That night, Xiao An slept more soundly than she had in a long time.
At the first hint of dawn, she got up, brushed her teeth, washed her face, and ate a simple breakfast. Then she took one of the thirty-year-old ginseng roots out of her space, placed it in her basket, and carried it down the mountain.
After a little more than an hour, she arrived in the county town.
The largest pharmacy in Qi County was Baicao Hall. Its proprietor, Wan Anzhi, was a famous physician who personally saw patients every day.
Xiao An walked into Baicao Hall.
A shop assistant greeted her with a smile. “Miss, are you here to buy medicine or see a doctor?”
“I’m not here for either. I’m looking for your shopkeeper.”
“The shopkeeper? This way, please.”
The assistant led Xiao An over to Wan Anzhi.
Xiao An looked at him.
Sitting behind the consultation table, Wan Anzhi appeared to be around sixty years old. His beard and hair were completely white, and his face looked kind and benevolent.
With his narrow, slightly squinting eyes, he looked at Xiao An and asked, “Miss, I am the proprietor of Baicao Hall. What can I do for you?”
Xiao An put down her basket and took out the ginseng.
“Shopkeeper Wan, do you buy ginseng here?”
Wan Anzhi took the ginseng from her and examined it carefully before smiling.
“Miss, how much are you asking for this ginseng?”
Xiao An had already made up her mind. She had to ask for more so that when the shopkeeper tried to bargain her down, she would still have room to negotiate.
“Shopkeeper, this is a forty-year-old ginseng. I want one hundred taels of silver for it.”
Xiao An knew it was probably only around thirty years old. She deliberately claimed it was forty years old because she wanted to hear what this experienced physician had to say. That would also help her determine whether her own judgment, based on the books she had read, was accurate.
If she was right, then the other two roots in her space—one over a hundred years old and the other around thirty years old—should also be correctly identified.
Wan Anzhi continued smiling gently.
“Miss, this is a thirty-year-old ginseng, not forty years old. It isn’t worth one hundred taels.”
He placed the ginseng on the consultation table instead of returning it to her. Clearly, he intended to buy it.
Xiao An remained expressionless.
“If you say it isn’t worth one hundred taels, then I’ll lower the price. Fifty taels.”
Wan Anzhi shook his head again.
“Fifty taels is still too much. Thirty-five taels. I can’t offer more.”
“Forty taels.”
Xiao An tried her best to negotiate. She had gone through considerable trouble to dig up this ginseng, so naturally, the more money she could get, the better.
Wan Anzhi picked up the ginseng and examined it again.
“How about this? Thirty-seven taels. I really can’t offer more. I don’t buy ginseng for my own use. I have to resell it. If I pay too much, I won’t be able to make a profit.”
His words were frank, and Xiao An nodded.
“Deal. Thirty-seven taels.”
Wan Anzhi instructed the shop assistant to pay her.
Only after Xiao An had put the silver away did he place the ginseng inside the shop’s display cabinet.
“Miss, are you a professional herb gatherer?”
“I farm, gather herbs, dig for ginseng, collect wild vegetables—I’ll do anything.”
Wan Anzhi’s eyes narrowed into a smile.
“If you find any more ginseng in the future, bring it here. I won’t shortchange you on the price.”
“Shopkeeper, people always talk about hundred-year-old ginseng, but I’ve never seen one and don’t know how to identify it. Could you teach me?”
Wan Anzhi was a decent man. He didn’t hold anything back and gave Xiao An a detailed explanation of what hundred-year-old ginseng looked like and how to distinguish it.
Xiao An blinked her large eyes.
“How much is a hundred-year-old ginseng worth?”
Wan Anzhi shook his head.
“A hundred-year-old ginseng may not even be encountered once in a hundred years. It’s difficult for this old man to put a definite value on it.”
After a pause, he continued, “If you ever find one, bring it here. We can discuss the price then.”
Xiao An nodded.
“Alright!”
When Xiao An left Baicao Hall, Wan Anzhi lowered his voice and said to the shop assistant:
“Keep this thirty-year-old ginseng and sell it to Liu Dashanren at a high price. That fellow makes his money through unscrupulous means. He isn’t benevolent at all. We don’t need to show him any kindness either.”
