Gu Nianzhi and her younger brother arrived at Baicao Hall.
The moment they stepped inside, a young shop assistant warmly greeted them.
“Little miss, did you catch another snake?”
The last snake had been soaked by Doctor Huang in snake wine and sold for three hundred copper coins per small cup!
“No, we’re selling lingzhi.”
“Oh, lingzhi… huh? Lingzhi?!”
The shop assistant looked at the siblings in their coarse hemp clothes, feeling a surge of envy. Their luck was simply unbelievable.
Last time they sold a snake and exchanged it for hemp clothing—this time, selling lingzhi would surely be enough to buy cotton clothes.
He asked them to wait for a moment and dashed into the courtyard, clearly going to fetch the doctor.
Before long, the same Doctor Huang from last time hurried out at a quick trot.
“I hear you found lingzhi?”
Doctor Huang’s face was full of delight.
Qingshan Town was far too remote and had no professional herb gatherers.
If one wanted to buy precious medicinal herbs like lingzhi or ginseng, they had to travel all the way to Xiangping Prefecture—and even then, good-quality ones weren’t guaranteed.
That was why lingzhi in Qingshan Town was in extremely short supply.
“Yes. Please take a look.”
Gu Nianzhi took the lingzhi out of her cloth bag. Doctor Huang accepted it and nodded.
The quality was good, and it looked to be over thirty years old.
“Miss, I won’t cheat you. One price—forty taels of silver. How does that sound?”
Hearing that number, Gu Nian’an felt dizzy. He didn’t even know how he walked out of the pharmacy in the end.
Forty taels!
They could never spend it all—absolutely never!
He let Gu Nianzhi pull him along by the hand, barely reacting even when they went to buy a chicken.
Gu Nianzhi waved her hand in front of his eyes.
“Snap out of it!”
Only then did Gu Nian’an come back to his senses.
“Big sister! We’re rich now!”
If they used forty taels to buy coarse rice and a few chickens, their family wouldn’t have to worry about food for decades!
They could even prepare ten taels as his sister’s dowry!
The more he thought about it, the more excited Gu Nian’an became. He wished he could immediately empty the grain shop!
At the market, Gu Nianzhi bought an old hen, planning to stew it for soup that evening. She also bought a few potatoes, a block of tofu, and a handful of leafy greens.
Normally, Gu Nianzhi would buy a lot whenever she came to town, but today she bought only a few vegetables before heading home, which made Gu Nian’an feel uneasy.
“Big sister, aren’t we buying grain?”
“There’s still enough rice at home.”
Gu Nianzhi didn’t want to buy too much grain. The kitchen was already small—if it was piled full of grain sacks, there wouldn’t even be room to stand.
After returning home, Gu Nianzhi handed the forty taels to Liu-shi.
“Mother, this is An’an’s money. Please keep it for him.”
So much money on a six-year-old child was unsafe. After thinking it over, she felt it was better to leave it with Liu-shi.
It was the first time in her life Liu-shi had seen so much silver, and she felt at a loss.
“Nianzhi, you keep the money. Mother doesn’t handle money.”
Now that her daughter was running the household, Liu-shi spent her days sewing clothes and digging wild vegetables, with no need to worry about making a living. Holding onto money herself didn’t feel appropriate.
But Gu Nianzhi firmly pushed the silver back to her.
“An’an earned this money. Save it for when he needs to establish himself and marry in the future.”
Liu-shi felt that made sense too.
The family had no house or farmland, and all of that would require silver.
But with the famine-driven flight coming next year, it wasn’t even certain they’d survive—she didn’t want to think that far ahead.
“Nianzhi, Mother understands what you mean. But you know what next year will be like. You keep the money. Buy whatever we need as you see fit. As long as the three of us can find a place to settle down and survive, everything else can come later.”
She wasn’t capable—she only hoped that her son and daughter could survive.
Only by surviving could there be a future.
Helpless, Gu Nianzhi could only secretly store the silver in her spatial storage. Once things stabilized, she would take it out again.
Gu Nian’an didn’t care about the silver at all. All he cared about was whether he could eat the old hen.
“Mother, big sister—are you done talking? Can we stew the hen now?”
In the courtyard, Gu Nian’an sat on a small stool, hugging the old hen tightly in his arms.
Gu Nianzhi realized that her younger brother truly loved to eat.
He had little interest in money—he even casually tossed aside the pocket money she gave him. Only when it came to food did he become unusually excited.
With plenty of time before nightfall, Gu Nianzhi and Gu Nian’an cleaned the hen, then put the chicken and chopped potatoes into an earthen pot to stew.
She then pan-fried a plate of tofu with lard and made a simple vegetable soup.
At dusk, the mother and two children sat under the osmanthus tree eating their meal. Wildflowers bloomed thickly along the fence, and cool mountain breezes drifted in from time to time—it was wonderfully comfortable.
For the next period of time, Gu Nianzhi took Liu-shi and Gu Nian’an into the mountains every day to gather mushrooms.
In just two months, they dried over ten sacks of mushrooms. Gu Nianzhi made more than two thousand jars of mixed mushroom paste, milk-cap mushroom paste, porcini paste, and “jian shou qing.”
At first, Liu-shi couldn’t understand why her daughter made mushroom paste every day but never sold it.
She had tasted a few bites herself—so fragrant it nearly knocked her tongue off!
Later, Gu Nianzhi explained that it was peak mushroom season. If they sold the paste now, the sharp-eyed people at the restaurants would figure it out in just a few days and start making it themselves. Once that happened, their mushroom paste would no longer fetch a good price.
So they had to make as much as possible during this time and only sell it when mushrooms were almost gone from the mountains.
That way, they could make a huge profit—and have more confidence for the journey ahead.
Finally, by the end of September, there were hardly any mushrooms left in the mountains.
The three of them searched all day and found only two baskets. Judging that the timing was right, Gu Nianzhi counted their stock at home.
They now had twenty-one sacks of dried mushrooms and just over three thousand two hundred jars of mushroom paste!
The kitchen and Gu Nianzhi’s bedroom were completely filled.
For the past few days, she had been sleeping on a pallet in Liu-shi’s room.
“Tomorrow I’ll go to town and take a look. If I can sell all the mushroom paste, we’ll be able to relax for quite a while.”
Over three thousand jars of mushroom paste! She planned to keep a little over a hundred jars in her spatial storage to eat with coarse bread or grain during the flight from famine, and sell all the rest.
As for the twenty-plus sacks of dried mushrooms, she planned to store them all in the space and eat them slowly in the future.
With her plan set, Gu Nianzhi rose early the next morning and carried eight jars of mushroom paste to town.
She planned to visit the Chen residence first. If they couldn’t take that much, she would then try selling to restaurants.
In the Chen household’s kitchen, Steward Song was happily instructing the cooks.
With plentiful rainfall these past months, the estate could harvest wild vegetables every day, and occasionally even buy some game. The master’s palate had grown quite picky lately!
Thinking about how the master had rewarded him with five taels of silver a few days ago, Steward Song felt especially pleased.
Just then, a young gate attendant ran over to inform him that someone was looking for him outside.
Steward Song assumed it was another farming household delivering wild game, gave a casual acknowledgment, and slowly made his way toward the entrance.