Wu Bensheng was a veteran herb gatherer. He had headed into the mountains to dig fritillaria as soon as he first came to Xinjiang seven or eight years ago.
Wu Bensheng came from a family of herb gatherers. His maternal grandfather had often dug fritillaria back in Sichuan, and Wu Bensheng had picked up a little of the craft from him as a child.
After arriving in Northern Xinjiang, he discovered that the money he earned through hard labor really could not compare with a few days of digging fritillaria in the mountains, so he simply became a full-time herb gatherer. Every spring, he came to Northern Xinjiang, prepared his supplies, and plunged deep into the Heavenly Mountain range to start digging.
Gathering herbs in the mountains was not only hard but dangerous. With the skills he had gained from a few years of martial arts practice, along with his experience of mountain life, things had gone fairly smoothly for him over the years.
The price of wild fritillaria kept rising, and Wu Bensheng grew steadily better off. At the end of every fritillaria season, he could take a large sum home to build a house, marry, and buy furniture.
A few years earlier, the Forestry Team had started setting up checkpoints at the Mountain Pass to confiscate herb gatherers' fritillaria. Wu Bensheng had found out early, so whenever he gathered a haul, he slipped down the mountain under cover of darkness.
A few years back, when supplies ran short in the mountains, he could trade fritillaria for necessities at the Small Wooden Cabin. But the cabin had not opened for the past two years, which left Wu Bensheng rather worried.
After all, there was a limit to how many supplies he could bring into the mountains at the outset.