Chapter 820

"It's truly a pity to keep these medicinal herbs here with you."

Li Long walked into the storeroom, approached the bags, sniffed the faint, musty smell, and looked at the many bags that had clearly been left unattended since being collected, saying with a pained heart.

These bags were of various colors and clearly confiscated directly from the herb gatherers. The fritillaria bulbs inside varied in quantity, and there wasn't the slightest trace of any processing.

Even just pouring them out and letting them dry in the sun on a clear day would have been better.

"That's why I brought you here," Adili said with a smile. In truth, they were used to it; every year, the herbs collected from those gatherers included moldy and spoiled ones, and nearly one-third to half of them ended up unsellable and were dumped.

Don't let the title of "forest ranger" fool you; over ninety percent of them didn't know how to store or maintain those herbs. The forestry team had only been established for two years, and most of these members were originally herdsmen. Being able to ride horses, patrol the mountains, catch people, confiscate goods, and prevent forest fires was already quite impressive.

To them, these herbs collected from the gatherers were a windfall. If they could sell them and split the money, that was best, but if they couldn't, there was no real loss. As for how much they sold, it wasn't something they cared much about.

"You should come here often from now on. You can take whatever we collect directly, so the herbs won't spoil," Bolati added from the side. "Why don't you take a look now at which of these herbs are usable and how much they're worth?"

"Alright then. Come, let's move all these things out together," Li Long said. "Move everything out, and I'll check bag by bag to see which herbs are usable, what grade they can be rated as, and then I'll pay you according to the grade."

He wasn't trying to be mysterious. They couldn't just pile them all together and calculate a lump sum—the fritillaria in these bags was a mix of dry and wet, good and bad. If he really gave a lump sum, it would be like gambling on stones; if it turned out well, he could make an extra profit, but if it turned out poorly, he could lose quite a bit.

To be honest, the price of fritillaria would only get more expensive in the future. Seeing such good goods just piled up here like miscellaneous junk, Li Long truly felt a bit pained.

Once he gave the word, Adili, Hou Zhengyi, and Bolati worked together to move the bags out of the storeroom.

Li Long carried a bag of fritillaria out to the truck, reached into the bag, pulled out a handful, and opened his palm to look at it.

This bag of fritillaria was about thirty percent dry and should have been gathered five or six days ago. The original gatherer probably dried it a little, but it was collected before it was fully dry, and somehow it ended up as the forestry team's spoils of war. There were some impurities in the fritillaria, and the sizes were uneven, but fortunately, it hadn't molded, so the quality was average.

"Do you have a scale?" Li Long asked as he saw Adili carrying a bag of fritillaria out with one hand, walking to the truck, and setting it down while looking at him.

"No." Adili shook his head and said, "Just estimate it like that. I've heard Bolati say that your hands are very accurate; you can tell the approximate weight of the fritillaria just by lifting it. Feel free to set the price; we trust you."

Li Long thought to himself that these people were truly carefree, listening to him on everything. Someone with a bad conscience could easily make a fortune from this.

"This bag of fritillaria in my hand is over eight kilograms, but less than nine," Li Long said after weighing it. "This fritillaria is a little bit dry, and there's no mold inside, so I'll calculate it at eight yuan per kilogram. This bag is seventy yuan."

"That's fine, that's fine." Adili was especially happy after hearing this. There were dozens of bags of fritillaria here, and this one bag alone was seventy yuan. Calculating it this way, they could get at least three or four thousand yuan today, right? That was much more than he had imagined.

In one fritillaria season, they could collect this much four or five times. If it were three or four thousand each time, the whole team could split nearly twenty thousand yuan in a season—that was quite a lot!

"As for these two bags... this one is a bit moldy. I'll take it back and wash it to see how much is usable. I can't offer a high price for this; look at the fritillaria here, the color has changed. I'll calculate it at two yuan per kilogram. This bag is about ten kilograms, so that's twenty yuan.

This bag here hasn't molded, and the dryness is okay. This bag weighs about fourteen kilograms, so I'll calculate it at fifteen yuan per kilogram, making this bag two hundred yuan."

"That much? Good, good, good, good, that's great." Adili was overjoyed; these three bags alone added up to three hundred yuan.

