Jiang'an County, situated southeast in Shu, is six thousand eight hundred li away from Jingguan City.
And from Ten Thousand Mountains just outside Youmen Pass, it is only a little over two thousand li.
In a corner of East County City, within a simple, dilapidated civilian house, a brother and sister in patched clothes are working together: the brother blowing on the fire, the sister stirring the thin porridge in the hanging stove. However, the porridge inside is pitifully thin, with scarcely any rice grains.
Yet they treat it with utmost seriousness!
"Brother, it's ready." The sister scoops a little with a wooden spoon scraped from a log, touches it with her tongue, then picks up a grey porcelain bowl with a cracked rim from the ground and fills it with the thin porridge.
Carefully holding the bowl, afraid of wasting the precious food inside, she heads to the dim back room.
