Lin Man was very surprised when he first learned that the Nanming base could grow rice. However, when he thought about the bases in the north that were said to produce a lot of grain every year, he began to understand.

These bases have been able to stand firm to this day, more or less because they have some trump cards of their own.

What Lin Man was more concerned about was whether he could exchange it for some white, sweet and delicious rice.

Lin Man used the name of Dongyang Base to successfully enter Nanming Base and was able to move freely in this base. Later, she gradually learned many things, such as although Nanming Base can grow rice, the output is very limited and is only used for some senior core personnel. It is rarely circulated in the market and the price is very high.

After the northern bases approached the Southern Ming base, they brought with them some daily necessities and grains in exchange for precious rice. After all, although the northern bases were located in the north, many of their members had come from the south, and they preferred rice to pasta. Of course, in this era of scarcity, pasta was a rare commodity.

In short, the rice from the Nanming base is very popular in the market.

Lin Man changed his clothes and put on a hat, which made him look very different. Then he carried a bag and wandered around the market which had recently become prosperous.

While getting to know the market, she estimated how much rice she could exchange for the sweet potatoes and corn in her space. Before she could exchange for rice, she saw a stall selling linen.

There were very few cloth stalls in this market. After walking around for a long time, she only found this one. The linen cloth had not been bleached and had a natural flax color. The workmanship was a bit rough, but it was still quite soft and breathable. Lin Man liked it as soon as she touched it.

"Brother, how much is this cloth?" she asked the man at the stall who looked to be in his thirties.

"Hey, this is linen that just came from the north. It's this year's new linen. Most people can't get this at all. I won't sell it. Do you have anything to exchange for it?" The man at the stall said, his eyes flickering at the old rag bag in Lin Man's hand.

Lin Man opened the bag, letting the man see the sweet potatoes inside, then closed the bag: "Do you want this, freshly dug out of the soil?"

"Sweet potatoes." The man's eyes were still on the bag. He said, "It's hard to talk here. Come with me."

Lin Man hesitated. She wasn't a novice anymore. She knew many people appeared honest but were actually trying to trick them into giving her a beating. Two fists couldn't beat four hands; she didn't think she could handle any crisis.

The man said, "Don't worry, I'm doing business with integrity. Besides, fighting and robbery are not allowed in our base. Look at this street, there are patrols all the time."

Although the Nanming base was unwilling to move north, it also discovered opportunities through its contact with northerners. At the same time, in order to improve the lives of the people in the base, they created this market. Naturally, they had to maintain the stability of this market and would never allow bad incidents to occur. Now is the time to act.

Lin Man thought about it and agreed.

The man's home was not far away. Lin Man followed him through a street and an alley and arrived there.

The Nanming Base was originally built on the basis of a small village, but unlike the Heping Base, the Nanming Base was well built. There were basically cement roads and cement houses everywhere, and at the very least, they were all built with stones. Although the houses were next to each other and a bit cramped, the streets and alleys were also distributed very regularly, and it looked very orderly.

The man's home consisted of two rooms with a very small front yard. It was clear that he was one of the better-off people on the base. He also lived with a woman in her thirties, a boy of seven or eight, and a couple in their fifties or sixties.

The woman was washing clothes and the boy was lying on a stool, seemingly writing something. There was nothing special about them, but Lin Man felt that the couple was a little special. The man was blind in one eye and was turning the soil in the yard, and the woman was sitting in a wheelchair, feeding an old hen. They were doing ordinary things, but they did not feel ordinary at all, and they did not have the weakness of ordinary disabled people.

Lin Man was secretly guessing in his heart, and at the same time he sighed that life in the big base was indeed much better. Compared with the people in the peace base, this family could be said to be enjoying themselves.

Then Lin Man fixed his eyes on the old hen and couldn't pull it off.

She could actually see live chickens! If only she could raise one in her space, have it lay eggs every day, and produce some chicken manure to fertilize the fields...

"Cluck, cluck, cluck!" The old hen seemed to sense the danger, flapping its wings and calling out uneasily.

The woman in the wheelchair turned and looked at Lin Man.

His eyes were calm and sharp. For a moment, Lin Man felt that she saw the flash of swords and sabers. However, she was also a person who had seen big scenes before. She nodded slightly without any fear.

The woman seemed a little surprised at her calmness.

"Dad, Mom." The man called out, without any intention of introducing Lin Man. He just said, "I'm here to buy cloth."

Then the man took Lin Man into the larger room and said, "Come in. I want to take a closer look at your sweet potatoes."

