A peasant girl traveled through time and space, and she became prosperous

Chapter 327 Seeking Water for Survival

Hearing someone shout behind her, Wen Meijiu quickly jumped off the carriage and ran back like a madwoman.

This is the tenth person to faint, all because of the hot weather and lack of water.

"Bring water."

Wen Meijiu shouted at Ma Rulan, who was not far away.

Ma Rulan didn't dare to linger for a moment. She quickly grabbed the water bag, ran over, squatted down in front of Wen Meijiu, and poured water into Zhongyong's mouth.

Soon, Zhongyong's father opened his eyes. Zhongyong, standing beside him, was moved to tears and kept thanking Wen Meijiu.

Ignoring all that, Wen Meijiu's throat was parched, and she reached out to take the water pouch from Ma Rulan and poured it into her mouth.

After a thin trickle of water flowed out, it stopped flowing altogether, and she anxiously shook the water bag repeatedly.

"Miss, there's no water left."

Ma Rulan looked at Wen Meijiu with a troubled expression, unable to bear to tell such a cruel truth.

Lately, the water problem has become increasingly prominent, and now even cooking has become a problem.

We're not far from Donghai County now; it'll be at most seven days from here. Although the riverbed is dry, the drought situation is much better than on the previous roads, so getting water shouldn't be this difficult.

The reason for this was that the local government, in order to protect its own interests, set up many checkpoints along the route of the refugees fleeing famine, preventing them from entering their villages or towns to fetch water.

"What should we do, miss?"

Ma Rulan didn't want to ask that question, but the team was already unable to move, and she was about to face the problem of having no water to cook.

Although water was hard to obtain in the past, there were still places to get it. Warming the wine and taking some water from the space was enough to fool people.

Now that there's no water source, it won't be so easy for her to cheat.

To temporarily appease people, Wen Meijiu pretended to be relaxed and said:

"With so many of us, this little matter of drinking water is nothing. I'll talk to the village chief in a bit, and we'll definitely come up with a solution. Don't worry."

The villagers who had gathered around relaxed their brows slightly upon hearing her words, though they hadn't completely let go of their anger.

It was too hot, and it was already noon, so Wen Meijiu and the village chief discussed it and decided to take a rest on the spot.

"Fine wine, if this continues, we'll all die."

The village chief pointed to the motionless disaster victims not far away and spoke to Wen Meijiu with great concern.

Wen Meijiu nodded as she thought about how to properly extract the water from the space and distribute it to the villagers.

Lost in thought, she overtook the village chief by a wide margin, so much so that she didn't even notice him falling behind.

"Fine wine, huh? How about we chip in some money and ask those officials to do us a favor?"

The village chief scratched his head. He didn't want to do this kind of thing of trying to please others, but now that he was about to die, why should he think about such things?

After speaking for a while, seeing Wen Meijiu walking ahead without any reaction, the village chief stopped and called out to her twice.

Upon hearing this, Wen Meijiu realized what was wrong and hurriedly asked what was wrong.

The village chief was both amused and exasperated, and repeated what he had just said to her.

Wen Meijiu shook her head slightly. Along the way, the villagers had already spent a lot of money to buy water. The local government had blocked the road to prevent disaster victims from entering the village. In addition to ensuring the water resources for the locals, some people were deliberately doing this to take advantage of the situation to raise water prices and make a fortune.

You might say that drinking water is expensive, but the key is that we need water for cooking and daily life. So many people are buying it. Whether they sell it or not is another matter, but even if they do sell it, they can sell water at the price of gold.

Wen Meijiu told the village chief her idea, and the village chief sighed, "No matter how expensive it is, we have to give it a try, right?"

After thinking it over, I realized that the village chief was forced into a corner. It might not be a bad thing for him to give it a try. Some things can't be turned back until you hit a wall.

“Okay, Grandpa, let’s split up. You take some people to buy water, and I see there’s a river here. Maybe we can find a place where water is seeping out.”

The village chief glanced at the riverbed beside him; in some places, it had cracked open with large fissures. He shook his head, not holding out much hope.

"It's difficult!"

How will you know if you don't try?

Grandpa, we can't put all our eggs in one basket. We need to pursue multiple strategies simultaneously to maximize our benefits.

Knowing Wen Meijiu's temperament, the village chief didn't try to persuade her further, but simply nodded in agreement.

Having finished speaking, Wen Meijiu saw the village chief standing there, looking somewhat embarrassed, and realized that he wanted money but was too embarrassed to ask.

Wen Meijiu reached into his pocket, pulled out twenty taels of silver, and stuffed it into the village chief's hand. He was a little flustered by the unexpected gesture.

“We don’t need these. Everyone should chip in; every family has to contribute.”

Wen Meijiu thought to herself, "Even if I could buy water, I don't know how expensive it would be. This amount of silver probably wouldn't be enough to buy much water."

Furthermore, water is too expensive, and the villagers are reluctant to pay for it. She will pay more first so as not to put the village chief in a difficult position.

I thought this in my heart, but I couldn't say it out loud, for fear of dampening the enthusiasm of the village chief and the villagers.

"Grandpa, take this first, and give it back to me when you have the rest."

The village chief was very excited to receive the money. He quickly called over a few young men and divided them into two groups. One group gave the money to Wen Meijiu, while the other group followed him to collect the money and buy water.

"Fine wine, but can we really find water?"

Dazhu was one of their own, so he naturally ended up in Wen Meijiu's group. He was clearly very skeptical of Wen Meijiu's decision, much like the village chief.

Unlike Dazhu's deep concern, Zhongyong deeply admired Wen Meijiu ever since she avenged him. He had switched places with others to join Wen Meijiu's group.

Zhongyong squeezed between Dazhu and Wenmeijiu, patting his chest and assuring Dazhu.

"I trust Sister Meijiu; she never exaggerates."

Da Zhu, a tall and burly man, elbowed him aside and joked:

"What are you guaranteeing? Meijiu hasn't even said anything yet, and you're not a mind reader."

Knowing that Dazhu meant no harm, Zhongyong punched Dazhu in the back, then turned to look at Wen Meijiu, wanting to hear what he had to say.

Seeing that everyone was looking at her, Wen Meijiu glanced at them with feigned profundity, then beckoned them to come closer.

“My dad once told me a story, I don’t know if you’ve heard it before…”

Wen Meijiu told them a story about a drought year, in which a child found a patch of lush wild grass on a mountain and said there was water underneath. At first, the villagers misunderstood and scolded him, but in the end, they actually dug out water and were praised and lauded by the villagers.

After hearing this story, the young people suddenly became excited, because they also wanted to be the one being praised.

"Sister, how can we find a water source?"

Some people, wanting to be heroes, were the first to raise their questions.

"Find places where grass grows, find places where the soil is moist."

Some clever people have already drawn inspiration from the story and made their own conclusions.

"That's right, just look for these two points, understand?"

Wen Meijiu narrowed her eyes slightly, a half-smile playing on her lips, affirming the summary.

"Don't worry, I'm determined to be this hero!"

Young calves are not afraid of tigers, and some bold young people are already eager to try.

"I want to be one too."

"I also want."

Wen Meijiu smiled silently as she looked at the enthusiastic young men.