Jiang Xiangdong quickly went out to call for the doctor, his steps swift.

Inside the room, only Huo Bing and Xiaohua remained.

Shen Qing spoke up, “You two should go back to your rooms for now. We’ll wait for the doctor to take a look first.”

She needed to conserve her strength until the food arrived.

Right now, she had neither the energy nor the heart to do anything more.

“Alright, Mother-in-law, please rest well,” Huo Bing said, leading Xiaohua away. She turned back three times as she walked, her eyes filled with doubt and reluctance, but no longer with the distrust she had shown before.

Shen Qing waved her hand to signal them off.

Before long, a bowl of boiled eggs in water was brought up.

There was no sugar, only salt.

Shen Qing thought to herself: if only there was brown sugar and vegetable oil, she could fry the eggs until golden and crispy, pour in boiling water, and then add two to three spoonfuls of brown sugar to simmer over low heat.

That would be an incredibly nourishing dish for a woman recovering from childbirth.

Unfortunately, in these times, salt was a precious commodity, and sugar was even more expensive than salt.

For a family like theirs, even salt had to be used sparingly, let alone the luxury of buying brown sugar.

Shen Qing took a bite.

The soft, smooth texture was incomparable to the grainy corn porridge she had earlier. For her hungry body, it was an absolute delicacy!

It was delicious beyond words!

In the past, even when she made fried eggs, she always used chicken eggs, thinking that duck eggs were not as smooth and had a slight fishy smell.

But today, even though the eggs in her bowl were duck eggs, she found them surprisingly good.

Yes, the eggs in the bowl were duck eggs.

Xingcheng had many water sources, and the lakes and rivers were rich with snails, aquatic plants, and other small creatures.

Ducks that were let out in the morning would return in the evening, already well-fed, requiring no extra effort or feed to raise. Because of this, almost every household kept ducks.

With so many ducks around, both the ducks and their eggs were cheap.

Chicken eggs, on the other hand, were considered more delicate and smoother in texture.

The market rate was two chicken eggs for three duck eggs.

So even though families might eat a few duck eggs occasionally, chicken eggs were too valuable to consume—they were always saved up.

Instead of eating chicken eggs, families stored them up.

Even duck eggs were mostly kept for trade, exchanged for salt and other household necessities at the market.

Being able to eat duck eggs at all was already a blessing.

Shen Qing quickly finished one egg, then another, and finally drank every last drop of the broth in the rustic clay bowl.

She felt as if she had finally come back to life!

Her body, which had been weak and on the verge of collapse from hunger, gradually regained some strength.

After sitting at the edge of the bed for a while, Shen Qing took a deep breath and began to assess her family’s assets.

Following the memories from her dreams, she shifted to the innermost side of the bed, lifted the heavy, dusty gray quilt, and pulled out a small cloth pouch.

She emptied its contents onto the bed.

She carefully counted twice—eleven pieces of broken silver and 327 copper coins.

Shen Qing wasn’t sure of the exact value of the broken silver pieces, but judging by their size and the family’s financial situation, each piece was probably worth about one tael.

That meant the entire household’s savings amounted to just about eleven taels of silver and 327 copper coins.

In ancient times, salt was under strict government control, as it was a major source of tax revenue.

A single jin of salt cost around 70 to 80 copper coins, and one person needed about two to three jin of salt per year.

For a family of this size, they would need to spend at least one tael of silver per year just on salt!

Eleven taels was too little.

No wonder they had no financial security when the floods hit.

During a refugee crisis, money might not be worth much.

But once they passed through cities unaffected by the disaster, food and supplies were still available—for a price.

If they had silver, they could buy whatever they needed.

Most importantly, after finding a safe place to settle, they would need money to build a house, clear land for farming, and buy food. Every step required silver.

Thinking of the flood, vivid images of devastation flashed through Shen Qing’s mind.

She immediately got out of bed and walked toward the burlap sacks piled in the corner.

Three sacks—two full, one half-collapsed.

She opened the half-collapsed sack first. Inside was ground cornmeal, yellow with specks of white and brown.

This must be what they had used to make the porridge she ate earlier.

Shen Qing frowned.

If they were grinding corn into flour for food, then the other two sacks must contain unthreshed corn.

It was only March.

Wheat wouldn’t be harvested until early May.

How could this little bit of grain last the whole family until then?

March and April were the hardest months—the time of food shortages.

No wonder they were even grinding dried corn cobs into powder to stretch their meals.

Still, Shen Qing untied the ropes on the other two sacks.

As expected, one was full of unthreshed corn.

But in the other, she found a small cloth bag.

“Huh?”

She opened it and found white flour.

Testing its weight, she estimated it at five or six jin—not much, but it was refined grain, a luxury item.

No wonder they stored it separately.

But five or six jin of flour wouldn’t last long.

If they ate it freely, it would be gone in one meal.

Even if they mixed it with vegetables and wild greens to make porridge, it would barely last a day.

No money, no meat, no oil, barely any salt, and not even enough coarse grains and vegetables to eat freely.

When the floods came in June or July, how would they have the strength to flee?

During a refugee crisis, people faced long journeys, hunger, lack of clothing, and the constant threat of bandits stealing what little they had.

Even the strongest individuals wasted away to skin and bones.

In the end, only one in ten would survive, if that.

Whole families were often wiped out.

With just two or three months left before the floods, their savings of eleven taels, plus three sacks of grain, left them too poor to even start a business.

Shen Qing grew more anxious as she thought about it.

She turned to check the eggs stored behind the wooden door.

There were two woven baskets—one with only a handful of chicken eggs, about ten or so, and the other with more duck eggs, around forty.

Shen Qing considered making salted duck eggs but quickly remembered the price of salt—70 to 80 copper coins per jin.

Duck eggs were cheap, but salt was not. If the city had no vendors selling salted duck eggs, then even with a low price and slim profit margins, it might still be a viable business.

The real problem was if someone else was already selling them. If they weren’t a novelty, competition would be tough, and they could end up with unsold stock. The family couldn’t afford any financial risks.

After the wheat was harvested in May, the usual practice was to quickly plant corn, which would be ready in late September. Wheat was too valuable to eat—it was mostly sold for silver to cover household expenses, with any remaining amount saved. The corn, on the other hand, was the staple grain for the whole year.

But if the floods came in June, the corn would be lost. The wheat, which they relied on for money, would have to be kept as food. Even if they sold some to buy coarse grains, the profits would be minimal.

The biggest annual source of income would disappear.

Just two or three months left…

Shen Qing looked out at the sky, deep in thought.

The distant future could wait. For now, she needed to deal with the immediate problem—she had to tell her sons that from now on, they would follow a “work more, earn more” system.