Chapter 167: Last Winter, There Was Even More Snow
The snow continued falling until the next day morning.
What made Su Ran relieved was that fortunately yesterday daytime, she and Gray had been clearing the snow accumulated in front of the door.
It was also fortunate that when they built the house back then, they made the door panel in a sliding style; if it had been an outward-opening door, they wouldn’t have been able to get out of the room that morning.
After the snow stopped, the temperature in the forest dropped even further.
Su Ran felt that the current temperature was at least minus thirty degrees, and the current time was not even one-half of the entire winter.
Early in the morning, the sky outside was already bright.
Su Ran felt the chilling temperature inside the room that made her shiver, wrapped herself in the quilt to stand up, opened the closet, and took out the thicker clothes she had made inside.
And it wasn’t just her.
Even Gray, after getting up and going out to bring in some firewood to light the stove, looked at Su Ran with a aggrieved expression and kept saying it was cold.
Su Ran quickly took out two coats for him and found a set of thin red-skinned pig hide inner autumn clothing.
Of the two sets of outer clothes she took for Gray, one was a long-sleeved top and trousers sewn from a single layer of animal hide with the fur removed, and the other was a long-sleeved top and trousers of the same style made from animal hide with the fluff intact.
Gray took off the long-sleeved single-layer sweater and trousers he was originally wearing and put on the new long johns Su Ran had taken out.
Then he put the sweater and trousers back on, and finally wore the single-layer coat without fur on top.
That set of coat with fluff was still a bit thick for him at the current temperature, and wearing it would make him feel a little hot.
Wearing such thick clothes on his body for the first time made Gray a bit uncomfortable.
He repeatedly spread his wings behind him and then folded them back, adapting to the strange sensation brought by the new clothes.
Su Ran had also used tail fur from the two-tailed beast to make two loops that fit perfectly around the roots of Gray’s wings.
When Gray was about to go out, she would put them on the roots of his wings on his back to prevent the clothes from letting wind leak in through the wing openings.
After Gray changed his clothes, he squatted in front of the stove and first lit the stove.
Once the fire in the stove was lit, Su Ran had also finished putting on her clothes.
The clothes she wore were much thicker than Gray’s!
Hairless red-skinned pig hide long johns, plus double-layer sweater and trousers with cotton, and then fur-lined animal hide jacket and trousers, making her look bulging all over.
But for warmth, Su Ran didn’t care whether it looked good or not, as long as it didn’t affect her movement.
Moreover, perhaps because the cold weather consumed too much heat, she felt that recently she was a bit thinner than when winter first started, so although the clothes on her body were cumbersome, her mobility wasn’t much affected.
After putting on clothes, Su Ran went to the kitchen to start making breakfast. Meanwhile, Gray had already started taking the bone shovel to go outside and clear the snow from the roof and the eaves.
Before entering the kitchen, Su Ran first went to the house doorway, lifted the thick animal hide door curtain, and looked outside.
As expected without surprise, she saw that the places outside that had not been cleared of snow before now had snow layers piled up as high as her chest.
Seeing this scene, Su Ran’s heart couldn’t help but skip a beat!
With the current weather so cold, this accumulated snow would actually be very hard to melt in a short time.
And this winter still had a long way to go; there might be many more such heavy snowfalls in the remaining time.
So, after these snows melt, would they cause flooding from accumulated water?
A sense of worry surged in Su Ran’s heart.
Mainly, she thought of those stones at the gravel beach upstream of the river beach; those stones should have been brought there by floods.
“Gray, in the previous winter, was there snow this heavy too?”
Su Ran stood in front of the two snowmen piled up yesterday and asked Gray.
Those two snowmen were almost completely buried by the new layer of snow.
“The previous winter?”
Gray looked up at Su Ran, thought for a moment, and answered: “Yes woo~ The previous winter had even bigger snow.”
As he spoke, he counted on his fingers, then held up four fingers to Su Ran: “Four such heavy snows!”
His gaze looked at Su Ran, a bit puzzled why she was asking this.
Su Ran, however, breathed a slight sigh of relief.
If the previous winters had always been like this, she could rest assured.
That meant that even if the accumulated water from melting this amount of snow could raise the river water level, it still wouldn’t cause any harm to the environment on both banks.
Then she thought of the beastmen living in caves in the settlement, and her mind became even more settled.
If snowmelt would cause floods, those beastmen wouldn’t live in caves.
But she was still a bit curious: “So, does this snow have to wait until spring to melt into water?”
“Some of it does woo~” Gray nodded:
“The snow later on takes a long time to melt, then it becomes river water woo~”
“Without snow, the river water would be very very little!”
So that’s how it is.
Su Ran nodded.
This fits the saying that a heavy snowfall heralds a good harvest.
Although too much snowmelt can cause floods, in comparison, the greater snowfall volume on this continent ensures that the rivers won’t run dry.
The more it snows, the better.
Su Ran completely set her mind at ease and returned inside the room to start making breakfast.
The weather was too cold; she and Gray had recently developed the habit of drinking hot soup in the morning.
Even vegetable soup, Gray now accepted without refusal.
This morning, Su Ran made blue fish soup.
She first boiled hot water on the stove, then used the axe to chop a whole frozen blue fish into pieces, and put them in clean water to wash.
These past two days with heavy snow outside, she and Gray got their water by directly bringing in clean snow from outside to melt.
The chopped fish head was set aside first, planning to make pickled vegetable fish head later. The green vegetables Su Ran pickled when winter began were now edible.
After heating oil in the pot, Su Ran first put in the prepared fish pieces to fry briefly, then added a few torn kelp leaves, and directly poured in hot water to start boiling the soup.
Blue fish meat is fresh and delicious; when simmering soup, using too many seasonings would instead affect its flavor.
Now they just needed to wait for the soup to boil, then add sea salt later.
The fish soup was stewing directly on the stove inside the room; after putting the fish soup on the stove, Su Ran went to the kitchen to start making other food.
She went to the small storage room in the back and first scooped out several bowls of flour ground from green soap fruit.
Then in the mixing bowl, she added hot water, first stirred the flour and water together with chopsticks, then began kneading the dough.
Today she planned to pan-fry a few pancakes to eat.
Drinking soup should go with oil pancakes, after all.
Pan-frying pancakes isn’t difficult; Su Ran knew how to do it back home before.
Now she only regretted not learning how to make leavened dough, otherwise she could make steamed buns or steamed buns too!
