Wen Qian didn't plan to repair the kitchen right away, as there were other things to do next.
She only cleaned up the blood-stained areas and left it open for ventilation.
She now had a place to live, and since it wasn't winter, she planned to repair it slowly before winter came.
Afterward, she would take the bloodstained clothes and broken bloody tiles downstream and dump them in the water.
The kitchen was now just four bare walls, the original stove had been torn down, and both pots were damaged. Wen Qian took the broken iron pot.
She continued to tend the crops and hunt, occasionally cutting trees.
She declined Big Jin's offer of help, saying she would take it slow, as their family also had their own things to do during this period.
This large family had to store food every day starting from spring, and Wen Qian didn't want to owe them too many favors.
Ni Sha's family visited once, having heard about the ordeal of Big Jin and Wen Qian's family. Ni Sha prepared to provide her with a water barrel, without needing any exchange.
The water barrel in the kitchen was likely damaged in the explosion, including other old pots and pans. The water barrel was one Wen Qian had brought back from her old home.
Originally without much emotion, thinking of this old water barrel made her start blaming those bad people.
Although the hunters had heard they had eliminated the bad people, they still worried that similar things might happen in the future.
Worry or not, life had to go on, but they were also considering whether they needed to build a wall around their home.
The wall quality at Wen Qian's home was quite good, built very high, and had indeed stopped the bad people from climbing over and forcing them to go through the door.
Then there was the hedge fence at Big Jin's home, which had also played a certain obstructive role, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to kill those two bad people so quickly.
So Ni Sha's family planned to go home and repair their wall to increase their safety.
Fortunately, after this incident, it was very peaceful here for a long time, with no major events occurring, but that's another story.
Telling Big Jin about the village where the bandits were roaming, he probably didn't expect those terrifying bandits to end up like that.
But those who commit evils and still hope for a good ending are merely deluding themselves.
During this summer, everyone was busy stockpiling food and inspecting their homes.
The temperature of this summer finally caught up to over a decade ago, but it didn't last long.
However, the grain yield was slightly higher than usual, and Wen Qian didn't know if it was due to the climate.
Wen Qian slowly nailed wooden boards onto the roof herself, then took out red tiles from her space to lay on the house.
The people at Big Jin's home envied her large red tiles, as they couldn't fire their own like that now, due to their remote location and lack of places to exchange or purchase.
They thought these were tiles Wen Qian had stored before, so besides envy, they didn't have too many questions.
After repairing the roof, Wen Qian built a stove in the kitchen, this time installing only one pot.
If she needed to simmer other things and it wasn't enough, she could use a brazier or other stoves and sand pots.
This way, it took up less space. Originally, she was a bit disgusted that someone had died in this room, but then she thought that her bedroom's kang and the firewall kang hole were on this side of the kitchen wall.
If she didn't want to repair this room, the direction for heating her bedroom kang would need major changes, which would be more troublesome than a bit of bad luck.
Anyway, the floor tiles were all rotten and had been thrown out, with new tiles of a different color laid down.
The entire kitchen was basically rebuilt, showing no traces of the past, and Wen Qian wasn't afraid.
She didn't fear any supernatural things either. Having been killed once before, if they really became ghosts, she would just kill them again.
Before she knew it, Wen Qian had become someone her past self would admire.
This year, Wen Qian built a second hunter's cabin and cleared the path between the two cabins.
Only one outpost remained, and if it was built, with four outposts, Wen Qian could freely travel between them to hunt more game.
Big Jin's family sometimes wouldn't see Wen Qian for a long stretch and would ask where she had been. When told she was building a hunter's cabin, he marveled at how hardworking she was.
The areas they divided were quite large, and according to their teachings, it was impossible to patrol the entire area.
But after building the hunter's cabins, it became possible to patrol the whole area.
Big Jin and his wife had a plan but hadn't been able to execute it.
Later, he went home and discussed with Big Ning, deciding they must do it this year.
And they would later be extremely grateful that they made this decision.
Ni Sha's hunter also set up a plan to build hunter's cabins at the place he used to live, where people would jointly build and maintain the hunter's cabins to take shelter in bad weather.
From construction to daily maintenance, everyone worked together, and the cabins would also store water boiling tools and fire strikers.
Since the hunting area was public, the cabins were also public, but now their areas were divided, so they each built their own.
Time moved forward, and three years passed. Wen Qian was now forty-four years old.
The village Big Jin had visited had now become the nearby market town.
This village had more than twenty households with over a hundred people living there, and the surrounding fields were farmed by them.
At the same time, the village also served as a place for nearby mountain residents to trade goods, gradually becoming the location for holding markets.
From spring to autumn, there would be markets on the 1st and 15th of each month.
Any hunters or farmers who could make a round trip within a day could come here.
There were a few merchants in this village: one textile shop, a general store, and a carpenter.
Therefore, many people living in remote areas would take advantage of the markets to come here to purchase or trade goods.
There were also merchants coming from other cities, who would purchase ginseng, deer antlers, bear skins, and sable furs in the north.
They usually came once in spring and once in autumn.
And the best time to catch sables was in winter, when their fur was at its finest.
This brings us to the story of Big Jin's decision to build the hunter's cabins.
Near his home, he could also find minks, but that was not a lasting solution, while the small hut had solved this problem.
During winter, he cycled between his home and the hut, setting traps, collecting prey, and selling the mink pelts he skinned for money or goods.
His eldest son had also learned to make traps and could help him.
Big Jin's family had built only two huts but had a substantial harvest in winter.
As for Wen Qian, if new neighbors had not appeared in another direction later, she might have even considered building a fourth hut further away.
However, now with neighbors surrounding her, the areas had been divided, so she only circulated within her own territory to collect.
Years later, Wen Qian received the now commonly used currency with a hole in the center, resembling copper coins that could be conveniently strung together, by selling mink pelts.
With this currency, one could trade from south to north, so Wen Qian saved some money.
