Thinking about his failed marriage in his previous life, Li Xiangdong shook his head. He realized that basing a marriage on interests and beauty was ultimately like building a tower on sand—unreliable.
After resolving his fourth sister's marriage, the heavy weight on Li Xiangdong's heart was finally lifted. He felt that the sky was bluer, the water was greener, and even the sorghum flour and wild vegetable pancakes no longer hurt his throat.
"Cough cough cough~"
It was still a bit harsh on his throat. Li Xiangdong took a sip of thin porridge and swallowed the piece of bread that was stuck in his throat.
It seems the big money-making plan needs to be put on the agenda immediately.
He still has a debt of 100 yuan on him. After giving Feng Zhiqing 60 yuan, he has 40 yuan left. He has to go to the county today to see if there are any business opportunities.
Li Xiangdong finished the last mouthful of porridge, wiped his mouth, and was about to run out when Zhao Sufang called out to him, "How many days has it been since you went to school? Why don't you put on your schoolbag and go to school?"
Li Xiangdong was stunned. He had completely forgotten about going to school. It would be a complete waste of time for him to learn first-year junior high school knowledge with a bunch of kids.
"Okay, I'll go there."
While verbally responding to his mother, Li Xiangdong went back into the house, grabbed his schoolbag, and ran out.
On a summer morning, waves of heat relentlessly wash over you, while the incessant chirping of cicadas fills the air.
The sharp cries made Li Xiangdong even more agitated. He bent down, picked up a clod of dirt, and threw it at the tree, startling a swarm of cicadas. Watching the cicadas fly away, an idea suddenly came to his mind. He quickly walked to an old elm tree and began to carefully examine it from the roots upwards, one, two...
Li Xiangdong held a few cicada shells in his hands, lost in thought.
Don't underestimate this seemingly insignificant thing now. But in thirty years, when everyone is into eating wild game, cicada nymphs will be deep-fried, sprinkled with salt and cumin powder, and become fragrant, crispy, and juicy. There's a famous dish called "Fried Three Delicacies," which is made by deep-frying cicada nymphs, grasshoppers, and water scorpions (dragonfly larvae).
The price of cicada nymphs was once driven up to more than 100 yuan per kilogram. Wild cicada nymphs were eaten less and less, and the supply could not meet the demand, which led to the emergence of many cicada nymph farmers.
These days, people don't have enough oil to fry cicada nymphs. Occasionally, kids catch them for a treat, but they just roast them over a fire, remove the blackened outer skin, and there's not much meat inside. Asking people to spend money on meat to eat cicada nymphs that are everywhere in the wild is something no fool would do.
Therefore, what Li Xiangdong was thinking about was not the cicada nymph, but the cicada nymph shell!
Cicada shells, also known as golden cicada shells, golden cicada skins, golden oxen, cicada molts, and fairy clothes, can be used to treat infantile convulsions, boils and carbuncles, and tetanus. They are a type of traditional Chinese medicine.
To understand why Li Xiangdong knew that cicada shells were a traditional Chinese medicine, we have to go back to his wife who cheated on him twice in his previous life.
Zhou Yuyu's father, her father-in-law from her previous life, was a habitual gambler, smoker, and whore. One day, after winning a hand of "Catch the Five" (a winning hand in Mahjong), he got so excited that he suffered a stroke and developed facial paralysis. Li Xiangdong searched everywhere for a good doctor for his father-in-law, and a traditional Chinese medicine doctor prescribed a herbal medicine called "Five Tigers Chasing Wind Powder," which was said to be as powerful as a tiger in dispelling wind and stopping spasms. The five ingredients were scorpion, silkworm, cicada molting, arisaema, and gastrodia.
It would be great if we could sell cicada shells as a medicinal ingredient now.
But where can we sell it?
Whether now or in the decades that followed, I never heard of anyone selling medicinal herbs near my village. The entire Huichuan County did not primarily engage in the cultivation, sale, or even manufacture of medicinal herbs.
Never mind, let's go to the county and look for a place that will buy our products!
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