Cultivation Reconstruction in the End Times

Chapter 9 Simplicity

After arriving in Province Z, Zhang He first contacted the person who left a phone number on the forum. As soon as the call got through, he found that the other party was a girl. He directly stated his purpose. The girl seemed a bit embarrassed and explained in a soft voice that she had left the message on the forum more than a month ago, and now all the strawberries had rotted...

Zhang He suddenly felt it was a pity. When the girl heard Zhang He introduce himself as a purchaser from a certain food company at the beginning, saying that he wanted to purchase some mountain specialties for processing and production, although he didn't mean anything special by it, the girl listened attentively. She didn't hang up the phone immediately but talked about other things in an attempt to persuade him to stay.

Her family was from that mountain valley. She was also one of the few college students who had come out of the mountains in many years. Her family didn't have the money to support her education. It was the village chief who mobilized dozens of households in the mountains, with each family contributing a little, that enabled her to leave the mountains. So when this happened, she was more anxious than anyone else. In a moment of urgency, she thought of asking her roommate who had a computer to post some information on the Internet to seek help from kind-hearted people and also left her phone number. However, in the past month, she hadn't received a single call.

Now that someone had finally called and was interested in purchasing mountain specialties, she immediately lit. ignited hope and began to introduce them, trying to see if she could make the other party interested in going to the mountains to buy the mountain specialties. In this way, the villagers could earn more money and make up for the loss of the dozen or so mu of strawberries they had previously lost.

Zhang He didn't hang up the phone immediately but was attracted by the girl's words. The girl said that there were mountain specialties in the mountains and many treasures. The farmers had also opened up a lot of land. In the fields, they didn't just grow strawberries. There were also many fruits and vegetables. In this season, vegetables such as peppers, tomatoes, string beans, potatoes, and cucumbers had been harvested. They hadn't been sprayed with pesticides. All the land was fertilized with pig manure, chicken manure, and rabbit manure raised by the villagers themselves, so they were very safe to eat. The villagers also raised quite a few pigs and chickens, as well as some wild vegetables and homemade sweet potato chips, and so on.

Zhang He was somewhat tempted, but the most important thing was still the price. If it was too expensive, there was no need for him to waste time there. Seeing that he was interested in buying, the girl's tone immediately became a bit excited as she asked him on the phone if he had time. If he did, they could make an appointment at a place and go back to the village together to have a look. The price would definitely be much cheaper. It was just that because the village didn't have the money, the road hadn't been repaired. If the goods were to be transported out of the village, Zhang He would have to think of a way.

This was a difficult thing for the people in the mountains, but for Zhang He, because he had the peach pit space, it wasn't a problem. So he immediately decided to meet at the intersection of a certain bus station at 2 pm.

At noon, Zhang He only ate a bowl of ramen at a small restaurant. Then he found a park with few people, sat down, and practiced the breathing and qi-nourishing method. After running through it once, he felt refreshed immediately, and the tiredness of the past few days was completely swept away. Then he carried a gray canvas backpack for travel, which contained some daily clothes and supplies, and held a kraft paper bag in his hand as he went to the designated bus station entrance.

It was just after noon. Obviously, the other party was more anxious than him. When Zhang He arrived, he saw a man and a woman looking around at the entrance. Zhang He didn't go over immediately. First, he dialed the other party's number. When he saw the girl with an ordinary ponytail answering the phone in a hurry, he then walked over.

The girl was wearing a white shirt that had been washed until it was faded, black pants, and a pair of ordinary sandals on her feet. The phone she was holding was obviously old, and the shell was damaged. Just as she was about to answer the phone, she found that the other party had hung up. Then she looked up and around. It wasn't until Zhang He walked in front of her that she reacted.

In her impression, the purchaser of a certain company should be dressed in a suit and tie and have a great deal of style. However, Zhang He was dressed in a simple outfit that was almost indistinguishable in the crowd. No wonder she had looked around for a long time and hadn't found him. It was very different from what she had imagined.

The surprise was only for a moment. Then she smiled stiffly and greeted Zhang He, and then introduced the male classmate accompanying her. After Zhang He exchanged a few simple greetings with them, he directly got to the point. The girl then let out a sigh of relief. She had been a bit worried before, but after seeing Zhang He, she naturally relaxed.

Some people are born looking repulsive, and people instinctively feel a sense of rejection towards them. Others are born making people have no defense against them. Zhang He was obviously the latter. Although his facial features were very ordinary, strangely, when people met him for the first time, they couldn't feel the slightest bit that he was a bad person. After talking for a few words, they would find that when he was calm, he looked very steady, and when he smiled, he made people feel as if they were bathed in the spring breeze, and their good impression of him increased involuntarily.

The girl involuntarily got a little closer to him. The boy next to her was obviously brought along as an escort. He occasionally interjected a few words, but didn't talk much.

The few of them got on the car first. After chatting on the way, the girl's previous shyness disappeared. She was also sure that Zhang He was a purchaser because he knew a lot about this line from his words.

