With this long-term business transaction secured, Xu Yi would have an income of eight hundred wen every five days. After deducting costs, he could still have about three hundred wen remaining. As long as he didn’t spend recklessly, this money was completely sufficient for his and Little Huang’s daily expenses.
In Yanting County, he could be said to be steadily establishing his footing, step by step.
Over the following days, when practicing martial arts, Xu Yi gradually increased his training duration bit by bit. Considering that this body was still developing, though his current height was over 1.76 meters, it was still quite a bit shorter than his former self.
He didn’t dare train excessively and risk injuring his muscles and bones. Therefore, after increasing to 3 hours, he stopped extending the duration, conserving his strength for climbing mountains and gathering and digging medicinal herbs.
Though he had been to both Yilu Mountain and Golden Goose Mountain, he hadn’t ventured deep into either. The ox cart driver had told him that wild boars roamed inside, frequently coming down the mountain to cause havoc and destroy cultivated fields. They were extremely fierce, and he was warned not to go alone.
“Only the hunters who frequently go up the mountain can fight those wild boars. Young master, with your build, it won’t do. One charge from them and you’d be seriously injured.”
Others traveling with them agreed, sharing gossip they had heard: “Two years ago, a farmer went up the mountain to cut firewood. His luck was bad and he encountered a wild boar, just one, and it nearly took his life. Though he was saved in the end, his leg was crippled and he couldn’t even work in the fields anymore.”
“Really that terrifying?” another person exclaimed.
“Absolutely. My cousin’s third great uncle’s son was there at the time. He said there was so much blood, it flowed all the way from the mountain to the village, and even after it rained, it wouldn’t wash away!”
Xu Yi blinked: “…”
The person paused, then asked teasingly, “Young master, do you still want to go now?”
Xu Yi was silent for a moment, then nodded. “I must go. Where there’s danger, there’s also opportunity. Perhaps I can dig up some precious medicinal herbs.”
“!” This person wouldn’t listen to advice.
Others wanted to say more, but seeing Xu Yi’s calm and composed demeanor, they instinctively swallowed the words at their lips.
Young and reckless, and foolhardy too. Having said so much and he still wouldn’t listen. He’d surely suffer hardship later.
Everyone quieted down, and Xu Yi’s ears gained some peace. He gazed at the mountain range drawing gradually closer and took a deep breath.
To him, perhaps the wild beasts on the mountain would pose less danger.
In the early Northern Song period, after the country had just been united, there had been a period of stable peace. Places like Tongchuan Prefecture, where Yanting County was located, all enjoyed favorable weather and peaceful lives. But that didn’t mean that everywhere across the vast Northern Song territory presented such comfortable scenes. Further west lay the Jianmen Pass, known as the “difficult road to Shu,” where vagrants and ethnic minorities frequently invaded year after year.
To the northwest was the militarily powerful Western Xia, who had been eyeing them covetously. Unlike the Northern Song’s emphasis on civil over military matters, their important political strategies were all oppositional, demonstrating Western Xia’s enormous ambitions. They were no easy adversary. Moreover, there were also the Liao and Jin, who, along with the Northern Song and later Southern Song, formed almost a tripartite standoff.
They would from time to time harass the border people, causing them great suffering. Especially in the northwestern regions where the land was arid and droughts occurred frequently, ordinary people lived difficult lives of fire and water.
Xu Yi was very grateful that he had transmigrated to Yanting County. At the same time, he remained vigilant at all times, knowing he couldn’t let his guard down in this era.
As for practicing martial arts, he naturally needed to find opportunities to verify the results of his training.
…
The ox cart moved slowly, finally arriving at the foot of Yilu Mountain.
The people on the cart got off one after another. After bidding farewell to the driver, they each went their separate ways.
Xu Yi, carrying a huge bamboo basket on his back, was particularly conspicuous walking on the quiet path. Today, he had deliberately brought along the machete he’d bought from the blacksmith’s shop.
This machete, purchased with “considerable funds,” was fairly sharp. When swung, it could easily cut the weeds and small shrubs ahead in half.
With it, Xu Yi’s speed climbing the mountain increased.
His main objective in coming to Yilu Mountain was still medicinal herbs. After climbing a small portion of the way, Xu Yi began stopping and starting.
Once he had filled half the bamboo basket, he stopped paying attention to those common medicinal materials.
What he had told his fellow travelers about hoping to get lucky and dig up precious herbs wasn’t just talk. If he wanted to accumulate capital as quickly as possible, relying on those ordinary medicinal materials wouldn’t be enough.
