Chapter 1 1. Dependence

  As the sun was setting, a thin and thin figure was walking on the mountain path. There were two blood marks on his face, which should have been wounded by thorns on the mountain. He was dressed in a white linen shirt, with traces of mending everywhere, and frayed threads hanging from the cuffs. The shoes can already show the thumbs. Carrying a big bamboo basket, which is full of miscellaneous herbs from the mountains.

  The boy is called Er Gouzi, formerly named Wang Hong, from Wangjia Village, and there is no one in Wangjia Village who can read and write. This name was given by an old Taoist priest who spent ten yuan in the town to ask a fortune teller. The grown-ups think that a cheap name is easier to support, and they call him Er Gouzi on weekdays.

  There are a lot of dog names, pig names, and cattle names in the village. There were six people who called Gouzi alone, and Wang Hong could only rank second, so he was called Er Gouzi. Er Gouzi felt that his nickname was not bad, it was much nicer than those nicknames of Niushituo and Roundworm.

  Wang Hong is 12 years old this year, and lost his mother at the age of 5. His father also never came out after entering the mountains last spring. The adults in the village said that he encountered wolves and was buried in the belly of wolves.

  Wang Hong and an eight-year-old younger brother are left to live together. The younger brother is Wang Yi, whose nickname is Sigouzi. It turned out that when my father was alive, he rented and planted ten acres of land from Wang Yuanwai's family, and his life was barely passable.

  Since his father passed away, Wang Yuanwai saw that the two brothers were too young, and feared that they could not grow the land well and would not be able to pay the rent. The land was also taken back. Anyway, there are many people and little land in this area, and there are a lot of people waiting to help their family farm.

  As for hunting in the mountains, no one is willing to take him with such a drag bottle. He will not be able to catch up with the wild beasts, but will be beaten by the wild beasts on the mountain.

   There is no way, Wang Hong can only gather some herbs in a relatively safe place outside Cangyun Mountain, and sell them to the pharmacy in the town for a few copper coins.

  The little brother wandered around the fields all day, looking for some wild vegetables, picking up some firewood, and was also responsible for washing and cooking.

Er Gouzi was thinking about today's harvest while walking. Today's luck was too bad. I only picked one or two honeysuckle flowers in the whole day on the mountain, half two and half summer, and some wild chrysanthemums, nepeta grass, and wind-chasing vines. When the herbs add up, they can be sold for two copper coins at most.

   In addition, I also took out three finger-sized bird eggs and picked a handful of wild fruits.

  Although the outskirts of the mountain are safer, there are no large beasts. But there are very few things that can be worth a little money, after everyone has searched over and over again.

  Wangjia Village at the foot of the mountain was already filled with smoke, and there were still a few children playing at the entrance of the village. There are only a few dozen households in Wangjia Village, all of whom are tenants of Wang Yuan’s family in the town. They make a living by renting and farming fields.

  When the year is good, I can barely get enough food and clothing. As for the bad times, there are also some who sell their sons and daughters.

   From a long distance, I saw a seven or eight-year-old child squatting at the door picking wild vegetables. Pick very carefully, carefully shake off the soil on each plant of wild vegetables, pick off the leaves of wild vegetables one by one, and remove the places that have been bitten by insects.

  Wang Hong walked lightly behind him, but he didn't notice it yet.

   "Ah!" Wang Hong suddenly roared, causing Wang Yi to sit down on the ground in fright. After seeing clearly that it was Wang Hong, he was so angry that he wiped all the mud on Wang Hong's body.

   Chased Wang Hong up and down, waiting until the younger brother finished venting his anger. Wang Hong took out a small package wrapped in leaves from the basket, and sewed it up with grass stems.

   "Little brother, what do you think this is?"

  Wang Yi's eyes lit up, he snatched it away, and said, "This is your compensation for scaring me."

  The little brother opened it gently, and inside was a kind of raspberry, which was gathered together by beads the size of millet, the one the size of a thumb, and the whole body was black when ripe. Sweet and a little sour, my brother usually likes to eat it most.

   "Wow, there are so many buds, and I also dug up a lot of wild vegetables today." The younger brother smiled so much that his eyes narrowed into slits, squeezed a few and threw them into his mouth.

