Chapter 1358: Huaxia's Goods

Fritillaria found the great sea and stayed by its side, collecting a great many foods. The food in the sea seemed inexhaustible; today they gathered up all the fish, shrimp, and such from among the reefs, and the next day they discovered there were more fish again.

After eating plenty of those various things that grow shells, they discovered a pattern: as long as you soak them in water for a day or two, you can wash the sand inside clean, and this way you won't eat sand when you eat them.

Different shells have different tasting meat inside; some large ones actually taste quite good, and even for some strange-looking ones, as long as they are boiled and cracked open, the meat is still edible.

It is just that they discovered the meat of these things cannot be pickled, nor is there a way to smoke it dry. Their method for making meat paste also seemed useless against the meat inside these shells, so they could only eat it fresh and give up on the meat inside these shells.

Anything that could not be brought back would turn foul after just one night and could not be eaten at all; it rotted even faster than fish meat.

They did use various methods to preserve the fish, making a large quantity, and there was also the various Sea Grass that Huaxia needed; once they collected it, they began to dry it.

They found some Grass, twisted it into Grass ropes, found a spot to hang it up, and hung the wide Sea Grass to dry. With the sun and the wind, it could be dried out in a day or two.

Once dried, they discovered it was much lighter than when it was wet, and it had a bit of flexibility. It could be rolled up, pressed tight, and then tied up with Grass ropes; this saved space and was convenient to carry, which could be said to be very good.

Fritillaria and the others collected several types of Sea Grass, dried them, and then bundled them up like this. In the end, they would see which type Huaxia actually wanted; in any case, they had already provided them.

However, they also discovered that there were many white things on those dried Sea Grass; scraping them with a finger and tasting them in their mouths, it was bitter and salty—it must be salt.

It seems what Huaxia said about being able to get salt out of the sea is not false. But if they could get salt from the dried Sea Grass, could they perhaps get the salt out themselves without relying on Huaxia?

Fritillaria questioned it on the spot: "Get it? How do you get it? What method do you have? Just by drying Sea Grass like this? With so much Sea Grass, how much salt is actually on it?"

The person who proposed the idea spoke very confidently: "Dry it! If you dry the seawater, won't there be salt? This water is so salty, it must be because there is too much salt in it."

This time, there was no need for Fritillaria to refute it; the other Soldiers refuted it themselves: "Dry the seawater? How do you dry it? Such a big sea is here, being dried by the sun every day, and we haven't seen any salt. Look at this ground; isn't there so much seawater here? Forget salt, you can't even see a tiny bit of white alkali!"

Struck by this, everyone stopped mentioning the matter of drying salt, but everyone also felt that getting salt out of the sea was entirely possible. It was just that they had no way to do it, and Huaxia, who understood the sea better than them, might really know how to get it out.

If they could trade some Sea Grass and some grass roots for such important information, that would be a great bargain.

Fritillaria and the others also found two very strange stones on the shore—white, sparkling, and glowing. At a glance, they were not ordinary things; they were heavy and just like good jade. They must be brought back to the tribe for the Tribal Chief to see.

Another person searching for other things for Huaxia, Jiaosheng, also took tribesmen into the mountains during the Winter; after all, if they did not go into the mountains to hunt, it would be difficult to find enough food.

And the time just as Spring began was the perfect opportunity for them to hunt. At this time, the bear, usually the most dangerous, was the easiest to capture for them, because the bear had just finished hibernating or perhaps had not even woken up yet and was still in a tree hole.

At this time, the bear would also be relatively weak due to not having eaten for a long time, making it relatively easier to capture.

Capturing a large bear, for one, could provide a considerable amount of protein, and bear skin was also very useful. Furthermore, if they killed more large bears now, they would encounter fewer bears when they went into the forest to hunt later, which could bring safety to these hunters.

During the Winter, the red fruits were still very conspicuous. They would walk straight over and pluck them up in one handful; sometimes they even had to use a bit more strength. It was just that they did not know why Huaxia wanted these strange-looking grass roots with such long whiskers.

Jiaosheng and the others found it troublesome, and also to make them look tidy, so they used their hands to strip off all the whiskers, leaving only the thick body.

They even pulled out one that looked a bit like a human shape, with arms and legs, but the hairs were too long, so they stripped them off in one handful as well.

Not to mention the ones they encountered when they besieged bears in the Spring, even in the Winter, they had already dug up many, many of them. Although this kind of grass could not be said to be everywhere, it was very common. As long as one looked carefully in the mountain forest, it was easy to find a large patch.

In the end, Jiaosheng and the others kept the ones they considered to be of "good quality"—the large ones. Some that were pulled out and seen to be relatively small were thrown away directly, or ones that were pulled and broken, or not pulled out completely, were all discarded.

It is because of willfulness now; never mind a few years, there are likely ones here that are over a hundred years old. Those over a hundred years are not certain, after all, even if it is a perennial herb, it will always encounter various disasters. Having finally lived for a hundred years, in the one hundred and first year, droughts, rainstorms, bears stepping on them, deer stepping on them—various disasters follow one after another. You might not encounter them in a year or two, but as long as you live long enough, you will certainly encounter low-probability bizarre events.

Baifeng also did not know if there were thousand-year-old ginseng in these mountains now; perhaps there were. But the current Baifeng might not be able to distinguish how many years these ginseng had lived, but he figured that as long as they were wild, the effect would certainly not be bad.

However, if Baifeng were to see ginseng that had been rubbed bald, he would definitely go crazy. Such good things, yet they were treated so casually—it is too much of a pity, too much of a pity.

If there were a hundred-year-old ginseng, never mind whether it had whiskers or not, as long as it was real, the price would be in the heavens. It might not just take money; one would also need status to be able to come into contact with it and buy it. With the current ginseng, Baifeng would certainly not dare to use too large a quantity; after all, the quality is a bit too good.