After walking for about a quarter hour, Xu Yi changed direction. Instead of continuing to climb upward, he headed toward the deep mountains behind.
The dense shrub forest was quiet and gloomy, with occasional insect calls and bird songs, as well as faint sounds of small animals stepping on branches.
“Rustle rustle.”
“Rustle rustle rustle.”
Xu Yi’s brow furrowed slightly as he alertly gripped the machete in his hand.
Suddenly he looked up toward a tree canopy and saw two leaping monkeys.
Xu Yi was looking at them, and they were nervously sizing up this human who had suddenly intruded here.
Because wild boars roamed the deep mountains, very few people had entered for a long time. Those who risked their lives to enter the mountains were, aside from hunters, no one else.
But this person was different from those they’d seen before. On his back was a large, round bamboo basket. He wore coarse hempen short garments convenient for movement, with cloth strips tied around his legs, binding the loose pant legs tightly.
He carried no bow or spear, only holding a pitch-black iron blade in his hand.
When he looked up, his somewhat refined face revealed sharp edges, and his black eyes swept with a killing aura.
The monkeys in the tree seemed frightened and fled chattering with their companions.
Xu Yi exhaled slightly, reining in his momentarily revealed aura, returning to his usual mild composure.
Only in his palms, traces of sticky sweat seeped out…
After walking a while longer, Xu Yi sniffed the air. In the forest, the smell of decay was especially strong, yet within this odor, he still detected a clear, sweet honey fragrance.
It was a familiar scent.
Like agarwood, yet not like ordinary agarwood!
Xu Yi’s spirits immediately lifted. The “Yanyi Bencao” compiled by Kou Zongshi of the Song dynasty recorded: “Agarwood can be found in all the southern prefectures, especially abundant in coastal regions.” Therefore, this agarwood mainly distributed in the Lingnan region, Yunnan, Hong Kong, and other areas of China.
If in Sichuan, what was recorded was that Mengding Mountain had wild agarwood trees. He hadn’t heard of wild agarwood trees existing in Yanting County.
Xu Yi felt slightly excited. What people commonly called agarwood was actually the secretion produced by agarwood trees after suffering injury, insect damage, or disease, which needed to undergo a very long period of precipitation before it could emit fragrance.
For Xu Yi to smell such a clear scent, it either proved that the agarwood formed on this tree was of the highest grade, or it was from the agarwood tree’s flowers.
Agarwood trees bloomed in March and bore fruit in May and June. Their fragrance wasn’t like this either. It tended toward a lighter type. So this scent couldn’t possibly be from the flowers.
Xu Yi’s gaze fell on the densely packed tree canopies all around. As he explored the path, he searched.
Before long, he finally spotted that agarwood tree bearing quite a few woody lumps!
This agarwood tree, which had weathered who knows how many years of wind, frost, rain, and snow, had a trunk several dozen centimeters thick. On the corroded bark, a thick layer of extremely dense agarwood had accumulated. The quantity wasn’t small, showing how high the quality of the agarwood on it was.
Xu Yi doesn’t know how to make incense, but he worked with medicine. The quality of agarwood used in medicine was usually average. Among the many pieces of agarwood he’d seen, not one was as good as what he saw today.
Though he didn’t know the grade, it was certainly top quality.
Xu Yi pondered how to remove the agarwood from above without harming this agarwood tree that had perhaps lived longer than him.
He put the machete back in the bamboo basket, took it off and placed it on the ground, then approached near the resin vein. Using the pointed tip of his sickle, he carefully scraped and cut along the position of the resin vein, removing the agarwood that had formed there.
This piece of agarwood he removed weighed over two jin. To form a piece of this weight wasn’t easy. He carefully placed it in the bamboo basket, then continued to select another resin vein…
After removing three pieces from the tree consecutively, Xu Yi looked at the trunk which still had quite a bit more, pressed his lips together, and didn’t continue.
Finding so much agarwood all at once made him uneasy keeping it in hand. Selling it would easily arouse others’ greed. As long as this agarwood tree remained here, he could come again.
Thinking thus, that bit of reluctance in Xu Yi’s heart also dissipated.
Just then, rustling sounds came from behind Xu Yi. He whirled around sharply to see a brownish-gray figure charging toward him.
Xu Yi’s gaze sharpened. Extremely quickly, he sidestepped and retreated to the side, narrowly avoiding it. After this dangerous dodge, he held the sickle in his hand before him.