"Uncle, there are so many mushrooms here, let me pick them," Chiang Xiao said, "After picking them, we’ll sell half and with the other half, I want to make something for Meng Xinian."
When Chiang Xiao talked about giving something to Meng Xinian, she wasn’t shy at all, quite the opposite—graceful and generous. She felt that she only regarded Meng Xinian as a business partner; exchanging gifts and staying in touch were just normal social interactions.
Xu Linjiang and the others thought she was still young, not yet aware of the affections between man and woman, so she wasn’t shy.
"Alright, since you found the mushrooms, it’s only proper for you to deal with them," Xu Linjiang agreed.
Chiang Xiao had received Meng Xinian’s grandmother’s gold and jade little gourd necklace, but Chiang Songhai had also given him a ring. In Chiang Xiao’s view, the engagement gifts were now even, but Meng Xinian had also sent so many things initially, cloth, rice, sugar, meat, and even tobacco and alcohol—and all that was worth money.
So Chiang Xiao felt it was only right to give him some food in return.
"Uncle, there’s another woodland up there, with really tall trees," Chiang Xiao pointed toward the slope above.
"Then I’ll go take a look over there while you pick mushrooms here," Xu Linjiang suggested.
Xu Linjiang saw that the area was just grassland, presumably safe, so he confidently continued climbing up.
Meanwhile, Chiang Xiao knelt down to pick the mushrooms.
The green grassland, dotted with mushrooms, looked utterly charming.
It didn’t take long for her to fill a basket, and she had already wandered some distance from the spot where she started. Ahead, there was a small cluster of red mushrooms; Chiang Xiao had never seen red mushrooms before and found them pretty yet somewhat intimidating. She had heard that brightly colored mushrooms were often poisonous.
But they looked so fresh that she decided to pick them and take them back for her grandparents to see. If they were poisonous, she could always throw them away.
Just as she was about to bend down to pick the mushrooms, she noticed something like a spiky ball beside them, already dried up. Chiang Xiao picked it up, and one side had split open, revealing dark brown nuts inside.
Upon seeing three or four crowded dark brown nuts, Chiang Xiao couldn’t help but feel joy.
She didn’t recognize the spiky ball, but once the outer shell cracked and she saw the nuts, they looked incredibly familiar—these were chestnuts! She had always loved eating sugar-glazed chestnuts!
Unfortunately, by the time it was her period to buy them, sugar-glazed chestnuts had become quite expensive. She remembered a national chain store near her school where a pound of chestnuts cost twenty-one yuan. She always thought of it as a bit of a luxury, only buying a small half-pound now and then to satisfy the craving.
It’s laughable, really. At that time, her paintings were already being sold by Deng Qingjiang and his associates for a hefty price, yet she, the artist, couldn’t bring herself to spend twenty-one yuan on a pound of sugar-glazed chestnuts.
Looking back now, Chiang Xiao felt she was utterly bewitched back then, foolish beyond belief, and deservedly ended up with such a miserable fate.
Chiang Xiao snapped out of her reverie and quickly looked ahead, spotting two tall chestnut trees at a distance. It wasn’t the season for chestnuts, and there were none on the trees, but the reason Chiang Xiao recognized them as chestnut trees was that the grass beneath them was covered with the same type of fruits, burst open, like the one in her hand.
Because no one had picked them, the chestnuts had fallen to the ground and lay scattered, uncollected.
Chiang Xiao’s eyes widened, and she couldn’t help but cry out excitedly.
"Uncle! Come here quick!"
The stillness of the mountain forest was broken by her shout, startling two birds into flight.
It also caused Xu Linjiang to slip, almost resulting in a tumble.