Chen Changyuan squatted on the steps and sharpened the sickle. The blade made a regular rustling sound on the bluestone slabs.
"Listen up!"
He suddenly stood up, the tip of his knife drawing a silver arc in the morning light. "Today we have to plow all five acres of sloping land in the back mountain. We have to sow the first load of seeds before noon."
There were echoes from the crowd.
Old Yuantou squeezed to the front with his pipe in his mouth, squinting at the two Jiefang trucks parked outside the yard.
The truck bed was filled with neatly stacked sacks, and the faint scent of herbs wafted in the morning breeze.
"Wow, this is good stuff that can only be found in the provincial capital."
The old man poked the sack with his pipe, and a few brown seeds fell out from the hole. "Boss Zhang really spent a lot of money this time."
Chen Changyuan rubbed a handful of seeds in his palm, a cold smile on his face. "How dare he not invest? The profit from the batch of Gastrodia elata he sold south last month was enough for him to build three large tiled houses."
He suddenly raised his voice and said, "Hurry up! If you finish your work before noon, you will get enough braised pork tonight!"
These words were like salt sprinkled in a frying pan, and the crowd exploded.
A few young men grabbed shovels and rushed up the mountain, with their trouser legs rolled up to their knees, revealing their tanned calves.
Old Yuantou slowly fell behind and suddenly grabbed Chen Changyuan's sleeve: "Changyuan, your mother has been coughing badly these past two days. I'll ask my wife to bring a bowl of loquat paste at noon."
Chen Changyuan paused.
Fang Suxia's suppressed cough was heard in the morning mist, like a blunt knife scraping a bamboo tube.
He took out a blue cloth bag and stuffed it into Lao Yuantou's pocket: "Uncle, this is the Sichuan Fritillaria I caught in the county yesterday. Please help me..."
Before he could finish his words, the old man pushed him back: "You want to be so distant with me? Back then..."
The old man suddenly choked and took two deep puffs of his pipe, with sparks popping in the pipe.
When the sun reached the top of our heads, a large area of freshly turned brown soil had already spread out on the hillside.
Chen Changyuan straightened up and wiped the sweat off his face, when he suddenly heard the roar of an engine coming from the foot of the mountain.
Two mud-covered trucks lurched into the village entrance, and a young man in a Dacron shirt jumped out of the truck bed.
"Brother Chen! This is the second batch of seeds that Boss Zhang asked us to send!"
The young man shouted at the top of his lungs, sweat staining the back of his shirt. "They say these are Panax notoginseng seedlings from Yunnan. We need to plant them on a cloudy day!"
Old Yuan came over and pulled away the car's cloak, gasping for air.
The neatly arranged bamboo baskets are filled with rhizomes as thick as fingers, and the cross-section is milky white.
Chen Changyuan grabbed a handful of Panax notoginseng seedlings and rubbed the cross-section of the rhizome repeatedly with his fingertips.
The roots wet with morning dew should have a jade-like luster, but now some of them have suspicious gray spots.
"Boss Zhang said this is Dianqi, which has been improved for generations?"
He suddenly thrust the seedling in front of the delivery boy, and muddy juice oozed out from the broken part. "Just smell this sour smell. Do you think I've never seen the world?"
The young man subconsciously took a half step back, and his lower back hit the iron railing of the truck bed with a dull sound.
The old man came over with a pipe in his mouth, his cloudy old eyes suddenly shining with brilliance: "This batch of seedlings is not right! When I was harvesting Gastrodia elata last year, I saw Dianqi in Lao Zhang's warehouse. The cross section should be milky white!"
The mountain wind blew Chen Changyuan's coarse cloth jacket, making it rustle.
He supported himself on the truck bed with one hand and jumped up, overturning whole baskets of bamboo baskets to the ground.
As the villagers gathered around, they saw him clutching a handful of blackened rhizomes and sneering, "This is mixed with 30% old, rotten stuff. Has Director Zhang been ripped off?"
"Brother Chen, this must be when loading the truck..."
Before the young man finished speaking, Chen Changyuan had already picked up the shovel under the seat.
