Chapter 1062

It was already afternoon when Hearing Bolati arrived at the wooden cabin.

Looking from afar, there was nothing unusual about the surroundings of the cabin. Clearly, Mingming and Haohao were playing within the range of the spring; whenever someone came to trade Fritillaria for goods, the two of them would run into the cabin early on.

A woman was busy running back and forth beside Li Long. At first, Hearing Bolati thought she was one of Li Long's sheep-herding girls, but as he rode closer, he realized this woman must have come from deep in the mountains; her hair hadn't been washed in a long time and was a tangled mess, and her clothes didn't fit her well either.

Seeing Hearing Bolati approach, Li Long greeted him. After sending away the person who had come to trade, he pointed to the shed beside the cabin and said:

"Two people who were digging for medicinal herbs in the mountains tried to rob me, so I knocked them down and tied them up. I suspect these two might have committed crimes back in their hometowns. Why don't you take them back and interrogate them?"

Tang Ling felt it was a bit strange to hear Li Long speak to Hearing Bolati about this matter as if he were giving orders to a subordinate.

She knew Li Long must have some connection with the Forestry Team, but she hadn't expected Li Long to be able to speak to Hearing Bolati like that.

To these herb diggers, Hearing Bolati, who carried a gun, was no different from a fierce and evil spirit; if they were discovered by him, the best they could hope for was the confiscation of their Fritillaria, and the worst was being escorted to the detention center.

Yet at this moment, the way Hearing Bolati and Li Long were interacting seemed a bit strange.

"There are still people daring enough to rob you at a time like this?" Hearing Bolati laughed as he dismounted, carrying his horsewhip toward the shed to take a look while saying, "Have these two lost their minds? Haven't they heard from other herb diggers about your skills?"

"Who knows, maybe they thought I was easy to bully." Li Long poured the collected Fritillaria into a large basin and began to wash it, and Tang Ling hurriedly came over to help.

Tang Ling was the woman who had been held hostage by those two men. After taking the money Li Long gave her, she had detoured into the mountains to pack the three people's luggage into two large bags, carrying one and dragging the other, and had managed to make it all the way to the cabin.

Li Long's intention was for her to take her things and leave quickly, but Tang Ling wouldn't go. She stubbornly insisted on staying here, saying she wanted to wait for the forest ranger to come and explain things clearly before leaving. Then, she ended up mooching a lunch off Li Long here—though, of course, she didn't just mooch for free; she took the initiative to help Li Long with his work.

Li Long couldn't hit or scold her, so he just let her stay there.

Now that Hearing Bolati had arrived, Li Long thought it was time for this woman to leave.

After those two men were tied up, because people would come by from time to time to trade Fritillaria for goods or money, Li Long thought it wasn't convenient to leave them out in the open. He simply tore up their ragged clothes, stuffed them into their mouths, and then dragged the two of them and threw them under the shed by the cabin.

It was only after seeing Li Long effortlessly lift those two men that Tang Ling had the idea to stay. She knew Li Long was capable, but she hadn't expected him to be this strong.

"These two don't look like good people at all." After Hearing Bolati finished looking at the two men, he didn't pay them any more mind, but instead walked toward his horse. After unloading the two bags of Fritillaria from the horse's back, he said to Li Long:

"First, exchange these two bags of Fritillaria for money for me. I'll rest for a while, then drag these two cowards to the Forestry Team."

"Alright, alright, alright. Let me see how your Fritillaria is."

Hearing Bolati said somewhat proudly:

"It's definitely very good. Recently, some people felt the Fritillaria season was coming to an end, so they prepared to take the Fritillaria they dug and dried out to exchange for money.

They don't know where they heard the news that if you wash the Fritillaria clean and remove the impurities, you can get more money for it, so the Fritillaria collected is all processed quite cleanly."

"That must be news they got from me," Li Long said while laughing and inspecting the Fritillaria. "It's just that here, I calculate the money based on how clean the Fritillaria is.

For everyone who comes to trade Fritillaria, as long as it's a bit dirty, I tell them that if they wash it clean, I'll give them two more yuan.

So these people slowly learned to wash the Fritillaria clean after digging it up, and then bring it to me."

"Then you're quite good; you've saved us some trouble. By the way, our captain said you should find some time to come over; we've collected quite a lot of Fritillaria at our team again.

Oh, and he said there's another important matter to discuss with you."

"Fine, I'll go over tomorrow. I'll go to your team tomorrow morning to collect the Fritillaria, and then I'll come back here at noon."

