Once Jiang Xue was certain Dong Yao had left, she swiftly entered the space. By the time the two men rushed over due to the lack of sound, not a trace of them was left.

"Where are they? Two kids and you can’t even keep an eye on them. Hurry up and find them; they made quite a bit of money today, bought many things. If we take it back, we won’t have to spend for the next ten days or half a month."

The other man rubbed his hands together, his face full of excitement: "More importantly, they’re girls. We can sell girls for money. Quick, let’s catch up to them."

Upon hearing this, Jiang Xue confirmed that these two were indeed following them and had improper thoughts. She initially planned to knock them out with a stick but then thought, since they’re coming right to her door, why not use them? So she jumped and stood right in front of them.

The two men were startled when they saw Jiang Xue appear out of nowhere. "Whoa, in the middle of the night like this, scared me to death. Where did you come from?"

Yet, thinking that they had lost the girls, and now one had delivered herself to them, she pretended to sprain her ankle and squatted down on the ground.

"Uncle, my foot hurts, seems like I’ve twisted it. Could you help me check it? I’ll treat you to candy; I just bought some this late afternoon!"

The two ruffians were infected by her bright smile and instinctively squatted down next to her. But before they could reach for her foot, she moved both hands simultaneously and stuffed two instantly melting, vile-tasting medicine pills into their mouths. The men widened their eyes and instinctively wanted to spit them out, but she held their jaws, forcing them to swallow the pills.

Once the pills were swallowed, Jiang Xue grinned at them and clapped her hands.

"I apologize for ruining your plans; it seems you won’t be able to kidnap us today. What you just ate is my newly developed slow-acting poison. If you want to live, come find us on the mountain by tomorrow morning. Before then, you might want to see a doctor to verify if you’re really poisoned. Of course, if you’re lucky enough to find a skilled doctor, you might survive!"

Jiang Xue’s figure flickered and vanished like a specter into the cricket-chirping grove. Once she left, the two men finally felt their bodies return to normal, screamed, and fled in panic, causing crows in the grove to fly about in cacophony...

Jiang Xue didn’t take long to find Dong Yao, who looked at her incredulously and asked.

"Just now, that noise...?"

"Oh, just two cowards, nothing serious. They can’t cause any real trouble. Let’s go; we have a long mountain journey ahead. Hungry? If you are, we can eat a little something first,"

Dong Yao shook his head, thoughtfully watching Jiang Xue’s departing back, increasingly curious about this enigmatic girl: who exactly was she?

Jiang Xue and Dong Yao managed to climb the mountain by the Chou hour (1 to 3 AM). As soon as Jiang Xue collapsed into the grass nest and fell asleep, she suddenly slapped her forehead.

"Ah, damn it, how could I forget such an important thing—cotton, we forgot to buy cotton."

"Forget it; let’s have those two unlucky guys buy it later." Jiang Xue muttered as she drifted into sleep, while Dong Yao dared not sleep directly, gathered firewood, and used a flint to light it. Although the cave entrance wasn’t sealed yet and blocked only with branches and firewood, having a fire was still safer.

They slept until the next day when the sun was high in the sky, roughly around the Si hour (broad daylight, 9 to 11 AM).

Jiang Xue awoke before Dong Yao, hurriedly transforming items from within the space. Fortunately, she had stored the meat in the space yesterday. Otherwise, it would probably have spoiled outside and attracted critters. It seemed Dong Yao was too exhausted to remember.

The new iron pot had to be seasoned, just as she needed to render lard. So she diced pig skin and about a pound of pork fat, cleaned them thoroughly, and used them to render oil in the iron pot, turning the pots until the oil sediment turned black, at which point the sediment was discarded as it was unusable.

Then she stir-fried wild vegetables on high heat, mainly to wipe the pot—these were discarded as well. She cleaned thoroughly before setting the pot on the burner again, cut another piece of pork skin into the pot, used a spatula to wipe, cleaned, dried, wiped, repeated three or four times until all pork skin was used up (requested separately), completing the seasoning of the iron pot.