Lin Man said nothing more, turning the bag upside down and pouring out all the sweet potatoes. There were about 20 kilograms of sweet potatoes here. They weren't very big, but they were all well-grown, with regular shapes and rich colors. There were almost no worm holes. Each one weighed about half a kilogram.

The man's eyes lit up slightly. Sure enough, he was not wrong. These sweet potatoes were of unexpectedly good quality. He grabbed one and peeled off a piece of skin with a knife, revealing the orange-yellow flesh inside. He peeled off another piece of flesh and chewed it. His eyes lit up even brighter. It was sweet, refreshing, and rich in water. It was very good.

He asked Lin Man, "Do you still have this kind of sweet potato?" This was the reason why he brought Lin Man back home. He wanted to do bigger business. If Lin Man said no, he would not lose anything.

Lin Man raised his chin and said, "First, tell me how much cloth these sweet potatoes can be exchanged for."

The man said, "Linen is very difficult to obtain. It's only available in the north, and they limit the amount of trading. They only allow trade between bases, not private transactions. I only managed to get some with great difficulty."

Lin Man understood something: "You went to the North by yourself?"

The man smiled and didn't answer the question. He continued to answer the previous question: "Although these sweet potatoes of yours are good, they are coarse grains. People in the north have brought a lot of them. Although they are a little less delicious than yours, they can still fill your stomach. So, for these sweet potatoes, I can only give you half a piece of linen."

That piece of linen was about two meters long and one meter wide, and half of it was only one meter square.

Lin Man was not very satisfied with the price. She didn't know whether it was reasonable or not. She only thought that rice was more expensive. So, the sweet potatoes she had saved for so long could not be exchanged for a bag of rice and a few pieces of cloth?

Lin Man said slowly, "My sweet potatoes are sweet and more filling."

"If it were ordinary sweet potatoes, I could only give one foot of cloth for such a pile."

Lin Man paused for a moment before saying, "No wonder you can't sell your cloth." She watched from the side for a long time but never saw him make a single deal.

The man was a little embarrassed. "To be honest, this cloth is really hard to get. I risked my life to get a little bit back. Adding the travel expenses, the cost is too high."

This cloth is in short supply and rare, but there are not many people who can afford to wear and use it. Most people in their Nanming base are struggling below the poverty line. His cloth can only be sold to those who are rich and powerful, and as a result, the price is severely suppressed. Those people devalue his cloth to the point that it is not even as good as a rag, which makes the man very angry.

But if Lin Man didn't show up, he could only hold on for a few more days at most. After all, there were so many people in his family who needed to eat.

He thought for a moment and said, "If you still have this kind of sweet potatoes, I can give you a discount if the quantity is large."

Lin Man frowned slightly, and after a while he said, "Are you selling the hen outside your house?"

The man was stunned: "Not for sale."

"You won't sell any more sweet potatoes?"

The man couldn't bring himself to say that the chicken was his precious flesh and blood, so he said, "That's a chicken that lays eggs, and there aren't many of them in the entire base."

Lin Man looked at him and said calmly, "My sweet potatoes are still sweet potatoes that can produce sweet potatoes."

"What's the meaning?"

After a while, Lin Man looked at the man strangely as he hurried out with the sweet potatoes in his hands, discussing something with his parents. After a long time, he came back again, and the look in his eyes when he looked at Lin Man was different.

To be precise, the way he looked at the pile of sweet potatoes was different, especially when he faced the sweet potato from which he had peeled a piece of flesh. Lin Man felt that his expression was as if the piece of flesh that was peeled off was his own.

"Can these sweet potatoes really be saved for seeds?" he asked.

"You should have confirmed it, right?" If she was not sure just now, Lin Man was now sure that at least one of the man's parents was a person with superpowers, or a person with superpowers in the field of sweet potatoes, or plants, because Guan Guan told her that the sweet potatoes the man brought back were stained with a trace of spiritual energy.

Is there some other ability that can determine whether a plant can be used as a seed? Whether it has the ability to reproduce?

The man's face changed, and he asked solemnly, "How many sweet potatoes like this do you have?"

"About a hundred pounds." Lin Man reported a very modest figure.

She had been planning to bid more because she wanted some linen, but the man's attitude made her cautious. It was just a sweet potato for seed? They didn't know it came from space, so why should she react as if she had discovered a divine treasure?

Little did she know that the northern bases were able to grow food because the soil, fertilizer, temperature, humidity, and other conditions were perfectly adjusted. Anything less would have been enough to produce nothing. Furthermore, the seeds they used had been genetically modified and enhanced multiple times, resulting in a poor-tasting crop that couldn't be saved for seed.

She only knew that her own sweet potatoes were good, but she didn't expect that the others' were so inferior in quality and style.