“Okay! Grandpa will take you to get some good food too!” Gu Xiao patted his granddaughter’s fuzzy little head and agreed to her request with a smile.
The next morning the two of them got up before it was the sun was up. Gu Ye bossed her grandpa around loading the bags and bags of herbal medicines onto the back of the horse. Gu Ming pouted unhappily as he was helping out. Grandpa was going to take his sister to town, but not him. He was so sad!
“Ge ge, don’t be sad. We will bring you yummy food when we come back!” said Gu Ye as her grandpa picked her up and put her on the back of the village head’s donkey. She saved her little paw at her brother and followed her grandpa out of town.
The round in the mountains were rough and would only allow one horse to pass at one time. Luckily both Gu Xiao’s war horse and the donkey that Gu Ye was riding were very adept to these mountainous roads. Even though they were carrying the medicinal herbs, they were still moving at a reasonable pace. When they were on the relatively flatter ground, Gu Xiao even had them ran for a little bit.
At the beginning, Gu Xiao was still a little worried that his fragile granddaughter would have a difficult time catching up, but every time he turned around, Gu Ye was sitting stably on the donkey. In fact, the way she was riding the donkey was quite skillful. He recalled how his grandson and granddaughter would ride his war horse around the front and back of the house house whenever they have the chance.
The grandfather and granddaughter left when it was just daybreak and only arrived in town at the dark of night. Knocking on the door of the only inn in town, the two of them brushed up, had some simple food and went to bed.
Gu Ye was woken up by the cacophony from the streets early next morning. Eh? The last time they came the streets were quite empty. How come it was so bustling with people today? She quickly washed up and got dressed, and walked outside of the inn before she even had breakfast.
As soon as she stepped outside, she immediately smelled a thick scent of herbs in the air. On both side of the main street in this nameless little town were dozens of stalls of various sizes and all of them were piled with herbs. Once in a while, a customer would stop and barter with the stall owner.
Gu Xiao had already gotten the information that he needed and came behind his granddaughter to address her curiosity, “Herbs were rich in our Mount Cangmang and many make their livings by collecting herbs. Every year, between the 8th and 13th of each year, there will be merchants coming here from all over the place to purchase herbs. Over time, it had turned into this scale you see today. It was sheer luck that we happened to come just at the right time for this major herbal market. Did you saw you wanted to buy some raw herbs? You can you go take a look. At least their price would be much fairer than what you’d find from an herbal merchant.”
Gu Ye walked from stall to stall. Most of them were untreated raw herbs. Even when she saw the occasional processed ones, their techniques were crude and their efficacy mediocre. As she kept on walking, she even ran into someone that she knew!
“Dr. Wu, you are here to sell your medicinal herbs too!” At Wu Danggui’s stall was mostly commonly-seen herbs in Mount Cangmang, but all of them had gone through some simple processing so he seemed to have slightly more businesses than other stalls. That being said, most of his customers were bell doctors that walked from streets to streets for businesses. Better customers would not care these kinds of crude processing.
Wu Danggui looked up at Gu Ye and her grandfather before he quickly turned his attention back to bartering with his customers. In his eyes, Gu Ye, who had been learning about medicinal herb processing, was a competitor of his. Naturally, he wouldn’t be too nice to her!
Seeing how interested Gu Ye was in his herbs, Wu Danggui was quite proud of himself. You little fart, so what you have been learning healing skills for a few days? You were still going to have to buy herbs from me in the future. Watch me price gouge you then!