   "Hmmm... delicious!"

   grabbed another handful and stuffed it into Wang Hong's mouth.

   "I found several raspberries in the mountains, and many of them are still unripe on the trees. I will pick them in two days. Let's eat them. I'm going to cook."

  Wang Hong grabbed a handful of rice, put a lot of water in the pot, boiled it, and stirred it slowly with a wooden spoon while boiling.

  The younger brother was helping to light the fire, stuffing a few raspberries into his mouth from time to time, and sending them to Wang's mouth from time to time.

   It took half an hour to wait until the water and rice in the pot were completely fused into a thick porridge. Then add the shredded wild vegetables, and then put three bird eggs into it, and gently cut it open with chopsticks, only to see green leaves floating in the porridge, and a few traces of egg flowers, and then add some salt to taste. A pot of fragrant and attractive wild vegetable egg porridge is ready. Two big bowls were filled, and the two brothers sat on the big stone at the door and drank until Xili snorted.

  At night, looking at the younger brother who was sleeping soundly next to him, Wang Hong didn't feel sleepy at this time. Since his father passed away last year, he has been relying on him to go to the mountains every day to collect some herbs and sell them to the pharmacy in the town, earning some copper coins to barely support the two brothers.

   Often eat the last meal without the next meal. The events of last winter are still fresh in my memory. The mountains were blocked by heavy snow for two months, the land was completely white, and there was no food to be found.

  The two brothers dug through the snow to dig grass roots to feed their hunger, and often woke up hungry in the middle of the night. Fortunately, a hare was caught in the middle, and they survived the last ten days on the grass roots. It's going to be winter again soon, and my younger brother usually has more than 20 handfuls of dried wild vegetables in the sun. These will not be dug for new wild vegetables until the beginning of next spring, and there is still a lot of difference.

   This year, I saved more than 20 yuan in frugal food and expenses, and I can only buy more than two catties of rice. It seems that tomorrow we are going to venture into the deep mountains.

  In fact, there are some precious medicinal materials in the depths of Cangyun Mountain. Last year, Wang Laoqi picked a 10-year-old ginseng tree and sold it for four taels of silver.

   You must know that one tael of silver is equal to a penny, equal to one thousand wen. Two taels of silver are enough for the two brothers to live for a year.

   It's just that there are many wild animals in the mountains. Usually hunters have to gather five or six people to dare to enter the mountain, so casualties will occur from time to time. Rather than waiting to die at home, it is better to go to the deep mountains to gamble.

  The next morning, Er Gouzi packed up, took a cornbread and a hunting knife, and walked into the mountains through the dew.

  After going deep into Cangyunye for more than ten miles, there are towering old trees here, and big trees surrounded by several people can be seen everywhere. The ground was even more overgrown with thorns, and the clothes and trousers were scratched several times.

  Wang Hong opened the way with a long stick in his hand, and pushed aside the thorns blocking the way, his eyes scanned the surroundings carefully. Suddenly there was a look of surprise on his face, and following his gaze, he saw a small clump of green plants not far from the left. Its stem is like a pen holder, covered with small white flowers, and the leaves grow in pairs, shaped like bamboo leaves.

   "Ha! Ha! Ha! There are so many sealworts." He took out the small medicine pick and dug carefully. After a while, a total of thirteen plants of Polygonatum were picked, one of which was eight years old, two were six years old, and the rest ranged from three to five years.

   There are still some small seedlings that have not been picked, so let them be left to later generations. This is also an unwritten rule among herbal collectors. After the ginseng is picked, some ginseng seeds will be scattered around, those with roots will leave some small stems in the soil, and those with vines will leave some vines. If the method of cutting off descendants and grandchildren were all adopted, all those precious medicinal materials would have been extinct long ago.

  After that, I found a few less valuable herbs, found a wild walnut tree, and picked up twenty or thirty wild walnuts. Walnuts don't go bad and can be saved for the winter.

  At this moment, Wang Hong found another kudzu plant, and he was digging vigorously with his buttocks pouted. Pueraria lobata can be eaten raw directly. It tastes sweet and can quench thirst when eaten raw. Tear off a small strip and chew it happily. Pueraria lobata can also be eaten boiled, the taste is a bit like boiled yam, it is very anti-hunger. It can also be sold as medicine.