As soon as she stepped outside, a wave of heat assaulted her face.
Tianjia Village hadn't seen rain in three months, and now it was the hottest part of summer. Just walking a few steps made Qin Sang feel like she was being baked into a mummy.
For a family of eight, there was one main room used for meals and receiving guests. The room on the left was where the Original Owner lived with her youngest son. The room on the right belonged to the newlywed Third Brother and his Wife. There was also a kitchen connected to a woodshed. Outside the woodshed was a chicken coop, and behind it was the vegetable plot. The fourth daughter usually slept in the woodshed, while the eldest three had built a shack on the vegetable plot.
Thatched roof, earthen walls—the poverty was plain to see. The most valuable thing in the house was probably the table in the main room, which was part of Third Brother's Wife's dowry.
Some dried vegetables, all sun-dried by Eldest Brother's Wife, hung on the walls. A few farming tools leaned in the corner—only a hoe and a sickle.
A black clay pot and a few chipped cups sat on the table. The floor was packed earth. In this weather, every step stirred up the raw smell of dirt and dust. In this short time, Qin Sang felt her throat clogging up, making it hard to breathe.
Outside the house stood a peach tree. This year's drought meant no fruit, and the leaves were curled and yellow from the sun. The courtyard wall, however, was built high. Back when the Original Owner's husband went off to be a Common Soldier, leaving his wife alone at home on the village outskirts, he had the wall built tall for safety. From inside, you couldn't see out. Wooden spikes and branches were embedded in the top of the earthen wall.
Qin Sang glanced through the open courtyard gate. Every household had low, thatched-roof huts. In the distance, she could barely make out the wheat in the fields, wilted and sparse, with little grain.
She went to the kitchen. The pots, pans, bowls, and dishes were pitifully few. Salt was stored in a bamboo tube. A jar held a bit of pickled vegetables. Two wooden buckets held water for drinking and use. Passing through the kitchen to the vegetable garden, a crude shack connected to the outhouse stood out starkly. A manure basket sat outside, emitting a foul stench of waste, with flies buzzing around it.
There was a lot of land, all dug by Eldest Brother and his wife. With no water for irrigation, even though the couple toiled in the fields from dawn till dusk, what should have been a season of abundant vegetables now yielded only sparse, withered plants that looked ready to dry up and die any second.
From her memories, it seemed the Original Owner's family only had about one and a half bags of grain left. With eight mouths to feed, even if they ate nothing but thin porridge, it would only last about a month.
Dirt poor. A hellish start.
Zhou Dahua, coming out from checking the chicken coop, unexpectedly bumped into Qin Sang, who was inspecting the place, and jumped back in fright.
"M-Mother-in-law..."
Having seen everything, Qin Sang's heart sank. This transmigration might as well not have happened.
She wanted to live, but could she survive here?
Yet, seeing her eldest daughter-in-law's frail frame, Qin Sang couldn't help but feel pity.
"Are there a lot of mosquitoes at night?"
Zhou Dahua was stunned. Faced with this sudden concern from her Mother-in-law, she shook her head in frightened denial.
Qin Sang sighed. She herself had only been standing here a short while and already had two mosquito bites. Looking at the many red welts on her eldest daughter-in-law's neck and the back of her hands, how could there not be mosquitoes?
The psychological shadow the Original Owner had cast on this eldest daughter-in-law was probably something even Einstein couldn't calculate.
"You, take Si Jin and come with me to the foot of the mountain to see if we can find any mugwort leaves. We can burn some or hang them by the door and inside the house to repel mosquitoes tonight."
Not daring to disobey, Zhou Dahua went inside to fetch Tian Sijin from the second room and followed behind Qin Sang towards the mountain foot.
If crops couldn't grow, wild plants weren't faring much better either. The weeds by the roadside were so dry they could spontaneously combust. Qin Sang began to worry she might have underestimated the severity of the drought here. What if the mugwort had dried up and died too?
After walking for about the time it takes a stick of incense to burn, Qin Sang was drenched in sweat and nearly faint from the heat. But fortunately, they finally found some wild mugwort leaves. Perhaps fewer people came to this part of the mountain foot, and with no crops competing for water and some shade from trees making it cooler than the fields, the wild grasses were still relatively lush.
Finding a large patch of mugwort leaves, without needing the Original Owner to say a word, Zhou Dahua and Tian Sijin immediately started picking.
"Don't rush. First, make some noise with sticks to scare away any snakes," Qin Sang instructed, panting as she sat down on a large rock to catch her breath.
Farming families were accustomed to using mugwort leaves. Even in later times, during the Dragon Boat Festival, people would buy mugwort from the streets to ward off evil spirits and insects. However, it was usually just hung on doorframes, with limited effect—more about tradition and sentiment than actual efficacy.