Adili was happy, and Li Long was happy too. To be honest, some of the fritillaria inside was indeed a bit moldy, but it was only on the surface. Taking it back to wash it, most of it would still be qualified product. Of course, Li Long wasn't an unscrupulous merchant; he would still wash it carefully when he got back, and if any was severely moldy, he wouldn't be able to keep it and would have to throw it away.

As bag after bag of fritillaria was brought over, Li Long estimated the grade and stated the total price right by the truck.

While he spoke, he also took a notebook and a pen out of his backpack. He had prepared these last night.

For every bag he evaluated, he would record the estimated weight and price in front of Adili, and then show it to him after recording.

At the beginning, Adili looked at every figure carefully, but later on, he basically just nodded at whatever Li Long said.

In his view, what Li Long said and did was very professional and earnest, and the prices exceeded his expectations, so he truly trusted Li Long.

"That's all the fritillaria." Bolati finished bringing the last bag, and after he set it down, Li Long said, "The rest are hides and deer antlers. Do you want to sell them all?"

"Yes, yes, yes, I want all of these." Li Long said with a smile, "I want everything you've collected in your storeroom."

Bolati was also expressing this to Li Long in front of Adili; he naturally knew that Li Long wanted all these things, and in the past, he had sometimes sold things he collected directly to Li Long, including deer antlers and hides.

"Team Leader Adili, let me calculate it for you first. There are forty-seven bags of fritillaria in total. Starting from the first bag at seventy yuan, I've added them up along the way. Look, twenty, two hundred... the total price is two thousand nine hundred and ten yuan. Take a look."

"Good, good, let me see." Adili took the notebook Li Long handed him and looked through it from top to bottom; he was mainly checking if there were any traces of Li Long having altered the figures.

He was certainly satisfied with this price; after all, just the fritillaria alone sold for this much, and there were still many hides and deer antlers to come. The total price would definitely reach four thousand.

After looking, Adili handed the notebook back to Li Long: "No problem, no problem, let's continue with the hides."

"This whole red deer hide, not bad, not bad, fifty." Li Long evaluated the hides one by one. "This roe deer hide has a problem, there's a bullet hole in the belly, this hide is thirty-five..."

Adili nodded continuously from the side, fully approving of Li Long's price assessments for these hides.

"As for this pair of deer antlers, they are quite heavy, but looking at the surface, they should be quite old, forty yuan."

After the hides came the deer antlers and roe deer antlers.

Bolati and Hou Zhengyi were right there; Li Long was setting the prices, and they were moving the items Li Long had priced onto the truck.

It took a full hour to clear out the storeroom. After calculating the last small pair of roe deer antlers at five yuan, Li Long began to calculate the final total for Adili. Adding the previous fritillaria price to the hides and the antlers, Li Long paid a total of four thousand six hundred yuan, rounding it off to a whole number.

Both sides were very satisfied.

Adili felt that he had earned a large sum for the forestry team out of thin air and had also cleared out the storeroom. A harvest like this, which they could get every ten days or half a month, was a bumper crop.

Half of this money had to be turned over to the higher-level department, and the rest would be distributed to the team members; the leaders like them would also get a share.

The money they got every ten days or half a month was much higher than their salaries.

Li Long was also very happy. Not to mention the hides and deer antlers, just these fritillaria bulbs alone, after being washed and dried, would likely earn him at least three or four thousand yuan or more.

Of course, it also depended on the purchase price when Jia Tianlong came. He was now urgently hoping that Jia Tianlong would come quickly, as there was really a bit too much fritillaria piled up at home.

With everything loaded, Li Long paid Adili and then took the wine out of the trunk and handed it to him. When Adili saw the wine, his eyes narrowed into slits with joy.

"Comrade Li Long, let's cooperate well in the future. When we have enough things here, I'll have Bolati go call you, or you can come over once a week, and I guarantee there will be enough things for you to take away. As for this wine, bringing it over is also fine."

"Don't worry, I will come to bother you often." Li Long also said with a smile.

"No bother, no bother, friends have come, right? We are very happy." Adili moved the wine into the storeroom. "If you didn't come, we wouldn't be happy."

