Time flies, and half a month has passed in the blink of an eye.
Li Yao's sweet potato digging team is about to complete their task. They have to turn over nearly 50 mu of barren land every day. Even with the help of oxen, everyone is exhausted. But after dinner every day, instead of hurrying to lie down and sleep in the grass nests, they are excited to weigh all the sweet potatoes dug that day.
After calculating everything in the end, they dug up a total of 200,000 catties of sweet potatoes, which is a lot less than Li Yao expected.
But Wang Yuanbang and his guys are already extremely satisfied.
The average household in He Wan Village has 10 mu of good fields, and each mu can produce more than 200 catties of grain. After digging sweet potatoes for half a month, it is equivalent to the harvest of one year. What is there to be unsatisfied about?
"Sister-in-law," after finishing the last stretch, Wang Yuanbang said happily, "When are we going back?"
Everyone looked over, obviously eager to share the good news with their families.
"It should be about time," said Li Yao. "You've been digging sweet potatoes here, and Village Head Li is leading the villagers to build the road. I guess you're both about done."
The road construction team led by Wang Jiafu has indeed nearly completed their task.
After half a month, the road builders are also extremely tired. They start working before dawn every day, and don't go home until it's pitch dark. Their bones feel like they're about to break.
But despite this, no one has any complaints.
Because He Xiaoya is responsible for cooking their meals, and seeing how tired they are, she always adds more oil when cooking for them, and they can even see some meat pieces every other day.
Being able to eat such meals every day, let alone building roads in the mountains, even if you ask them to dig away these mountains they would be willing.
"Uncle Wang," a villager asked, "The road has reached the edge of Valley of Broken Souls, where else are we building it to?"
Wang Jiafu looked at the deep valley for a long time before replying: "Just here, no more building."
"I don't mean to pry, but I just want to ask why Sister-in-law Li wants to build the road here?"
"Yeah Village Head, these hills don't belong to our village, right?"
Wang Jiafu looked at everyone and said, "Now that we've come this far, I can tell you the truth."
"This road is for transporting food."
What?
Everyone was confused at the same time.
You look at me, I look at you, wondering where this food is coming from.
Could there be farmland inside these big mountains?
"Uncle Wang, where's the food?"
"Here it is!"
At this moment, Wang Yuanbang's voice came from behind. Everyone looked back and saw him holding some sweet potato-like things running over.
"Wang Yuanbang, what do you have there?"
"You guys don't even know about this?" Wang Yuanbang held out the sweet potatoes proudly before everyone. "This stuff - you can eat it!"
"It looks like little wooden yams, can you really eat it?"
"Don't believe me?" said Wang Yuanbang. "I'll eat it in front of you."
As he spoke, he nimbly peeled it with a knife, and took a crunchy bite.
Seeing him eat with gusto, someone tried taking one, peeled it and started eating like he did.
Soon the mouths of several people were filled with crunching sounds, making everyone else crane their necks eagerly.
"How is it?"
"Not delicious," Wang Yuanbang put on a pained expression. "Both bitter and astringent."
"I knew it, nothing edible can be found in these hills, I've seen it all... Hey hey, you said it's not tasty, how come you're still eating it?"
Seeing Wang Yuanbang snatch away the last sweet potato, the others finally realized they were tricked.
"Alright alright," said the Village Head, "as my wife said, there's a lot of this, we built the road to transport it out."
To build a whole road specially for transport?
Everyone's hearts skipped a beat, thinking how massive the amount must be.
"Wang Yuanbang, tell everyone about it."
"Actually it's not that much," Wang Yuanbang said seriously. "Just around 200,000 catties."
Everyone had the urge to beat him up.
This braggart, calling 200,000 catties not much?
In bad crop years, the whole village may not even produce that much grain!
With food secured, no one in the village will go hungry this winter. Wang Jiafu's hanging heart for half a month finally settled down completely.
"Where's the stuff?"
"In the valley, my sister-in-law told me to come find you, said to prepare more ox carts," Wang Yuanbang said. "She also said to bring more ropes to haul the sweet potatoes up from below."
"Good good, I'll go prepare now," said Wang Jiafu. "You take them down to start moving the sweet potatoes here."
With food at hand, everyone was full of motivation.
Wang Yuanbang led the road builders down to the valley to move the dug sweet potatoes towards the road exit. Wang Jiafu went back to the village and brought all usable ox carts and wheelbarrows along the newly built mountain road.
Li Yao had the villagers who knew some carpentry make more than a dozen pulleys hung on the tree branches, so the sweet potatoes could be easily pulled up the cliff.
More than a hundred people worked busily for three whole days before finally transporting all the sweet potatoes to the large yard of Li Yao's new house.
Seeing the mountainous pile of sweet potatoes, all the villagers were so excited that their faces turned red. The way they looked at Li Yao was as if looking at their life savior.
"With everyone from the village here, let me say a few words first," Wang Jiafu stood on a large square table and addressed everyone. "These sweet potatoes originally all belonged to Li Yao. But she's kind-hearted, and didn't want to see everyone starve, so she thought of sharing with everyone. I feel we can't just take her stuff for free, so I had everyone help out with some work at her home. This way when we take the food, we won't feel bad."
"That's right, this is only proper."
"There are two options now, choose for yourselves," Wang Jiafu continued. "First, you get paid as originally agreed. Second, use your wages to exchange for these sweet potatoes, one penny for one catty..."
"I'll exchange for sweet potatoes!"
"Me too!"
Wang Jiafu hadn't even finished speaking when nearly all villagers started voicing their choices. Rice prices have skyrocketed nowadays, costing over ten pennies per catty.
Grain priced at one penny per catty is unheard of even in dreams!
So anyone sane would definitely choose to directly exchange for sweet potatoes.
But could there really be such a good deal?
"Village chief, you're not joking with us, right?"
"Whether I'm joking or not, you'll find out right away." Wang Jiafu took out the work log. "I'll call each family one by one. Fang Shian, you first."
"Then I'll go first."
Fang Shian walked up all smiles. His family had 23 people total. Excluding two babies under two years old, 21 people helped with land reclamation and road construction, so they immediately got 3,150 catties of sweet potatoes!
Seeing him haul away three ox carts full of sweet potatoes, the remaining villagers no longer had any doubts. They hurried home to fetch baskets and tubs.
Seeing the beaming faces of the villagers, Da Zhuang felt even happier than having a bowl of honey.
Everyone finally didn't have to eat wild vegetables everyday or go hungry. They probably won't call his mother a shrew anymore, right?