My village can't be like this

Chapter 590: Raising Centipedes

Although he has found several, including a very large one, Zhang An still plans to continue searching.

Because he doesn't know whether he can raise it successfully, he tries to find as many as possible. The more the number, the greater the probability, which is inevitable.

After catching all the centipedes under the first stone, Zhang An then moved up the next two stones.

As expected, there were still some goods. There were five under the second stone, but they were relatively small, only a few centimeters at most. There were not many under the third stone, only two, but they were both large goods, about one foot in size.

Then Zhang An continued searching for a while, and his harvest was amazing. In less than half an hour, he had found dozens of them, and the bamboo cage hanging around his waist was already nearly half full.

"Strange, why are there so many centipedes in the bamboo forest now?"

Although he gained a lot, Zhang An was very confused and kept talking to himself.

Because he had come here to catch centipedes before, but he always found a lot, and it was already very good if he could find twenty or thirty of them in a day.

He had originally planned to go into the mountains to look for it today, and he came here just to try his luck and see what the situation was. He didn't actually have too high expectations.

But after arriving here, I found that I had not used the insect attracting powder I had prepared, nor had I used the woven cage I brought, but I had already caught half a cage of centipedes.

And it’s only been half an hour. If we continue looking, I think we can find dozens of kilograms today.

However, this question did not puzzle Zhang An for too long, and he soon figured it out.

This is the year 1999, not the village of 20 or 30 years from now.

The memories in his mind still stayed in the later times, because at that time there were dealers who came to collect centipedes, so he went into the mountains specifically to look for them.

It was not an exaggeration to say that centipedes at that time were made of gold. As long as you could find them, you could basically sell them for two thousand yuan per pound, or even more.

At first, not many people believed it, until someone in the village caught some and tried it, and found that it could really be sold for so much money.

So when the villagers heard the news, they no longer hesitated and immediately took their entire families into the mountains to search for centipedes.

Because this price is not only tempting, but it can also directly knock people out.

You don't need much in a day, just half a pound can be earned, and in a few days, the income can be equal to the income from several years of farming.

Facts have also proved that everyone made a lot of money from this matter. Basically, those who started catching centipedes at the beginning made a lot of money by selling them.

But this good thing did not last long. Under the temptation of money, everyone searched everywhere with high enthusiasm. After more than a week, the harvest dropped sharply.

Because there are so many people catching centipedes, some people even stay up all night to look for them.

No matter how many centipedes there are in the mountains, there are only a limited number of them and they cannot withstand this.

It was also at that time that Zhang An was called by his family to catch centipedes, but after he returned to the village, most of the centipedes had been caught by everyone, and no matter how hard he looked, he didn't get any results.

At present, centipede dealers have not started to go to the countryside, and centipedes have not yet been killed by everyone, so they are still relatively easy to find.

Similar things happened to not only centipedes, but also the golden cicada flowers in the bamboo forest, the nine-scented insects in the mountains, also known as stink bugs, and the slugs in the cracks in the walls. With the arrival of purchasing dealers, their populations also suffered devastating blows.

There is also the Polygonatum sibiricum, which can now be found everywhere in the mountains, but after some people went to the countryside to buy it, it became difficult to find another one not long after.

Although Zhang An now understands that everything must be done in moderation, he can't say anything.

It is impossible that if someone comes to collect these things in the future, he will be able to stand up and stop everyone. This is unrealistic.

This kind of thing, no matter who you are, once you do it, you will immediately become everyone's enemy, because everyone likes money. There is a saying that cutting off someone's financial resources is like killing his parents.

After all, in later generations, when Zhang An himself had little money, didn't he also follow everyone else to catch centipedes and sell them to dealers?

So even though Zhang An knew the future fate of these centipedes, he could only sigh. At most, he would not follow everyone to look for them in the future.

When Zhang An came to his senses, he found that his cage was already full of centipedes, so he simply stopped catching them.

He immediately brought all the centipedes into the space and found a suitable place to put them.

In order to take care of them, Zhang An also planted some bamboo in the space, and then picked up a lot of stones and put them in so that they would have a place to hide.