"Team Leader Adili, I'd like to ask, is it easy to get rifle ammunition here?" Li Long suddenly remembered something. "We are often in the mountains, and yesterday we even ran into bears and wolves. We are very low on ammunition, so I wanted to ask if you have any here."

"We do, we do. Wait a moment, I'll have someone bring you a crate." The forestry team rangers in the mountains didn't just face illegal herb gatherers, but also those fierce wild carnivorous animals. So their rangers almost all carried guns at this time, and they certainly had a large stock of ammunition.

Li Long thought the ammunition Adili was giving him was the kind in a tin box with seven hundred and fifty rounds, but he didn't expect Adili to have someone bring over a wooden crate with fifteen hundred rounds directly.

This was quite impressive!

"Come find me again if you don't have enough in the future!" Adili said very generously. "We understand things in the mountains. You are also a forest ranger, we are all our own people, don't be polite."

Li Long was indeed not polite, loaded the ammunition into the jeep, said goodbye to Adili, Bolati, and the others, and drove toward the county town.

After Li Long left, Adili excitedly put the money away and then gathered the remaining people at the station for a meeting.

"From now on, we must seriously look for those herb gatherers. We sold these fritillaria for a lot of money this time. If you want more money, a better life, more wine... um, delicious food, then we must collect more of these fritillaria, deer antlers, and other things from the mountains, understand?"

With Bolati there, these people already knew that the things in the storeroom had sold for over four thousand yuan, which was a considerable sum of money!

Even if half of it had to be turned over to the superiors and the leaders had to take a share, the money finally distributed to each ranger would not be small—at least not less than a week's salary!

With money, they could buy good things. These team members had long understood this principle, and their enthusiasm was thus mobilized.

The herb gatherers in the mountains also didn't expect that after the forestry team and Li Long cooperated for the first time, they would increase the intensity of their patrols.

The amount of fritillaria they could take out of the mountains this year would be significantly less.

"Comrade Li Long, today's harvest is really huge." When they arrived at the courtyard, Hou Zhengyi, who got out of the car to help move things, said, "There must be three hundred kilograms of fritillaria here."

"Hmm, it is over three hundred kilograms. But most of it needs to be cleaned; there is dirt, some have impurities, and some have mold on the surface." Li Long said while moving them. "Anyway, it's quite troublesome; I don't know how much will be left after cleaning and drying."

Hou Zhengyi smiled and didn't speak.

He had watched the whole process of Li Long buying the fritillaria just now and was very envious, but he couldn't do this kind of work.

It was very difficult to gain the trust of the forestry team like Li Long had. Don't look at how easy it was for Adili and Li Long to trade, even to the point of letting Li Long set the price, as if they would calculate it at whatever price Li Long said without any haggling.

This point was the hardest—most of the people in the forestry team were from ethnic minorities, and they inherently had a certain vigilance toward people of other ethnicities. For Li Long to become their friend and gain their full trust, it wasn't something that could be achieved with one or two days of "investment."

Another point was that it was very difficult for ordinary people to have enough cash on hand to acquire these things.

The forestry team also had to take risks. Once these things were collected in the storeroom, they certainly wouldn't be willing to let people buy them in small quantities—the forestry team would definitely not deal with those peddlers who went from village to village, and even if those people knew the news, they wouldn't be able to pry open the forestry team's door.

This situation would persist for decades. Ordinary people would also encounter similar opportunities, but without such large capital, some opportunities simply couldn't be grasped.

Of course, another very important reason why most ordinary people couldn't make money was the information gap; by the time they knew that certain fields or materials could make money, those things were no longer profitable.

Dozens of bags of fritillaria and those hides and deer antlers almost filled all the spare side rooms Li Long had now.

That is to say, since Gu Bo Yuan had already moved to the purchasing station, the materials collected by the station didn't need to be moved to the courtyard anymore; otherwise, it would really be quite troublesome to store things.

Because there were still things to do in the mountains, Li Long couldn't stay at home for long. After unloading and putting the things away, he greeted Sister Yang, hugged Mingming and Haohao, and then drove toward the mountains with Hou Zhengyi.

The two cars arrived at Yushanjiang's winter shelter together; it was already noon. After getting out of the car, Li Long and Hou Zhengyi gnawed on dry naan with salted vegetables here to make do for a meal.

