Socially Anxious Girl Starts Hoarding Before the Apocalypse

Chapter 160

The hunter began discussing the exchange weights with Big Jin, as the two children from Big Jin's family had already run back home to prepare containers for collecting items.

After Big Jin's family finished exchanging their items, Wen Qian then inquired if they needed anything else.

Through their conversation, she learned that the beautiful woman's name was Zhu Jin, and she also had another name, Ni Sha. Her husband's name was Li Anming.

Ni Sha directly said that she wanted grains and seeds, anything that could be grown here.

So Wen Qian asked if they wanted potatoes and sweet potatoes, and they nodded in agreement. However, since the weather was hot now, they couldn't preserve them for too long, so they only took a basket to eat.

They also felt that Wen Qian wouldn't have too much, since her household consisted of only one person.

Then Wen Qian asked if they wanted wheat and corn, and after thinking that these two could be preserved for a long time, they also agreed.

Wen Qian requested fish roe sauce, honey, and all the seafood she had brought.

As expected, the meat items placed at the bottom just for padding were not of much interest to these two families.

Wen Qian then turned back home saying she would fetch the items, and since there were many items to exchange, she started preparing the items she had prepared for exchanging inside her space.

The wheat and corn were stored in jars, while the potatoes and sweet potatoes were placed in baskets she had woven.

All the items were placed outside the front door, and Wen Qian called them over to carry the items.

Wen Qian had an old-fashioned steelyard scale and asked if they needed to weigh the items again.

Li Anming directly tested the weight with his hands, feeling somewhat troubled. They had indeed come with the intention of exchanging for more grains.

But he also knew that during the long winter, people here must have consumed more grains, so he felt that the two of them should be able to carry everything away.

However, with the jars and baskets, it would take a long time to carry them back. And if they used a wooden sled to pull them back, they were worried about the items falling into the water.

So they negotiated with Wen Qian, deciding to take half of the items today and leave the other half at her place, then come back the next day to retrieve the rest.

They used their own animal skin bags to swap out Wen Qian's containers.

Just the wheat and corn alone were more than they had expected. Later, Lisa also asked Wen Qian if she could exchange a woven basket for some cured meat, and Wen Qian agreed.

In the end, Ni Sha simply gave all her cured meat to Wen Qian, and Wen Qian gave her a small vegetable basket in return.

This exchange was very successful. Wen Qian even tasted the fish roe sauce, and they gave her a few small spoons made of seashells, telling her to use these small spoons to scoop it out when she wanted to eat it.

As for these seafood items, Wen Qian didn't have enough money to stockpile them back then, at most buying some seaweed and the like. The rest of the seafood was just a taste.

But after all these years, she was actually able to exchange for them, and Wen Qian was curious why they had come here. Was it really because of the cold making it impossible to grow crops?

Wen Qian thought about it and felt that it wasn't entirely the case, but she didn't need to pry too much, as that was their privacy.

After packing the grains into their animal skin bags, the two carried away the items they were taking today, leaving the rest for Wen Qian to move into her room for them to pick up the next day.

Wen Qian didn't need to worry about any disputes between them, as the items packed in the animal skin bags were weighed by them, and even the knots on the ropes were tied by them.

Lisa was very delighted with these grains, and what made her even happier was when they asked Wen Qian if she could leave them some sweet potato sprouts and sprouting potatoes the following spring, Wen Qian readily agreed.

Wen Qian didn't even discuss with her what to exchange for them, as she loved these two foods very much. So they made an arrangement that the next spring, she would come and exchange for them with game.

The current season was not suitable for growing potatoes and sweet potatoes, so they would first plant the vegetable seeds they had exchanged.

The sweet potatoes and potatoes they had brought back home, other than eating them, couldn't be preserved until the following spring.

If they could successfully obtain the sprouts from Wen Qian and grow them at home, then they wouldn't need to exchange with others in the future.

Every year, they could grow their own sweet potatoes and potatoes, only needing to preserve enough to last through the winter, and then plant again the following spring.

After dividing the items, they helped Wen Qian carry everything from the shore to her front door.

Then they waved goodbye, and Lisa said she would come back again the next day.

Wen Qian hung the cured meat they gave her in the yard to continue drying, while the jars for honey and fish roe sauce were from Ni Sha's family, so Wen Qian didn't need to provide her own containers.

Theoretically, these jars should have been counted as part of the exchange, but since Wen Qian had exchanged a lot of items, Ni Sha simply gave them to her.

Wen Qian took out the somewhat dried seafood items, which still had salt grains stuck to them, and examined them carefully one by one.

She thought that the salt they had used to pack the seafood was probably sea salt, and Wen Qian remembered the things she had dug out from the salt pans in Xia Province long ago.

Even though she had used a lot of salt for curing meat, she had already considered her usage when she initially purchased it, so she wasn't lacking any.

Since these were seafood items, Wen Qian planned to go back and look through cookbooks to see how to make them taste good.

Wen Qian had grown up in a small mountain village and had a longing for the sea. Later, after watching videos online of people going to the sea, she became even more envious, as just being by the seaside meant being able to gather many edible things, which must be amazing.

But what she didn't know was that Ni Sha's family didn't actually live by the sea either. They could only reach the sea mouth by taking a few days to travel by boat along the river.

This new neighbor family still had something they hadn't shown the two neighbors - their tamed reindeer.

Otherwise, carrying seafood and a lot of salt would have taken them much longer to reach this place.

After Ni Sha and her husband returned home, the first thing they did was quickly fire the dried clay bodies they had prepared.

Jars were still the best for storing grains, as wooden boxes or animal skin bags were more susceptible to damage from rats and insects.

Firing the kiln required building the kiln first and preparing a lot of firewood.

This was no problem, as they had exchanged a lot of grains from their two neighbors, allowing them to reduce their hunting time and focus on this task.

Additionally, they could fire more, and later see if their neighbors wanted any. If they didn't know how to do it, they could teach them.

Because according to the information they had read, autumn was the best season for firing the kiln, so Wen Qian planned to fire it in the autumn.

Even if Ni Sha's family wanted to exchange things that had been cooked, Wen Qian would likely agree to the exchange, because she could use them for quality comparison.

That evening, Wen Qian cooked a porridge with dried scallops and shrimp. As for the other ingredients, she stored them in her spatial pocket to eat slowly.

The other half of the things that the new neighbors didn't take, she also put into her spatial pocket, because she was worried that at night they might get bitten by insects or rats, which would only cause more trouble.

Ni Sha's family's skills didn't stop there, and later they exchanged with the neighbors many more times.