After coming out of the bamboo forest, Zhang An did not rush home. After putting all his things into the space, he walked forward to the Sanqing Temple.

He thought that since he was already here, he might as well go and take a look at the old man.

When we arrived at Sanqing Temple, we found that there were only a few people burning incense in the main hall, not as many as usual.

However, the large incense burner on the table was filled with incense sticks, which was enough to show that many people had come to burn incense recently.

After burning incense, those people donated some money to the merit box and prepared to go down the mountain. Zhang and his party saw them out as they did in the past.

"Why did you come here today?"

Zhang Yixing, who was sending a few people out, saw Zhang An and asked with a smile.

"I came to the Purple Bamboo Forest to look for something, and came up to take a look."

While talking to Zhang Yixing, Zhang An squatted on the ground and touched Heizi's big black dog head.

It was lying down and sleeping, but when it noticed Zhang An coming, it immediately ran over and circled around Zhang An's feet.

When I first sent Heizi to the temple, he was still very small. But now, without me noticing, he has grown to be taller than a human knee and has become a mature big dog.

"I see the rice down the mountain is starting to turn yellow. When are you going to harvest the rice?"

Zhang Yixing did not ask Zhang An what he was looking for in Zizhulin, because he knew that Zhang An would say what he wanted to say, so he didn't need to speak. Instead, he asked about the autumn harvest at Zhang An's home.

In the past two years, whenever Zhang An's family harvested the crops, he would go to help, because the food he ate in the temple was all sent by Zhang An.

He has always advocated taking action, and if he is not allowed to go, he will not accept the food that Zhang An sends him.

"It may take until the end of the month. Although it has turned red in the past two days, it still looks a little tender. If we keep it for two more days, the rice we harvest will taste better."

The rice of other families turned yellow, but that of Zhang An's family turned red, because they planted all blood rice, which became redder as it matured. When it was time to harvest, it looked like it was covered in chicken blood, and was very conspicuous in the large field at the entrance of the village.

No matter who you are, as long as you come to the village entrance, you can tell the difference of the kids at a glance.

Of course, this year in Changqing Village, Zhang An’s family was not the only one that planted blood rice.

When the rice seedlings were being planted, several uncles, such as Zhang Xinmin, Huang Ming, Zhou Yang and Zhang An, came to ask for some rice seedlings to plant. However, unlike Zhang An's family, they planted only a part of the fields, which was basically enough for the family to eat. The rest was planted with hybrid rice, because normal rice had a higher yield and was more cost-effective to sell.

"It seems that not many people come to the temple today. It must be a rare moment of peace and quiet for you, old man."

Looking at the relatively quiet temple at the moment, Zhang An smiled and said that during normal times when there were many people, the temple was always full of people coming in and out, and even those who came to see a doctor could line up.

"That's true, but it wasn't quiet this morning. Several groups of people came, including several who came to see the doctor."

Zhang Yixing really enjoys this quiet time, because he has always been a quiet person. However, he is still very welcome when people come to burn incense. After all, for Sanqing Temple, a lot of incense is a good thing.

It is much better than in the past when only villagers came to the temple to burn incense.

Afterwards, Zhang Yihang ignored Zhang An and walked into the side room.

Zhang An followed and saw that there were large bowls everywhere, all filled with tung oil, which were now on fire, just like oil lamps.

On top of the oil lamp, there is a large bowl placed upside down on top, supported by a broken bamboo.

After Zhang and his entourage came in, they picked up the oil barrels beside them and refilled the lamps with oil one by one.

Even with so many oil lamps lit, the room looked very dark, with black smoke everywhere.

After all, what is burning is tung oil. When this thing burns, it produces more smoke than other oils, and it is also black.

Zhang Jianwen did not finish after adding a circle of tung oil. Instead, he took off the large bowl that was covering the tung oil lamp and scraped the soot inside into another bucket.

"Godfather, are you planning to make new ink this year?"

At this time, even if Zhang An had never made ink, he knew what Zhang Yixing was doing.

