Wen Qian dragged the net through every segment of the river, catching many small fish, but there were no big fish in this river.
The species were also very limited to the local fish varieties. It seemed that the fish in the artificial lake and the river were separated.
Wen Qian continued to drag the net through the entire river segment of the pasture, and finally pulled up the set gillnets.
She planned to leave in the afternoon and didn't want to stay for a third night, so she hastily killed the fish, stored them in her dimensional space, and left.
There were also some small fish fry. With a try-it-and-see attitude, Wen Qian put them in buckets, intending to raise the small fish in the nearby stream at home. If they couldn't survive, they could be kept as pets.
As for the fish she had stored in her dimensional space, she could clean and gut them later. Today, she just wanted to go home.
She hadn't been home for a few days and was concerned about the vegetables and things in the house.
Fortunately, the sun exposure time was long enough in the plateau region, and she returned near her home around dinner time.
After taking a look around and seeing nothing unusual, she climbed up the ladder and entered.
Today's harvest was quite abundant, and Wen Qian was feeling happy.
The bucket with the small fish was placed by the door, and she planned to deal with it the next day.
That night, due to excessive physical exertion, she ate an extra bowl of rice and then went to bed early.
The next morning when Wen Qian woke up, she found some dead fish floating on the bucket.
She removed the dead fish fry and dug a larger shallow pool downstream from where she drew water from the stream. After lining it with stones, she released the small fish fry into it.
She didn't waste the dead small fish either. After squeezing out their guts and cleaning them, she left them outside to dry, then brushed them with oil and roasted them in the stove as snacks.
Speaking of which, she had previously bought snacks like pumpkin seeds, but those were unroasted raw pumpkin seeds, the kind that could be planted to grow sunflowers.
Originally, Wen Qian had planned to roast some raw peanuts and pumpkin seeds for snacks, but seeing the importance of the seeds, she has now narrowed down even the range of snacks.
The unroasted peanuts and pumpkin seeds have all become seeds waiting to be planted in the future.
After finishing these tasks, Wen Qian sat outside and cleaned the fishing nets she had used the previous day. She removed all the fish stuck to the gillnets, cleaned out the debris, and then soaked them in the stream, weighed down with stones, to slowly wash them clean before moving on to the next net.
It took her the whole afternoon to finish everything. The small fish in the two plastic buckets in her dimensional space had already been killed the day before, so Wen Qian kept some of the remaining small fish from the nets and put the rest into the buckets in her dimensional space.
She cleaned and pan-fried some of the small fish by the stream for a vegetable dish, leaving the rest in the buckets to deal with whenever she had time.
By now, her hands reeked of fish, so she washed them with some wood ash.
After washing the fishing nets clean, she hung them on the wall to dry before storing them in her dimensional space.
The fishing activity gave her an immense sense of satisfaction.
Afterward, she surveyed the surroundings with a telescope, admired the beautiful snow-capped mountain scenery, and then set up the alarm system in the yard before closing the door and going inside the house.
To avoid insects and rodents, Wen Qian basically didn't leave any food outside and stored everything in her dimensional space.
It was still early, so after eating dinner, Wen Qian took off the outer layer of her clothes, which smelled of fish, soaked them in a basin with detergent, and planned to wash them the next day.
When she woke up in the morning, Wen Qian felt something was off. She realized her abdomen was uncomfortable, and checking the time, her period seemed to have arrived two days early, likely due to her exposure to cold water in the past few days.
She quickly grabbed a hot water bottle, filled it with hot water, and used it to warm her abdomen.
Sure enough, her period arrived that day. After eating breakfast, Wen Qian made herself a cup of brown sugar water to drink.
While feeling lethargic wasn't the main issue, the discomfort of abdominal cramps and the chilling sensation in her hands made her feel that this period might not go smoothly.
By the afternoon, Wen Qian was restless and had to lie down. Fortunately, she had the hot water bottle to provide some relief. If the pain worsened, she would have to take painkillers.
Speaking of which, she had always paid attention to her health and didn't usually experience such painful periods. It was just that this time, she had forgotten about the exposure to cold water. Different people have different reactions - for some, exposure to cold water may delay their period, while for others, it could worsen the pain.
The first and second days were equally miserable. Wen Qian had no heart to do anything else, so she didn't go out.
It wasn't until the afternoon of the second day when her condition improved that Wen Qian went out to check on the vegetable garden and then returned to lie down again, skipping a meal.
After a few days, Wen Qian once again opened the radio atop the tree to receive messages.
The cold weather in the north hadn't subsided, and the south was shrouded in gloomy rain, with no place seeming suitable for growing crops.
In the remote Xiaochenwa area of An Province, people were trying to grow various crops on a small scale, as well as vegetables and melons.
Fang Ya was also gathering mushrooms, wild vegetables, and greens at home. They had eaten the Chinese toon shoots he had collected earlier for a while.
The weather was terrible, making it nearly impossible to grow crops and harvest grain. Furthermore, their hilly area wasn't suitable for large-scale farming. In other regions, people would use supplemental lighting during the growing season, but they lacked the energy resources for such measures here.
Without sunlight, even the weeds weren't growing as lush as before under the constant gloomy weather, which could easily make people feel depressed. This was only the first year.
Fang Ya even wondered if Wen Qian didn't return because the conditions in the city were better than in rural areas.
But according to people he knew, the situation in the cities was even worse due to the rationing system, where people were allocated food based on their assigned work.
After the last time Wen Qian spoke to Fang Ya, she never thought about her phone again.
Even when she needed to look up knowledge, she consulted reference books instead.
Currently, her phone didn't serve much purpose. She wasn't particularly interested in watching the shows and videos she had stored on it before.
The electronic device Wen Qian used the most was the radio, but she only listened to limited content for a limited time, and it couldn't be used to communicate with the outside world or stay on 24/7.
She seemed to have gradually gotten used to not using her phone or going online, rarely thinking about them now.
Whenever she recalled her past life or saw shows from videos, comparing them to her current situation wasn't a good thing for Wen Qian.
So she tried not to look back at the past.
Just as she couldn't immerse herself in the role of a wealthy heroine in novels, in real life, Wen Qian would actively avoid her classmates who came from affluent families, had harmonious family relationships, and were gifted with good looks, intelligence, and kind hearts.
It wasn't because of dislike or envy, but rather the stark contrast would evoke a feeling of sadness.
