The sky shimmered with starlight, and the cold moonlight spilled over the mountains and forests.

The village head ordered the women to light torches and climb the mountain to illuminate the workers digging the canal.

The torches lined up in a row, resembling a fiery dragon coiling around the eastern mountain.

Cheng Wanwan stood among the crowd, holding a torch, while a voice echoed in her mind.

[Ding! Wild gastrodia elata detected!]

She noticed something in the canal that looked like gastrodia elata, but the lighting was poor, making it hard to confirm.

Even if she could see it clearly, now was not the best time to retrieve it.

[Ding! Wild shepherd’s purse root detected!]

Shepherd’s purse was growing abundantly in the dug-out canal. It sold for only a few coins per pound, but the roots were more valuable, fetching over twenty coins per pound.

Cheng Wanwan remained calm.

She currently had 119 taels and 560 coins—an enormous sum.

However, hoarding money that couldn’t be openly explained wasn’t practical.

The real problem was figuring out how to make her wealth legitimate.

She wanted to buy land and, more urgently, build a house before winter arrived.

[Ding! Wild stone flower seeds detected!]

Cheng Wanwan frowned.

What were stone flower seeds?

She had never heard of them before.

She looked at the floating interface in her mind.

The image showed a cluster of green plants with dark purple stems, heart-shaped leaves, and lantern-like fruits hanging at the top.

She had seen this plant before.

In modern times, it was called stone flower seed and was used to make ice jelly.

She had traveled extensively and once visited Xinyang, where ice jelly was a local specialty.

A tourist site she visited even cultivated the plant and allowed visitors to make their own ice jelly.

She could vaguely recall the steps…

An idea instantly formed in her mind.

She had been wondering how to launder her money, and now a business opportunity had practically fallen into her lap.

“There’s so much lantern grass here!” Zhao Sidaan exclaimed playfully. “Let’s see who can pick the most!”

A group of young boys started frantically picking the lantern-like fruits, then tossing them to the ground and stomping on them.

Cheng Wanwan felt a pang of distress.

She stepped forward, raising her torch, and said to the children, “Whoever picks a pound of lanterns for me will get a chicken egg as a reward.”

Hearing this, Zhao Sidaan got excited. “Mother, I’ll do it! I want all the eggs for myself!”

Cheng Wanwan chuckled. “As long as you pick a pound, you’ll get an egg.”

Aunt Wang, watching with curiosity, asked, “Wanwan, what do you need those lanterns for? Even chickens won’t eat them.”

“I vaguely remember my grandmother making some kind of delicious snack with them when I was little,” Cheng Wanwan lied effortlessly. “Since there are so many here, I want to try making it again. Who knows? Maybe I’ll figure it out!”

Aunt Wang didn’t believe a word of it, but exchanging something useless for chicken eggs was a deal too good to pass up.

She quickly called out to her children. “Damie, Xiaomaizi, Nuiqui, come help me pick lanterns! The more, the better!”

The other women overheard and immediately summoned their own children.

Word had spread that Zhao Dasao had found two wild hens and a rooster in the mountains a few days ago.

The hens were extraordinarily good layers, producing four eggs a day, so there was no doubt she could afford the rewards.

Soon, all the kids who had been idly picking wild vegetables joined in, eagerly collecting stone flower seeds.

“Aunt Zhao, is this enough for a pound?”

“Aunt Zhao, my sister and I picked a whole basket—how many eggs can we get?”

“I filled a basket too! My mom says it’s two pounds—can I get two eggs?”

Cheng Wanwan looked at the collection in front of her: three or four baskets, seven or eight smaller containers, and dozens of pockets filled with stone flower seeds—at least twenty pounds in total.

The children’s efficiency was astonishing.

It seemed like this kind of task could be outsourced to them in the future.

She called over Zhao Sanniu to help transport the stone flower seeds back.

He carried a large basket on his back, another hanging from his chest, and four smaller baskets in his hands. His younger brother, Zhao Sidaan, carried the rest.

The two boys, proud of their haul, began their descent down the mountain.

Cheng Wanwan smiled at the remaining children. “Our hens lay only four eggs a day, so only four people can collect their rewards each day. Can we let the younger children go first?”

Wang Damaizi immediately nodded. “I’ll go last!”

His younger brother, Wang Xiaomaizi, followed suit. “Me too!”

Zhu Huzi licked his lips. “Then I’ll wait till the last day.”

Cheng Wanwan had expected some resistance, but these children were surprisingly considerate.

She grinned. “If I need more lanterns in the future, I’ll come to you first.”

Exchanging one egg for a pound of stone flower seeds was an incredibly good deal.

If ice jelly proved profitable in this era, she wouldn’t mind increasing their reward to two eggs per pound.

As the night deepened, some of the younger children, too tired to stay awake, followed their older siblings down the mountain.

The women remained, holding torches.

Cheng Wanwan stayed close to Zhao Dashan and Zhao Ergou, occasionally offering them water.

They weren’t her biological children, but she still felt protective of them.

The village head, who had been enduring the late hours with them, was visibly exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot as he climbed onto a large rock and shouted, “Just three more zhang (10 meters) to go! Keep it up!”

Everything was progressing smoothly—until an unexpected event occurred.

With a heavy thud, Wang Yongcheng’s shovel struck something solid.

This had happened before—there were plenty of stones in the mountains, and normally, they could just dig around them.

He shifted to another spot and tried again, but his shovel hit something hard once more.

The stone was larger than expected.

He moved several times, yet the obstruction remained. Eventually, they realized the rock extended over five zhang—about 16 meters.

A stone this massive was beyond human strength to remove.

Cheng Wanwan’s expression turned serious.

In modern times, heavy machinery would be used to break through such obstacles.

But here, they had only manpower. Moving the rock was impossible.

Rerouting wasn’t an option either—on the east side was a sheer cliff, while the west side was an ancient forest filled with towering trees, each requiring three people to encircle. Cutting them down was equally unrealistic.

The weary workers, who had thought they were nearing the finish line, were now faced with an insurmountable challenge.

A murmur of discontent spread through the crowd, eventually turning into open complaints.

“I knew from the start—what does a woman like Zhao Dasao know about this?!”

“Why did we listen to a kid like Ergouzi? How did this end up involving the whole village?”

“This rock is massive! Even the emperor himself couldn’t move it! Village Head, what now?”

“What else? Go home and sleep. Our crops are doomed anyway. Not like we’re the only village suffering from drought. Guess we’ll all starve together…”