Chapter Bonanza (1/10)

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”I thought it was a big deal. Just buy the chickens and keep them in the backyard. I don’t even want the eggs.”

After Huo Ling and Yan Qi descended the mountain, they quickly discussed the matter with Ye Suping, asking her to help raise a few hens.

Upon hearing this, Ye Suping readily agreed. “I can’t say more than that, but if you only plan to keep four or five, it’s nothing more than scattering an extra handful of feed during feeding time. What trouble is there in that?”

She refused the eggs from the second household, but Huo Ling and Yan Qi didn’t want to leave things ambiguous. Huo Ling said, “Sister-in-law, if you don’t want the eggs, we won’t raise the chickens. Just agree to it, and we’ll go buy them.”

“We’re family—no need for formalities.”

Ye Suping was a straightforward sort who disliked nitpicking over such things.

Yan Qi interjected, “The closer the family, the more we should act this way. Sister-in-law, just agree. Tomorrow, Huo Ling and I will buy some and bring them back. Then we can head up the mountain without a care.”

The young couple chipped in with their arguments, and eventually softened Ye Suping’s stance. When they suggested she take one egg for every five they collected, she still refused. Finally, they settled on her taking one egg for every ten they gathered.

“Say another word, and I’ll change my mind.”

Seeing Huo Ling about to speak again, Ye Suping smiled. “But I wonder what you two plan to start with. If it’s just four or five, buying eggs to hatch yourselves won’t be economical. Buying chicks means waiting half a year before they lay eggs. Buying fully grown hens is best, though they’re pricier.”

Hens at the market weren’t cheap. Old hens that no longer laid eggs but were slaughtered for meat went for seventy or eighty wen each. Young hens that could start laying eggs immediately upon bringing them home were even pricier, fetching as much as a hundred wen.

After all, once brought home and given a few days to settle in, they’d lay an egg within a day or two. It wasn’t laying eggs—it was laying money.

Once summer arrived, hens laid more eggs, and eggs spoiled quickly if stored too long. The selling price had dropped to two coins per egg. Still, if a hen laid eggs for two months, the money spent on her would be recouped.

The two men, who had originally planned to buy chicks, hesitated for a moment upon hearing this. They decided the extra few dozen coins weren’t worth the risk and opted to buy young hens instead.

That afternoon, Huo Ling and Huo Feng went to the backyard to build a wooden fence, enclosing a new area where they constructed a fresh chicken coop.

The new young hen needed to be kept separate from the existing ones—not for easier egg collection, but because two groups together were prone to fighting.

Five chickens, priced at one hundred coins each, would cost five hundred coins.

This trip down the mountain yielded two baskets of wild greens—mostly cat’s claw, tender thistle shoots, and Siberian ginseng—plus two bundles of mountain celery.

They skipped gathering other common greens like shepherd’s purse and dandelion. As the wild vegetable season drew to a close, edible tender shoots and leaves grew scarce. These inexpensive greens were hard to sort, and selling old and young mixed together meant practically giving them away.

Cat’s paw greens and tender thorn shoots looked somewhat similar, fetching a slightly lower price. Yet more people preferred buying cat’s paw greens over the tender shoots, making it worth selling.

Throughout the entire spring and summer, they collectively sold nearly two hundred pounds of wild greens. The tender thorn shoots alone brought in over a tael of silver.

Selling them bit by bit, it didn’t feel like much, but when they tallied it up later, they realized their labor in the mountains hadn’t been wasted.

“We’ll bring some loose change just in case. No need to carry the money for the chickens, especially since it’s too heavy to lug back and forth. The mountain goods we’re bringing this time should fetch at least five taels of silver. That’s enough for a few young hens.”

That night, sitting cross-legged on the kang, Yan Qi heard Huo Ling’s words and counted out fifteen copper coins as instructed. After a moment’s pause, she added five more.

“Is this enough?”

Huo Ling glanced at them and nodded. “It’s enough.”

Yan Qi gathered the coins and placed them all into Huo Ling’s small red bean pouch.

This was their personal spending money. When doing business at the market, they also carried larger money pouches tied to their waists.

