After sending his wife home, the hunter saw the harvested grains at home.
Even the grains they had agreed to exchange with their neighbors were delivered to his home first.
The hunter was touched by the neighbors' thoughtful help.
When he saw the well-cared-for tamed deer grazing by the river, Wen Qian had said that if he didn't have time to care for them, she could help raise them until the end of winter.
The people around them provided the new parents with great help and acceptance, something they had not expected when they left their hometown to come here.
Not only did the two families deliver the grains early to his home, but they also left some of the fruits they had gathered for them later.
As winter was approaching, they gave as many supplies as possible for the two to get through the winter, thinking that the adults raising a child should have a more varied diet.
Due to Ni Sha's pregnancy and childbirth, they hadn't been able to do much work that year, but they had mentally prepared for it beforehand.
After sending his wife home, the hunter immediately started heating the kang bed, as they had previously built another room next to the two rooms, separating the bedroom and kitchen.
Now with the kang and firewall, the indoor temperature could rise quickly. They had stocked up on a lot of firewood before leaving home, so they didn't have to worry about running out.
The sheep were placed beside the kang hole in the kitchen, where there was a heat source, so they wouldn't suffer from the cold during winter.
There wasn't too much dust in the house, probably because a neighbor had come to tend the crops or deliver something and helped clean up.
The year passed quickly, and the hunter, looking at the mother and daughter in the room, felt this must be his greatest achievement in life.
With the addition of a newborn, Ni Sha would mostly stay at home to care for the child, while the hunter, aside from going out to hunt, spent the rest of his time caring for the new mother and child.
Thinking that Wen Qian would be catching weasels in the winter, he went to her house and took the tamed deer away.
If the deer stayed with Wen Qian during the winter, she wouldn't be able to stay in the hunter's cabin for long periods. Later, he planned to exchange things for the hay she had stored.
Although Wen Qian didn't ask for extra compensation, he knew that cutting the hay was also very tiring, so he couldn't take advantage of her for free.
Seeing that he insisted, Wen Qian had no choice but to go with him.
When he left, Wen Qian gave him the little clothes she had made, saying they were already washed and dried.
Winter came soon, and Wen Qian spent her forty-fifth birthday in the hunter's cabin.
Come to think of it, she had already reached this age, but she felt forty-five was a very new number, and the people around her didn't know her exact age.
The Big Jin Family's couple was around her age, but they said that Wen Qian seemed younger than them.
Wen Qian wondered if perhaps the aging rate of people who don't have children is the original aging rate, while having children accelerates it.
Of course, if one receives good care after pregnancy and childbirth, and has someone to share the burden, then one wouldn't age particularly quickly.
Only nowadays, it was estimated that only some major cities in the south would have postpartum caregivers or maternity centers.
On her forty-fifth birthday, Wen Qian was knitting a sweater for herself. She had seen a few sweater knitting patterns in the knitting books.
So, during her hunting breaks in winter, she tried to knit herself some nice-looking sweaters, as she still had a lot of yarn left from her initial purchase.
The sweaters had high-difficulty patterns like flowers or cartoon characters, but Wen Qian found it easy to knit herself a small blanket.
She also knitted a small sweater for Ni Sha's child, but it seemed the child would only be able to wear it after learning to walk, so she planned to keep it in her space until the child grew a bit older before gifting it.
Wen Qian's daily routine at forty-five was clearing paths in the snow and traveling between a few houses along fixed routes.
Essentially, each trap she had set would yield a catch, and sometimes, she had barely set the bait when prey came knocking.
During this period, she also encountered a neighbor, Old Liu, the one who had initially occupied her house, for some unknown reason near the boundary line.
At that time, Wen Qian was on her way from the second cabin to the third when she pointed her gun at him.
However, he was surprisingly there to apologize, which made Wen Qian wonder why the apology came so early.
It had been over a year.
While apologizing, he asked Wen Qian if hunting alone was difficult, seeing her walking empty-handed on the fixed snow path, and invited her to his house for a meal.
The more he spoke, the stranger it sounded. It had been a long time since she had heard such an insincere show of concern, the last being over a decade ago when someone said no one would care for her if she didn't marry.
As if getting married guaranteed someone would care for you, who knew if you would truly be cared for or if it would just drive you crazy.
This man didn't stop even when Wen Qian ignored him and kept walking, rambling on about how a lonely person should find a companion to get through life.
Wen Qian thought this person must have a matchmaking addiction and was trying to set her up.
But if she knew what was really on his mind, she would probably sift through his ancestral grave three times.
Originally, Old Liu's family of four had come here to make a living, but his elderly father had passed away, leaving three people in the family.
Earlier, he had intended to occupy Wen Qian's territory, not realizing she was formidable. He had come back a few times and found that Wen Qian rarely came to the cabin except during winter.
So he thought he could move in when she wasn't around, but Wen Qian was no pushover, locking the door with a thick iron chain.
Then he came up with another idea, thinking his son was already an adult but couldn't find a wife, while Wen Qian, who appeared to be in her thirties, was still single.
If she married into his family, her hunting grounds and courtyard house would all become theirs.
But when he brought up the subject, his wife started scolding him because she knew Wen Qian was around Big Ning's age, making them from the same generation.
No one would send their son to marry someone just to obtain their property, it was simply too absurd.
If he wanted to find someone, there were single youths and middle-aged people in the village he could pursue instead of resorting to this.
Old Liu was not disheartened and thought that although the other party was too old to be her son's match, wouldn't it be good for him to pursue her himself?
The more he thought about it, the more plausible this idea seemed, so he mulled over it countless times in his mind.
Thus, he planned to make his presence felt when winter came, when the other party was most likely to appear.
Perhaps the impression he had left on her before was too poor, so the other party didn't even look at him properly. Old Liu thought that whenever he caught a big game, he would give it to her as a gift.
A woman struggling to survive, wouldn't she be touched if a man gave her game he had hunted?
Fortunately, Wen Qian couldn't read minds, otherwise he would really be sliced into fish sashimi on the spot and offered as a sacrifice to the heavens on the snowy ground.
