The dead are naturally finished with everything, but the living long desperately for the moment when the autumn wind rises. Only after the cold winter arrives will Heaven stop taking lives, and only then can the living safely survive until the next year.

The wealthy families, seeing the floodwaters recede, also began to leave the city of Tokyo. They understood even better than the poor that the more people there are, the more likely disease will spread.

Grace Walker gritted her teeth and persevered. She was not prepared to inquire about the whereabouts of her clan until her own house was built. However, she still spent five hundred wen to bribe the Kaifeng County clerk, transferring her and her son's household registration from Xiangfu County, which was also a suburb county, to Kaifeng County. In this way, she became a true resident of Tokyo.

Now, her family would also receive a share of the firewood money distributed by the authorities in winter. Although it was only thirty wen a year, she and her son planned to live in Tokyo for a lifetime, so the five hundred wen was well spent!

In fact, Grace Walker had even more far-reaching plans. Once her child started to study and learn to read, the county school in Kaifeng was undoubtedly the best in all of Song.

Everything was going well.

The only trouble was that Ethan refused to eat real food. Other than breast milk, he wouldn’t touch anything else—not sweet osmanthus cake, nor golden millet porridge, nothing at all. This left her quite troubled.

If Ethan didn’t eat, how could he grow up to be a man?

Fortunately, Ethan was extremely well-behaved. As long as he was full, he wouldn’t cry or fuss. Even when he fell and got a big bump on his forehead, he would just pout and reach out for her to pick him up.

This was all Heaven’s mercy, pitying him for losing his father’s protection, and so making him precocious...

“Ethan, you can’t feed the osmanthus cake to the fox.”

Seeing her son about to stuff a piece of osmanthus cake into the fox’s mouth, Grace Walker quickly snatched it away, though she was a bit late—the cake was already in the fox’s mouth when she took it back.

Grace Walker sighed and stuffed the osmanthus cake back into the mouth of the fox, which was circling her and whining.

Ethan Brooks’s hand was reaching into a bucket again, and Grace Walker pulled her son’s hand out of the bucket.

This child loved to make trouble for her, especially with the bucket. Sometimes he would even tip it over, and even if he fell, he never tired of it.

Now he could crawl all over the floor with his head held high, and could even pull himself up to stand by grabbing things.

Grace Walker looked at the water in the bucket, now dirtied by soil, and remembered that her son never touched hot water. Sometimes she wanted to give this mischievous child a small lesson, so she would deliberately set aside some hot water, planning to let him touch it and then drip a little on his hand to teach him a lesson, hoping to break his bad habit of playing with water.

But, as soon as this child saw the water being boiled, he would never touch it. Even if the hot water was placed right in front of him, he wouldn’t touch it at all.

Grace Walker suddenly looked at her son and said, “Son, could it be that you dislike this water because it’s not clean?”

Ethan Brooks giggled, putting his wet hand on his mother’s face, and butted his big head against her chest, playing with her.

Chapter Six: The Imperial Palace is a Treasure Trove

Grace Walker asked the big brother guard on the imperial city wall to help look after Ethan Brooks, then hurried off to Maxing Street.

Today’s task was heavy; the household needed a new water jar and rice jar.

Recently, grain in Tokyo had suddenly become cheap—very cheap. She decided to buy more.

With food at home, there’s no need to worry.

This was something Andy had taught her. Andy once said that among clothing, food, housing, and transportation, eating should come first. As for clothes, as long as you have food in your belly, you could survive even wrapped in leaves.

When Andy was forging iron, he wore nothing but a loincloth.

In the blazing smithy, it was often just her and Andy. With every hammer blow, sparks would fly, and the iron bar on the anvil would glow and dim. Sparks would land on Andy’s shiny chest, bounce a couple of times, then fade and fall away.

He was a strong man, one who seemed capable of carrying a mountain on his back...

Grace Walker shook her head, sniffled twice, looked at her son babbling to her from the edge of the washbasin, wiped her damp eyes, tied her handkerchief around her nose, and merged into the crowd outside.

Both the living and the dead traveled this bustling road—one walking, the other piled on carts being dragged out.

The epidemic had broken out after all...

That was why grain prices had dropped. The roads out of the city were packed with people, but the shops inside the city were cold and deserted.

Anyone with even a mouthful of food at home would never go out onto the streets for no reason, for fear of catching the breath of death.

She bought a wheelbarrow for just five wen—a real bargain. There wasn’t a single person in the shop selling water jars.

Grace Walker called out loudly several times, but no one answered. When she walked into the shop, she saw a pair of feet in black-and-white merchant’s shoes lying outside the inner room’s threshold.

Grace Walker was startled and quickly backed out.