Chapter 1055: People Who Repay Kindness Are Worth Appreciating

Hearing Bolati did not wake up until the sun was nearly setting; Li Long suspected he had been woken by the cold.

Mainly, in these mountains, once the sunlight disappears, especially after afternoon, the weather becomes very cool.

Li Long had actually finished packing up; the fritillaria bulbs traded today were already loaded into the vehicle, and after that Molinsheng left, two more people came to trade items for fritillaria.

When Li Long traded fritillaria for goods, he was basically quite casual; whether it was a little more or a little less really didn't matter.

So when the last person arrived, he packed up and gave away all his remaining items.

The semi-dried fritillaria traded today totaled nearly three hundred kilograms; Li Long thought to himself that he didn't know if Chen Hongjun's purchasing station could even collect this much in a single day.

In any case, it was quite profitable.

"Is it already this late?" Hearing Bolati sat up, rubbed his eyes, looked left and right, and asked.

Li Long did not answer him; instead, his horse, seeing his movements, snorted loudly, which counted as an answer.

"Li Long, this afternoon I originally should have been able to collect fritillaria from a few more people to bring to you, but that drink was so comfortable, truly very comfortable! Don't worry, tomorrow I will definitely collect more fritillaria to bring to you, no charge! Let's say it's settled then..."

After saying this, Hearing Bolati ran to the spring, knelt directly halfway by the water's edge, plunged his head into the spring, and gulped down several mouthfuls of water.

Li Long actually wanted him to drink some hot tea, but there was no time.

After finishing his drink, Hearing Bolati wiped his face, waved to Li Long, Mingming, and Haohao, walked over to the horse, untied the reins, vaulted onto its back, flicked his whip, and the horse immediately bolted forward impatiently.

"Dad, I want to ride a horse!" Watching Hearing Bolati's dashing figure as he spurred his horse and raised his whip, Mingming gnawed on his fingers, tugged Li Long's clothes, and said.

"Dad, I want to ride too!" Haohao waved his hand to shoo away a flying horsefly and immediately added.

"Alright, if he comes over again tomorrow, when we go into the mountains, I'll take you two to ride horses."

Riding a horse was no big deal; Li Long opened the car door, let the two children get in, locked the wooden house door himself, and then drove away.

Molinsheng hurried into Lin Zi with the unfinished naan bread, his shovel, shoes, and bag.

He wiped his face, which was already covered in tears.

Ever since deciding to enter Northern Tianshan to gather herbs, everything he encountered had been malice.

Originally, Molinsheng had come to Northern Xinjiang to seek refuge with relatives; the relatives had promised to introduce him, a high school graduate, to a teaching job—a temporary position without formal establishment but with a salary.

His family had initially disagreed, feeling it was too far, but since Molinsheng had nothing to do at home, he eventually persuaded them; however, by the time he arrived, it was too late, classes had already started there, and they had hired someone else without waiting for him.

The relatives could do nothing but tell him to wait and see if other opportunities arose.

Molinsheng did not want to simply eat and drink for free at his relatives' home, so he went out every day to look for opportunities; he met a fellow villager, and during their chat, the topic of entering the mountains to dig for fritillaria came up.

That fellow villager had not entered the mountains himself but had heard about it from others, speaking with a face full of envy.

Molinsheng did not stop to think: if it were truly so easy to dig, why hadn't his fellow villager gone himself?

He recognized fritillaria and had heard how to harvest it; gritting his teeth and steeling his resolve, he spent all his remaining money on supplies and then entered the mountains.

At first, he was quite afraid in the mountains, but since there were truly so many fritillaria bulbs, as he dug, his fear gradually turned into excitement, and every day he calculated how much money the fritillaria he dug could fetch.

He never expected to first have his goods confiscated and then be robbed; as a frail scholar, he truly could not deal with those people, mainly because he lacked the courage and bravery to take action.

It was only when he was left with nothing that he realized that if it really came to a fight, even if he couldn't defeat the opponent, it was not impossible to cripple one of them at the cost of his own life.

He had also heard about the wooden house exchanging supplies from a fellow villager; starving beyond endurance and knowing he definitely couldn't exit the mountains, he thought he would try his luck at the wooden house, never expecting that Li Long would actually save him.

After changing his shoes in the forest and waving his shovel, he thought that this time he must dig fritillaria properly, digging more today and tomorrow to bring to Li Long as repayment of his debt.

If he hadn't been truly starving, he would never have considered begging for food.

Now he could only comfort himself by saying this was a loan, so there must be borrowing and repaying.

He dared not eat the remaining naan bread, saving it for dinner and tomorrow morning's meal.

Next was to find a spot to dig fritillaria properly; of course, to survive well, he also needed to find a place to spend the night.

Although he had not encountered wolves, he had heard them howling at night and knew that encountering such creatures meant there was a high probability he could not escape.

