The Whole Village Thrives After Adopting a Lucky Girl

Chunniang hesitated, unwilling to open the door: “My husband is not at home, it might not be convenient to let you in.”

The visitor grinned, “You’re Jiang San’s wife, right? We’re from Jinxiu Cloth Store in Simen town. We heard that your family has two large gourds and we wanted to see them for ourselves. Look, we travelled quite a distance, could you let us have a look?”

Yingbao peered out from behind her mother, tugged at her softly, whispering, “Let them in.”

Maybe they’re big spenders.

Chunniang patted her daughter’s head and went forward to open the bamboo gate.

The two men walked in, giving Chunniang a slight bow: “Sorry to disturb you.”

Chunniang didn’t let them inside the house. She brought out the large gourd herself and put it on the stone slab in the middle of the courtyard for them to see.

The two men circled the gourd in amazement, exchanged a glance, and asked with a smile, “Is this gourd for sale?”

Yingbao answered first, “Of course it’s for sale, but if the price isn’t right, then we’re not selling.”

Chunniang nodded, “Several people have wanted to buy this gourd from our house. I wonder how much silver can you offer?” One of them asked back, “How much do you want for it?” Chunniang was speechless.

She didn’t really know how much the gourd could sell for.

Yingbao also countered, “So, you’ll give us as much as we say?”

The man choked, then burst into laughter, “This little girl of yours is quite

funny.”

The other man said, “We really would like to buy it, but anything over thirty taels wouldn’t be a good deal.”

Yingbao grinned, “That’s alright. Thirty taels it is.”

She had plenty of these things in her cave, selling one for thirty taels were already a hefty price, she couldn’t be too greedy or risk getting struck by lightning.

The two men were straightforward, taking out three silver ingots from their bag and placing them on the small table under the apple tree: “These are ten-tael silver ingots, take a good look.”

Assuming that farmers didn’t recognize silver ingots, he pointed out the characters inside the ingot to Chunniang: “This is silver made by the Luzhou Prefecture, ten taels. Got it?”

Chunniang nodded: “I see.”

As the two men were lifting the gourd to leave, Yingbao stopped them, “Take out the seeds first before you go.”

The man laughed, “This little girl is really sharp, the gourd would be worthless without the seeds, even ten taels wouldn’t be worth it.”

He quickly stepped out of the yard, placing the gourd carefully on the mule cart. The two men jumped onto the cart, whipped the mule, and quickly left the village.

Yingbao chuckled quietly, touching the silver and muttered, “If I hadn’t said that, you’d probably think you got a bad deal. Hmph.”

Chunniang, on the other hand, was regretting at the side, “Yes, how could I forget to take out the seeds first.” Even a few would suffice. It would be so much better if she could plant some of her own.

Yingbao: “We still have another large gourd on the South Slope, can’t we just grow its seeds?”

Even if that fails, she still had many more in her cave.

“Correct, correct, correct!” Chunniang carried the silver back to the hall, asking her daughter, “Do you want to keep this cash or should your mom help you keep it?”

“You keep it.” She still had more than forty taels stored in her cave, it was better to let her parents keep the thirty taels.

When Jiang San’er came back that evening and heard that the gourd from their house was sold for thirty taels, he was stunned. “Who bought it?”

“It’s a cloth store from Simen.” Chunniang told her husband everything that happened that day. “We should scoop out the seeds from the gourd on the South Slope and plant some of them, what do you think…”

“Sure thing! I’ll go to the South Slope and scoop out the seeds from the gourd tomorrow.” Since it was so valuable, why not try to grow some ourselves? If they can grow large gourds, it would be another source of income.

But before he could leave the house the next day, the Clan Leader and the village head came to see him.

“San’er, I heard you sold our village’s Divine Gourd?”

Jiang San’er: .

How did his gourd become the village’s?

Chen Fu, the Clan Leader, looked heartbroken: “San’er, that was the divine object of our village, how could you just sell it? Ah, what about the other one?

You can’t sell that one too.”

He hadn’t touched the gourd for a day and he felt sore in his waist, even walking was difficult, and his old cold leg was cramping.

Just as Jiang San’er was about to respond, he heard Chen Sanyou say: “San’er, how about dividing the seeds from the other gourd among the villagers? We’re willing to give you money for them.”

Chen Sanyou knew he and the others couldn’t stop Jiang San’er from selling the gourd, but asking him to leave behind some seeds wasn’t too much, right?

Jiang San’er thought for a while and nodded, “Alright, let’s wait until I’ve scooped out the seeds from the gourd.”

So, Jiang San’er went to the South Slope, came back carrying the large gourd, made a hole at the top, and after exerting a great effort, finally scooped out the seeds from inside.

After cleaning the pulp, he scraped out more than thirty plump seeds.

While he was scraping the pulp, a dozen villagers gathered around to watch. Even the Clan Leader and the village head were sitting on low stools, eagerly watching.

There are twenty-eight registered households in Dongchen Village, but there are also many families split from those registered and didn’t register separately. If they were to count individually, there might be about forty households in the village.

And there were only slightly more than thirty seeds, how could they be divided among every household?

“Why don’t we just divide them according to the registered households,” village head Chen Sanyou waved his hand, “Each household gets one.”

Jiang San’er had no objection, but the question of how much to charge became a problem.

If they charged too much, the villagers wouldn’t be happy, and he’d have a hard time living in the village in the future. After all, the villagers had helped him a lot.

For things like building houses and digging ponds, his family didn’t pay a dime in labor. They only provided two meals a day for the villagers.

If paid too little, he might as well give them the seeds for free. They were all fellow villagers, it was just a few seeds. If they didn’t grow, at least there wouldn’t be blame on him.

When Yingbao came home from school, she saw this scene, the courtyard was crowded with people, everyone craning their necks to see what was happening in the middle.

She squeezed her way in and saw a handful of gourd seeds on the small table, and a few elderly men were deep in discussion.

In the end, Jiang San’er said, “Alright, let’s set the price at ten coins per seed. As for whether it can grow or not, it’s all down to your luck.”

He initially wanted to give them away for free, but the Clan Leader and village head disagreed, so Jiang San’er set a not high, but not low price for the seeds.

Ten coins was not a small sum for the villagers, yet they could still afford it.

Everyone was in agreement, even the ever calculating Wang Erniang didn’t say anything. Even her family could receive a seed, whereas Chen, the village head, who had three sons, all living separately because of household division, could only get one gourd seed.

Even the richest family in the village, Chen Family Clan, only had one. You had to understand, these were Divine Gourd seeds.

Hehe, without comparisons, there would be no harm done. Wang Erniang unexpectedly felt a sense of unprecedented relief.

Not long after the gourd seeds were distributed, someone else came to buy gourds. Jiang San’er sold the empty gourd and earned twenty taels.

A lot of villagers were onlookers to this event, and their hearts were ignited. They wished they could rush home to plant the gourd seeds right away.

But it’s Liqiu now, it’s not the season to plant gourds, so people could only hold back their eagerness and carefully kept the gourd seeds, hoping for the arrival of the spring in the coming year.

It was just after the Zhongyuan Festival in July, Jiang Er’er was preparing to go to the South Slope to harvest golden ears. As he opened the gate, he suddenly saw a disheveled woman standing outside.

Jiang Er’er startled, took a closer look, and his face instantly turned sour, “Why is it you? What are you doing here so early in the morning?”