I survived the famine by scavenging and supported my family.

After Ning's father told the village head about the large tent team, the village head indeed decided to send people to stake out the area.

It wasn't safe for him to go alone, so he asked Ning's father to take the two of them with him, one to accompany Wang Xiufeng and the other to familiarize himself with the way.

Next, they took turns going to stake out the area.

Those who had previously teamed up to search for mushrooms did so as before, while the remaining people in the cave set up traps at the cave entrance, just like before!

Digging during the day is too noisy, so they dig when the team is usually not moving around in the morning. After digging, they cover the entrance with straw mats and then scatter some wild grass on top of the entrance.

The area outside the cave was already chaotic, and with such haphazard covering, it was easy to miss anything at first glance.

After two days of commotion, the group came back once more, not to fight, but to beg for food.

They also brought silver.

"My lord, please, we haven't had anything proper to eat for days..."

"We'll trade silver! Ten taels of silver for a pound of food! Anything, as long as it's food!"

"Not even ten taels of silver," the village headman sternly refused. "Get out of here! If you stay any longer, don't blame us for being impolite!"

Seeing that they couldn't exchange their money for anything, the ten men left dejectedly with the silver.

After they left, the village head sighed and turned to the people in the cave, saying, "The food we have now is more precious than anything else. Don't be greedy for short-term gains and trade away the food that will save your lives."

"Our team has to wait here until the rain stops. After the rain stops, we still have to walk down the mountain path."

The village head's earnest words dispelled most of the villagers' idea of ​​exchanging food for silver.

Some people were thinking: That's ten taels of silver!

During the festive season, ten taels of silver is enough for a family to eat for several years!

Many people verbally agreed, but secretly they were very tempted.

Back at the innermost part of the cave, Granny Qian shifted back and forth on the cart frame before finally standing up and saying, "Third brother, bring out three catties of mushrooms."

Knowing what his mother was up to, Zhao Laosan hurriedly pulled a bag from the carriage and asked, "Mom, isn't exchanging three jin a bit too much?"

These are all dried mushrooms. If they were fresh mushrooms... three catties would only make one big bunch, so exchanging them for thirty taels would be a great deal!

"There's a way to sell dried mushrooms!" Granny Qian said. "Go and tell them that dried mushrooms cost thirty taels of silver per pound."

Thirty taels?

Zhao Laosan almost twisted his back; thirty taels of silver was less profitable than robbing someone!

"Thirty taels... I'm afraid they won't be happy to trade with us. How about we trade some fresh mushrooms first? Didn't we pick some fresh mushrooms these past few days?" Zhao Laosan jumped off the front of the cart, rummaged around next to his own wheel, pulled out a piece of wood, and found mushrooms sprouting from it, already as big as a thumb.

"Let's pick these and take them over, then we can raise them again."

"How much are wet mushrooms?" Granny Qian scoffed. "Twenty taels. Dried mushrooms are worth more than wet ones! If it's twenty taels, we can sell more."

With that money, they can buy rice to eat when they go down the mountain to town after the rain stops!

If you were to trade mushrooms directly, you wouldn't get this much for a pound of mushrooms.

Granny Qian handed over the bag containing the dried mushrooms, saying, "Find an excuse to slip out later and change it as soon as possible."

"I see there are other people in our village who want to trade too! We need to hurry! Otherwise, they'll stop wanting our mushrooms once they've traded enough!"

Granny Qian kept urging him on, and Zhao Laosan had no choice but to take the bag from her hands.

Three pounds of dried mushrooms would make a huge bag just to take out; you can't just openly show them off!

After thinking for a moment, he asked Zhao Huilan to carry it first. After all, Zhao Huilan was still a child. He would find an excuse to sneak out later and then have Zhao Huilan deliver the mushrooms to him.

That was settled. Zhao Laosan first went to the group to find the old man who had previously stored the mushrooms, retrieved the mushrooms he had secretly hidden, and then, under some pretext, slipped out of the cave.

After standing there for a while, Zhao Huilan came out wearing a straw mat to deliver the items.

With the straw mat providing cover, the things she was carrying weren't very noticeable. The two met up discreetly, and Zhao Huilan noticed with her sharp eyes that her third uncle was carrying a large bag of things.

—That's stolen food!

Reason told her she couldn't expose her third uncle at this time, but emotionally, Zhao Huilan still couldn't suppress her jealousy.

—Why?! Where did Uncle San put the stolen food?!

Zhao Laosan had no time to pay attention to her. He grabbed two bags of dried mushrooms and hurriedly ran towards the large tent.

A few days ago it was his turn to stake out the area, so he knew the way.