The shovel head brushed past the young man's ear and was nailed into the wooden board of the truck bed, causing the tarpaulin to rattle.
"Send the real stuff before noon, one or two ounces less—"
Chen Changyuan pulled out a shovel and waved the sharp blade in front of the young man's crotch. "Just keep the rotten root as a family heirloom."
The crowd erupted in laughter.
Several women picked up bamboo baskets and dumped the rotten seedlings down the mountain. The brown juice meandered into a river along the ruts.
Old Yuan took a few glances and suddenly frowned: "This is not ordinary sulfur, it is mixed with industrial bleach."
Chen Changyuan's pupils suddenly contracted.
Memories of the previous life suddenly flooded back - ten years later, a fake medicine case broke out in the provincial capital, and more than 30 people suffered from kidney failure. The source was this mixed drug.
He clenched his fists until they crackled, then turned and kicked the truck tire. "Tell me! Which shady workshop is this stuff from?"
The young man slumped to his knees, the back of his shirt soaked with sweat. "Yes, it's Boss Zhang's brother-in-law's factory... He said it's hard to tell if the product is 30% fake..."
The mountain breeze blew the aroma of herbs towards me.
Chen Changyuan suddenly laughed, and his laughter made the young man feel creepy.
He squatted down and patted the other person's shoulder: "Go back and tell Boss Zhang to deliver 50 kilograms of genuine goods before noon tomorrow. One kilogram less..."
His fingertips suddenly clamped down on his shoulder blades. "I'll send the test report on that batch of moldy Gastrodia elata to the city's health bureau."
When the sun was so hot that it could melt the asphalt road, a sharp brake sound was heard at the entrance of the village.
Zhang Qinghai's brother-in-law Zhao Debiao jumped out of the car, with mud spots on the lenses of his gold-rimmed glasses.
He flung open his suit jacket, revealing a bulging leather wallet at his waist. "Brother Chen, this is Dianqi, which was just airlifted from Yunnan this morning!"
Lao Yuantou got into the truck bed with a pipe in his mouth, and scraped the cross section of the rhizome with his fingernail. A milky white liquid immediately oozed out with a fragrant smell.
The villagers exclaimed in surprise, and several women reached out to grab the food from the bamboo baskets.
“Wait!”
Chen Changyuan suddenly pressed the edge of the tarpaulin and asked, "Boss Zhao, is there something hidden in this truck?"
Zhao Debiao's expression suddenly changed, and his gold-rimmed glasses slid to the tip of his nose: "What do you mean?"
The moment the tarpaulin was lifted, three bulging bags of fertilizer rolled to the ground.
Chen Changyuan picked up a sickle and cut through the sack, and the blackened Gastrodia elata flowed out, and the mold spots glowed a strange green color in the sunlight.
"On the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month last year,"
Chen Changyuan picked up a moldy spot with the tip of his sickle. "You said this batch of Gastrodia elata was specially supplied to the county hospital, but it ended up causing heavy bleeding in three women who had given birth."
Wang Fugui squeezed into the crowd: "Changyuan, we are from the same village..."
"The village chief has arrived just in time."
Chen Changyuan pulled a neatly folded document from his trouser pocket and slapped it against the metal sheet of the car's front. "The red seal from the County Health Bureau is still warm. Triple compensation—a penny less, and this report will be posted on the door of the County Pharmaceutical Company tomorrow. You're Director Zhang Qinghai's brother-in-law, and yet you're doing things like this under him."
The veins on Zhao Debiao's forehead bulged, and he suddenly pulled out a switchblade from his waist: "You little bastard, you're looking for death!"
As the blade flashed coldly, the old man's pipe hit his wrist bone.
Zhao Debiao screamed and the switchblade fell to the ground with a clang.
A dozen villagers carrying hoes came up and the tips of their hoes carved grooves of varying depths in the mud.
Suddenly, a muffled sound exploded on the mud ground.
The two thugs brought by Zhao Debiao rushed out of the cab, swinging the iron chains in their hands loudly.
Lao Yuantou turned his pipe in his palm, and the sparks from the pipe splashed on the thug's face, burning him so much that he covered his face and screamed.
"Don't move!"
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