After leaving Baicao Hall, Xiao An went to the seed shop and bought various vegetable seeds. The original owner hadn’t left behind a single seed, so she needed to purchase everything herself.
Then she went to the grain shop.
White flour and rice were both forty copper coins per pound—an outrageously high price.
Xiao An bought thirty pounds of rice and thirty pounds of white flour, spending more than two taels of silver in total. She also bought several pounds of millet to save for making porridge.
After leaving the grain shop, she went to the butcher’s and asked about the prices.
Pork fat cost twenty copper coins per pound, almost as expensive as cornmeal.
Xiao An bought thirty pounds of pork fat and spent six hundred copper coins.
Once she had finished shopping, she left the city and headed home.
When she arrived, she put all the rice, flour, and pork fat into her space.
First, she planted the half-acre vegetable plot. In a while, she would have fresh vegetables to eat.
She stayed busy until evening.
After returning inside, she chopped up the pork fat and rendered it into a large jar of lard.
Looking at the jar, Xiao An gave a bitter smile.
In her previous life, she would never have imagined that the lard she had always avoided eating would become something she struggled to obtain in this life.
She kneaded some dough and steamed two baskets of snow-white steamed buns.
Xiao An smiled.
When she had first arrived here, she had encouraged herself that everything would eventually get better.
And sure enough, things really were getting better.
She blanched the wild vegetables she had gathered during the day, chopped them up, and mixed them with the crispy bits of pork left over from rendering the lard. She used the mixture as filling and steamed a basket of vegetable buns.
For dinner, Xiao An ate five large buns in one sitting.
In her previous life, she couldn’t even eat that much in an entire day.
Things really had changed.
But just as Xiao An’s life had finally begun to stabilize, something completely unexpected happened.
The next morning, she stepped out of the bamboo house and suddenly discovered that all the melon seedlings she had planted in her two-acre field had been pulled out.
Not a single plant remained.
The moment she saw it, Xiao An’s head began to buzz. She was so furious that tears streamed down her face.
She cried for a while before finally calming herself.
There was no point crying. She needed to solve the problem in front of her first.
She immediately went back down the mountain and returned to the county town. At another seed shop, she bought several ounces of melon seeds.
On her way home, she stopped at Zhu Cui’s house and told her that someone had pulled out all her melon seedlings.
She asked Zhu Cui whether she had time to help her replant the field.
Zhu Cui immediately became furious and shouted curses.
“Which heartless bastard did this? They’re even more despicable than that cat that stole the fish from my house! Why bully a little girl who’s all alone?”
Wang Dashan lowered his head for a long while before asking, “Xiao An, is there still enough time to plant them now?”
“The melons mature quickly. I think we can still make it.”
“Then we have to plant them,” Zhu Cui said. “Otherwise, if you don’t get a harvest this year, how are you supposed to survive?”
She then frowned.
“But what if that heartless bastard pulls them out again after they sprout?”
“Don’t worry. Once the seedlings grow, I’ll have a way to deal with it.”
Wang Dashan nodded.
“Let’s go. We’ll plant the field first.”
The three of them went to the fields together.
That afternoon, the village head and his wife also came to help Xiao An and comfort her. Anyone would have been furious if something like this had happened to them.
Zhu Cui cursed the culprit the entire time she worked. She kept cursing until the field was finally replanted, at which point she had completely run out of breath.
Night fell.
Xiao An sat alone on the large stone outside the bamboo house, thinking through everyone who might have done it.
She suspected Huang Xing.
He was Huang Ji’s elder cousin, and over the past few days, he had been making quite a scene in the village. He had been telling everyone that he and his wife had personally witnessed Xiao An killing a rabbit with a single strike of a stick.
Her accuracy was extraordinary.
Although he hadn’t directly said that Xiao An had been the one who stabbed Huang Ji’s leg, his words clearly implied that she was a suspect.
If they wanted revenge, they wouldn’t dare confront Xiao An openly. Pulling a sneaky trick like this was entirely possible.
Her second suspects were her original parents, Su Shun and Zhao Daiqin.
Those two heartless people were perfectly capable of doing something like this.
The third suspect was Liu Dashanren.
Thinking about these people, Xiao An gave a cold snort.
Don’t rush.
Once I confirm who did this, I’ll make sure you regret ever being born.
But she couldn’t act based on suspicion alone.
She needed evidence first.