Anning took some soil at home during the warmer period.

She separated the soil into flower pots and labeled them, with some kept indoors and others outdoors to start experimenting with new crops.

What Anning first thought of were edible algae foods, as well as improving some relatively old crops.

After continuous improvement and research, she finally managed to cultivate a plant similar to algae that could be eaten when the extreme cold arrived.

This plant could survive in environments colder than minus forty to fifty degrees, tolerate extreme cold and heat, and was indifferent to temperature differences, growing rapidly.

However, this plant had a drawback; it tasted bitter, anyway, the taste was not good, but it was harmless to the human body.

She tried planting a batch and then started gathering representatives from each village to hold a meeting, teaching everyone how to plant and also distributing seeds to them.

Actually, each village chief was worried.

With the weather turning like this, not to mention how to keep warm, just talking about food; although everyone had food reserves, who knew when this damned weather would end? If it never ended, crops couldn’t grow in the fields, then what to eat or drink at that time?

It wasn’t long before Anning developed this crop that could grow in icy and snowy conditions. Although it was a bit hard to eat, as long as it was something edible, that was enough, being able to prevent everyone from going hungry and survive was more important than anything else.

Anning distributed seeds to each village, everyone planted together, and the harvested seeds were spread down the hierarchy to the county and city through Zhou Tong and others.

She wanted to try her best to save more people.

Anning was researching various plants.

Xiao Yuan, however, was organizing personnel for patrols with people like Li Hai.

Now, the villages around Fengtai were relatively calm, but many places outside had already fallen into chaos. Xiao Yuan and others feared it would affect the villages here, so organized a large number of people to patrol to protect the villagers’ safety.

The second year after the great disaster, Liu Feifei and Si Linna gave birth one after another; Liu Feifei gave birth to twin daughters, and Si Linna had a son.

Anning had prepared food and supplies for the kids in advance, and the kids weren’t much worse off than before the disaster when they were born.

But at this time, the weather outside was even colder. Although Anning’s cultivated plants were edible, guaranteeing no one starved, the extreme cold still made some people unable to bear it; those with weak constitutions either fell ill or froze to death.

In the villages around Fengtai, many elderly people had frozen to death.

Some families would go check on the elderly in the morning after sleeping at night, only to find the elderly had stopped breathing, not knowing when they froze to death.

In these conditions, it wasn’t possible to have big funerals when the elderly died, many couldn’t even prepare coffins.

Many families chose to make a thin wooden box like a coffin themselves, placing the elderly inside and carrying them to the mountains for burial.

From last winter to the second-year winter, the number of elderly dying in Fengtai villages was indeed quite high; in short, every day someone was having a funeral.

In just one year, half of the elderly in these villages were gone.

Mr. Xiao and Mrs. Xiao saw this every day, and they started to feel down.

And Shao Wen’s parents, the Liu family’s parents, all these older people were somewhat scared.

They told their children that if they died, just toss them into the mountains, don’t risk going out for wood to make coffins, don’t let the dead burden the living.

These words made everyone’s hearts feel heavy.

By the third-year winter, the situation stabilized, and people gradually adapted to this severe weather.

In fact, along with the great disaster, people’s constitutions strengthened.

At first, everyone didn’t feel much, but later slowly realized their strength had increased, they ran faster, and their physical fitness was gradually improving; the young people had almost stopped getting sick.

And those children born after the disaster had even stronger constitutions.

Take Si Linna’s boy for example, a small child who was stronger than an adult before the disaster, ran especially fast, jumped high, and was mischievous all day.

He wasn’t afraid of the cold either, while others didn’t dare to go out, he was out playing, coming back covered in snow, acting as if nothing was wrong.

Xiao Chang’s twin daughters were like this too.

Fortunately, with the three kids at home, everyone lived close, the three kids never lacked companions.