Zhang He naturally knew about it because his mother had been a purchaser for a small food company before she passed away. Under the influence of his mother, he also knew something about it.

He didn't bring any certificates. However, after showing the girl his ID card and vehicle license, the girl felt embarrassed to doubt his identity anymore. If the other party was really a liar, what could he cheat in such a poor mountain valley where not even a bird shits? Besides those mountain specialties that were worthless if they couldn't be transported out, there was only the land that couldn't be taken away. And there couldn't be such a bored liar, right?

After the girl opened up, she told Zhang He a lot about the things in the mountains. Zhang He listened attentively. Before he knew it, they arrived at the certain county she mentioned.

Then they took a tricycle, which took the three of them to a dirt road. After getting off the tricycle, the three of them walked on a rural path for a while and finally stopped at the side of a mountain.

Zhang He then understood why the mountain road had collapsed for so long and no one had taken care of it. Due to the terrain, it was probably impossible to manage it even if they wanted to. Even if the government wanted to take care of it, it would need a large sum of money to repair it. Judging from the situation in this county where dilapidated mud houses were everywhere in the countryside, it was probably impossible to come up with such a large sum of money to repair the road for the dozens of households in the mountains.

Because this mountain road was built on a cliff. It was about five meters wide and circled around the mountain wall. One side was against the cliff, and there was no railing on the other side. Only a stone was placed every meter to block it, and there was a cliff below.

As they walked, the girl explained that this road had been there for a long time. The villagers had walked on it for several generations. When they grew fruits and vegetables, they would transport them to the county town by tricycle or carriage to sell. The livelihood of the whole village depended on this little income. However, two months ago, there was a heavy rainstorm. Maybe it was a landslide, or the stones on the mountain were washed down by the water and hit the road. The only passable mountain road collapsed for a few meters.

After about half an hour, Zhang He and the others finally reached the collapsed place. As the girl said, the collapsed place was very serious. Some wooden planks had been laid on it. When people walked on the wooden planks, they trembled. It was very scary. Tricycles and carriages couldn't pass through it, let alone trucks for transporting goods.

The girl said that in the past, the fruit merchants who came to buy fruits were unwilling to take such a dangerous mountain road to enter the mountains to buy fruits. It was the fruit farmers and vegetable farmers who transported their own things to the county town to sell. But now that the road was in such a bad condition and no one was willing to take care of it, the things couldn't be transported out. Before, there was an old man in the village who carried a basket of duck eggs to sell at the foot of the mountain. When he walked here, he didn't pay attention and almost fell down. The duck eggs and the basket all fell down. Seeing that the things the villagers had worked hard to grow were all going bad and rotting, she was also very worried.

Zhang He took a couple of looks. No wonder it had been left unattended for so long. Which construction team would dare to start work on the cliff? Even if there was one, who would selflessly risk their lives to repair the road for such a poor village?

The three of them walked slowly one by one close to the wall along a row of wooden stakes. As they walked, gusts of cold wind blew up from below, making their trouser legs feel chilly. The girl was probably used to it and was calm. She was the first to walk over. Zhang He was the second. Although he walked slowly, he wasn't afraid either. When it was finally the turn of the boy wearing glasses, the boy's face turned pale with fright, and his legs were shaking. After walking two steps, he stepped back and said he wouldn't go over no matter what. After much persuasion, he finally walked over tremblingly with his hands clinging to the wall. When he walked over, his feet were so weak that he could hardly stand.

The three of them followed the stone wall to another hilltop. After passing through a rice paddy, their eyes suddenly lit up. They saw that there were mountains all around, and there were patches of green shade. In the middle, there was a flat piece of land. Among them, there were not many houses with red tiles and white walls, and the others were neatly arranged thatched houses. Then there was a large field, which was green and formed a beautiful scene with the blue sky and green forests.

Before, Tao Yuanming wrote about a Peach Blossom Spring. At that time, Zhang He, who was still a student, couldn't imagine what that scene was like. Now, after seeing this mountain village in front of him, his eyes couldn't help but light up. He had originally thought it would be like the dilapidated houses he saw when entering the county town. He didn't expect it to be such a beautiful scenery.

The girl pointed to the small village with some pride and said, "My home is there. Let's go over quickly."

It looked beautiful from a distance. When they got closer, some of the houses were a bit dilapidated, but fortunately, they were clean. The girl directly took Zhang He to the village chief's house. The village chief was a man in his forties.

He was busy in the yard. When he heard that Xiaolin had brought a customer who wanted to buy mountain specialties, he immediately washed his hands and came out to greet them, and welcomed Zhang He and the others into the house.

There were only more than twenty households in this mountain. When they heard that someone had come to buy mountain specialties, they couldn't help but crowd at the village chief's door to have a look. Even a few of them went home and brought mountain specialties over. The village chief took out the dried peanuts and walnuts from his home and entertained the guests very warmly.

