It's really hard to just farm peacefully.

Chapter 182

Jiang Yan carried a thick straw mat on his head, two straw bags slung across his shoulders, cooking utensils in his left hand, and a "javelin" in his right hand. He walked through the mud, one foot deep and one foot shallow, and stood still at the foot of an unknown mountain.

Looking at the village not far away with wisps of smoke rising from it, Jiang Yan straightened his back and breathed a sigh of relief. He had finally made it out!

From the day she stopped to weave straw, she walked for another six days.

The mountain roads were incredibly difficult to navigate during those six days. It was sunny one day, rainy one day, drizzling three days, and cloudy one day. If she hadn't been so well prepared, she would have been drenched, and probably seriously ill.

Jiang Yan put away his emotion, pushed back the straw rope that was about to slip off his shoulder, and strode forward.

She had to find someone to find out where she had been.

……

"Hexia Village? Which river, which Xia?" Even though he knew that he was walking towards the southeast and there was no way he would ever return to the vicinity of Heding Prefecture, Jiang Yan still had a shadow over this name.

"A river that flows, one that flows up and down, what else could it be?" The villager Jiang Yan had called in for questioning stared at the four arrowheads atop her "javelin," gripping the hoe handle defensively and asking, "Where are you from? What are you doing in our village?"

Jiang Yan took a few steps back to hint that she had no ill intentions, then said awkwardly, "I'm from Hexia Village. A few days ago, I went into the mountains with the villagers to find food. Unexpectedly, it started to rain heavily and we got separated. Since we didn't know the way, we just walked along the mountain path and came here."

The villager held the hoe across his chest and said, "Besides our village, I've never heard of another Hexia Village in this area."

"It's not the river that means water flows, it's the surname." Jiang Yan smiled and said, "It's in Heding Prefecture."

The villagers were suspicious: "Heding Prefecture is so far away, you walked here alone?"

Jiang Yan was embarrassed: "I've been gone...it seems like seventy, eighty, ninety days."

The villagers were now distracted and looked at Jiang Yan carefully. From her tangled hair to her cloth shoes that were almost worn out, she looked in a miserable state.

He spoke in a gentle tone with sympathy: "We are from Zhongyuan Prefecture."

"Zhongyuan Prefecture?" Jiang Yan was dumbfounded. She knew that she was going in the wrong direction, but she didn't expect the deviation to be so big that she ended up in Beppu territory.

Seeing Jiang Yan's stunned look, the villagers thought she didn't know about Zhongyuan Prefecture, and said enthusiastically and proudly:

"Don't you know where Zhongyuan Prefecture is? Let me tell you, Zhongyuan Prefecture is just west of Kyoto. Our village is even closer to Kyoto. It only takes three days to walk there, which is about the same as going to the prefectural capital."

This distance... Jiang Yan recalled the minimalist map of Northern Jin that he had accidentally seen from Fu Nulang, and for the first time he felt that the journey home was really long.

According to her calculations, if she didn't consider terrain obstacles, didn't consider being stranded along the way, didn't worry about food, drink and shelter, and traveled day and night, and everything went well, it would take at least twelve or thirteen days to cross Zhongyuan Prefecture and return to Dongshan Village.

Jiang Yan thought a little dejectedly, why not just walk through the mountains? After all, after so many days of walking, I have some experience and insights, but I just don't know when the fork in the road will appear.

Moreover, it was very cold in the mountains in September, both in the morning and at night. She was wearing thin clothes and was weak, so it was really unbearable.

Seeing Jiang Yan fall silent, the villagers tentatively asked, "Do you know how to get back? Even through the mountains?"

Jiang Yan shook his head slightly: "I haven't thought about it yet."

"I haven't thought about it yet..." After a moment's delay, the villager picked up his hoe and was about to go home for breakfast when his mind suddenly popped up the third grandson of his wife's second brother from her mother's family. His family was poor and he was dull. That silly donkey hadn't mentioned his young wife yet...

His cloudy eyes moved quickly, but when he turned around, he was very kind: "Little girl, I can see that it's not easy for you either. Why don't you go to my house to rest, have a glass of water and think slowly?"