After catching a few fish, Wen Qian killed them on the spot and left.
Then she rode her bicycle to the campsite, set up her tent, and began cooking fish soup for the day. She took out a portable stove and a small pot, pretending to take out some seasonings from her backpack.
Wen Qian had pre-packaged these seasonings in small travel-sized portions from her spatial inventory.
She added a little oil, pan-fried the fish, then added water and the deodorizing ingredients, covered the pot, and began cooking.
It had been a long time since she cooked, and since she had fish to eat today, she wanted to give it a try.
However, she only cooked two small fish, and put the rest into her spatial inventory.
After the fish soup was ready, she carried it into the tent, then took out other food.
The fish was tender and fresh, and the soup was delicious. Wen Qian ate with great satisfaction.
She felt this hiking trip around Jade Lake was quite nice, but she planned to take a bus and leave Jade Lake the next day.
The hiking route around Jade Lake would be interrupted and she would move on to the next destination.
The next morning, she hiked to a scenic spot where buses departed every hour when full.
She paid the fare and got on, and the bus soon departed for Xia City.
Wen Qian bought a train ticket on her phone to travel from Xia City to the edge of the western basin, where there was a small city called Mangge City.
The train ride would take six hours, with only one afternoon train per day. When she arrived in Mangge City, it would be after 10 PM, so Wen Qian planned to stay at the train station overnight and set out for cycling the next day.
To the northwest of Mangge City was the basin, an endless expanse of gobi and desert.
To the south stretched the massive Jade Mountain Range.
The mountain range ran from west to east, marking the border between Xia Province and Qing Province, and had been famous since ancient times.
From Mangge City, there was a national highway heading south that passed through the Jade Mountain Range.
Wen Qian planned to cycle along this road and look for the first safe haven at the foot of the Jade Mountains.
The basin was below 3,000 meters above sea level, while at the foot of the Jade Mountain Range, the elevation would be around 3,000 meters and above.
The highest elevation Wen Qian could reach was 4,500 meters; ordinary tourists generally could not go any higher.
However, Wen Qian's goal was to find a safe haven, not to summit the peaks. This area also had forests and alpine meadows, where Wen Qian could find terrain environments similar to the second safe haven.
This was truly a sparsely populated wilderness.
The reason it was planned as the first safe haven was precisely because of this. Wen Qian hoped to settle down in the Jade Mountains rather than the area around Jade Lake.
On the bus ride, Wen Qian thought a lot about how she had originally planned to complete the Jade Lake circuit hike before moving on.
But she wanted to find a place to settle down quickly, after which she could still go out for hikes.
Building a house in the Jade Mountains would definitely be more difficult than around Jade Lake, who knows how long it would take, so she decided to just go there first.
It was possible that she might even have to return the way she came later.
In the two days before Wen Qian began her search for a place to settle down, over in the M Country across the ocean, the stock market was crashing.
The Black [event] from the history books had come again, accompanied by varying degrees of zero purchases.
In countries where it was legal to own guns, a tiny bullet could easily take a person's life.
Wen Qian had seen their bullets in a magazine before, just like candy in her own country, packaged in boxes and sold by weight.
At that time, she was still a high school student and was just surprised by the magazine's content.
But during the stockpiling period, she could buy many things, but she could not stock up on these.
Nevertheless, she still took an extreme risk to obtain some components and assemble them herself at home.
Fortunately, these components did not attract anyone's attention, and no one came to inquire about them.
Although not as good as professional equipment, being able to obtain these in the country was not too bad.
She did not intend to use them, but she felt that if the world became chaotic, not having them would be just as disastrous, because those who had them would be the ones calling the shots.
The route to the Jade Mountains would have uninhabited areas where survival would be difficult for both humans and wildlife. Wen Qian's original purpose for taking the risk was simply for self-defense.
In the plateau region, documentary records showed the rampancy of poaching gangs.
They also had real weapons, killing animals for their meat, bones, or fur.
They would even violently attack and attempt to kill any humans that obstructed them.
After years of cracking down on such cases, they seemed to have become less frequent, at least according to the news Wen Qian found online.
Less frequent did not mean disappearance, so there was still a possibility of encountering them.
Wen Qian could only hope not to encounter such dangerous situations in the future, and if she did, she would have no choice but to lament her fate.
Wen Qian did not think she could avoid these dangers, so it was better to prepare in advance.
Being prepared might not help, but not preparing and then regretting it later would be worse; at the very least, the former would give her some peace of mind.
She really wanted to go to the Jade Mountains now to determine if she could settle down there. If not, she could still go to the area around Jade Lake later.
Winter came early on the plateau, and she had to get things done ahead of time before she could relax.
She really disliked deadlines, even as a child she hated rushing assignments on the last day.
As an adult, she still hated dragging things to the last minute. It was good if she could complete them, but she hated the anxiety and peril.
Moreover, she did not want to wait until the last minute only to find herself powerless; by then, begging would be useless, and all she could do was wait for her doom.
The bus arrived in the city, and Wen Qian transferred to a public bus. Even if she went to the train station now, she would have to wait for a long time, so she decided to walk around the city first.
She also remembered that she wanted to buy some clothes. There were some ethnic minority costumes locally, and Wen Qian wanted to buy some inexpensive items with ethnic characteristics and symbols.
If she was going to settle down, she definitely wanted to blend in with the local community's way of life, rather than standing out as an outsider.
With this in mind, she even bought a textbook on an ethnic minority language.
She thought it might come in handy, and if not, it was just a book. Books could always be useful someday.
Afterwards, she went to the train station after buying her items and began waiting for the train. There were free charging stations where a few people were standing and playing on their phones while charging.
Although the umbilical cord is cut at birth, the sight of people charging their phones as if they were a part of their bodies made Wen Qian suddenly wonder what people would do if the internet was gone one day - they would probably be very anxious.
And if they didn't even have books, it would be even more anxious, right?
Despite thinking this, Wen Qian still found an outlet and stood there charging her phone and playing like everyone else.
