Chapter 118
Wen Qian planned to take various building materials to construct a street, no matter if it was furniture or bricks and stones.
Initially, due to the volcanic winter, many people had run out of heating supplies and started cutting down the street trees after exhausting their stockpiled resources.
Originally, these places had very little greenery, and after the trees were taken for firewood, those areas could only grow weeds until now.
Wen Qian intended to acquire more construction materials purely to build a few more houses, as her future residence was likely to be where she would live for the rest of her life.
One house would not completely satisfy Wen Qian's expectations.
She needed a separate kitchen and bedroom, a room for storing supplies, and a place for storing firewood and hay.
If there was a courtyard, the ground would also need to be paved. In short, there were many things to be done.
In her ordinary winter days, she had drawn countless drafts of what she wanted her home to look like.
She needed to prepare the materials, tools, choose the location, estimate the time required, and find a suitable spot along the route.
During the long, boring winter days, what should spark her interest was planning for the future and looking forward to it.
While collecting materials, Wen Qian occasionally looked around.
With so much time having passed, memories of the past became blurred. Originally, there were not many people in this small town, and she knew this before coming.
When she was strolling around the town, she observed that its surroundings on the map were so desolate, and the nearest city was very far away, even taking a train would take several hours.
And now, there were no scheduled trains passing through here anymore.
Perhaps there were still some coal-fired steam trains, mostly for freight rather than passenger transport, but Wen Qian did not yet know which routes were still operating.
Therefore, when Wen Qian planned to leave, she would prepare for a relatively long time on the road.
After roughly planning the route, Wen Qian started searching for relevant information based on her previous research, to see if she could obtain some of the things she wanted on the way, whether seeds or plants.
At this point, zero-element shopping was basically impossible, and anything useful in supermarkets and stores would have been taken away.
After many years, some things that were not taken away should have spoiled as well.
Wen Qian spent two days collecting bricks and stones outside, which was not very tiring. In the places she walked, the bricks and stones on the sidewalks were all removed, leaving only the underlying concrete or bare soil exposed.
She walked around the city, quickly covering the exteriors of all the buildings, but as for the interiors, Wen Qian did not want to get too close.
She did not want to see any corpses inside.
During this time, she set up a movable house in the middle of the square, with open space all around and a very flat surface.
After collecting everything, Wen Qian headed northeast, as she remembered there were many planting areas in that direction.
There was a river surrounding the outskirts of the small town, and when Wen Qian saw this river, she wondered if there might be fish in it.
If they were purely wild, then the variety of fish here would be very limited, but if there had been aquaculture, then the variety should be quite diverse.
She was thinking about whether the local people had eaten everything edible before leaving this place.
Regardless, Wen Qian set up a sticky net at one spot, intending to check if there were any fish when she returned.
She also dropped a few fish traps, baited with some previous kitchen waste, such as chicken and duck offal.
Soon after leaving the river, she entered the planting area, which should have had many plots for growing wolfberries.
Wen Qian quickly found that patch, as it had grown many more weeds due to lack of maintenance.
Wen Qian considered that wolfberries could be propagated by cuttings, so she cut many wolfberry branches, preparing to plant them in a suitable location later.
She then walked further and came to the black wolfberry planting area, doing the same.
These wolfberries were basically all open-field cultivated, and since it was July, the wolfberries had not yet ripened, so Wen Qian did not pick any fruits.
There were also some jujube trees, and although they had weathered the storms, many were still surviving.
As for the varieties cultivated in the previous greenhouses, most had frozen to death due to the years of cold, with only a small portion stubbornly clinging to life.
For example, strawberries, so Wen Qian searched for strawberries among the weeds and cut off the runners.
While living things could not be put into the Space, parts of living things and seeds could.
Therefore, every time Wen Qian was particularly attentive to any plant varieties that could be propagated by cuttings, as she had previously bought some and stored them in the Space, but did not have a particularly large quantity.
Therefore, wherever she could find them, any varieties she could obtain, she would take cuttings and preserve them, hoping that one day she could grow them all.
Wen Qian spent more time in this area because there were strawberry, blueberry, and grape planting bases here, with quite a large area.
At this season, blueberries and strawberries were still bearing fruit, especially blueberries, which grew particularly well here, possibly because the cooler environment was more suitable for blueberry growth after the temperature drop.
Wen Qian picked a few strawberries and many blueberries.
Since they could all be propagated by cuttings, Wen Qian tried to take as many branches as possible.
In some grain planting areas, she could see traces of quinoa and wheat, perhaps seeds left on the ground from the previous mechanical harvesting that were not completely picked up.
It seemed that people had cultivated them to some extent afterwards, as abandoned farmland would always have some previously cultivated plants appearing among the weeds.
Therefore, those fields still had some crops here and there, but Wen Qian did not plan to harvest them at this time because the season had not yet arrived.
After leaving the planting area, Wen Qian finally remembered the fishing nets and fish traps she had set up earlier.
After more than a day, if there were any fish, they should have entered by now.
As expected, there were some small miscellaneous fish in the fish traps, not large but quite numerous, and before Wen Qian picked them up, she saw white in the river water.
A total of seven fish were caught in the three sticky nets, three large and four small, some still struggling and some already dead.
Happy to have this additional catch, Wen Qian collected everything into the Space.
After gathering these items, Wen Qian stood on the hill observing this city.
It was truly deserted.
After completing these tasks, Wen Qian began her return journey.
She had stayed here for two more days but was still concerned about the crops at home.
Although there had been no animal damage in recent years, she still felt uneasy after being away for several days without being able to patrol and inspect them.
She finally understood why Wen Qian's grandparents rarely went out back then.
Back then, Wen Qian's grandparents raised chickens, ducks, pigs, and cattle at home. If they went out for a day, these animals would starve, let alone if they were gone for an extended period. Someone had to stay home.
That's why they felt such a strong attachment to their hometown; it wasn't that they didn't want to go out and play, but they simply couldn't find the time.
Wen Qian thought that if she raised chickens, ducks, and grew crops in the future, she wouldn't dare to stray too far from home either.
On the way back, Wen Qian rode her bicycle the entire way, trying to conserve fuel whenever possible. Years had passed, and Wen Qian couldn't find any resources related to gasoline or diesel fuel.
These things would be very hard to come by in the future, and Wen Qian needed to save the remaining oil for the migration journey ahead.
After several days of travel, Wen Qian finally reached the ranch.
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