even want to pick them. But looking at the little girl's red face and eager expression, I picked wild fruits again and again to give her a taste. Diospyros, oranges, millet, jujube, almost every kind of wild fruit made her jump with excitement. I don't care, because my center of gravity isn't here. In my eyes, the wild fungi and mushrooms that could be found all over the mountains were even more fascinating. It was the same with the little girl. Every time she saw a fresh group of bacteria, she would be so excited that she would jump.

I was excited too, but not as excited as she was. To tell the truth, after living in the mountains for so many years, I have learned some skills. For example, with such a large area of wild bacteria and mushrooms, I was able to identify professionally and proficiently which ones were poisonous and which ones were non-poisonous. This was not only due to the practical knowledge I had learned in the mountains and the identification methods I had learned from my father and grandfather, but also due to the expertise I had learned in college. Because, when I was in college, I took two specialized courses, one of which was kinematics. Although the fungi don't belong to the kinetophysics category, I did take a look at these borderline subjects while I was studying them. Although I can't say that I must have figured it all out, but I believe that my relevant foundation is still quite solid.

With my rich practical experience and strong theoretical knowledge, it gave me a feeling of being an omnipotent master in the face of wild bacteria and wild mushrooms that filled the mountains. I took the little girl with me, teaching her to identify which species of wild fungus were poisonous and which could be consumed, and to pick at the same time.

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