Chapter 241
Chapter 241
“Huh?” Jiang Yunsui looked down blankly and only then realized she was still clutching something.
“I don’t know. I probably grabbed it when I rolled into the ravine.”
“Oh, and Little Pink.”
Jiang Yunsui pulled a small snake from inside her clothes.
Little Pink looked dazed. She had plainly been crushed during the tumble.
Any creature living on Jiang Yunsui had to accept the possibility of injury at all times.
Fortunately, Little Pink was tough and still alive.
Jiang Yunsui fed her Imperial Flowing Essence and stroked her body. The little snake quickly recovered her vigor.
“Those are ginseng berries,” Shen Qingzhu said.
Jiang Yunsui’s eyes grew perfectly round.
Did that mean ginseng grew below?
“I’ll go look.”
As a physician, Shen Qingzhu could never resist collecting fine medicinal ingredients.
If the ginseng was young, he would leave it. But if it was old-especially more than a century-he had to dig it up.
After treating Jiang Yunsui’s sprained ankle, he descended the slope.
He soon found the ginseng.
And a highly venomous silver-banded krait, crushed half senseless.
Shen Qingzhu fell silent.
“Jiang Yunsui, check whether you’ve been bitten! There’s a silver-banded krait down here!”
Every eye instantly turned toward her.
Jiang Yunsui pointed at her side. “It stings a little here.”
When they lifted her clothes, they found two fang marks seeping black blood. The surrounding skin had turned blue.
Ji Si hurriedly gave her an antidote pill while the others squeezed out the venom.
Jiang Yunsui patted her chest. “I’m fine. I can’t be poisoned!”
Her body was immune to all poisons, and the venom truly had not spread. A little pressure expelled it along with the black blood.
“You’re unbelievably careless!” Ji Lu said, unable to resist rapping her forehead.
Jiang Yunsui let the scolding enter one ear and leave the other. She was fine, wasn’t she?
The hunter stared, dumbfounded. That was an extremely venomous snake. And she was all right, just like that?
“Shen Qingzhu, is there ginseng down there?”
Shen Qingzhu laughed. “Yes, and it isn’t young.”
Jiang Yunsui immediately demanded to go down and help. She had never dug ginseng before.
“I’m excellent at digging holes. I can definitely dig ginseng.”
Wasn’t it all just moving soil?
Ji Lu stared at her. “What can you do with an injured foot? You’re certainly determined despite your disability.”
Jiang Yunsui refused to listen. She wanted to fuss with it.
Ji Si finally carried her down.
Everyone gathered around the ginseng while Jiang Yunsui hopped on one foot.
“Let me dig! Let me dig!”
“Move slowly,” Shen Qingzhu warned. “With ginseng, it’s best not to break even a single root hair.”
Jiang Yunsui skillfully brushed the soil aside.
When squatting made her legs numb, she simply lay flat on the ground without the slightest concern for dignity.
Everyone was used to it.
The work would take a long time. Ji Lu led several men away to hunt and prepare food.
Digging ginseng was painstaking and dull. Shen Qingzhu expected Jiang Yunsui to become bored and wander off.
Instead, she lay beside him and dug for a full hour and a half.
She did not break a single root.
The earth around wild ginseng was loose and fertile, making it relatively easy to excavate. Using only her hands and occasionally a twig, Jiang Yunsui uncovered root after delicate root.
Only when the aroma of food drifted down from above did she rub her growling stomach and call Ji Si to carry her back up.
They had noodles and roast meat.
Jiang Yunsui held a wild pheasant leg and noisily slurped noodles, eating with tremendous appetite.
At six years old, she remained delightfully chubby, with soft flesh, pale skin, and enormous eyes.
One look told anyone that she was easy to feed and not picky.
That was true. Wherever she traveled with Ji Yan’an and Shen Qingzhu, Jiang Yunsui never allowed herself to go hungry.
When desperate, she could happily gnaw raw mushrooms.
Ji Yan’an was her exact opposite.
Poisoned and frail, he ate and slept poorly whenever his surroundings changed.
The Sleepy Mushrooms Jiang Yunsui produced had solved the sleeping problem. Getting him to eat still required coaxing, persuasion, and sometimes force-feeding.
Nanshu did the coaxing; he lacked the courage to force food into his master’s mouth.
Once full, Jiang Yunsui patted her stomach. Overflowing with a child’s energy, she teased the roosters and dogs until she had digested a little, then lay down to continue digging.
“Shen Qingzhu, how old is it?”
He examined it carefully.
“More than three hundred years.”
Even century-old ginseng was extremely rare. A three-hundred-year specimen could only be found in deep mountains like these.
Shen Qingzhu believed five-hundred-year and even thousand-year ginseng might exist deeper still.
Finding it would depend on luck.
He carefully packed away the wild ginseng.
It was already late. After resting through the night, they resumed their journey early the next morning.
Half a morning later, Milk Tea’s cry sounded overhead.
“We’re here!” Jiang Yunsui exclaimed.
They stood atop a cliff. Far below lay an enormous mountain valley obscured by mist.
It was already late morning, yet the fog remained dense. They could hardly imagine what it looked like at dawn.
“How do we get down?”
Surely they could not climb the cliff. It looked tremendously deep, and no one knew what dangers waited below.
“Let’s search for a path,” Shen Qingzhu said.
After a short rest, they followed the cliff’s edge in hopes of finding a descent.
Milk Tea flew into the valley and returned. On the way up, thin mist curled around the eagle’s body, as though it had pierced a bank of clouds.
By dusk, they had found no path, while the surrounding fog grew steadily thicker.
Faint birdcalls and the roars of wild beasts rose from the valley.
“We’ll rest and continue tomorrow.”
They found a safe place and expertly cut wood to build a temporary shelter.
The fog grew so thick that the surroundings became difficult to see.
“The moon is so big and round.”
Jiang Yunsui sat beneath a tree and gazed up.
The moon was enormous, and the stars were breathtaking. The sky seemed unusually close, as though she truly could pluck down the stars and moon merely by raising a hand.
With each breath, Jiang Yunsui seemed to draw in moonlight and the Power of the Stars.
“Wow! Shen Qingzhu, Si Si, Liu Liu, look over there!”
She had spotted pearly-white light shining from the opposite cliff.
The distance was too great for even sharp-eyed ordinary people to identify the source. But many patches of light gathered together, conspicuous and beautiful.
Wanting a clearer look, Jiang Yunsui started toward the edge.
“Jiang Yunsui!”
Realizing her intention, the others rushed over and caught her. This time, they gave her bottom a thorough spanking.
Jiang Yunsui wailed loudly, though she shed very few tears.