Fortunately, he still had that box of matches; later, he would find a rock crevice or Shi Dong, light a fire at the entrance, which should be enough to scare those things away.

Over the course of the afternoon, Molinsheng dug more than three kilograms of fritillaria; he dared not dig too late, mainly because he wanted to find a place to stay quickly—he had learned his lesson before.

He did not find a suitable cave near the place where he was digging fritillaria, but under a large pine tree that required two or three people to embrace, he discovered an earth hole dug out by some unknown creature.

One person could crawl inside by bending over; it was more than a meter deep, and if some dry grass were laid down, it would be suitable for sleeping.

He first cleared the entrance, observed that the large tree grew quite sturdily and did not look like it was about to fall, but the entrance was a bit too wide, worrying him about defense.

Molinsheng gathered quite a lot of dry grass nearby, carried it back to spread inside the tree hole, then broke off some pine branches to cover the wide openings on both sides of the entrance, which could block some wind and make the entrance smaller.

Feeling it was about right, he went to gather a pile of dry firewood, picked up some dry pine needles as tinder, placed them more than a meter in front of the entrance, lit the pile of firewood, and shrank back into the earth hole, finally gaining a sense of security.

The sky was still somewhat bright; Molinsheng took out the remaining naan bread, split half of it, roasted it over the fire, and began to eat, saving the rest for tomorrow's breakfast and lunch.

Perhaps tomorrow he wouldn't need lunch; if he dug fritillaria all morning tomorrow and worked hard to gather ten kilograms, he could take it to Li Long to repay his debt, borrow a little more naan bread to get through these two days, and everything after that would be money he earned himself.

Around midnight, wolves passed nearby, but the bonfire scared them away; Molinsheng slept soundly, and the next day he was woken by the cold—the fire had gone out by midnight—but fortunately, his fever did not return; he crawled out of the earth hole, first gathered a pile of firewood to reignite the fire, then went to a nearby small stream to wash clean the fritillaria he had dug yesterday.

Mainly, he felt that when repaying his debt to the owner of the wooden house, he should not use dirty fritillaria.

When Li Long returned to the county town yesterday, the sun had already set; he first drove the vehicle into the courtyard of the purchasing station, where Mingming and Haohao impatiently got out of the car and ran ahead to find Gu Gu Bo Yuan.

Li Long and Sun Jia Qiang unloaded all the fritillaria from the jeep, and Sun Jia Qiang was also somewhat surprised:

"Did you trade this much today?"

"Mm, people digging for fritillaria in the mountains are still quite short on supplies, plus Hearing Bolati didn't take two sacks," Li Long explained, then asked, "How much did we collect today?"

"There's over a hundred kilograms of purely dry ones, over four hundred kilograms of semi-dry and semi-wet ones, and some fresh ones, probably another two or three hundred kilograms," Sun Jia Qiang replied; he was now somewhat numb to the purchasing station's profitability, seeing such large daily volumes had become habitual for him.

Mainly, he dared not calculate in detail, because if one calculated carefully, just the fritillaria alone amounted to tens of thousands of yuan every day.

The trend of collecting fritillaria this year seemed even fiercer than last year; he and Liang Shuang Cheng took turns washing and drying the fritillaria every day, feeling that this workload was not much less than when one person did it alone last year.

What did this indicate? It indicated that the volume of fritillaria purchased now was much greater than last year.

Li Long calculated that, adding what he exchanged in the mountains, the fritillaria collected today, converted to dry weight, amounted to over five hundred kilograms, with a total value exceeding sixty thousand yuan.

Even if calculated slightly lower than the purchasing station's buying price, and his own exchange price was even lower, at least thirty thousand yuan in profit must have flowed out, right?

It was terrifying!

In a gap between receiving goods, Gu Gu Bo Yuan asked Mingming and Haohao how their day of playing had been.

"We had so much fun! The grasslands in the mountains are truly vast!"

"Grandpa, tomorrow we're going to ride big horses!" Haohao blurted out eagerly.

Gu Gu Bo Yuan revealed a trace of worry; there was no way to explain this to the two children, so he planned to persuade Li Long during dinner.

Actually, if they were his own children, riding horses at three or four years old would be nothing; an adult could simply lead the horse.

But the affection between grandparents and grandchildren knows no reason; Gu Gu Bo Yuan simply felt that Haohao was still too young, and Li Long's rough approach might easily hurt the child.

After unloading the Fritillaria, Li Long moved to the front, exchanged a few words with Gu Gu Bo Yuan, and then took Mingming and Haohao home.

Although the sun had already set, seven or eight people were still queuing in the acquisition station's courtyard waiting to sell their goods; Li Long had originally intended to stay and help, but Gu Gu Bo Yuan chased him back home.