Sold immediately after wearing it? I took my family and fled the famine.

After everyone left, Jiang Xing squatted beside the nearly burnt-out fire. As the flames were about to die out, she placed a few dry branches on top of it, and when the fire flared up again, she said to Ma Dadan, "Tomorrow at dawn, I will go find medicinal herbs to treat colds myself. This mountain forest is densely vegetated, so there should be some usable ones. Once I find them, I will have those who are not sick come with me to dig them up."

She paused, looking at the cave walls illuminated by the firelight: "If a cold is left untreated for too long, people will die. If one person dies, there may be two. Once it becomes a plague, let alone reaching the southwest, there won't be enough people left in this cave to die."

Ma Dadan was silent for a moment, then stood up and cleared his throat: "Okay! I'll dig with you tomorrow!"

The rain stopped when it was light, but it was still gray and misty. A thin layer of fog permeated the forest, and water droplets occasionally dripped from the leaves, hitting the withered leaves with a dull sound.

Jiang Xing came out of the cave and stood at the edge of the forest, looking up at the hillside. She had noticed this forest when she came in yesterday. The vegetation was dense and the soil was thick. There were large areas of ferns and moss on the shady hillside.

Wild mugwort and perilla are most likely to grow in this environment. She was preparing to go and scout ahead when an old man followed her out of the cave.

The old man was in his sixties, with gray hair and beard, wearing a faded blue cloth long gown and carrying a worn-out medicine box on his back. This was the same old man from last night.

He walked straight up to Ma Dadan, cupped his hands in greeting, and said, "Sir, my surname is Gu, and I am a traveling physician from Yongzhou. Last night, I was the one who examined the pulse of that woman's child."

He spent the whole night taking pulses in the cave yesterday, and then took pulses again after dawn. He had two dark circles under his eyes, but he was still in relatively good spirits.

"Three more people collapsed last night. It wasn't anything serious, just a cold. The young people can get through it in a couple of days, but the older folks and children have a hard time."

As he spoke, he glanced at the people lying haphazardly in the cave and lowered his voice: "There are at least forty or fifty people with fevers, and the medicine in my medicine box won't last much longer."

"Fortunately, no one is delirious yet, but it's hard to say what will happen if this drags on any longer. I heard the official is going up the mountain to find medicinal herbs, and I'd like to go with him to identify them."

Ma Dadan glanced back at Jiang Xing, who nodded. With a doctor present, the herbs they collected wouldn't be used incorrectly, and it would also provide an extra resource for teaching people how to identify herbs.

Not many people are needed to explore the way; if they can't walk fast, it will only waste time. She and Doctor Gu each carried an empty basket out of the cave.

The rain was light but dense, and a thin layer of mist permeated the forest. The soil underfoot was soft from the rain. After walking for less than half an hour, Jiang Xing found a few clumps of wild mugwort on a shady hillside. Doctor Gu dug up perilla and catnip by the nearby stream. Further in, they found a few saposhnikovia and wild ginger on a gravelly slope.

Doctor Gu squatted down and rummaged through the medicinal herbs in his basket: "These herbs are only enough for one meal at most. Let's go back first."

The two returned to the cave, spread the medicinal herbs on the ground, and Ma Dadan glanced at them before starting to call out names without saying a word.

He divided the able-bodied men who could still walk into two groups. Doctor Gu led one group to the north slope, where the terrain was flat and suitable for the older men to follow. Jiang Xing led the other group to the deep mountains to the south, where the forests were denser and there were more medicinal herbs, but the path was also more difficult. She was accompanied by young men and nimble women.

The deep mountains to the south are much more difficult to traverse than the northern slope.

The bushes were dense and tall, and when you crawled through them, the branches scratched your face painfully.

The path underfoot was a mixture of gravel and decaying leaves, making it uneven as you stepped on it. The dense forest had its advantages, as there were many kinds and quantities of medicinal herbs.

Jiang Xing walked at the front, his eyes constantly scanning the ground.

In less than fifteen minutes, she found several clumps of mugwort and perilla, which she had the people behind her dig up by the roots and put into their baskets.

A woman was digging for medicinal herbs and wild vegetables at the same time. The shepherd's purse on the ground was wilted but still edible, and there were still some purslane that hadn't been damaged by the frost.

Someone who didn't recognize the medicinal herbs dug up a weed and mixed it with the mugwort. A woman next to her quickly stopped her: "What you dug up is wormwood, not mugwort! Smell it, the back of mugwort is white, while the back of wormwood is green."

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The man leaned closer to take a look, smiled sheepishly, threw away the weeds, and started digging again. When he encountered something he couldn't identify, he would bring the herb to Jiang Xing for help. Jiang Xing never got annoyed and would identify each herb one by one, explaining it clearly before letting the man continue digging.

As you venture deeper into the mountains, the terrain gradually becomes steeper.

The humus on the ground was getting thicker and thicker, and stepping on it felt like stepping on an old cotton quilt. Jiang Xing stopped on a gravel slope. Several plants with palmately divided leaves grew in the cracks of the gravel. Their stems were thick and their tubers were exposed on the soil surface, with brownish-brown outer skin.

The Arisaema was in excellent condition. She squatted down and carefully dug away the surrounding soil with a short knife, uprooted the entire plant, shook off the mud, and used the action of tidying up her basket to bring up the shop panel.

Available for sale: 1 Arisaema plant

[System valuation: Araceae 400 points/plant]

Has it been sold?

She clicked "sold," the screen went dark, and her points balance jumped.

She continued walking and found several clumps of Boluhui (a type of medicinal herb) under a shady rock wall. The stems were tall and the capsules were completely dry, which was the best time for its medicinal effects.

She dug up two clumps and, before the others could catch up, quickly sold each clump for 300 points.

She did these actions very quickly. With the basket on her back, no one saw her. By the time the people behind her caught up, she had already put the basket back on and was bending down to dig up a clump of Solomon's seal.

"What is this?" A woman came closer to look.

"This is Solomon's Seal. It can be cooked and eaten. It tastes very sweet and can fill your stomach." Jiang Xing dug out the Solomon's Seal rhizome, shook off the mud, and broke off a piece to reveal the yellowish-white flesh inside.

The woman's eyes lit up. Her family's food supplies were running low, and they had been surviving on wild vegetable porridge for the past few days. She quickly squatted down to help dig, calling out as she dug, "There's something edible over here! Solomon's seal! Miss Jiang said it can be cooked and eaten as a meal!"

When the news spread, several women gathered around and started digging.

Jiang Xing walked a little further and found patches of fern roots and kudzu roots on a patch of soft humus soil. The rhizomes of the fern roots ran horizontally under the soil layer, and a single hoe stroke could uncover a long one; the kudzu roots were even deeper, but the rhizomes were thick and strong, and digging up a piece could provide enough for several meals.

She instructed the people behind her to dig up all the fern roots and kudzu roots, telling them not to dig them up completely and to leave the smaller ones so they could continue to grow.

"This Smilax glabra is also edible." She pointed to a clump of inconspicuous vines next to her. The roots and stems were hard when dug up, with a grayish-brown outer skin and a whitish cross-section. "When cooked, it becomes powdery and can fill you up."

An elderly man squatted down and dug up a sphagnum moss. He held it in his hands and weighed it in his hands. His eyes were a little red. He didn't say anything, but carefully put the sphagnum moss into his basket and went to dig up the next one.