Qin Sang rounded the large tree and saw Tian Yuanshan's patrol team talking with Mrs. Tian Li and several others.
It turned out that Mrs. Tian Li and her companions hadn't gone to the fields to harvest grain but were heading up the mountain instead. When the patrol team spotted them and questioned them, Mrs. Tian Li and the others didn't lie and explained the reason, but Tian Yuanshan clearly didn't believe them.
Mrs. Tian Li said crossly:
"Can we go now? Why do you care what happened to Da Zhuang's Mother? Anyway, we didn't take your family's rice or eat your family's grain. If you don't believe us, then don't. It's not like we're asking you to do it."
As she spoke, she tugged at her two sisters-in-law to leave, with several of her children following beside them.
Tian Yuanshan grumbled and cursed:
"I'm doing this for your own good. Brother You Gen is still lying in bed unable to get up. Instead of staying home to take care of your husband, you're listening to Widow Tian's nonsense and going up the mountain to dig for grass. If something happens to you on the mountain, who will take care of Brother You Gen?"
Mrs. Tian Li wasn't polite either:
"None of your damn business. My husband is doing fine; he can already get out of bed to eat and use the toilet by himself. He doesn't need care. I think some people are just jealous that such a good thing has nothing to do with them."
Tian Yuanshan spat:
"Pah... Me, jealous of you?"
After they parted ways, Tian Yuanshan was still saying to the patrol team behind him:
"We'll go to Widow Tian's house later to watch the show. If Widow Tian's family really uses white rice to trade for wild grass, I'll write my name, Tian Yuanshan, backwards."
The group cheered, saying they would definitely all go together when the time came.
Qin Sang thought to herself that if Tian Yuanshan really came to watch the excitement today, he might actually be doing her a huge favor.
After they had walked far away, Qin Sang finally headed up the mountain alone. She didn't plan to go with Mrs. Tian Li and the others; with too many people around, it would be difficult to take things out.
There truly were many ordinary medicinal herbs, but they weren't Qin Sang's goal. She only symbolically picked a few of each kind, intending to take them back as specimens. Later, she could just have the villagers help her collect them.
Rounding a large boulder, Qin Sang made a discovery. After a few strokes with her hoe, a rhizome was in her hand:
"High-quality gastrodia elata detected. Two mall coins per gram."
She chose to sell it. This piece of gastrodia elata weighed 150 grams, and her mall coins increased by three hundred.
There were a few more gastrodia elata plants in this area. Qin Sang dug up two more; she sold one to the Mall and kept the other to sell to a pharmacy later. She planned to leave the rest for whichever lucky soul came to dig them up.
She stuffed a few potatoes into the holes she had dug and lightly covered them with withered grass and branches.
Later, she found some solomon's seal rhizome, worth three mall coins per gram. This was a good medicinal herb for tonifying qi and nourishing yin. There was a small patch of them. Qin Sang dug up half and left the other half. Of those she dug up, half went to increase her mall coins and half were kept for use at home.
She didn't drop potatoes here but instead placed pumpkins. She couldn't bear to leave ten-pound ones, so she left small pumpkins weighing two or three pounds.
Qin Sang walked and stopped, finding a cluster of Motherwort. This was good stuff—it promoted blood circulation, regulated menstruation, acted as a diuretic, and reduced swelling. It was a 'friend to women.'
Qin Sang planned to keep it for her own family's use. Although she could exchange for patent Chinese medicines in the Mall—like Huo Xiang Zheng Qi liquid, Pu Di Lan, and Motherwort granules—those were, after all, medicines produced through large-scale cultivation in later generations. Their efficacy certainly couldn't compare to these pure, wild, high-quality raw materials.
A large part of the reason for the decline of Chinese medicine in later generations was that many rare herbs were listed as national protected plants, and herbs were no longer wild but mostly cultivated, leading to insufficient efficacy.
Therefore, Qin Sang planned to keep a portion of the medicinal herbs she found for her own use and not sell them all for money or mall coins.
