"You don’t have to look at me like that. Now that mother is gone and the family is gone, we can only rely on ourselves from now on,"

"No, how do you know these things? You clearly didn’t know anything before."

Since Yuan Tian brought Jiang Xue here, she never let her do any hard labor. Even if she exhausted herself, she never let Jiang Xue lift a finger. She sent her to school for enlightenment at the age of six. Even if nothing happened, she would definitely have been spoiled. So Dong Yao couldn’t figure out what went wrong, why did their pampered young lady, who didn’t understand anything, learn everything in just a few days?

Jiang Xue didn’t plan to hide it from her because there was no way she could anyway. Besides, it was just the two of them on the mountain. If they didn’t practice martial arts well, they might not even have the ability to protect themselves in the future. Fortunately, they were still young now, able to practice martial arts, study, and earn money all at the same time.

"Your young lady died long ago, I am not your young lady. I woke up to find myself occupying her body. If you are willing to continue following me, then let’s support each other to survive in this world. If you mind that I’m not her, you can leave. Anyway, those men in black are after me, not you. Even if you go back, they shouldn’t harm you!"

Dong Yao looked at Jiang Xue in shock, full of disbelief, shaking her head repeatedly, "This is impossible, how can this be possible?"

Jiang Xue ignored her and focused on stripping the skin off the vine, painstakingly weaving the hard wooden strips together using a complex method.

"Why can’t it be possible? Look, here I am, right? Although the body is still your young lady’s, the core has changed. I won’t tell you my previous name. Since I’m called Jiang Xue now, I’ll continue to be Jiang Xue. Trust me, I know more than you do. If you want to survive, you really need to rely on me." 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

After a brief shock, Dong Yao dumbfoundedly watched Jiang Xue weave baskets and gather materials. Without knives or daggers, she searched for sharp-looking stones. After much struggle, two baskets were made. Without feeling tired, she immediately used them to carry soil. Despite there being so much soil in the mountain, she didn’t understand why Jiang Xue didn’t use the soft soil but insisted on carrying the hard, difficult-to-break Yellow Soil back to the cave.

The soil they carried back had to be soaked with water using leaves, and after being soaked, it needed to be kneaded. Dong Yao was too exhausted to ask what Jiang Xue was doing.

When hungry, they foraged for fruits, looked for wild vegetables to eat raw, as there were no tools for cooking. They could only eat raw, which made her mouth tasteless and astringent, yet the work couldn’t stop. Dong Yao, anxious, kept asking: "What exactly are you doing?"

"So many things need to be made, we could work from summer till winter and still not finish. You, don’t waste your breath; just keep smashing and carrying the soil. I’m not idle either, digging here for an earth kiln. We need to quickly make some containers to hold water. The quality of this soil is decent; these dry branches and straw, make sure to gather a lot, they’ll be essential for making the earth kiln in the future."

The saying goes, ’Haste makes waste’. Jiang Xue knew some things couldn’t be rushed. So when the first batch of containers was made and waiting to dry, she pulled the reluctant Dong Yao along to search all over the hills for medicinal herbs.

At the mention of medicinal herbs, Dong Yao’s thin little face, sunken from malnutrition, lit up with excitement: "We can sell them for money, right?"

Jiang Xue nodded: "Yes, we can sell them for money. Let’s gather them first. When the containers are dry, we’ll soak and dry them. If we take the fresh ones down the mountain directly, they won’t sell for a good price. After we process them, there’ll be quite a harvest. See, this area is quite large. We’ll carve out another plot, grow vegetables, cultivate medicinal materials...,

Dong Yao got anxious: "You’re really planning to live on the mountain? There are tigers and wild boars here. Just the two of us, isn’t that seeking death?"

Jiang Xue shook her head, "Everyone says there are tigers, have you seen one? It’s normal to have wild boars; it’s not that easy to encounter a tiger. Besides, we’ve been back and forth in the mountains a lot these days, have you seen any large animals?"

"Though our current position is high, it’s also in the shallow part of the mountain. Snow Wolf Mountain is vast; there’s a whole forest behind and a deep pool and valley below. The deeper you go, the steeper and more dangerous it gets. We are on the mountain’s side now; if it weren’t for finding this suitable cave, we wouldn’t live here, thousands of meters high, close to the waterfall. It’s noisy but scenic, much simpler than building a separate house, right?"