I became the Counterpart of the Winner in a Period Novel-Chapter 299 - 282: The Heroine’s Unlucky Day (Part 3)

"Probably brought the eggs down to sell, the eggs you just intercepted were likely collected from them."

Intentionally leaked the information a little.

An Jian squinted his eyes, "Jiang Zhenzhu, Jiang Mingyue, you both have the surname Jiang, oh! Right, I remember now, the girl you were switched with, the difference between you two is huge."

"How so?"

"Two completely different personalities, that one clearly has bad intentions, it was right for you to hide just now."

Jiang Mingyue: "...Does this mean you approve of my character?"

"You’re my brother, how can you be bad?"

Thank you very much!

The two hurried along and finally caught up with someone, they sized each other up, and one word came to mind: disheveled!

"Ha! Brother, you need to adapt. In our line of work, a little hardship is nothing; there are things a hundred times harder than this. So usually, we don’t recruit girls here; they can’t handle this kind of suffering."

"Grandma, my sister and I got lost in the mountains and now our throats are dry and sore, could we please have some water?"

The old lady looked them up and down cautiously, then finally stood up and went inside.

The two exchanged a glance, it was mealtime, but the old lady hadn’t started a fire, and the two thatched huts seemed to be quite old. Judging by the roof, it wouldn’t hold up in heavy rain; it seemed the family lacked able-bodied labor.

Soon, the old lady came out with two bowls of water.

"Thank you, Grandma!" They took the bowls and drank them in one go, they were indeed thirsty, and the mountain water was really delicious, like a fresh spring, clean and sweet.

The old lady probably made up her mind, and dropped her guard around them, becoming friendlier.

"You must be tired, sit down and rest for a while." The old lady pointed to two tree stumps in the yard for them to sit on.

The two glanced around: were these makeshift seats? 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Because the roots were still buried in the ground, and the stumps were quite old, even worn smooth from frequent use.

"Thank you for your hospitality, Grandma." An Jian said while slipping a couple of candies to the old lady.

Jiang Mingyue raised an eyebrow, remembering the candies Jiang Zhenzhu had given, and was momentarily speechless.

The old lady saw the candies, a smile appeared on her face, and she became more talkative.

"Children, where are you from?"

An Jian: "Grandma, my sister and I are also from farming families, but my grandfather was literate and taught us to read from a young age. Later, he sent us to school, and we both did well, getting into technical school. After graduating, we were assigned to Nanxi City. We came from Nanxi City."

Jiang Mingyue: "..." Wow! Thinking back to this guy coming over to her house to freeload some chicken, it seemed understandable. After hearing such a genuine self-introduction, anyone’s guard would be lowered by half.

While they were chatting, Jiang Mingyue used her spiritual power to scan the entire village. The whole village currently had only seventeen families, mostly the elderly, women, and children, with no brick houses. There were over twenty empty yards, uninhabited, but all raising chickens, with coops under every eave made of bamboo, visible in every household front and back, with bamboo everywhere.

When asked, they were all used by neighbors.

With so much bamboo and so many chickens running around, eating insects under the decaying bamboo leaves, no wonder the eggs Jiang Zhenzhu collected were so big.

Of course, this was just an incidental observation; the main goal was to find Lv Yan, but relying solely on spiritual power alone hadn’t identified any young men.

Jiang Mingyue withdrew her spiritual power, and just then, An Jian glanced over, Jiang Mingyue shook her head.

An Jian was already quite familiar with the old lady by now, who also had a grandson about their age, but after her two sons moved down the mountain five years ago, they hadn’t come back to see her, and she hadn’t seen her grandson since then.

The old lady seemed sad.

"Why don’t you go down the mountain with your sons?"

"I like it on the mountain. The mountain is nice."

The two young ones didn’t quite understand: it’s so inconvenient!

"Grandma, what do you eat?"

The old lady looked at An Jian like he was silly for asking.

"Cornmeal porridge. The mountain can’t grow wheat or rice, but corn and potatoes can thrive, and so can radishes and cabbage. Corn is ground into flour with a stone mill for storage, stirred into a paste with wild vegetables for meals."

Jiang Mingyue blinked, just as a group of hens ran by chased by a rooster, she pointed over, "Grandma, are those all yours?"

"Of course, they’re mine. The mountain is too quiet, there’s no other source of income; raising chickens and selling eggs can be exchanged for cloth to make clothes, buy salt, soy sauce, and other daily necessities."

Hmm! The two exchanged a quick look: the old lady seemed different!

"How many chickens do you have, Grandma?"

The answer surprised the two greatly; each household in the village had over a hundred chickens, even the old lady had dozens, no wonder the villagers all looked so healthy and rosy.