Chapter 1750
You'll Starve to Death Sooner or Later
No sooner had Wang An finished speaking than Yang Shuwen hurriedly said:
"Of course, of course! We'd be grateful if they gave us the lampstand and the two Jiazi (a unit of currency), otherwise I'd have slunk down the mountain and gone home, hehehehehehehe."
After wandering around the mountains for more than half a month without any results, they were overjoyed to have Wang An leading them to dig for Dengtaizi and Erjiazi.
It should be noted that although Wang An and his three companions did not care about the lampstand and the two Jiazi (a type of ginseng), mainly because they did not have time to dig them up, in the eyes of other ginseng gangs, these were invaluable treasures.
After all, even a perfectly intact 200-year-old jasmine seedling can be worth tens of yuan, while a perfectly intact jasmine seedling can be worth two or three hundred or even three or four hundred yuan.
However, if Wang An and his three companions were to be so greedy as to take the lampstand and the second Jiazi into their possession, they would have to spend years digging for ginseng in the mountains. And if they wanted to wade through all 13 old ridges, it might take several years.
This kind of life is not what Wang An wants.
The key issue is that you never know when those old hamlets that you didn't have time to wade through will be discovered and raided by others, just like the old hamlet with seven dead people in it. Then Wang An and his group will end up with nothing, not even a scrap of loot.
Therefore, prioritizing ginseng with leaves of grade four or higher is the most correct choice for Wang An and his group at present.
After Yang Shuwen and his group uttered a few more useless words, Wang An interrupted them with a smile:
"Alright, Brother Yang, let's hurry up and continue searching for the club. Finding the club is the most important thing, right? Hahahaha."
After Wang An finished speaking, Yang Shuwen and the others agreed with smiles on their faces, and then everyone dispersed to continue playing with sticks.
There's a saying that goes, "When eating, you're afraid of having too many people; when working, you're afraid of having too few people." Eleven people working together waded through the old village with incredible speed. In just one morning, these eleven people had waded through the entire village.
Compared to yesterday afternoon's harvest, this morning's harvest was undoubtedly very gratifying. Two seedlings with six-leaf morphology were found, five seedlings with five-leaf morphology were found, and nine seedlings with four-leaf morphology were found.
Including yesterday's harvest, Wang An and his three companions harvested 3 seedlings with six-leaf cultivars, 9 seedlings with five-leaf cultivars, and 22 seedlings with four-leaf cultivars in this old hamlet alone.
It has to be said that only in these old, untouched places can such precious treasures as the fifth-grade and sixth-grade leaves be found.
Although these three seedlings with six leaves are not large, averaging just over 210 grams each, a six-leaf seedling is still a six-leaf seedling, far superior to a five-leaf seedling, mainly because their prices are in a completely different league.
However, digging ginseng is a very slow and laborious task, especially digging large specimens with many rootlets, such as those with five or six leaves.
So in the end, even Wang An and Wang Li got involved, but since they were both impatient, they only dug up fourth-grade leaves.
In this way, it took Wang An and his three companions two and a half days to dig out all the ginseng in this old village. The only regret was that Wang An and Wang Li's ginseng digging skills were really bad, and each of them broke off the ginseng rootlets of a four-leaf ginseng plant.
Since Wang An let Li Sanmeng go and everyone cooperated without holding back, the smiles on Yang Shuwen's seven faces never stopped. Although they could only dig up the lampstand and the second Jiazi, the quantity was still quite considerable.
In this old village, the seven of them dug up more than forty seedlings of *Lysimachia nummularia*. If each seedling was worth an average of 300 yuan, they could earn 12,000 yuan. If they also counted the even larger number of seedlings from the second cycle, the seven of them could earn 15,000 to 16,000 yuan each.
After wading through the old embankment, Wang An and his four companions, along with Yang Shuwen and his group of seven, only searched it once before Wang An completely lost interest. The main reason was that after searching it once, they only found five seedlings, which, in Wang An's view, was a complete waste of time and life.
So after flipping through the first section, Wang An forcibly suppressed Yang Shuwen and the others' idea of flipping through it a second time, and led everyone toward the tenth old hill.
At this moment, Wang An only wanted to finish quickly, wade through these old ravines as soon as possible, and then go down the mountain and go home immediately.
Wang An had had enough of digging ginseng in the mountains.
Sometimes, Wang An would even have a really crazy thought: he hoped that all four remaining old houses would be waded through, so that he could go home openly and with a clear conscience.
There was nothing he could do. Although wild ginseng was a treasure and extremely valuable, Wang An had neither a shortage of wild ginseng nor a shortage of money. In particular, he didn't even know how much he would have if he were to liquidate all his assets.
However, knowing there were treasures in Lao'anzi but not digging them up was definitely not in Wang An's nature.
But wandering around in the mountains for so long, with poor food and sleep, and most importantly, no women around, was not the kind of life Wang An was looking for.
So, this is fucking frustrating.
As soon as Wang An and Yang Shuwen arrived at the tenth old hamlet, Yang Shuwen frowned and said to Wang An:
“Brother, just a few days ago, this place was already ravaged. Those guys stayed here for more than ten days. I think there’s probably nothing left here.”
Upon hearing this, Wang An felt a surge of joy, no, it was a mixture of regret and sadness, and then he asked with an incredulous expression:
"Brother Yang, are you sure? This old place actually has some really good stuff!"
Yang Shuwen nodded and said decisively:
"I'm absolutely sure. There were 11 of them in total. As soon as we got close, they showed us their weapons. After they left, we even came back to search the place thoroughly. We searched for the batons all day, but we didn't find anything."
When he said the last sentence, Yang Shuwen was clearly a little embarrassed and scratched his head awkwardly.
If a ginseng gang doesn't rely on finding and digging for ginseng themselves, but instead makes a living by searching through places where others have already dug for ginseng, then that's really a bit pathetic.
However, this is quite normal, since ginseng has very demanding growing conditions.
So normally these things grow in clusters. Generally speaking, once you find one ginseng plant, you'll find a large patch of ginseng nearby.
But if they can't find ginseng, the entire ginseng community will be in a predicament where they can't find a single ginseng plant.
Clearly, this is the case with Yang Shuwen's small ginseng gang.
This also shows that Yang Shuwen's abilities as the ginseng gang leader are questionable; following him will only lead to starvation sooner or later. (End of Chapter)