Each time they earned money from sales, they saved it until they had five hundred coins. Then they strung them together with hemp cord. Since he married into the Huo family, he had handled four large strings of coins—equivalent to two taels of silver.

This had only been about two months. Clearly, Huo Ling’s claim that earning twenty to thirty taels a year was no big deal was no empty boast.

Yan Qi already considered it substantial, but Huo Ling still felt it was insufficient.

“A father must think beyond himself—he must build houses and acquire land for his children. If we have sons, without these assets, what respectable maiden would willingly marry into our family? If we have a ger, it’s even more crucial. The fields can be used as his dowry—let’s see which in-laws dare to mistreat a Huo family ger.”

Some thoughts, once allowed, inevitably wander far.

Huo Ling gathered the scattered coins on the bedside table to one side and leaned closer to Yan Qi. “That’s just counting one child. We can’t be sure we won’t have more. Yingzi is five by the lunar calendar, and your brother and sister-in-law are still young. There’s a good chance there will be more.”

Yan Qi fiddled with a copper coin, flipping it back and forth. The topic unsettled him, for he feared he might be unable to conceive.

Still, he replied, “If we can bear children, we’d want many. Siblings keep each other company, make it harder for bullies to pick on them in the village, and always have someone to stand up for them.”

Among the villagers, the more children and relatives a family had, the more stable their foundation. For this reason, everyone strived to have children, and many even desired sons above all else.

Back then, Yan Qi’s mother had given birth to only him, a ger. Though his grandparents didn’t show it much, they were secretly displeased.

Now look at the Yan family branch—dead or scattered. By his grandfather’s logic, hadn’t they effectively died out?

He finally understood: as long as people live, that matters more than anything else.

Throughout history, across dynasties and centuries, how many lineages ended? Yet life went on.

He asked Huo Ling if the Huo family must have a son in this generation, but Huo Ling dismissed the notion.

“It’s not something you can just will into existence. Whatever comes, comes. Wouldn’t a ger or son still be our own child? Yingzi is perfectly fine. If need be, we can take in a son-in-law. The child born would still bear the Huo name. Daughters and sons can be raised right here, never leaving home. I think that’s perfectly good.”

The man gently scraped his finger across the ger’s nose. “Don’t overthink it. We have no elders above us. No matter how long the tongues of other villagers may be, they can’t reach us. Even if they want children, it’s only because they want children of me and you. The key isn’t the child, but the two of us living our lives together.”

Since their marriage, they hadn’t often discussed having children. Today, the matter was laid bare—especially Huo Ling’s final words, which brought Yan Qi profound peace.

Even after lying down, his mind wouldn’t settle. A secret joy lingered within him.

Sleep eluded him. Resting his head on the pillow, he curled his fingers around Huo Ling’s hand, overlapping their palms to compare their sizes. Soft laughter escaped them as they shared amusing stories from the day.

The moon hung high in the sky. Distant dog barks echoed from the courtyard. Half-covered by a thin quilt, they drifted off to sleep without realizing it.

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“These wild greens aren’t sold anywhere else. I didn’t expect you’d still have them. I’ll take an extra two pounds to share with my sister’s family.”

A woman squatted before the stall, picking through cat’s-paw greens. Yan Qi had cleaned the wild greens meticulously, stripping off old shoots and damaged leaves. There was little left to sort through; any stalk she picked was good.

As she placed them in her basket, she lamented, “It’s my fault for not coming this way before. I usually buy from stalls further ahead. Had I known yours were so fresh and clean, with fair prices, I should have walked a few extra steps.”

Huo Ling chuckled, “We’ve been here year-round. You’ll see. Though wild greens will soon be out of season, we’ll have plenty of other good stuff. Drop by when you have time, Madam. I promise you won’t leave empty-handed.”

“You merchants are always so smooth-talking. If your greens weren’t genuinely this good, I wouldn’t believe a word of it.”

The woman beamed, gesturing for them to weigh the basket.

Yan Qi hung the basket on the balance scale. They’d brought this basket from home, so its weight was known. Subtracting that gave the net weight of the vegetables.

