I survived the famine by scavenging and supported my family.

Zhao Ningning smiled and tried it herself. The goat milk ice cream had a unique flavor, and it was incredibly refreshing to eat on a hot summer day.

After two bites, the bowl was empty. Zhao Ningning took Zhao Qi downstairs to the stall, scooped out some ice cream, and shared it with Ning's mother and Cao Niangzi.

Madam Cao had no idea what Ningning was doing with the big quilt until she took the bowl from her hands and realized something was wrong.

The bottom of the bowl is cold; what kind of food is this?

"Aunt Cao, eat up! It won't taste good if it melts!" Zhao Ningning urged. Aunt Cao picked up a spoon, scooped up a spoonful, and was immediately captivated by the milky and sweet aroma.

Not to mention, this dish is ice-cold! It's like it has ice in it, but it's not as hard as ice cubes.

"What kind of food is this?" Madam Cao exclaimed. "It's delicious and served cold; the diners will surely love it."

"This is called ice cream!" Zhao Ningning said. "But we don't plan to sell it ourselves; we intend to sell the recipe to restaurants in the county town."

—Sold to a restaurant?

Madam Cao pondered for a moment, holding her bowl, before finally speaking: "The restaurant should accept this recipe. I wonder which restaurant you plan to sell it to?"

"We'll still need to ask around," Ning's mother said with a smile. "The recipe and ingredients for this ice cream are not something that ordinary small restaurants can afford."

Just considering the ingredients, a bowl of this costs at least forty coins, not to mention the ice.

"Madam Zhou, to be honest, my family owns shops and we usually deal with various shopkeepers. My father knows a couple of restaurant owners. If you'd like, I can go back and talk to him about it."

Cao Niangzi's words were a lifesaver for Zhao Ningning. Ning's mother didn't say anything more and simply helped Cao Niangzi guard the stall while she went home to ask.

Before long, Cao Niangzi's father arrived, tasted the ice cream, and praised it as delicious.

He pondered for a moment, then told Ning's mother about two restaurants.

One is Qingfenglou, which serves more refined and delicious dishes, while the other is Jixiang Restaurant, which has a slightly stronger flavor and larger portions. Both are the most popular dining spots for people in Fengning County.

After a moment's thought, Ning's mother suggested going to Qingfeng Tower.

Since they prefer refined dishes, they must also like new dishes, and ice cream also fits the taste of their restaurant.

The remaining person was Cao Niangzi's father, Cao He'an, who took Ning Ma to make an introduction.

She wasn't comfortable leaving her children at the stall, so she simply stopped doing business there and brought her two children along.

With Old Man Cao's introduction, the manager of Qingfeng Tower only took one bite before leading his men upstairs to see the owner without saying a word.

The owner of Qingfeng Tower was a young woman. Old Man Cao felt it inappropriate to stay and listen to people talk business, so he went downstairs to the lobby, ordered a pot of tea, and sat down to wait.

"What kind of food is this?" The owner put down his account book and watched as Zhao Ningning laid out the jars one by one, and a milky aroma wafted out instantly.

"Sister Dongjia, this is called 'milk cake'." Zhao Ningning ladled out two bowls of milk cake with different flavors and placed them on the table.

The host nodded, picked it up, smelled it, and tasted it carefully. After trying both flavors in turn, she nodded, "This is the first time I've seen it done this way."

Zhao Ningning proudly said, "This is my idea."

Before doing it, she had inquired about it. The iced drinks that people usually eat in Fengning County in the summer are just made by putting clean ice cubes into various drinks, and at most, they just use ice cubes to chill them.

Ice cream, however, tastes "icy" to me.

"That's interesting. What price are you looking to sell this recipe for?" The owner chuckled, covering his mouth. "You're the family that sells ice jelly in the East Market, aren't you?"

"How did you know?" Zhao Ningning asked in surprise, tugging at her mother's sleeve. "Mom, has such a beautiful lady ever bought ice jelly from our stall? I don't remember."

"Oh dear, this child," Ning's mother playfully punched her, "the employer must have sent someone to buy it."

"You can just call me Duan Jinshi." Duan Jinshi sat down. "Indeed, I asked the waiter to buy it for me."

Whenever a new food appeared on the street, she would send someone to buy it and try it. She could usually figure out how to make a dish after eating it a few times, but she could only make the same flavor of the toppings as Zhao Ningning's ice jelly. However, she didn't know what the ice jelly was made of.

"Sister Jinshi, are you interested in ice jelly? Let's sell it together!" Zhao Ningning held out her hand: "One hundred taels of silver."

One hundred taels? Duan Jinshi placed her hand on the abacus, calculated for a moment, "One hundred taels is a bit high. These two dishes can only be sold in the summer. I can only offer a maximum of eighty taels."

Eighty taels is not bad. Zhao Ningning never thought of selling the popsicles herself after she made them; she just wanted to earn a "technology" fee.

After a brief back-and-forth, the two prescriptions were finally sold for 86 taels of silver.

Duan Jinshi asked Zhao Ningning to go to the kitchen to teach the cooks how to cook, and led Ning's mother and Zhao Qi downstairs. She had the waiter serve them a pot of good tea and some snacks.

