Chapter 18 – Veterinary Certificate

“I found it. I’ll start treating it now. You’d better find the poisonous weed mixed in with the pig fodder—otherwise, other pigs might get poisoned just like this one.”

Hearing this, everyone shivered. Ge Mazi turned to look at the people he had left behind at the pig farm.

“No one’s going home today until we find that poisonous weed.”

Among the workers at the pig farm, four of the breeders were middle-aged women.

They were mainly responsible for preparing pig feed, feeding the pigs, cleaning the pens, and washing the pigs.

The other five men had three tasked with collecting pigweed, while the rest of the coordination work with the meat processing plant was handled by Ge Mazi.

Zhou Ye’s work was relatively lighter, but not entirely easy—he occasionally had to patrol the mountains.

If he encountered a wild boar, he’d capture it and bring it back to lock in the pigpen, then figure out how to tame it and get it to breed.

That’s why, after a year of his arrival, there were three or four more pigs in the pens.

In this respect, the other four male comrades at the farm admired him quite a bit.

But today, the incident of poisonous weed mixed into the wild pigweed was no small matter.

After hearing Ge Mazi’s words, everyone hurried to search through the pig fodder.

“But the pigweed’s already chopped up—how are we supposed to find any poisonous weed in it?”

Zhou Ye watched from the side, his brows furrowed tightly.

He reached out to sift through the chopped-up fodder, but there was no way to tell.

“All this pigweed is no good anymore. We’ll need to collect fresh weed tomorrow.

We don’t know which piece was poisonous—if any of the other pigs eat it and get poisoned too, the consequences could be unimaginable.”

As he spoke, he glanced over at Jiang Manman.

He saw her seriously working with medicinal herbs, uncertain whether she could cure that pig.

If that sow couldn’t be saved and other pigs also ended up eating the tainted fodder…

He didn’t even want to think about the outcome.

Then he turned his cold, stern gaze to the three men responsible for gathering pigweed.

“I know if I ask now, none of you will admit to being the one who picked the poisonous weed.

It’s possible you didn’t even know it was poisonous—but this is a very serious issue.

You three will go collect pigweed again tomorrow, and tomorrow’s work points will be deducted entirely. The pigweed must be collected without fail.

Otherwise, I’ll report it, and the three of you will be disciplined.”

Among the three pigweed collectors, one of them was Qian Duoyu.

Jiang Manman didn’t recognize the other two, but none of them wanted to be officially reprimanded.

The issue was tricky—there was no way to argue it clearly.

One of them firmly declared:

“I can guarantee that there was absolutely no poisonous weed in the batch I collected.”

Another said:

“I also double-checked when I was gathering—there’s no way there was poison.”

Then Qian Duoyu’s eyes flashed as he added:

“It’s not our first day gathering pigweed. Why would we mix in other plants?

The aunties who chop the pigweed should’ve seen it too.

They’d definitely spot anything off when chopping.”

Hearing that, a few of the aunties immediately nodded:

“Yes, we always check while chopping too. We didn’t see any poisonous weeds.”

“Yeah, yeah! We always glance over it while chopping—it wouldn’t go unnoticed!”

Qian Duoyu then said:

“Could it have been the kids helping us gather the pigweed? Maybe they grabbed something random without knowing it was poisonous?”

One of the aunties gave him a glare.

“What kind of talk is that? Even if they don’t recognize it, we would. We didn’t see any unfamiliar plants while chopping.”

The four women were adamant, and Zhou Ye felt a headache coming on.

He knew this matter would be difficult to investigate.

Jiang Manman was fiddling with purslane. If only she had a juicer—it’d make the process a lot easier.

Doing it all by hand was exhausting.

Hearing their conversation, she suddenly turned to Zhou Ye and said:

“Come give me a hand.”

Everyone looked at her strangely.

Wasn’t Director Zhou the head of the entire pig farm?

How come this female educated youth was bossing him around like it was second nature?

Zhou Ye heard her call him and, thinking of the bamboo viper in his pocket, assumed she wanted the snake’s gall bladder.

He walked over, pulled the snake out of his pocket, and Jiang Manman jumped away with a loud yelp.

“Are you trying to scare me to death?

Get the snake gall yourself!”

Jiang Manman clutched her chest, startled by the sudden appearance of a snake.

She was still a little afraid of these cold, slithering creatures.

Zhou Ye crouched down, drew a knife from his calf, and swiftly cut open the snake to extract the gall bladder, handing it to Jiang Manman.

After taking the gall, she leaned closer to Zhou Ye and whispered:

“Actually, it’s not hard to figure out who picked the poisonous weed.

If my diagnosis is correct, I should know what kind of plant it is.

I can teach you how to tell if someone’s hands have touched it.”

Zhou Ye jerked his head toward her.

Jiang Manman nodded and gave him a meaningful look.

Zhou Ye, standing close to her, suddenly realized—her eyes were stunning.

He quickly turned away and focused on what she said.

Then nodded and whispered back:

“Can you teach me the method?”

“Of course. But how about you consider letting me join the pigweed-gathering team?”

Zhou Ye glanced at what she was working on and said:

“If you can save this pig, forget gathering pigweed—even if you wanted to feed the pigs, I’d agree.”

Jiang Manman had no intention of feeding pigs—she just wanted more free time.

Don’t be fooled into thinking gathering pigweed wasn’t tiring. You had to gather fifty jin (about 25 kg) to earn five work points.

Fifty jin!

It roughly worked out to ten jin per point. The regular weed gatherers were mostly men.

They also had the task of catching wild boars.

The others gathering weed were teenagers from the village.

If they could gather ten or twenty jin in a day, that was considered good.

So they could only earn one or two points daily at most.

Jiang Manman continued her work and eventually produced a bowl of thick, dark medicinal juice.

“All right, now we just need to get this medicine down the pig’s throat. As long as it swallows it, it’ll be standing in under an hour.”

She sounded so confident—and anyway, the pig was barely breathing at this point.

Zhou Ye immediately instructed a few men to help pour the medicine into the pig’s mouth.

Jiang Manman didn’t join in.

They were the experts at dosing pigs—now it was just a matter of waiting.

Zhou Ye pulled out a box of “Da Qianmen” cigarettes from somewhere and handed one to each of the men.

A smoke while waiting was perfectly normal.

The pig wouldn’t show any quick signs, so no one from the pig farm went home.

The brigade leader and the Party secretary also heard about the situation and came to check.

Zhou Ye pulled them aside to talk privately. A while later, they returned.

The brigade leader went to speak with Jiang Manman and asked if she had a veterinary certificate or a barefoot doctor’s license.

Of course, Jiang Manman didn’t have one.

Then he asked if she could treat other pig illnesses.

If she planned to go down this path, he said he might be able to help her apply for a veterinary certificate through the village clinic.