However, there were still people from Wangli Village on duty over there. After thinking for a moment, Zhao Laosan took a detour from another place and went directly to another road.

In this way, the transaction can be conducted without anyone noticing.

Zhao Laosan walked along the new road to the large tent. Before he could speak, someone immediately crawled out from under the tarpaulin tent to stop him.

"What are you doing!"

"stop!"

"Don't go any further!"

Suddenly, three men sprang out from below, each wielding a large knife. Zhao Laosan quickly put on a fawning smile, held up the dried mushrooms in his arms, and said, "Don't get excited! Don't get excited... I'm here to exchange for silver!"

"Exchange for silver?"

The person on the other side looked puzzled for a moment, and someone next to him said, "Didn't Lord Jia say that there wasn't much food in the army, so he sent someone to get silver to exchange for food?"

"Oh, I remember now, someone did go to exchange for food today, but they were refused by your villagers! Why are you here again?"

The person opposite softened their tone and put down their broadsword.

Zhao Laosan's heart, which had been hanging in suspense, was finally put back into his stomach as he put down the big knife.

"Pshaw! What does the village head know! He's not short of money, unlike us..." Zhao Laosan smiled ingratiatingly, "We happen to have a few extra pounds of mushrooms. If you don't mind, we can exchange them for silver so we can find a place to stay after we go down the mountain."

The person on the other end nodded: "This is a mutually beneficial arrangement. You wait here, I'll call someone over."

He told the two men to keep an eye on Zhao Laosan while he went inside to call for help.

Before long, the man who had been to the cave that morning came over and was not surprised at all to see that someone was actually sneaking around to exchange food for silver.

He led the man to a tarpaulin shed in the corner, dismissed the others, and made Zhao Laosan sit on a bench.

"Young man, my name is Huang Biao, and yours?"

Zhao Laosan naturally wouldn't tell him his real name. He put the mushroom on the ground, rubbed his hands together, and said, "Brother Huang, my surname is Zhao, and my name is Zhao San."

"Let's check the goods." Huang Biao didn't say anything more and gestured for Zhao Laosan to open the bag.

There were two bags, one containing mushrooms of varying sizes, some drier and some wetter, which made Huang Biao frown.

The other mushroom, though also of varying sizes, was completely dried out. I took one out and tried to pinch off the cap with my fingernail, but I couldn't break it.

Zhao Laosan carefully observed his expression and said, "To be honest, when I came out, my elders told me that dried mushrooms and fresh mushrooms shouldn't be priced the same, you see..."

Huang Biao put down the mushrooms he was holding and casually asked, "Where did you pick these mushrooms? How come some of them are so big!"

"I picked them on other hills before, and I climbed several small slopes!" Zhao Laosan said.

Huang Biao: "Oh, then why are some of your mushrooms dried out when roasted, while others aren't?"

"Maybe... we were in a rush and put some away before they were fully dried," Zhao Laosan said, wiping the sweat from his brow. "But they're all pretty much the same! Look, we've picked through them; they're all edible mushrooms!"

That's obvious, who would want to grill something they can't eat!

"Why are you in such a hurry to get going?" Huang Biao weighed the bag of mushrooms in his hand. It was heavy; the two bags together weighed at least eight pounds.

—This person is really greedy.

A glint flashed in his eyes, but unfortunately Zhao Laosan didn't see it.

After thinking for a moment, Zhao Laosan realized there was nothing wrong with being chased by bandits, so he said directly, "There were bandits! They really got us into trouble; we almost didn't have time to harvest the mushrooms!"

Upon hearing about the bandits, Huang Biao slapped his thigh and said painfully, "Alas! Bandits are truly disgusting people! We were also chased by bandits, and more than ten brothers have died. It hurts to think about it!"

"Sigh! We're the same..." Zhao Laosan shook his head, "About ten of us are gone."

Huang Biao shook his head, "The bandits deserve to die."

He then changed the subject, saying, "We can only keep half of this bag of mushrooms."

Old Zhao smirked and said, "Half it is! Mushrooms are all the same no matter how many you eat. We just wanted to fill our stomachs, that's why we gathered so many."

Huang Biao nodded, "We adults don't like to eat these things, so I'll collect them privately. As for the money... I can only give you ten taels per pound."

"Ten taels..." To be honest, it was a bit low, but better than nothing. Zhao Laosan gritted his teeth: "Ten taels it is, otherwise I'll have to carry it back!"

A mocking glint flashed in Huang Biao's eyes as he took out four large silver ingots, each worth ten taels.

He casually picked up the bag of dried mushrooms, saying, "Alright, here are your mushrooms. I'll take them to the brothers to try as soon as possible!"