Hearing Bolati's two bags of Fritillaria weighed over seventy kilograms and were about sixty or seventy percent dry. Li Long calculated it at fifty yuan per kilogram and gave him three thousand six hundred yuan.

This money was a large bundle. Hearing Bolati happily wrapped the money up, put it into his horse's saddlebags, and then went over to lift up the two tied-up men, who looked a bit half-dead.

Li Long came over to help, lifting the heavier middle-aged man and draping him over Hearing Bolati's horse. Hearing Bolati hurriedly said:

"We can't do it like this. How could my horse handle two people? You loosen the ropes on their legs, and I'll find a long rope to tie their hands together, then fasten them to my saddle.

That way, I can ride the horse in front, and they can just follow behind me."

"What if they can't keep up?" Tang Ling, who hadn't spoken until now, couldn't help but ask.

"Don't worry, they'll keep up," Hearing Bolati said with a strange smile. "If they can't keep up, they won't have faces left."

While Tang Ling was still pondering why they wouldn't have faces left if they couldn't keep up, Li Long pointed to the pile of luggage Tang Ling had sorted out and said:

"Hearing Bolati, this is the luggage of these two men. They held this woman hostage, which counts as me saving her, and then she went into the mountains and brought their luggage back. Do you want to take this luggage with you?"

"They even held a woman hostage?" Hearing Bolati's expression changed. He raised his whip and gave each of the two men a lash. "You animalistic things, I'll definitely give you a good lesson when we get back! There are a few people in our team who hate this kind of thing the most. When we get back, I'll hand these two over to them. Don't worry, they won't be let off lightly!"

"Then put these things on the horse's back and take them away quickly. I haven't even looked at them yet."

"Don't bother. People like this probably don't have anything valuable anyway. Sigh, miss, you come with me. You'll need to testify when we interrogate them."

Tang Ling was somewhat reluctant and glanced at Li Long.

"You'd better go along," Li Long said. "Don't you hate these two? Maybe they really have committed other crimes. You can watch as these two are put into prison."

Hearing Bolati nodded. Just for the crime of kidnapping a woman in the mountains, under the current circumstances, these two would likely be sentenced to five years or more.

Although the people in the Forestry Team guarded the forests and mountains, they didn't actually reject people digging for medicinal herbs in the mountains.

To put it bluntly, if there were no one digging for herbs in the mountains, they wouldn't be able to earn extra income.

They had a somewhat interdependent relationship. Therefore, what the Forestry Team hated most were unstable factors in the mountains like these two men; they would affect the security environment in the mountains and make some herb diggers afraid to enter.

Being able to take down and sentence people like this was also a good thing for the Forestry Team.

Tang Ling hesitated for a moment, but finally decided to go with Hearing Bolati. Her luggage was placed on the horse's back by Hearing Bolati, and as for her, she could only follow along.

Fortunately, for those who can dig for herbs in the mountains, walking twenty or thirty kilometers a day is no problem.

After Hearing Bolati left with Tang Ling and those two fellows, Li Long also prepared to leave. The Fritillaria collected today wasn't as much as yesterday, but the Fritillaria brought by those two fellows counted as a free harvest, and earning a few thousand yuan out of thin air was also a good thing.

After loading all the Fritillaria onto the car and letting Mingming and Haohao sit in the car as well, Li Long took a look at the luggage bags of the two people Tang Ling had left behind just as he was about to leave. Feeling a bit curious, he stepped forward and opened the bags.

Ragged bedding, messy clothes, and some miscellaneous personal items.

These things could be ignored, but two small bundles rolled up in the bedding caught Li Long's attention.

One bundle was handmade from cloth, slightly larger than a child's textbook from the eighties, and it was stuffed full.

Li Long untied the button on the bag and poured the contents out to see: rolls of small change, with the largest denomination being ten yuan and the smallest being one fen; it looked like there were several dozen yuan.

Then there were over a dozen silver dollars covered in dirt and rust, and two jade thumb rings. They were made of jasper, but the quality of the jade was quite good; there were no black spots, and they were quite green and translucent.

The other was an artificial leather bag, similar in size to the cloth bag. After Li Long opened it, he found a pile of miscellaneous items inside.

There was a jade cigarette holder, a jade belt hook, a gold ring with a ruby, a rather intricate gold necklace, over twenty rusty Yuan Datou silver dollars, and a small, blackened silver ingot.