“You go call them back for breakfast.”
After sending Liu Shi out, Yue Jiuyue put the bed back into the mall’s storage space, put on a pair of gloves, and casually tied up her hair.
Oh, right—last night she had only bathed and hadn’t even looked at what the original owner actually looked like.
So Yue Jiuyue opened the mall again and started comparing prices. She found that a cheap floor mirror was actually less expensive than some makeup mirrors. In the end, she spent just thirty-nine wen on a floor mirror.
When she took the mirror out, there wasn’t a flat spot to place it. Yue Jiuyue didn’t care about such small details. What she cared about was—was that scrawny, dark, ragged woman uglier than a beggar woman in the mirror really her?
Unbelievable!
She was, a young woman in her twenties as lovely as a flower. Sure, she had been orphaned as a child and had lived off others’ charity, wearing nothing but hand-me-downs. But as an adult, she had been as fair and delicate as jade. This beggar-like appearance—not only would she never have looked like that herself, but even the old women begging on the streets with bowls were dressed neatly and properly.
It was absolutely unbearable to look at.
By the time Lin Chaodong and the others returned, each member of the family had a bowl of wild vegetable soup. After they finished, Lin Chaodong went to fetch water from the mountain spring. Lin Chaonan took the Polygala and Pinellia that Lin Chaobei had dug up the day before and headed to town. Lin Chaobei, excited, went up the mountain to dig for more herbs. Liu Shi stayed home to look after the children. And Yue Jiuyue went to the clan leader’s house.
“Uncle, Auntie, I came to talk to you about the herbs. Yesterday, my third son went to the medical clinic in town and asked. They said they accept a few kinds of herbs: slender grass, crow’s eye, stone bamboo, little chicken drink, and sweet grass root.
“For slender grass, crow’s eye, and little chicken drink, they want the roots. For stone bamboo, they want the above-ground parts. For sweet grass root, they want both the root and the rhizome.”
Yue Jiuyue didn’t know how to beat around the bush with social niceties. Besides, she wanted to finish talking quickly so she could go up the mountain to dig herbs. So she got straight to the point.
Clan Leader: …
Wang Shi: …
Was this girl crazy? Was she really just blurting out a way to make money so directly?
Wang Shi exchanged a meaningful glance with the clan leader.
After saying her piece, Yue Jiuyue noticed that neither the clan leader nor his wife seemed inclined to say anything. So she planned to head up the mountain to pull weeds.
Her goal was simply to avoid making her own family the obvious target. In times of famine, when every household was struggling to put food on the table and some were even selling their children, if her family made a decent amount of money, there would surely be jealous people among the villagers—even if they were all members of the Lin clan. Who knew what they might end up doing?
Anyway, she still had other herbs like goosegrass, catchweed bedstraw, and windmill grass to exchange for money with the mall. They were all common medicinal herbs, and no one was competing with her for them. Making a fortune quietly—could anything be better?
But the clan leader and his wife, Wang Shi, didn’t know that. Seeing Yue Jiuyue turn to leave after speaking, Wang Shi immediately grabbed her by the arm.
“Hey! Little sister-in-law, this is a profitable business you’ve got. How can you just blurt it out like that? Our family can still get by. You should just do this for yourself.”
It was normal for younger clan members to think of their family when they came across something beneficial. After all, her husband was the clan leader and also the village head. Even though they all descended from the same ancestor generations ago, there were always degrees of closeness and distance, and there would always be times when people needed favors. So of course people tried to curry favor with their family.