While the cook was learning, Zhao Ningning also went to watch. She chatted with the cook as she worked, and that's when she learned that Duan Jinshi had built Qingfeng Tower all by herself.

Duan Jinshi's family was just an ordinary family in Fengning County. She loved to think about food since she was a child. When she was twelve, she begged her family to set up a small stall for her. Starting from the small stall, she later rented a shop. After going through many hardships, she bought her own small shop and then gradually expanded it into a restaurant.

She is only nineteen years old now.

Zhao Ningning sighed: "It's true that one should become famous as early as possible. Look at Duan Jinshi, she became the owner of a restaurant at the age of nineteen. She is a role model for us all."

The popsicles were easy to make. After they were made, Zhao Ningning said that they could also be replaced with regular sugar water. She also explained how to make sugar water popsicles and mung bean popsicles. Duan Jinshi listened and nodded repeatedly.

When it came time to make ice jelly, Ning's mother came over. She was strong and could knead the ice jelly quickly. She took out the ice jelly seeds that had been soaked beforehand when making ice cream, kneaded them, added lime water, and waited for the ice jelly to solidify.

Duan Jinshi was even more astonished. These two methods were something no one would normally think of. Zhao Ningning was truly remarkable for her small stature, as she was able to make these two amazing dishes.

Now that the work had been handed over, Zhao Ningning and her family could go home. Before leaving, Zhao Ningning told her employer that if they had any questions during the process, they could go to Wangli Village to find her, and she would provide after-sales service.

With eighty-six taels of silver in hand, the family no longer had to set up their stall under the scorching sun! Zhao Ningning held her mother's hand, her steps almost floating.

Back at the stall, Ning Ma gave two ounces to Cao Niangzi, telling her to take it home and buy meat to eat. She also said that setting up a stall at home was too much trouble, so she wouldn't be setting up a stall in the county town anymore. She told Cao Niangzi to come visit her in Wangli Village when she had time.

They had only known each other for a short time when Madam Zhou was about to leave. Madam Cao was reluctant to part with her, waving her handkerchief and saying: I will definitely go!

Back home, Zhao Ningning was still jokingly telling her mother that she had found a best friend.

With over eighty taels of silver in hand, Ningning's family could finally catch their breath and rest for a while.

After the rice harvest in Wangli Village, the villagers plowed the fields but did not sow any more seeds for a long time.

In early spring, the river was still about two zhang (approximately 6.6 meters) wide, which was enough for the villagers to irrigate their fields, though it made things a little more difficult. As the rice seedlings grew taller, the water in the river became less and less.

After the grain harvest, when Zhao Ningning went to the river to fetch water, the bucket would occasionally touch the riverbed.

When villagers asked the village head what crops his family grew, the village head and the village chief visited several villages and concluded that they dared not grow rice anymore and would instead grow drought-resistant crops.

Their family planted millet, while Zhao Ningning's family rested. Watching others farm, they also bought seeds. Farming wasn't hard work; Ningning's mother and her two children planted the seeds in a single day.

After the floods in the south subsided, the price of grain in the town and county seat dropped by a few coins. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Ning's mother took Ningning there and exchanged all seventy taels of silver for grain.

Zhao Ningning's space was almost overflowing.

Taking a day off, Zhao Ningning took out all the grain and put it at home, then took a broom and went into the empty room.

The familiar elevator lobby, the familiar shoe cabinet.

The small elevator lobby was filled with modern garbage. Zhao Ningning picked and chose, putting the really useless construction waste into a sack, planning to take it up the mountain to dump it when she had the chance.

After cleaning up the waste soil, she piled it up in front of the elevator entrance, and then tidied up the rest and placed it on a wooden shelf.

Zhao Ningning clapped her hands, looked at the much cleaner elevator lobby, and nodded in satisfaction.

I didn't have time to tidy it up before, but it's finally much neater today.

She turned and left the space. When she came back in, she was holding a few peaches. Since the temperature outside the space was high, she brought them back and used the constant temperature to "freeze" them before taking them out to eat.

Although it doesn't cool you down much, it can make other people feel a bit cooler in the summer.

After putting down the peaches, Zhao Ningning couldn't resist reaching into the small bowl, taking one and starting to eat it.

—I just ate it, so why does it taste even better in the space?

Zhao Ningning finished a peach, which was about the size of her fist, in two bites, casually tossed the peach pit into a sack, and then raised her hands to go out of her spatial dimension to wash the peach juice.

She froze as soon as she stepped out of the space.

—The space…has been upgraded?!

Without even washing her hands, Zhao Ningning wiped them on her clothes, rubbed her eyes, and looked again. The system panel that popped up in front of her was an upgrade notification!

[System: Congratulations, host, for unlocking a new area: the entrance hall]

Zhao Ningning flashed back to her spatial dimension, her hand trembling as she pressed against the door. The fingerprint unlock was successful, and she pressed the doorknob. The door clicked open.

My home, which I hadn't seen for almost a month, finally came into view.