The scale beam rose high. Huo Ling adjusted the counterweight. “Fourty two wen total. Let’s round it down to fourty wen for you, ma’am.”

Cat’s Claw and Siberian Ginseng sold for the same price: ten wen per jin. The woman counted out forty wen for Yan Qi, and the transaction was complete.

“We’ve got enough for half a hen now.”

Huo Ling chuckled as he watched Yan Qi tuck the coins into his money pouch.

“Hens really are expensive. If you buy chicks, they’re only a dozen cash or so each.”

But he understood why laying hens cost so much—they were raised for half a year. Chicks were prone to dying young; raising them to maturity was no easy feat.

Eager to taste eggs from their own chickens sooner, he and Huo Ling calculated how many chickens they could buy with each silver coin earned from subsequent sales.

As they calculated, over two hours passed. The wild greens sold out completely, leaving only some kidney grass, two large pieces of old ox liver, and several sections of pine resin.

Pine resin was hidden within pine branches and trunks, mostly found in decaying fallen logs. To extract it, one had to chop through the outer layer.

These pieces were saturated with pine resin, giving off a strong, pungent pine scent. They kept some at home, so they didn’t need candles when going out at night with lanterns. But they usually couldn’t bear to use them, and selling them now seemed like a better deal. Lamp oil could be pressed from wild hemp seeds, which were much more economical.

At the big market, everything found a buyer and a seller. Though pine resin weren’t usually sought after, once displayed, connoisseurs came asking the price. By closing time, two resin had been sold, and even Old Ox Liver found a taker.

“Eight catties of tender thorn buds, plus ten catties each of cat’s paw and Siberian ginseng, five catties of mountain celery… sold for…”

Yan Qi drew lines in the dirt with a stick, taking a while to calculate. “Nearly five taels.”

He smiled at Huo Ling. “Not counting the scattered items like the pine torches, we’ve got enough for the hen.”

Huo Ling did a quick tally. “Add in the odds and ends, and we’ll have extra cash.”

Today’s haul was decent. Even if the money would be spent before it had time to warm in his hands, it was still hard-earned cash. Otherwise, he’d have had to dip into the family savings to buy the hen.

“Let’s go. We won’t sell the rest. If we don’t hurry to the poultry market, we might not find any good ones.”

The two bent down to gather the remaining kidney grass and a few scattered pieces of pine resin. These could be stored without worry; if they couldn’t sell everything today, they could bring the rest next time.

Yan Qi had never been to the poultry market. Baojia Town’s grand market was truly vast. Though he’d come several times a month to set up his stall, he hadn’t yet explored every corner.

From a distance, the mingled stench of poultry and livestock wafted toward them. Many came to buy live chickens and ducks for their meals, so the stalls slaughtered them on the spot. Water mixed with feathers flowed everywhere.

For this reason, the poultry market wasn’t set up in the main town square but tucked away in a more secluded corner. Even on non-market days, several livestock and poultry shops, along with butcher shops, operated here.

After searching for a while, they finally found a vendor selling laying hens rather than meat chickens. Two cages held seven cramped hens, and eggs were sold alongside them. They stopped to ask the price. The vendor called out one hundred and ten cash per hen. Without flinching, Huo Ling bargained:, “We’ll take five. Will you sell them for four hundred cash?”

The price was a steep bargain, and the middle-aged vendor waved them off. But just as Huo Ling and his companion turned to leave, the man called them back, offering, “Five hundred cash. Not a single coin less.”

“Go look further down the street—everyone else charges the same price. But I dare say none have my reputation. If these hens don’t lay eggs within seven days, bring them right back to me.”

Huo Ling and Yan Qi exchanged a glance, then crouched down to inspect the hens. They asked the man to catch them out for a closer look at their quality.

Five hundred coins were still a bit steep, but buying five together should get them a discount. After haggling for a while, Yan Qi managed to pay only shour hundred and fifty wen and even scored two extra straw baskets for carrying the chickens. The five young hens clucked incessantly within their cages. Though noisy, their chatter now sounded delightfully cheerful.