Qin Sang planned to sun-dry the picked mugwort leaves, chop them finely, and process them into mugwort floss. The thick smoke from burning that would be effective at repelling mosquitoes. Making it into mosquito coils would be even better.
Seeing the two obediently lash the area with branches for a while, driving away insects, Qin Sang also started picking. She plucked a stalk of mugwort and sniffed it. The aroma was rich and refreshingly fragrant—an effect unmatched by the mugwort sold in pharmacies in her later life.
A *ding* sounded in her mind: High-quality pure wild mugwort leaves detected. Price: 12 mall coins per jin. Sell?
Qin Sang subconsciously clenched the mugwort in her hand. Was this the system that every transmigrator in novels and TV shows was equipped with?
You finally showed up.
Tears of joy welled in Qin Sang's eyes as she immediately began examining the System Mall in her mind.
In Zhou Dahua and Tian Sijin's minds, it was only right for Qin Sang to rest. If Qin Sang actually exerted herself to pick these mugwort leaves, they would be the ones feeling anxious and uneasy.
Qin Sang had no time to dwell on that. Her mind now held a Mall interface. Her mall coins balance was zero, and the product display page was as convenient as the shopping apps from her later life.
Qin Sang first checked the price of rice in the Mall. The cheapest was 1.8 mall coins per jin, the most expensive over ten. Qin Sang figured that even the worst rice from her later times would be considered top-tier in this ancient era, something ordinary farming families simply couldn't afford.
One jin of fresh mugwort could be sold for 10 mall coins, which could buy five jin of the two-coin white rice in the Mall.
She wouldn't starve to death.
There was also bottled water, priced similarly to later times, the cheapest being five coins for five liters.
She wouldn't die of thirst either.
Qin Sang tried to converse with the system in her mind, but it remained silent and unresponsive.
Qin Sang then looked at the Mall's terms and conditions: No reselling?
So, she couldn't take modern goods from the Mall and open a supermarket in ancient times?
Fine. Her grand get-rich-quick scheme instantly evaporated.
Better to keep her feet on the ground and quickly pick more mugwort to earn mall coins.
Having the Mall as a safety net was already good enough. No point asking for the moon.
Seeing Qin Sang start working, faster and more deftly than them, Zhou Dahua became even more afraid to look up. Her heart leapt into her throat, and she didn't dare stop even when the mugwort stems scraped her palms raw.
Tian Sijin was much the same. Though young, she worked efficiently. In no time, she had a bundle behind her, looking to weigh over ten jin.
Qin Sang herself had also picked quite a bit, around five or six jin. Taking advantage of the mugwort being waist-high, she crouched down, opened the System Mall in her mind, navigated to the sell page, and sold half of the mugwort she had picked.
On the panel, her mall coins balance changed to thirty-four.
To verify how purchased items would appear, Qin Sang, still crouching, opened the buy page and spent one Mall coin on a Shumai dumpling.
After clicking 'buy,' a Shumai from a breakfast shop of her later life appeared in her palm, still warm. Qin Sang stuffed it into her mouth in one go. The savory, soft, glutinous flavor nearly made her cheer out loud.
So delicious. So nostalgic.
It tasted like home.
After verifying, Qin Sang continued picking mugwort. After the better part of an hour, the three of them had harvested the entire patch in front of them.
"Mother, let me carry that."
Zhou Dahua hurried over to take the bundle of mugwort from Qin Sang, only to find her Mother-in-law, who had been moving so deftly earlier, had only picked a small handful.
Maybe Mother-in-law got tired after picking for a while and sat down to rest.
Without overthinking it, she tried to hoist the bundle onto her own shoulder and also offered to take Si Jin's.
"Give me Si Jin's bundle. It's not much anyway." It wasn't that Qin Sang was being diligent; she needed to take Si Jin's bundle to continue selling mugwort to the Mall.
In just this short while, her mall coins balance had already reached eighty-seven.
She felt uncomfortable not rounding it up to a nice number.
Before Tian Sijin could even voice her refusal, Qin Sang had already slung that bundle of mugwort over her own shoulder.
"You two hurry back home to start cooking. Your mother is hungry."
Zhou Dahua still wanted to say something, but this order shut her up. She rushed home with Tian Sijin in tow. If Mother was hungry and in a bad mood, she would beat and scold them.
Qin Sang was happy to follow behind at a leisurely pace.
By the time Qin Sang had rounded up her coins and returned home, she unexpectedly ran right into Eldest Brother and Third Brother at the courtyard gate.
Not seeing the others, Qin Sang asked curiously:
"Da Zhuang, where's Eldest Girl? Why haven't you brought her back yet? Still worried I'm going to sell her?"