Return to the small mountain village in 1983

Chapter 318: Encountering the Big Cargo Again
"Big catfish?"

Lin Heng guessed that it was most likely this thing.

"No, it's a black stick. A very big black stick." Lin Yue said in surprise.

"Black fish!"

Lin ran over in surprise and took a look. He was stunned. It turned out to be a big black fish weighing three or four pounds. It was indeed rare.

"Is it a good thing?" Lin Yue said with a smile.

Lin Heng nodded: "Indeed, it is rare for this thing to be attracted here."

Although the black carp looks ugly, it is a genuine native fish. It has only two rows of large bones, and its meat is delicious and rich in protein.

"Catch them and keep them alive first. If there's enough food, we can take them back and share them with everyone, how about that?"

Lin Heng asked, this is a good ingredient for making pickled fish, it would be a pity to waste it here.

Lin Yue agreed: "I thought so too."

The two men worked together to catch the big black fish, passed a rope through its gills, and temporarily released it into the stream.

"A lot of the fish here have been eaten." Lin Yue said after catching the black fish.

"For sure, this guy was probably attracted by the small fish." Lin Heng nodded. Because of the black fish, the number of small fish coming in was much less than usual.

They caught all the small fish and fed them to Xiongba and Fengshou, but even so, the two dogs were only barely half full.

The two of them cooked a pot of noodles and coated the duck from last night with salt and sauce and smoked it over the charcoal fire. At this time of year and with no oily trees nearby, it was impossible to set the forest on fire.

After finishing, the two spread the mushrooms they picked yesterday on the stones to dry in the sun, and at half past six, they took the two dogs, Xiongba Fengshou, into the mountains to search.

This time they still teamed up in pairs, searching the mountains and forests one by one, looking for ginseng or other precious Chinese herbs, and hunting at the same time.

Because wild ginseng in the Qinling Mountains is scarce and not as abundant as in the Greater Khingan Range, finding ginseng is completely a matter of luck. There are very few organizations that go into the mountains on a large scale to search for ginseng.

Lin Heng only thought of looking for it nearby after he discovered the hundred-year-old wild ginseng. He decided to search all the nearby mountains. If he still couldn't find it, he would give up.

Finding ginseng becomes much easier as August approaches, as the seeds have turned red and look more obvious.

This searching method is very slow and time-consuming. It felt like it was already noon when we had only searched half of the mountain.

"This ginseng is so hard to find!" Lin Yue sat down and sighed.

"That's for sure. Maybe we have all missed it." Lin Heng took out a steamed bun and ate it. He would not go back to the shelter at noon today.

Ginseng is very difficult to find, and sometimes you may miss it if you are not careful. Although ginseng seeds turn red in August, they may be eaten by birds or trampled to the ground by other animals, which may cause you to miss the ginseng.

Some of them are located in tricky positions and cannot be seen unless you look at a certain angle.

"But if it was really that easy to find, people would have come here in droves." Lin Yue shook his head and started eating the steamed bun.

They didn't bring many steamed buns with them, and after sharing them with the dog, only half a bag was eaten.

Xiongba wanted more after he finished eating, so he squatted in front of Lin Heng, looked at the steamed bun in his hand, stuck out his tongue, and the big tail behind him began to shake.

Lin Heng rubbed its head and said, "We will split it in half. If you want to eat, work harder in the afternoon and find some prey. I will give you half too."

Their harvest in the morning included fungi such as Ganoderma lucidum, Ganoderma lucidum, Coral Ganoderma, etc. In addition, there were some more common herbs, such as Bupleurum, Pseudo-ginseng, Polygonatum sibiricum, etc., none of which were particularly valuable.

"Ow~"

Xiongba rubbed his head on Lin Heng's hand like a spoiled child.

"Let's go!"

After eating, the two people and two dogs continued on their way.

After walking a few steps, Lin Yue called out in surprise: "Hey, Polygonatum sibiricum was found here again, come and help dig it up, brother."

"It's true." Lin Heng walked over and saw that there were seven or eight of them, which was quite a lot.

The soft humus soil is easy to dig. The tuberous roots of Polygonatum sibiricum are also small yellow bumps, one connected to another, and it grows a small bump every year.

Although the one dug out by Lin Heng is only the size of a palm, it already has 15 small bumps. It is a -year-old wild Polygonatum.

This kind of thing does not use fertilizer, and the wild ones are relatively small, but the medicinal effect is much greater than those cultivated artificially. However, the price is also average, and the dried wild Polygonatum is only seven yuan per pound.

But fortunately, there are a lot of them, so it is quite cost-effective to dig some. It is also very good to take it home and eat it yourself. This is a plant that can be used as both medicine and food.

After Lin Heng helped dig it out, he gave it all to his eldest brother. They had already agreed that whoever found it would own it, so there was no need to distribute it.