In about two hours, Qin Sang earned over three thousand mall coins.
On the way back, she placed a few more pumpkins and buried several clusters of potatoes. Her basket now held seventeen or eighteen eggs, a pound of bird's eye chilies, three pounds of oranges, two pounds of apples, and eight pomegranates. Fortunately, the Mall's prices were very fair, with no 'fruit assassins.' After buying all these miscellaneous items, her Mall balance remained at five thousand seven hundred.
By the time she reached home, Qin Sang was exhausted and had already finished two bamboo tubes of water. Before she even entered the house, she saw someone coming out to meet her:
"Mother, come quickly and take a look! Someone fainted and was brought to our house."
Qin Sang quickened her pace. Entering the courtyard, she saw Si Jin giving the person water. Seeing Qin Sang enter, Si Jin looked as if he had seen a savior:
"Mother, Aunt Xia fainted. It looks like the heatstroke you mentioned yesterday. I gave her some lightly salted water."
Qin Sang checked and indeed, it was heatstroke. In such hot weather, her family relied on her as the sole laborer. If she collapsed, the sky would truly fall for the Xia family.
"Go to the room and bring the medicine box I prepared."
Si Jin was quick and nimble, soon returning with it. Qin Sang took out one of the bamboo tubes, which contained the Huo Xiang Zheng Qi liquid she kept at home. Yesterday, when Da Zhuang went on patrol, she had also had him prepare a tube. This stuff could truly save lives in an emergency.
After she poured it into Widow Xia, perhaps because the medicinal smell was too strong, Widow Xia woke up after a short while.
"I... I am..."
Seeing her wake up, the villagers who had brought her over were finally relieved:
"Widow Xia, you fainted in the field. It was your child who came running to find us crying that we found out. If there had been any more delay, you probably would have baked to death in the field."
"We carried you to Widow Tian's house. It was Widow Tian who gave you medicine and saved you."
Widow Xia was thin and frail, her clothes hanging loosely on her. Hearing this and recalling some of the scene, she realized Qin Sang had saved her. She hurriedly scrambled up and knelt on the ground:
"Big Sister Qin, thank you for saving my life. If it weren't for you today, I..."
Qin Sang hurriedly helped her up:
"Get up quickly. How could I possibly deserve such a grand gesture? Get up, get up. "
"This heatstroke of yours isn't some major illness; you were just extremely overheated. "
"If the Heavens really wanted to take you, I wouldn't be able to save you anyway."
Fortunately, it wasn't a severe heatstroke; otherwise, even an immortal couldn't have helped.
Qin Sang signaled Eldest Brother's Wife with her eyes, and the two of them supported Widow Xia. Widow Xia's eyes were filled with tears:
"No, you don't know. If it hadn't been for the few pounds of grain you sent to my house last time, my... my family would have long since been unable to survive."
Everyone who heard this sighed. The village knew how miserable the Xia family's situation was.
A paralyzed Younger Brother-in-law, a Mother-in-law who had gone blind from crying, and four children underneath who were only four or five years old. With so many mouths to feed, the whole family relied on her working the fields for food and drink.
Someone had once advised her to remarry, on the condition that she didn't take the children with her.
Widow Xia hadn't agreed. If she left, this family would truly have no way to survive.
Qin Sang felt some admiration for this woman. She took several fruits and eggs from her basket and stuffed them into the other woman's arms:
"Sister, I picked these fruits on the mountain today. I've tasted them, and they're very sweet. Take them back to eat; they aren't worth much. "
"You can't just work yourself to the bone in the fields in this kind of weather. Your own body is what's important. "
"Working for a while and then resting for a while can sometimes get more done than pushing yourself with an exhausted body."
She also pulled out the few medicinal herbs she had dug up today from the bottom of the basket and gave them to her as well:
"These are Prunella and isatis root, also dug from the mountain. Take them back and boil them in water to drink; they can relieve heat and reduce internal fire. "
"If you feel bad about it, just dig a few plants to pay me back after you're finished with the work in your fields."