Li Long had heard before that Codonopsis left undug for years deep in the mountains could grow very large. After all, it was nowhere near as valuable as ginseng, and the Heavenly Mountain range stretched hundreds of kilometers from east to west. With so few people and so many resources, hardly anyone dug it up.
He just hadn't expected a randomly chosen plant to have such a huge root crown!
He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. All he'd wanted was a chopstick-thick root to chew on and quench his thirst!
But he'd already started digging, so he might as well continue.
He stood one end of the stick on the ground and stamped hard on it, snapping it to produce a sharp wooden point, then went on digging.
He exposed a section about ten centimeters long below the Codonopsis crown. It really was as thick as Li Qiang's arm, without any exaggeration, and its skin split as soon as it came out of the earth. Li Long guessed that the surrounding soil had held it together underground. Once that restraint was gone, the abundant juice inside made it burst open.
This Codonopsis had grown very evenly. The upper section hardly branched at all, running straight down and reaching its thickest point about thirty centimeters below the top, then tapering farther down. There were fine rootlets, but Li Long ignored them. It wasn't anything particularly valuable anyway.
He remembered apparently discussing it with Chen Hongjun: during the September and October harvest season, their Purchasing Station and the Medicinal Materials Company paid only twenty yuan per kilogram for dried Codonopsis.
This root might weigh half a kilogram once dug up. Would it weigh two or three hundred grams after drying?
By that calculation, it could actually make decent money. Digging