This was the simplest lunch they had eaten in recent times.

Neither of them felt it was hard; they were a bit tired from running back and forth, and the dry naan tasted quite good.

After eating, Li Long carried his backpack and gun and headed into the mountains. Others had high hopes for him, so he had to work hard, at least to see if there was a chance to hunt something.

To be honest, Meng Hai and the others worked very solidly, and the quality of the winter shelter they built was also very good. Li Long felt it was necessary to let them get some benefits in other aspects besides their wages.

It wasn't until it was almost dark that Li Long, having climbed over a dozen mountains, finally hunted a lone, half-grown wild boar in a nearby mountain gully. The wild boar wasn't very big, weighing about sixty or seventy kilograms, but it was enough for everyone to share.

By the time Meng Hai and the others came down from the winter shelter on the mountain with their tools, Li Long had already skinned the wild boar, removed the internal organs, and divided it up.

There was no time to cook the meat, so they still ate dry naan with salted vegetables and red bean curd for dinner. Although the food was simple, Meng Hai and the others were very happy, mainly because they could take meat back again today.

After returning to the courtyard, Li Long ate dinner and began to wash the fritillaria. Gu Xiaoxia and Gu Bo Yuan both came to help, and Sister Yang let Han Fang watch Mingming and Haohao while she also came to help.

Li Long was used to this work, and it didn't require much technical skill. With four adults working together, they had already washed over a dozen bags by dark.

These clean fritillaria bulbs that had been washed and separated had to be spread out in the room to dry.

The next morning, after Li Long got up, he continued to wash the fritillaria before the meal was ready.

If you want to make money, you have to work hard; there was no other way.

Fortunately, there was nothing to do in the mornings and evenings for the next few days. During the day, Li Long went into the mountains, took Meng Hai and the others to renovate the winter shelters, hunted himself, and also went to Sun Jia Qiang's place to replenish supplies in the wooden house, then brought back the fritillaria Sun Jia Qiang had collected.

At night, he would wash the fritillaria, and the washed fritillaria would be dried. The days were slowly getting longer, the working time was also getting longer, and life was quite fulfilling.

Six days later, Meng Hai and the others finished renovating all the winter shelters on the mountain. Li Long took the truck again to collect the woven baskets from Xiaobaiyanggou and Qingshuihe Village; this time, he collected over seventeen hundred baskets.

The fritillaria he collected from the forestry team was finally washed clean and dried.

The dried fritillaria was packed bag by bag and stacked in the side room; the fritillaria and the hides were placed in two separate rooms, otherwise, the smells would mix.

The purchasing station had also received a large amount of fritillaria and other miscellaneous goods.

On the day Meng Hai finished renovating the winter shelter, Li Long went to the forestry team again with Hou Zhengyi, bringing them two cases of wine, a case of small champagne, and some canned goods.

When he returned, he brought back over two hundred kilograms of fritillaria and hides worth over five hundred yuan.

There was almost no room left at home.

Li Long was worried that he didn't have Jia Tianlong's phone number; otherwise, he would have called to urge him long ago.

Finally, on May 3rd, after Li Long returned from the mountains, he heard good news. Jia Tianlong called the supply and marketing cooperative, and Li Xiangqian sent someone to the purchasing station to tell Gu Bo Yuan.

The main point was that Jia Tianlong would come in the next two days, and he asked Li Long to organize the medicinal herbs ready for sale.

Li Long, who returned from the mountains at night, felt relieved upon hearing this news. This guy was finally coming; if he didn't come, he was planning to drive a truckload of fritillaria to Beiting City to sell.

It was early May, the peak season for harvesting fritillaria. So far, Li Long had three sources for collecting fritillaria: the wooden house, the forestry team, and the purchasing station. The fritillaria collected from these three sources and dried now amounted to almost a ton.

It was equal to the total amount of fritillaria collected in the entire last year.

After a rough calculation, even Li Long was startled.

Of the three sources, the price at the purchasing station was the highest, followed by the forestry team, and the cheapest was the wooden house.

Of course, the amount collected at the wooden house was also the smallest.

Just this batch of fritillaria, if calculated at last year's prices, would be worth forty or fifty thousand! (End of chapter)