9 – Selling He Shou Wu
“Wife, look at this.” Bai Renyi placed the little dumpling on the kang and showed the contents of his back basket to his wife.
Cui Shi was immediately astonished and asked incredulously, “Such a large fleeceflower root—did you dig this up yourself?”
Bai Renyi laughed, “I dug it up. Our family is about to have another big windfall.”
“How much silver will this fetch? Husband, haven’t you noticed our family’s luck has been particularly good lately? First we found that lingzhi mushroom, now this fleeceflower root. And remember a few days ago when Tiger Girl stopped you and the sons from going up the mountain? Strangely enough, could it be our Tiger Girl knew something bad was going to happen…”
Bai Renyi didn’t want to discuss that incident. Whenever it was mentioned, he would recall the gruesome sight of those corpses and feel deeply disturbed.
He interrupted Cui Shi, “Exactly. Ever since Little Tiger Girl came to our family, good fortune has been arriving one after another. She’s our little lucky star.”
“Yes, Little Tiger Girl is indeed our little lucky star.” Cui Shi, realizing her husband didn’t wish to dwell on that matter, quickly changed the subject.
“Wife, I’ll send Bai Laoda and Bai Laoer to town tomorrow to sell the fleeceflower root…” Bai Renyi sighed, “Who knows when this drought will break? I’ve seen the crops in the fields are withering from lack of rain. We should stock up more grain.”
Cui Shi nodded, “Let’s do as you say. With so many mouths to feed in our family, it’s safer to store more grain.”
“Our sons and grandsons all have healthy appetites. We can’t just watch them go hungry. And our Little Tiger Girl—I especially can’t bear to see her suffer any hardship.”
The little dumpling, hearing her father mention her name, gurgled and cooed in response with a wide, toothless grin.
Whenever Bai Renyi saw Little Tiger Girl’s adorable little face, the worries in his heart would immediately dissipate.
Early the next morning, Bai Laoda and Bai Laoer went to town to sell the fleeceflower root. This time, there were even more refugees on the road, traveling in groups as entire families fled the drought.
The fleeceflower root fetched only twenty taels of silver at the herbal shop. The shopkeeper said that in better times, it could have sold for eighty to a hundred taels without issue, but twenty taels was his maximum offer now.
The brothers had no choice but to accept. Along their journey, they had seen several herbal shops that had closed down. If they didn’t sell to this shopkeeper, they would have to carry the root back home.
In these hard times, survival came first. It was better to exchange it for grain.
Bai Renyi and Bai Laosan led Da Keng, Er Keng, and San Keng in expanding the family cellar at home. Grain was essential for survival, and whatever they bought needed proper storage.
Si Keng and Wu Keng weren’t strong enough to dig the cellar, so they transported soil above ground instead. Cui Shi and her daughters-in-law stopped their weaving work to help with the digging too. The household was filled with tense, busy activity.
That evening, Bai Laoda and Bai Laoer returned with four ox-carts of grain. Grain prices had skyrocketed, becoming exorbitantly expensive. They had managed to purchase these four cartloads only after extensive pleading with the grain shop owner.
Besides rice and flour, they also bought various types of beans—all items that stored well and wouldn’t spoil for at least a year.
The Bai family conducted all these preparations in secret from their villagers, but unbeknownst to them, someone had been watching—Xu Cui, Li Zhenzhu’s sister-in-law from her maternal family.
Xu Cui had come to borrow a shoe pattern from Li Zhenzhu, but through a crack in the door, she witnessed everything. Without making a sound, she slipped away.
The drought had arrived without warning. Not a drop of rain had fallen for months. The crop leaves in the fields had curled up, on the verge of complete withering.The villagers exhausted themselves carrying water from the distant river to irrigate their fields, but each bucket poured onto the crops would evaporate under the scorching sun before even soaking the soil.
The Bai family was no exception. For the past two months, all their laborers had stopped gathering herbs in the mountains to focus on fetching water for the crops. Yet the river was shrinking daily, leaving even small fish and shrimp dead from thirst.
Mountain herbs grew scarcer by the day. For many consecutive days, they found nothing to harvest. On rare occasions when they gathered some, it was only worthless varieties that couldn’t even be traded for a steamed bun.
When the crops finally matured, each family reaped merely a small basket of grain.
The villagers gazed skyward with despairing sighs—Heaven was truly driving them to the brink!
Compared to the panicked and hopeless neighbors, the Bai family stood on firmer ground, having stored eight cartloads of grain to sustain them awhile.
Early one morning, Li Zhenzhu had just risen when urgent knocking came from the gate. She rushed to open it and found her elder brother from her maiden family.
“Brother! What brings you here? Come in and sit!”
Li Qiang replied anxiously, “Sister, I can’t stay. Hurry home—our mother is nearly starved to death!”
Li Zhenzhu’s legs buckled, her face turning ashen. “When I visited Mother days ago, she said they still had stored grain! How could she be starving?”
A complicated expression flickered across Li Qiang’s face. “Just go see her quickly. Any later and you might miss your final chance!”
With those words, he hurried away.
After a stunned moment, Li Zhenzhu rushed to find Cui Shi, who was sewing soles for Little Tiger Girl’s shoes. Li Zhenzhu threw herself to her knees before her mother-in-law. “Mother, I beg you to save my mother! My brother just came—she’s dying of hunger!”
Though Li Zhenzhu knew grain was the family’s lifeline, the crisis left no room for pride.
Cui Shi was shocked. Li Zhenzhu’s maiden family lived in the same village, and Cui Shi knew they struggled even before the drought worsened their plight.
Though she disapproved of her third daughter-in-law’s gossiping tongue, she couldn’t stand by while the woman’s mother starved.
“Get up,” Cui Shi told the kneeling Li Zhenzhu. “I won’t refuse to save a life.”
She went to the cellar and filled a half-sack with grain, instructing Li Zhenzhu to deliver it to her family.
After thanking her mother-in-law, Li Zhenzhu hurried back to her maiden home carrying the grain.
The moment she stepped inside, her sister-in-law Xu Cui snatched the sack from her shoulders. “Ah, so my husband’s sister still has a conscience! I’ll cook porridge for Mother right away.”
Too worried about her mother to argue, Li Zhenzhu handed over the grain and went to see the old woman.
Her mother lay on the kang, emaciated to little more than bones. Li Zhenzhu’s tears fell like rain. “Mother! How did you become so thin in just a few days?”
The old woman wheezed like bellows. “Cough… Don’t mention it. Your sister-in-law… stole all our grain for her own family behind my back. Cough… I haven’t eaten for days… starving…”
So that was the truth! No wonder there had been stored grain days earlier—Xu Cui, that vicious woman, had caused this!
Li Zhenzhu shoved a dry ration cake from her sleeve into her mother’s hands, then stormed out to confront Xu Cui.Xu Cui had just lit the stove fire when Li Zhenzhu roared behind her, “Xu Cui, why did you steal all the grain from the house? Are you trying to starve Mother to death? What exactly is your intention?”