The two men moved forward, searching for ginseng at a distance. In the blink of an eye, it was already six o'clock in the afternoon, and it was almost dark in the mountains.

"We're almost done searching this mountain, let's just work until dark." Lin Yue said, looking at the sky.

"Okay." Lin Heng agreed and continued moving forward.

Soon they finished exploring the last bit of the area and came to the bottom of the ravine to see if there were any prey such as pheasants or golden pheasants.

But our luck was not good. We couldn't even hear the crowing of chickens in this place. We only saw a few squirrels.

"Let's go back and continue tomorrow."

Lin Heng shook his head and said.

His elder brother was lucky today and dug up six or seven kilograms of wild Polygonatum.

He picked a lot of mushrooms, including 32 red Ganoderma lucidum, which weighed more than one or two taels when dried.

Adding up all other items, his elder brother's profit was about fourteen or fifteen yuan, and he made about ten yuan less, which was because he looked down on some cheap herbs.

We didn't find any prey on the way back, and we couldn't even find any recent prey feces, which shouldn't be difficult to find after it rained.

However, today the sun was so strong that the water level of the canyon stream shrank by more than half, and all the fishing traps they had set were stranded. Fortunately, the ropes used by the snakehead fish were long and did not dry out.

Back at the shelter, Lin Heng looked at his elder brother and said, "Let's have some rice with duck sauce tonight. Brother, go rearrange the fishing traps and I'll cook."

"Okay, I'll go there in a moment." Lin Yue nodded.

After taking a sip of water, the two first put away the dried mushrooms, and then sorted and dried the mushrooms and Chinese medicinal materials they picked today.

Then Lin Heng started cooking while his elder brother went out to rearrange the fishing traps.

The ducks were almost smoked in the morning. Lin Heng hung one of them aside to continue smoking it, and chopped the other one into pieces and put it in a pot to stir-fry it with soybean paste. He then added water and rice to make soybean paste rice.

When the rice was ready, his elder brother came back and they shared the meal.

"Today's meal is delicious." Lin Yue nodded vigorously. It was a great luxury to be able to eat such delicious rice in the wild.

"I hope we can have a harvest tomorrow, otherwise we can only eat fish." Lin Heng said, and threw a duck bone he had eaten to Xiongba. "I think it will be fine." Lin Yue smiled and said optimistically, while Lin Heng was a little worried.

The two men finished their meal and went to the stream with flashlights. The fish and eels were very stupid at night. If they caught some for Xiongba and Fengshou to eat, they would definitely not be full if they only ate the bones.

There are a lot of stream groupers and groupers in the mountain streams. You can shine a flashlight at night and catch one with one claw.

"I didn't see any eels tonight, but there were lots of them here before." After catching thirty or forty stream groupers and horse mackerel, Lin Heng was a little confused.

"The water level just rose, so they probably haven't come out yet." Lin Yue explained casually.

The two were talking when the flashlight was shone forward. They both froze almost at the same time and their breathing stopped immediately.

"I'll do it." Lin Heng said in a low voice, and walked towards the big creature quietly.

He grabbed its butt from behind and lifted it up. No matter how long the old turtle's neck was, it couldn't bite him.

Lin Yue opened the net bag excitedly: "It's rich, it's rich, this must be about five or six pounds."

"I've made a fortune indeed." Lin Heng said with a smile. This kind of pure old turtle from the deep mountains can be sold for at least four or five yuan per catty, and this one can be worth twenty or thirty yuan.

Putting the turtle into the net bag, Lin Yue smiled and said, "Let's see if there are any more."

Lin Heng nodded and continued searching. The resources in the mountains were very good these days. He still had two turtles weighing one or two kilograms at home that he had not eaten. They were both caught last year.

Going up, the two searched again. The biggest catch was a half-pound plum fish, and the rest were some small fish.

In addition to the old turtle, the small fishes added up to about three or four pounds, which was nothing for this stream. As long as one did not electrocute or poison the fish or use a net to kill the fish, one could catch endless fish in such a small stream.

"These two hours at night were not wasted." Lin Yue said with a smile.

"Of course." Lin Heng said with a smile.

The old turtle continued to be kept in the net bag, and two kilograms of small fish were cooked to feed Xiongba and Fengshou.

There is a pound of large fish left. I gutted it, killed it, sprinkled salt on it, and smoked it over the fire. After it is dried, I can take it up the mountain as lunch tomorrow.

Compared to yesterday, today was not that tiring. The two woke up in the middle of the night and added more fire. When they woke up in the morning, all the fish were roasted crispy, and the beautiful transparent shreds of meat could be seen with a light tear.

Only the half-pound plum fish has not been grilled yet.

