It took several strong laborers more than an hour to dig out the kudzu root using crowbars, hoes and steel chisels.

The main root is about 1.78 meters long and as thick as the pillars under the eaves. There are also some branch roots, some as thick as an adult's calf. Originally, it was estimated that 300 to 400 kilograms could be dug out. After digging it out, it felt that there were at least 500 kilograms.

Zhou Huairong and Zhou Huaishan were busy carrying the kudzu roots back, while Zhou Huaian and the other two continued to dig up the yam and kudzu roots. They were busy until the sun went down before they started setting traps.

Zhou Huaian deliberately placed three traps around the Panax notoginseng, and the others were placed in secluded places where one could enter the mountain. Finally, he put up a sign outside and at the intersection to warn strangers who wanted to go down the big pit that there were animal traps buried and pits dug below. If anyone entered without permission, they would be responsible for the casualties themselves.

Yang Chunyan and her mother-in-law took the three or four hundred kilograms of yam they had carried back from home and stacked them in the wine cellar.

There were a lot of kudzu roots, weighing more than a thousand pounds in total. The mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law washed them one by one, and Zhou Huaian and his brothers helped to grind them with a stone mill and pound them with a stone mortar. They were busy until about ten o'clock before they finally crushed them all.

Yang Chunyan and her mother-in-law put the kudzu powder that had been washed, rubbed and filtered several times into wooden barrels, wooden basins and pools to let it settle.

These Pueraria roots are at least five or six years old, and they produce a lot of powder. Fortunately, there are several large wooden barrels and large basins, as well as two pools at home, otherwise there would be no place to store them.

The next morning, Zhou Huaian and the old man moved the diesel barrels, tarpaulins, charcoal stoves, iron pots, kettles, as well as clothes and food prepared by Yang Chunyan for them onto the tractor and prepared to set off.

Yang Chunyan put the rice balls she had wrapped in the morning into the vegetable basket and then into the bamboo basket in the truck bed. "Be careful on the road and come back early."

Zhou Huaian put the crank down and smiled at her and the old man, "Don't worry, I'll be back in three days at the fastest and five days at the slowest."

Yang Chunyan sent him out of the yard, watched the tractor rumble away, then turned and went to the backyard.

The kudzu root powder that was soaked last night had already settled to the bottom of the pool, the wooden barrel and the basin. She scooped out the water and poured it out, revealing the white kudzu root powder underneath.

Zhou's mother and Zhao Huifang walked in with a smile, "Is the youngest leaving? How's the kudzu root powder you made last night?"

"We've been walking for more than half an hour." Yang Chunyan picked up a piece and smiled. "Look, it's as white as flour."

"After drying, these kudzu powders will weigh at least 500 to 600 kilograms." The more Zhou's mother thought about it, the happier she became. She smiled so hard that her teeth were showing. "This big pit you bought is really worth it."

"Yes, Chunyan and the youngest have good taste, but I don't know if the price is good?" Zhao Huifang picked up a piece and broke the kudzu root powder into small pieces and put them in the winnowing basket.

Mother Zhou shook her head. "This thing is not valuable. It's about the same price as potato starch and sweet potato starch. It's probably only 1.12 yuan per pound, right?"

Yang Chunyan thought that hundreds of kilograms of kudzu powder could only be sold for dozens of yuan, and felt that it was not worth selling it. "Mom, I don't plan to sell it. Kudzu powder is good for the body. I will share some with each family, send some to Dr. Wang's family, and send some to the provincial capital."

Mother Zhou thought that her family could have the present situation thanks to the Wang family and Mr. Zheng from the provincial capital. "Send more to Doctor Wang and Mr. Zheng. We can just keep 10 to 20 kilograms. If you want to eat more, you can just go to the mountains and find it and cook it again."

Zhao Huifang: "Mom is right. If we want to eat them, we can go up the mountain to look for them. Huairong said last night that they found a lot of small ones in the big pit. We can dig again in two years."

Yang Chunyan: "The sun is strong these days. Once they are dried, put them in bags and ask my third brother to send them to Wang Zhen in the city."

After a while, Zhang Xiuxiang and Li Qiuyue also came to help. The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law were busy for a whole morning before they broke all the kudzu powder and hung it out to dry.

In the blink of an eye, it was the afternoon of the third day. After the sun went down, Yang Chunyan stood at the gate of the yard holding Xiao Jiuer. She looked at the road at the entrance of the village for a long time, but did not see any tractor entering the village. She returned home disappointed.

It was not until the afternoon of the fifth day that Zhou Huaian returned driving a tractor.

The several bamboo baskets in the truck bed were all filled to the brim with Polygonum multiflorum, Ganoderma lucidum, Coriolus versicolor, Panax notoginseng, as well as Tripterygium wilfordii, Fritillaria thunbergii and Gastrodia elata, all of which were valuable goodies.

When he and Zhou Yiding came down, they smelled a sour odor and asked, "You didn't take a shower after you went out?"

"Where can we take a shower?" Zhou Huaian scratched his itchy back and said with a bitter face, "I think we are all infested with lice. Fortunately, we brought a padded jacket. The mountains are much colder than in Funiu."

Zhou Yiding scratched his hair, which looked like a chicken nest. "No doubt, I have lice. Next time I go into the mountains, I would rather sleep in a tractor."

Yang Chunyan felt her scalp and body itchy after seeing this. "Go wash it quickly. I'll go to the agency store to buy a bottle of lice medicine and apply it on your hair."

Zhou Yiding hurriedly said, "Sister-in-law, buy one more for Xuejiao. I'll go back and wash them."

"Hey!" Yang Chunyan rode away on her bicycle.