"Yeah, the lacquer you brought back last time with me is almost ready to be mixed with tung oil. It's time to start making some preparations. But if you want to make new ink, you have to wait for several months. You have to use up all the tung oil."

While talking to Zhang An, Zhang Yixing kept collecting the soot with very skillful movements.

"How much oil soot can be produced from burning so many barrels of tung oil?"

Zhang An turned his head and looked at the door, where there were several barrels filled with tung oil.

"The lacquer and tung oil this time are both of better quality. I estimate that they can burn about 7 to 8 kilograms."

Zhang Yihang smiled slightly and expressed his satisfaction with the lacquer and tung oil they had harvested this time.

"Hiss, it's only seven or eight kilograms. I think these barrels of oil together weigh at least more than a hundred kilograms."

After hearing this, Zhang An's eyes widened immediately. More than 100 kilograms of oil only produced a few kilograms of ash. The cost was not small.

"Haha, this is already a lot. If the oil is not good, there might not be so much. Otherwise, do you think that one ounce of gold and one ounce of ink is just a joke?"

Zhang Yixing shook his head slightly and said to Zhang An.

"I originally thought it was just talk, but I didn't expect it to be true. No wonder the ancients always gave pen, ink, paper and inkstone as gifts. Whether they were useful or not was not the point, but they were really expensive."

Only now did Zhang An realize that he was a frog in a well. In the past, when he watched the ancient great figures on TV, he would be very happy when he received pens, ink, paper and inkstone from others.

At that time he thought that it was a popular literary style among the ancients and everyone liked these things. However, he did not expect that people did not like these things at all, they obviously just liked money.

"Haha, that's not true. Ink can be divided into good and bad. The ink you mentioned is made of top-grade spices or even gold powder. However, few people use it for writing."

Zhang Yixing did not refute, but just smiled and explained.

"By the way, didn't we say before that we should add some musk? I'll send some over when I get back."

Speaking of the finest spices, Zhang An thought about what he had told the old man before, that musk should be added into the ink when making it.

Musk is definitely a top-grade spice. He doesn't have anything else, but he has a lot of musk. There are so many musk deer in the space, and he basically takes musk every once in a while.

"There's no rush. Once I finish using all this tung oil, it will take at least until next year. We can talk about it then."

Knowing that Zhang An had a lot of musk, Zhang Yihang didn't feel reluctant to give it up.

Afterwards, Zhang An stayed in Sanqing Temple for half a while, and someone came to burn incense again.

Zhang An didn't stay any longer and went down the mountain to go home.

In the next few days, Zhang An kept paying attention to the centipede in the space.

In the first few days, the centipedes grew significantly, basically changing every day.

Especially those very small centipede babies grew very quickly, but the largest ones grew relatively slowly. Now the centipedes he caught were basically the same size.

But after it grows to a certain size, there seems to be no obvious changes.

However, with the experience of the previous saplings, Zhang An also knew that they had reached the growth threshold and there was no rush, so he could only wait slowly.

Of course, with growth there will be other behaviors. The centipedes he caught into the space, both male and female, will naturally reproduce normally.

The small bamboo forest he created for raising centipedes has now bred a lot of centipedes, more than those in the purple bamboo forest, and they are densely packed all over the ground.

If he hadn't imposed restrictions, these centipedes would probably crawl everywhere in the space.

Leisurely days always pass quickly. The rice in the fields, which originally needed a few more days to grow, also changes day by day. In just a few days, it turns completely golden.

Everything is golden yellow, the color of harvest, and it is absolutely true.

Standing on the bridge and looking around, the fields are all golden. After last year's harvest failure, the farmers cherish this harvest even more, and their faces are filled with satisfied smiles.

It was only the end of September, and every household in the village had begun to go out to harvest the rice in the fields.

In fact, the weather in September and October is much more stable than in May and June, and it won’t easily change and rain heavily.

Everyone is so eager to harvest because they know that National Day is coming, and based on the experience of previous years, this will be a rare opportunity.

Especially when they knew that city dwellers would have a seven-day holiday for National Day this year, they were even happier than they were.

(End of this chapter)