Zhao Shiying didn’t have time to think too much about it. She immediately turned and walked toward the pair of sisters.
“Chunhua, Chuncai, have you seen my Seventh Sister?”
“Xiaoyu?”
“Yeah.”
“She went that way.”
Seeing Zhao Shiying about to chase after her, Chunhua quickly reminded her, “Xiaoying, don’t go too far. My mother said the deep mountains are dangerous.”
Zhao Shiying waved her hand. “Got it, thanks. I’m just going over there to see if my Seventh Sister is around. I’ll come back soon. I won’t go deep into the mountains.”
Watching Zhao Shiying walk away, the Chunhua sisters exchanged a glance before lowering their heads and continuing to dig for wild vegetables. At the same time, they muttered to themselves about how strange those two sisters had been acting today.
Still, the two quickly refocused on gathering wild vegetables. Their mother had said that while the vegetables were still tender, they should gather as much as possible and dry them for storage. That way, during winter, they could mix them into their grain and avoid going hungry.
Following the direction the sisters had pointed out, Zhao Shiying walked for quite a while, but she still didn’t find Zhao Shiyu. She couldn’t help feeling puzzled.
The children who came to dig wild vegetables never wandered too far inside, so why hadn’t she seen Zhao Shiyu anywhere along the way?
Could Zhao Shiyu have gone even deeper into the mountains?
But how dared she?
Was this what it meant to be the female protagonist—naturally fearless?
Sure, there was an adult soul inside her, but people shouldn’t forget that her body was still that of an eight-year-old child!
Wasn’t she afraid of danger?
Zhao Shiying hesitated. She wanted to continue searching deeper inside, but she was also afraid of running into real danger. Her current eight-year-old body simply wouldn’t be able to handle it.
Even though she also had an adult soul inside her, this body was undeniably that of a child. Ever since transmigrating here, she had remained an ordinary person. She hadn’t awakened any supernatural abilities, nor had any system attached itself to her.
Was it just because she wasn’t the heroine that she didn’t deserve a cheat ability?
But she was a transmigrator too! Just because the original owner of this body didn’t have a cheat item, did that mean she shouldn’t get one either?
Wouldn’t that make her transmigration completely pointless?
Fortunately, she knew the plot. She knew the original heroine possessed a cheat item. As long as she intercepted it before the heroine got it, she would gain the means to survive in this era.
Once she thought it through, her heart finally calmed down a little.
But perhaps because she lacked the protagonist’s halo, even though the heroine could easily find the Space Stone, Zhao Shiying had searched with all her strength and still failed to find it.
She had finally endured long enough for the clouds to part and the moon to appear. At last, the heroine had transmigrated over, and just as Zhao Shiying was about to succeed, someone else had suddenly intercepted it first.
Worse, she didn’t even know who had taken it.
At this point, Zhao Shiying hated the unfairness of heaven itself. She hated the heroine for being useless, and she also hated the person who had stolen her opportunity…
That’s right—in Zhao Shiying’s mind, since she had transmigrated here and possessed knowledge of the plot, the original heroine’s cheat item should naturally belong to her!
So whoever took the Space Stone was basically stealing her cheat item.
Besides, before the heroine obtained the Space Stone, it had been ownerless. Strictly speaking, that didn’t count as stealing from the heroine.
After all, she was a transmigrator too. Everyone had come from the modern world, so nobody was more noble than anyone else. Zhao Shiying believed that if she could seize the opportunities originally meant for the heroine ahead of time, replacing the original heroine wasn’t impossible.
But now…
Zhao Shiying was starting to question her entire life.
She sat dejectedly at the foot of the mountain for a long time before finally pulling herself together again.
Although the Space Stone was the cheat item she wanted most, it wasn’t the heroine’s only opportunity.
Since she had failed to seize the first one, she would take the second instead.
If she remembered correctly, the people of Zhao Family Village had lived at the foot of this mountain for generations, for over a hundred years. There was even a village doctor who regularly climbed the mountain to gather herbs, yet no one had ever discovered any ginseng here.
But not long after the heroine transmigrated, she somehow dug up a wild ginseng root from this very mountain.
And not just any ginseng—
It was a hundred-year-old wild ginseng.
The most ridiculous part was that it had been found in the mountain’s outer region.
Seriously, where was the logic in that?
Even though children only played around the lower slopes, adults from the village still wandered around the outer mountain areas from time to time. Yet not a single person had ever discovered the ginseng.
And then the heroine found it shortly after transmigrating here?
How the hell was that reasonable?
Later, the heroine secretly used a trip to the county with her family as an excuse to slip away and sell the ginseng behind their backs. She exchanged it for three hundred taels of silver, earning her first bucket of gold.
So now Zhao Shiying needed to find a way to intercept this ginseng.
If she could keep it for herself, naturally that would be ideal.
But even if she couldn’t monopolize it, she could still expose its existence.
Whether it was the ginseng itself or the money from selling it, as long as it was handed over to the family treasury, she would still benefit from it.
Most importantly—
It would make the heroine suffer.
By now, Zhao Shiying had already begun to hate Zhao Shiyu. As long as Zhao Shiyu was unhappy, she would feel happy.
Even though she knew this kind of thinking was immoral, she simply couldn’t suppress the jealousy inside her.
That blazing fire called jealousy was practically burning her alive. She desperately needed an outlet to vent it.
Deep down, she understood perfectly well that this was the classic mentality of someone who couldn’t stand seeing others live better than themselves.
But no matter what, she just couldn’t persuade herself to give up.
It was incredibly contradictory.
Still, she had ultimately received a modern education and had been a law-abiding citizen in her previous life. No matter how vicious her thoughts became, all she wanted to do was steal Zhao Shiyu’s opportunities.
She had never once considered harming anyone.
Mostly because she didn’t have the courage to.
Since Zhao Shiyu still hadn’t returned, Zhao Shiying started wandering around nearby instead.
Even if the mountain itself wasn’t dangerous, there was no point entering deeper to search for Zhao Shiyu. There were no fixed paths inside the mountain, and she had no idea which direction Zhao Shiyu had gone after entering.
She wasn’t about to waste effort on something pointless.
It was better to search around the outer area instead.
And who knew? Maybe luck would favor her, and the ginseng she wanted to intercept would be nearby.
After all, the novel had stated that the heroine discovered the ginseng somewhere in this outer mountain region.
Unfortunately, the story never described the exact location or surroundings where the ginseng was found, leaving Zhao Shiying searching around like a headless fly.
The main issue was that everything around her looked almost identical.
Aside from trees, there were only weeds and shrubs.
Most of the trees were poplars, pines, cypresses, and parasol trees, with the occasional willow tree mixed in. Of course, there were also a few varieties she couldn’t recognize.
The trees grew chaotically across the mountain without any pattern whatsoever.
Even though the novel had described the environmental conditions suitable for ginseng growth, trying to locate it in such a vast forest was still incredibly difficult.
Because of that, Zhao Shiying was really just trying her luck.
In truth, she wasn’t holding onto much hope at all.