The old man and Zhou's father helped move the things into the wine cellar and put them away. Zhou Huaian said to Zhou Yiding, "Let's check the accounts first."

"Why panic? I'm so itchy. I'm going to go back and take a shower and change clothes first." Zhou Yiding leaned sideways and scratched his thigh a few times, then stepped onto his bicycle parked on the steps and left.

Father Zhou and the old man were looking at the mulberry fungus in the bamboo basket in the wine cellar. "These must be worth a lot of money, right?"

The old man said cheerfully, "I heard from the youngest that it's very expensive, the good ones are over a hundred yuan per pound."

"These must weigh about 20 to 30 kilograms!" Father Zhou looked at the bamboo baskets. "They are really brave to carry so much money with them."

Zhou Huaian walked in with a cigarette in his mouth, "Old man, we brought 20,000 yuan this time, and we still need more than 10,000 yuan from the herbal farmers in Baicaopao and Bailing Mountain. Go home and rest for a day, and then give them the money the day after tomorrow."

He looked at the two elders with a smug look on his face and said, "Actually, I don't want to buy on credit at all. I kept telling them that if they didn't bring enough money this time, it would be the same next time.

They refused to agree and insisted that I take it away, and told me to bring the money back to them next time I go there."

"..." Father Zhou couldn't stand his smug look, and rolled his eyes at him speechlessly, "That's because they know what you do and where you live, so they're not afraid that you'll run away."

Zhou Huaian chuckled, "That's right, this also proves that people in our family are trustworthy in the eyes of others, so they dare to believe us!"

"Zhan Lingzi!" The old man patted him cheerfully, "Go wash your clothes first, you're almost making me vomit."

"Is it that smelly?" Zhou Huaian raised his hand and sniffed it. "Fuck! It smells even worse than sewage."

When the old man saw him running away, he and Zhou's father packed up their things, locked the door, and walked out through the alley. He took out a piece of meat hanging inside, locked the outer door, and went to the front yard.

Yang Chunyan waited for Zhou Huaian to come out of the shower, took out something like a piece of chalk, and smeared it on his thick black hair one by one. Then she wrapped his head with a towel. After two or three minutes, the lice were killed.

This chalk-like lice medicine is a miracle drug for killing lice these days. It is said to be chalk soaked in DDT, which is somewhat toxic to the body. It is okay to use it occasionally, but frequent use is harmful to the body.

She thought that Zhou Huaian often went into the mountains to collect herbs in the past two months, and might have caught lice. She had to go and dig some Trichosanthes kirilowii to avoid having to use lice-killing medicine next time.

Zhou Huaian leaned back in his chair comfortably, "Yan'er, where is Jiu'er?"

"My mother has gone to collect duck eggs. Brother Huang and Chef Li asked her to pack a few hundred preserved eggs and send them over." Yang Chunyan put his changed clothes in a basin and scooped the boiling water from the pot into the basin to scald the lice on the clothes to death.

"Oh!" Zhou Huaian took the cup of water she handed over, "Yan'er, I didn't expect there were so many good things over there. Secretary Lin also said that there are a lot of truffles in the next door Chuancheng. He told the relatives there and asked them to dig them up and bring them back to sell this year.

"I plan to set up a purchasing point in Bailing Mountain and let my sister-in-law and brother go there to look after the purchase. The purchasing point for red mushrooms at Secretary Xu's home will be handed over to him, and the one at Uncle Datian's home will also be managed by them.

Let my second brother and second sister-in-law go to Baicaoping, and let my third brother and third sister-in-law go to Sancha Road. Ding Dingmao, Xu Laosan and I will go to various points to pick up the goods. "

Yang Chunyan thought this arrangement was a good idea. "In this case, you only need to go to Sancha Road with Secretary Xu and decide on the purchase point."

"That's right!" Zhou Huaian thought of what he saw at Bailing Mountain this time and said happily, "They were very enthusiastic when we went there. When they heard that I would go in to collect herbs in the future, they took their hoes and went to repair the road. They were worried that I would not go there again because the road was too bad."

Yang Chunyan was also very happy after hearing this, "Hasn't anyone ever gone in there to collect herbs before?"

"Of course not. The price is very low. The price of mulberry yellow is not as high as that of other trees." Zhou Huaian sighed, "After I went there, I still bought it according to the old purchase price. They were all very happy."

"Secretary Lin also said that before truffles and red mushrooms were sold, some people in their village didn't even have new cotton-padded clothes. This year, many new houses were built in the village, and they even made their own bricks and tiles to build brick houses."

Yang Chunyan was also very happy after hearing this. "I see that the Chonglou you bought this time are all in good condition. Wang Zhen's purchase price hasn't gone up yet?"

"It's neither rising nor falling. We sent the Millettia reticulata, Adenophora radix, Codonopsis pilosula, and other common herbs we bought this time to Wang Zhen on our way back. He told me to bring the good herbs back first and keep them there, and then notify me to bring them over when the off-season comes."

Yang Chunyan picked up the waist bag he had placed on the table, and the two of them walked towards the front yard together. "When you go in this time, the good medicine over there is basically gone, right?"

"Secretary Lin left for Chuancheng yesterday and asked his relatives there to send herbs to Bailing Mountain to sell. He also said that the herbs there are no less than ours, but life is even harder than theirs."

After hearing this, Yang Chunyan thought that even after another 20 or 30 years, the conditions over there would still not be as good as here. "We still have a railway here, but transportation over there is even more difficult. If we can't transport our goods out to exchange for money, how can we live a better life?"

At this point, she remembered the slogan "If you want to be rich, build roads first." (End of this chapter)