Hetian Mutton-Fat White Jade

Before long, a rustling came from inside the tree hollow, accompanied by the soft squeaks of rabbits.

Zhou Wanwan hurriedly swung the basket off her back and set its open mouth against the entrance. Then she stepped aside and held her breath.

Soon, a large grayish-brown rabbit darted out of the hollow and plunged headfirst into the basket.

Another large rabbit followed, with three or four half-grown wild rabbits behind it. They hopped into the basket too.

Finally, more than a dozen palm-sized baby rabbits crawled out through the entrance and all squeezed into the basket.

Zhou Wanwan grinned. "All right, let's go!"

Suddenly, she heard a kudzu vine nearby say, "They're dead for sure this time. Someone's lying in wait for them on the way back!"

A goosegrass plant beside it said, "Lying in wait for them? Really?"

"It's true. Those people have bows and arrows. The moment they come out, they'll be turned into sieves."

Zhou Wanwan's breathing grew heavier. Someone had set their sights on them. It was probably the people from Zhou Family Village.

She frowned. "Come with me. Don't make a sound."

She led her brothers and uncles around to the other side, where she heard the people from Zhou Family Village muttering, "Why haven't those people come out yet?"

"Don't worry! They'll be out soon. They're just a few children, aren't they?"

"That jinx-I'll shoot her dead in a moment, or she'll bring death to everyone in Zhou Family Village."

"Are we really going to shoot her dead? Isn't that a bit too cruel? I still think we should forget it. She's just a child, isn't she?"

"Pah! She has to die today."

Zhou Wanwan gave a cold snort and had Liu Sanlang chop down at a neck. Soon, one person was knocked unconscious.

Zhou Wanwan tossed out a piece of incense, and before long someone said, "Do you smell something?"

"There really is a scent of osmanthus. It smells so..."

Before the person could finish, they all fainted. Only then did Zhou Wanwan stand up.

It was a calming incense she had made from medicinal herbs found in the mountains. It could knock everyone unconscious in about ten seconds.

It was also one of the Zhou family's closely guarded medicinal formulas. She looked at the people sprawled all over the ground and said:

"More than twenty people came to kill me. Zhou Family Village really thinks highly of me.

"Search them and take everything they have."

Zhou Qingyan, Zhou Qinghe, and Zhou Qingchen moved swiftly, searching them one by one.

Liu Sanlang, Liu Silang, Liu Wulang, and Liu Liulang soon joined the search.

Zhou Wanwan looked at her third uncle, Zhou Fuyu, and her second uncle, Zhou Fukang. "I didn't expect them to be here too. Born of the same root, why must we scorch each other so fiercely?"

Zhou Qingyan gave them several vicious kicks. "Who shares a root with them? They're not even worth calling people. Who does things like this?"

Zhou Wanwan looked at the bows and arrows in their hands and said:

"How did the people of Zhou Family Village suddenly become so rich?

"I find it strange. A single bow costs at least several taels of silver, yet every one of them has one. How many taels would that take?"

Zhou Qingyan nodded. "True. Oh! Zhou Fuyu and Zhou Fukang have quite a bit of money on them too. Look at these two cloth bags."

Zhou Wanwan opened the cloth bags found on Zhou Fuyu and Zhou Fukang and clicked her tongue twice. "This Zhou Fuyu really is quite wealthy, isn't he?"

Inside the bundle was a five-tael piece of silver, more than a hundred copper coins, a gold ring, and a jade pendant. The character for "courage" was inscribed on the pendant.

The jade pendant was indeed quite fine, warm to the touch. Little Ginseng gave a sly grin and said:

"Hetian mutton-fat white jade! Wanwan, you've hit the jackpot. This really is good stuff.

"There's some Spiritual Qi inside it, which is a great help to me."

Zhou Wanwan rolled her eyes. "You're the one who's hit the jackpot. But this piece of jade is quite beneficial to me too."

Zhou Wanwan discovered that simply holding the Hetian mutton-fat white jade in her hand let her hear the trees nearby talking. "These people are really unlucky. There are so many of them, yet they couldn't even beat this little girl. She's impressive, having incense like that."

"Isn't she? Really impressive. She isn't going to bury them outright, is she?

"If I were her, I'd kill every last one of them, then bury them all beneath us trees to nourish us."

Zhou Wanwan's lips twitched. Trees really were different from the wild grasses; the wild grasses had simpler thoughts.

These trees were different. Some of the larger ones had already developed intelligence and were extremely violent.

"No! I still have some things hidden beneath me!"

"Oh... You mean what that mountain bandit secretly hid here back then?"

"Yes, the good stuff that mountain bandit hid here. It can't be dug up."

Zhou Wanwan looked at the tree, her heart blooming with joy. Soon, all those people's bows and arrows were in their possession.

Altogether, they found fifteen taels of silver, two gold rings, a jade pendant, and more than two thousand copper coins.

Liu Sanlang and the others stripped the clothes off them and put everything in the baskets. "We'll take them all back. These are good winter clothes. We can give them to the villagers to wear."

Zhou Wanwan nodded. "That works too."

Zhou Wanwan pointed beneath the big tree. "Eldest brother, second brother, help me dig here and see if there's anything under this tree."

The tree roared:

"You wretched girl, can you hear us talking?

"If you dare dig up my things, believe it or not, I'll fight you to the death!"

These big trees all considered whatever was buried beneath them to be theirs, treating those things as their private property.

Zhou Wanwan acted as though she hadn't heard, her face unflushed and her heart steady. After digging for the time it took an incense stick to burn, Zhou Qingyan said, "There seems to be a box..."

Zhou Qingyan dug the wooden box out. It wasn't big, only about the size of a pencil case.

But when they opened it, they found five silver ingots inside, each worth five taels, as well as a gold hairpin. The hairpin's design was fairly simple.

It was an ordinary, common style. Zhou Wanwan grinned. "This gold hairpin is quite nice. We can give it to our mother later."

There was also a piece of parchment inside. Zhou Wanwan picked it up and examined it. "Take a look at the place marked on this parchment. Where is Three Purities Mountain?"

Liu Sanlang looked at it. "It's not far from here. With an ox cart, it would take half a shichen."

Zhou Wanwan narrowed her eyes. "Then let's go have a look around when we have time. All right, we're done for today."

They had made a great haul today, and Liu Sanlang was beside himself with excitement. Zhou Wanwan looked at him. "Third uncle, would you rather have silver or grain?"

Liu Sanlang froze. "Huh? We get silver too? We don't want it."

Zhou Wanwan grinned and said:

"My idea is to use all this silver to buy grain, because we need so much of it.

"Even with these forty taels, we can't buy that much grain.

"But this time I plan to divide the forty taels' worth of grain into two portions: thirty taels all spent on coarse grain, and ten taels of silver on fine grain."