—That bag of mushrooms weighed over four pounds!

Zhao Laosan felt a pang of heartache for a moment, but then he realized that this was someone else's territory, and if he made a fuss over less than half a pound of mushrooms, he would only end up worse off. So he could only silently swallow his loss.

He stood up and said, "If you want to eat mushrooms again next time, Brother Huang, come find me again!"

Huang Biao nodded and watched the idiot go back.

He had only managed to extract a little useful information—that the group had been chased by bandits.

They also lost about ten people.

There are about seventy or eighty of them. If we send out eighty percent of our men, we can take them down!

Just then, someone else came to report.

"Brother Huang, someone else has come to exchange silver!"

"Tell him we've had enough..." Huang Biao said, then changed the subject, adding, "Never mind, bring him over."

"yes!"

A man was led by his men to the bottom of an oilcloth shed.

Compared to Zhao San from before, this man's face clearly showed resentment and a desire to please.

Huang Biao looked at him with great interest.

Before Huang Biao could speak, the man said, "Damn old man, he always blocks our way!"

Huang Biao, who had been somewhat nonchalant, immediately perked up.

He had intended to probe Zhao Laosan's words to see if he was telling the truth, but he hadn't expected that the man seemed to have a lot of opinions about his team!

He immediately moved the stool to the side and handed over a bowl of hot water.

Boiling water also requires firewood. The man took the bowl, thanked him, and slowly sipped the water along the rim.

After exchanging names, Huang Biao asked, "Young man, what do you mean by 'blocking your way'?"

Wang Dacheng put down his bowl and said, "Isn't this our village headman?"

"It was one thing for them to stop me from getting water before, but this is such a good opportunity to exchange food for silver, and they won't let us come!"

Huang Biao scoffed inwardly. This village head was indeed knowledgeable, but unfortunately, his subordinates didn't listen to him.

Although he thought this in his heart, Huang Biao couldn't reveal it aloud. He went along with Wang Dacheng's words and said, "Sigh! Your village head is also thinking of you. It's really hard to get food these days."

"It's only now, when food is so hard to find on the mountain, that you're willing to offer such a high price!" Wang Dacheng drank some water and felt intoxicated, thinking to himself: Where will I find such a sucker when I get down the mountain! As long as you're willing, you can always find mushrooms on the mountain. You can just pick up some branches and dry them.

If he hadn't been rushing on his journey and hadn't had time to search, he could have taken out a hundred catties of dried mushrooms to exchange for silver!

Unfortunately, even if he took out all the mushrooms, he would only have fifty catties. He kept ten catties as food for the next few days and planned to call people to the vicinity of the cave entrance to deliver the remaining thirty catties of "goods".

"Yes, there's nothing on the mountain, it's already good enough to meet you all... Brother Wang, are you short of money?" Huang Biao asked tentatively.

"We're short! Of course we're short! Ordinary folks like us can't even earn two taels of silver all year round. If we could exchange it for some silver, we could get down the mountain..."

Wang Dacheng chuckled twice, revealing his large, yellow teeth, and continued, "Buy some land, buy a wife, and life's back to normal!"

He had originally escaped with his mother, but unfortunately, she was swept away by the mudslide. Wang Dacheng was so busy with the things in his own cart that he didn't notice and his mother died.

It doesn't matter if he loses it all. He can get some silver and go down the mountain to find a wife! Food is so precious these days, maybe he can even get some by trading dried mushrooms!

Thinking this way, Wang Dacheng started laughing again.

Huang Biao: "..."

Huang Biao: "But I just harvested four catties of dried mushrooms. We adults don't like to eat mushrooms."

Wang Dacheng panicked, "Who! Who dares to disobey the village head and come out to exchange mushrooms!"

They even beat him to it! Wang Dacheng gritted his teeth, determined to find out who it was and report them to the village head first!

"I didn't get along with him much, so I exchanged the silver and let him go." Huang Biao said, "Brother Wang, if you want to exchange silver, you can. I have a way to exchange silver without eating."

"What method?" Wang Dacheng asked.

"Our superiors are looking for a reliable team to follow, and your team is quite good. Tell us about your team, and if our superiors are pleased, they will naturally reward you with silver."

A reward?! Wang Dacheng stared into Huang Biao's eyes, and seeing Huang Biao's serious expression, he swallowed hard.

"How many?"

Huang Biao pondered for a moment and said, "One hundred taels."

"Just say something trivial, and you can get a hundred taels of silver for free..." Huang Biao tempted. "After we get down the mountain, you might even be able to buy two servants and live the life of a landlord."

Wang Dacheng was madly in love.

"……no."