They cooked a big pot of noodles and ate their fill. They then used the soup to cook the fish from the trap and fed them to the two dogs.

"Let's come back in the afternoon and make two more fish traps. The fish caught in this one is barely enough for the dogs to eat. I also want to smoke and roast some." Lin Yue said.

"Sure. There's a very long pool of water upstream that's attached to the rock wall. We can set a trap there when we come back. It will definitely be better than here." Lin Heng said.

The section of the stream that sticks to the rock wall on one side of the canyon is hundreds of meters long. It is a large, long pool of water formed due to the low terrain.

After the dog finished eating, they set out again. They set out early today, it was only half past five, and both of them hoped to get something.

Unfortunately, he didn't find anything in the whole morning. He ate fish at noon and continued searching in the afternoon. As there was no prey and no ginseng, Lin Heng was so angry that he shot five big red squirrels.

They are the easiest to bully in this forest.

At the end of the day, we searched another mountain, but found no ginseng, and the harvest of other Chinese herbs was not very large. The mushrooms we did find were mostly varieties that were delicious but could not be sold for much money.

All in all, the two of them only gained about five dollars that day.

"Let's go back and build fish traps." Lin Heng no longer had any hope for this place.

"Okay." Lin Yue agreed, and the two of them got up and walked back.

A fishing trap was built beside the long rectangular pond. The pond was emerald green, and it was impossible to tell whether there were any fish in it, but the two men felt that it should be fine.

When they returned to the camp, they ate the remaining roast duck. Because it had been kept over the smoke, the duck had not gone bad yet.

Early on the third day, when they went up to check the fish traps, they were stunned.

“Oh my god, there are so many big fish here!”

"This must be about 7 or 8 kilograms of fish!"

The two were shocked as they looked at the plum fish swimming back and forth in the trap. These fish weighed half a pound each, and there were more than a dozen of them.

The two men put them all in a net bag and lifted them down. There were fifteen big ones in total, each weighing at least half a pound, and the biggest ones could weigh seven or eight ounces.

After feeding Xiongba, Fengshou and two dogs, they killed six more fish, cut them into slices and smoked them over the fire, preparing to make fish as dry food for lunch during the exploration.

The remaining five are kept in water and ready to be taken home when the time comes.

On the way up the mountain, Lin Yue said, "Today is already the fourth day since I came here, and we have finished eating all the rice and flour."

Lin Heng nodded: "Well, it's almost time to go back. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, next time we come, we'll go to a different place, this place isn't very good."

He really couldn't stay any longer. Today was already August 16th. Even if he didn't build the dam, he would have to go into the city on the th to discuss the purchase of the abandoned factory.

"These are the last two mountains. If you can't find it, don't come next time." Lin Yue shook his head and said that because he didn't hunt properly when looking for ginseng, the harvest was indeed not good.

After entering the mountain, the two men continued to search as before. Lin Heng found two Ganoderma lucidum early in the morning. The only good harvest was a super thick yam vine found on the slope, and they dug up seven or eight kilograms of wild yam.

His elder brother was even worse off than him. The mountain they entered today was overgrown with weeds and vines, making it difficult to move forward.

Lin Heng glanced at his watch and saw that it was already twelve o'clock. He was about to ask his elder brother to stop eating when he heard his brother's excited but timid voice in the distance: "Brother! Damn, I found two large pieces of Panax notoginseng!"

Lin Heng suddenly became excited and crawled over. When he came over, he saw his elder brother standing in a patch of Panax notoginseng.

"This is Panax notoginseng." Lin Heng said with a smile.

Lin Yue nodded happily: "Yes, I estimate that I can dig at least 20 to 30 kilograms, which is also a big harvest."

"Congratulations, big brother." Lin Heng was happy for his big brother from the bottom of his heart and walked over to help dig.

"This is all thanks to you. Brother, you can dig some too. Here you go." Lin Yue said generously.

Lin Heng shook his head: "That won't do. We agreed that whoever finds it will own it. Just take it with confidence. I didn't share it with you last time I found it."

He had two kilograms of premium Panax notoginseng at home for himself, but he didn't care about it.

"Okay then." Lin Yue stopped hesitating because he knew Lin Heng didn't need that little money.

After digging, he weighed it and found that it weighed about 40 kilograms, and 70 to 8 kilograms after drying. Although the quality was slightly lower than what he found last time, it would be no problem to sell it for 300 to 400 yuan, which was definitely a large sum of money.

"Damn, now I have saved enough money to open a store." Lin Yue said in surprise.

"It seems that there are indeed a lot of Panax notoginseng here. Let's look for it again. If we can't find ginseng, maybe we can find Panax notoginseng." Lin Heng said. After this, he didn't want to rest anymore. He took the dried fish and ate it while looking for it.

(End of this chapter)