Perhaps because they were isolated from the world and didn't often contact people from the outside world, Zhang He could feel the simplicity in every word they said, and they didn't doubt Zhang He's identity at all.

There was no need to doubt either. It was easy to know that a liar wouldn't come here to cheat because even if they cheated something, with the road in such a bad condition, they couldn't transport it out.

Zhang He pretended to be an expert and talked with the village chief about the mountain specialties and local products in the village. The village chief also told him about the road situation, saying that it was probably not easy to transport. However, Zhang He said that the road was not a problem and he naturally had a way. Seeing that he was so sure, the village chief thought he would use a crane or other tools to transport, so he didn't ask any more questions.

By this time, it was almost dark. The village chief directly invited the three of them to stay in the village and have dinner together in the evening.

The village chief's wife prepared a table of dishes, all of which were the specialties brought by each villager just now. The wild rabbits raised by the Wang family were fat and big. The stir-fried rabbit meat with dried bamboo shoots was very delicious. The tomatoes with red flesh grown by the Liu family, when mixed with a little sugar, were very sweet. And the Li family at the back raised more than ten pigs. The pigs were fed with potatoes and sweet potatoes grown in their own fields, so the meat was very safe. Just smelling the fragrance made people's mouths water. His wife also made the excess meat into steamed pork with rice flour and cured meat in winter and would take them to the county town to sell during the Spring Festival.

Every time Zhang He ate a dish, the village chief would introduce it. After the meal, he also knew about this place more or less. However, he didn't express his attitude verbally. The village chief couldn't help but feel a bit uneasy. But good things take time, so he didn't immediately ask Zhang He's opinion, thinking that he would take him to have a good look around tomorrow.

After the meal, they sat in the house and chatted for a while, and then they all went to rest. The girl went back to her own home. Zhang He and the boy wearing glasses temporarily stayed at the village chief's house. Zhang He didn't talk much. The boy with glasses was also very tired after walking for a day and didn't talk either. One of them fell asleep as soon as he leaned against the pillow, and the other sat cross-legged on the kang and practiced the breathing method all night, in a state of half-awake and half-asleep.

Early the next morning, the girl came to find the boy with glasses and said goodbye to Zhang He and the village chief. Because she had asked for leave yesterday, she had to go back to school today and couldn't stay here all the time. The village chief found two more villagers to see them off.

After the two of them left, the village chief officially took Zhang He to see some of the mountain specialties and local products made by the villagers in his village. As the village chief had said, the group of wild rabbits raised by the Wang family were all fat. The pigsty of the Li family was also full. The pigs had pink flesh, and their white hair was very sparse. There was also a widow who raised a large group of chickens and had saved a lot of eggs. The chickens were all fed with chopped wild vegetables dug from the mountains, wheat bran, and cornmeal, so the meat was fresh and smooth, and the eggs were more nutritious than the eggs from farms.

Moreover, each household also planted a large patch of corn. In a few days, the tender corn would be almost ready to eat. This corn was different from the corn outside the county town. As Xiaolin had said when she came back, in big cities outside, chemical fertilizers were used in the fields, which was not good for the body. Here in the mountains, all the land was fertilized with pig manure, chicken manure, and rabbit manure from their own homes. Because each household raised some cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens to varying degrees, there was a lot of livestock manure. There was no need to buy chemical fertilizers at all.

Then there were some vegetables and fruits in the fields, and eight or nine mu of peanuts were almost ready. The gluttonous children had already started pulling up the peanuts to eat.

The more Zhang He saw, the more satisfied he was. After a whole day, he asked the village chief to make a price list of the mountain specialties in the village for him to have a look. Most of these things were for their own consumption, but some were also taken out to exchange for money. Almost everyone knew the price range. But this time, it wasn't them selling the things, but someone coming to buy. If the price was too high and the buyer didn't want to buy and left, these things could only be kept for their own consumption, and they couldn't earn a single penny. With only more than twenty households in the village, their stomachs couldn't hold so many things. Moreover, some things would go bad if they were kept for too long.

So the village chief and the villagers discussed it and directly gritted their teeth and set the price at half of the market price.

When Zhang He received the list, he couldn't help but be taken aback. An egg from a domestic chicken that only ate rice and vegetables was actually only sold for five mao. In City S, this kind of egg would sell for at least 1.2 to 1.5 yuan. Then there was the spotted chicken raised by the widow. The market price per catty was about seven yuan. Her chickens were all twelve or thirteen catties each, and each chicken should cost at least eighty yuan at the lowest, but the price marked on the list was only forty yuan, half the price.

And it wasn't just these. All the listed things were sold at half or even less than half of the market price, which made Zhang He feel a bit uncomfortable and slightly guilty.

The reason why he came here was actually not without the intention of taking advantage of the situation and buying some agricultural products at a low price. The thought of helping was very little. Saving some money was the real reason. But the people in this village were really simple. They actually reduced the price by half on their own and immediately offered the lowest price they could bear. If the price was any lower, it would be almost like giving the things away