Chapter 86 : Entering the Mountain Again

She had no other options. The brigade had no clinic and no barefoot doctor. She could only helplessly say, “Zhigang, your wife is in pain from her period. Take her to the county hospital tomorrow.”

—

Yun Siying looked at Shu Ruxue, who was still in pain, feeling very satisfied with her efforts. Then she returned to the Youth Courtyard. She entered her space and checked the seedlings in her field, they had grown very tall. She went to the field to measure them. The seedlings were thirteen centimeters tall. With a thought, the seedlings were automatically pulled out and neatly replanted in the field.

The vegetables planted in the field were all edible and still growing well. The thirteen ginseng plants were now thriving. She had to be patient. The older the ginseng, the more valuable it became. She wasn’t short of money now, so she wasn’t in a hurry to sell them.

After practicing physical training for so long, her physique had improved greatly. Now she could continue absorbing the spiritual crystal core. With a thought, the spiritual zombie crystal core appeared in her hand. She began absorbing it until dawn. Her spiritual system finally rose to level four. It seemed the effect was good, her spiritual ability had risen by two levels.

She felt comfortable all over. After washing up, she cooked a bowl of wontons and sprinkled some chopped green onions on top. After eating a large bowl of wontons, she moved the mushrooms inside the house out to the yard to dry.

Then she carried her backpack and walked up the mountain. No one was with her today, so she was freer to do as she pleased. However, she didn’t take any of the mountain products outside the forest, leaving those for the villagers. Her goal was to go deep into the mountains. She didn’t expect to meet Li Hongying and the others outside the mountain, each carrying a full backpack with a sack on top.

Wang Yunfeng asked in surprise, “Siying, you’re just going up the mountain now?”

“Yes, Aunt Yunfeng, Aunt Hongying, Aunt Cuifen, Aunt Lianzhi, you had a great harvest today,” Yun Siying said admiringly.

“We’re all familiar with this mountain and basically know where the mountain products are. We came early, so we had a good harvest. If we had known you were going up, we would have called you,” Lianzhi smiled.

“Thank you, Aunt Lianzhi. I can’t get up early in the morning,” Yun Siying scratched her head and said a little embarrassed.

“Then don’t go too far. It’s dangerous in the deep mountains. There are large beasts coming and going. Even the men in the village don’t dare go in,” Zhang Cuifen warned.

Wang Yunfeng and Li Hongying had learned from their sons that this delicate-looking Siying was actually a remarkable woman with extraordinary skills. She could rescue people from a group of twenty adult wild boars and was not an ordinary person. The two who knew the truth were not worried about her safety.

After saying goodbye to them, she continued forward, climbed over five hills, and encountered two pheasants, which she collected into her space, along with a dozen pheasant eggs.

When she climbed to the top of a mountain and up a big tree, she looked into the distance and saw endless mountains rising from the ground one after another, covered in green trees, shaped variously, steep and rugged. About twenty hills were clearly visible, and the faint peaks in the distance showed how vast the mountain range was.

After getting down from the tree, she found a small patch of Gastrodia elata a few steps away. This was good, a medicinal herb that could remove rheumatism, relieve pain, and promote blood circulation. It had high medicinal value.

She squatted down and quickly dug. It took half an hour to dig out this piece of Gastrodia elata, which she stored in her space. This search was too slow. She released her fourth-level mental power, and the small animals in the mountains had nowhere to escape. Pheasants, hares, wild goats, wild deer, and wild boars all appeared in her field of vision.

With a thought, half of the adult pheasants, hares, wild goats, wild deer, and wild boars entered her space. Once inside, they were instantly strangled by her mental power and stored in the third warehouse of the space for preservation.

She couldn’t take all the small animals from the mountain, she had to leave half so they could reproduce. After collecting animals from three mountains, it was already five o’clock in the afternoon, so she turned around and headed back.

She had already eaten dinner at the Youth House. Nangong Ruochen and Han Yuecheng hadn’t returned yet, it seemed they were still out on a mission. Only Chen Banghua had come back.

At eight o’clock in the evening, she packed the cooked rice and pickled fish into a basket and went to the cowshed. Once again, it was Elder Ming who opened the door. When he saw that it was Yun Siying, his expression softened significantly.

“Girl, what are we having tonight?” He had guessed she was here to deliver food again, so they hadn’t cooked anything themselves.

“Old Man, I made pickled fish today,” she said, placing the food on the table with a practiced hand. Elder Hua came over and sat down, but Lu Huaren remained seated on his bed, unmoving.

“Future Master, are you still mad at me? What could be more important than eating right now? Only if you’re full will you have the energy to stay angry, don’t you think?”

“Hmph! Don’t try to corrupt me with your sugar-coated bullets. I won’t be fooled by you again,” Lu Huaren said, who told this girl to tease him yesterday?

“Hey! I guess we really don’t have the fate to be master and disciple. But Uncle Lu, I’m very talented. If you don’t take me as your disciple, it’ll be your loss,” Yun Siying said lightly. The fate between master and disciple mattered, after all.

“You’re just boasting about yourself,” Lu Huaren said unhappily. The girl sure changed how she addressed him quickly.

“Girl, you’ve come here twice. If you really want to become a disciple, shouldn’t you introduce yourself more thoroughly?” Elder Hua asked, seeing that Lu Huaren’s attitude had softened.

Yun Siying gave it some thought. Right now, she used a simple alias. That was partly due to the current environment: the legal system was heavily damaged, and the social order was chaotic. These men had been demoted for various reasons, some political, others personal, involving enemies, relatives, friends, or even past disciples. Now, at their lowest point, how could they casually accept a girl they had only met three times as a disciple?

“My real name is Shu Siying. I grew up in Beijing. My father was Shu Guofeng, my mother was Tang Lingxue. I had a brother who loved me and a strict grandfather. Those were the happiest times of my life. But things can change unpredictably. Half a year ago, they brought a girl home and told me she was their biological daughter. We had been switched at birth in the hospital.”

“Li Yinyin really does resemble my mother by about seventy percent. My parents changed her name to Shu Ruxue. Her adoptive parents are Li Gang and his wife from the Hongxing Brigade. But ever since she returned to the Shu family, she’s hated me. She has framed me and slandered me multiple times. The Shu family never looked into it, they always believed her.”

“When the Youth League Office came to mobilize her to go to the countryside, she fell down the stairs and blamed me again. While trying to save her, I was whipped by Tang Lingxue. The rest of the Shu family just watched coldly. In the end, they left me dying in my room and never checked on me again. I was lucky. I had a high fever for a whole day and night but didn’t die. I eventually woke up.”