Looking at the familiar furnishings, Zhao Ningning almost cried. She couldn't quite describe her emotions. Was it because she had suddenly traveled to an unfamiliar ancient world and then returned to a modern world full of order? Or was it because after experiencing so much, only here could she feel that everything in the modern world wasn't a dream?

Zhao Ningning opened the door and stepped into her home.

Instead of a shoe cabinet, Ning's mother installed a floor-to-ceiling storage cabinet on the left side of the entryway.

To the right is a separate wet and dry handwashing station, and further in is the guest toilet.

Zhao Ningning walked forward, but before she even entered the washbasin area, she was stopped by an invisible barrier.

She couldn't get through the entryway to the living room; she could only move around in a two-square-meter space by the door.

If you insist on proceeding, the system will keep displaying a permission insufficient message.

Ningning could only explore the cabinet by the door.

There are cabinets on both the top and bottom, with a recessed space in the middle for storing things. On top of the cabinets are spare keys, alcohol, air fresheners, masks, and small bottles of mineral water.

Near the corner, there was a storage box. When the box was opened, it contained tissues, soft tissues, and wet wipes.

Seeing the tissues she hadn't used in so long, Zhao Ningning quickly took them out and put them in her pocket. Tissues! These were soft tissues!

Ning's mother loves watching videos on organizing and tidying up. Her cabinets are always packed full and neat. Zhao Ningning squatted down and opened the cabinet door. At a glance, besides the handkerchiefs and soft tissues on the cabinet, there were also some unused individually packaged alcohol wipes, hand sanitizer, deodorizer, lint roller, cleaning wipes, and mouthwash.

Opening the top cabinet, I found several umbrellas inside, some opened and used, others unopened. My husband's company likes to hold hiking competitions, and they always give out a big bag of daily necessities. The extra umbrellas, toothpaste, towels, and soap are all kept here.

Zhao Ningning took some out, intending to take them out later to surprise her mother and the others.

Besides these items, there were also several bottles of floral water, anti-itch spray, and family-sized mosquito coils in the cabinet. Zhao Ningning saw them and quickly gathered them up.

The mosquitoes in Wangli Village are incredibly vicious! After the family separated, Ning's mother would burn mugwort in each room before going to bed to fumigate them, but even so, the four members of their family were still bitten by mosquitoes every day.

Finally, a stack of Zhao Qi's school activity prizes—canvas bags printed with the school logo—was also stuffed into the cabinet.

Zhao Ningning put the things in her hands on the cabinet, took out two canvas bags, and filled them to the brim, taking out the space.

"Mommy, Mommy!" Zhao Ningning shouted, "We're rich! We're rich!"

"What nonsense is this child spouting in broad daylight?" Ning's mother, fanning herself with a palm-leaf fan, came out of the main room and was startled to see Zhao Ningning carrying a canvas bag. "You! You're allowed inside?!"

"You can only get in through the doorway!" Zhao Ningning put her things on the dining table in the main room and spread them out for her mother to see. "I took some things out of the cabinet to use."

"That's great..." Ning's mother touched the tissues with affection. "You can put the tissues back. These tissues are cleaner than the ones from ancient times. We can keep them for emergencies."

"Hmm!" Zhao Ningning pushed the paper aside and said, "It would be great if we could go into the storage room; it's full of tissues."

"Silly child, we only have this much paper at home, and it will eventually run out, so we have to use it sparingly." Ning's mother patted her daughter's head. "This floral water can be used now, though. It's fine if we run out, at least we won't suffer for a while."

"No," Zhao Ningning said, "Let's sell it!"

"Sell? Sell what?" Ning's father's voice arrived before he did. As soon as he finished speaking, he came over from the yard, followed by Zhao Qi.

The two of them were just studying the hand-cranked fan in Zhao Qi's room when they heard Zhao Ningning's voice and rushed over.

As soon as they entered, Ning's father and Zhao Qi saw a pile of modern items on the table. Ning's father picked them up and admired them for a while before putting them down.

"You just said you wanted to sell the floral water?" Ning's father asked.

Zhao Ningning nodded, "You see, our family can only live off our savings from now on; we still need to make money!"

"We only have a few bottles of floral water. We'll keep two for ourselves and repackage the remaining three to sell," Zhao Ningning said. "Otherwise, what will we do for the next few months?"

"That works too." Ning's mother pondered for a moment. "The point of this stuff is to keep it fresh. Old Zhao, go and think of a reason for selling these bottles of floral water. We'll go to the county town to buy some porcelain bottles to put in them when we have time, and then ask around at Duan's place to see how to sell them."

"That's not simple." Ning's father pointed to the floral water and said, "It's supposed to be a fragrant dew that traveling merchants brought from other places to repel mosquitoes. This floral water must be a bit too concentrated, so it needs to be diluted."

This was left for Ning's father to figure out. Ning's mother pulled the two children down to sit and asked Zhao Ningning, "How did you upgrade your space? How did you suddenly become able to enter through the doorway?"

Zhao Ningning pondered. She hadn't done anything particularly special in her spatial dimension today... Oh right! Peaches!