Manbao stretched out her hand and tugged at the vine leaves, still feeling they looked familiar, and asked Keke, "What is wild yam? Have I entered it before?"
"No," the system seemed somewhat excited, "This is wild yam, which is very valuable. If the host had entered it, you wouldn’t forget."
The system added, "It’s very tasty, can be stewed with chicken."
Keke had already quickly pulled up some information about wild yams inside the encyclopedia.
Now in the future, wild yams were extinct, but since their disappearance was recent and they had a glorious period in history as a food ingredient, there are quite a few records about them. Not only that, but an entire cookbook using wild yams as an ingredient could be found in the encyclopedia.
The system urged Manbao to hurry and dig up the plant to record it, saying, "Because wild yams not only have medicinal value but also substantial food value, the encyclopedia values it highly. If recorded, the reward points will certainly be considerable, and they will be awarded quickly."
So far, the encyclopedia hadn’t settled the points for privet fruit with them, and the system worried that Manbao’s enthusiasm would be dampened.
But Manbao herself had nearly forgotten about the privet points; all she heard was Keke saying the yams were tasty, which made her salivate a bit more, and then she gestured to Fifth Brother to start digging for her.
Zhou Wulang looked disdainfully at the clump of plants, finally squeezing a bit of recollection from his limited wits, "Isn’t this skunkvine? What are you digging it up for?"
Keke instinctively searched within its own system for skunkvine, but no entries came up. Searching the encyclopedia yielded no results either, making it wonder, "Could this be another unrecognized name for wild yams?"
Manbao didn’t care at all, insisting Zhou Wulang should dig. If he wouldn’t dig, she squatted down herself, found a small stick, and began to dig laboriously.
Left with no choice, Zhou Wulang lifted his little sister aside, saying, "I’ll do it."
He found a fairly thick branch, broke it to make it sharp, and only then pushed the vine aside to dig around its roots.
While digging, he complained, "This is just skunkvine, right? It’s just a long root underneath; what’s the use of digging it up?"
Zhou Liulang and Datou came over to see Zhou Wulang huffing and puffing as he dug. They joined in to help, asking while they dug, "Wulang, what are you digging this up for?"
"Manbao told me to dig it, isn’t this skunkvine? I remember we have some by a patch of land at home," Zhou Wulang tried to negotiate with Manbao, "If you really want it, I’ll dig some up for you when we get back home."
Zhou Liulang looked at the plant and said, "This doesn’t look like skunkvine; see, it hasn’t even fruited."
Datou also thought it didn’t resemble skunkvine. As for the others, they knew even less since they had never heard of skunkvine before.
Zhou Wulang was getting tired and considered making an excuse to stop when suddenly something appeared in the soil.
He uttered a surprised sound and started digging alongside the rootstock saying, "It really isn’t skunkvine."
Elated, Manbao crouched closer, instructing, "Dig here, dig here, don’t ruin it."
The soil here was relatively easy to dig through because it was on the side of a hill where there were many fallen leaves. The earth was brown, and perhaps because of the abundance of decaying leaves and moisture, the soil was loose.
By that time, Keke had already searched lots of information about wild yams for Manbao and had analyzed the soil, indicating that this area was very suitable for wild yams to grow in.
Rich, moist soil and the fallen leaves supplying ample nutrients—Keke also reminded her that for sustainable development, it was advised not to uproot all the yams, but to leave some to seed.
Manbao agreed. This clump of wild yams was quite abundant—they definitely wouldn’t be able to dig them all up.
Manbao crouched at the side, hands full of soil mixed with decaying leaves which she rubbed together. Zhou Wulang had already dug up a wild yam, a very long portion of it, with a small piece broken off still in the dirt. But Zhou Wulang couldn’t be bothered to dig it out, so he snapped off the vine, handed the rootstock to Manbao, and went to dig up another plant.
With everyone busily at work, Zhou Dalang finally sensed something unusual and came over to investigate.
He saw them, bent over and digging away, and Zhou Dalang couldn’t resist asking, "What are you all doing?"
Manbao, now helping out herself and covered in mud, excitedly raised her face and said to Zhou Dalang, "Big brother, come and help, we’ve found wild yams."
Zhou Dalang stepped forward immediately, glanced at the rootstocks they had dug up, and asked, "What kind of medicine is a wild yam?"
Manbao replied, "It’s just wild yam. It can be eaten as a vegetable, or used as medicine."
Zhou Dalang didn’t doubt her; after all, they only knew that privet was medicinal because Manbao told them so.
He rolled up his sleeves to help and asked Manbao, "How do you know that wild yam is medicinal?""
"It’s written in books."
Unfortunately, Manbao couldn’t show the books from Keke’s belly to her brother.
Zhou Dalang assumed Manbao must have read it in a book from Mr. Zhuang or the Bai Family since in recent days, Manbao always followed the young master of the Bai Family to read books in their house. According to what she had said, the Bai Family had many, many books, including an illustrated book with a lot of medicinal herbs and methods of processing them.
With Zhou Dalang’s help, they were much faster. At Manbao’s request, they left one wild yam on the hillside. In Manbao’s words, "Leave one as a seed, next year we can harvest a bunch more."
Daya adjusted her little waist and said, "We might as well dig it up and plant it at home; that way, next year we won’t have to come all the way out here to dig."
Thinking it over, Manbao felt Daya made sense and thus called everyone to dig up the last wild yam too.
Keke wanted to say something, but after scanning, it saw their unprofessional digging had left small segments of each root in the dirt, so it kept quiet.
There were quite a few wild yams. Zhou Dalang and Zhou Wulang each carried a bundle. Being cautious not to break them, they carefully placed them onto a handcart.
Zhou Dalang said, "I wonder if these need to be processed before use."
Zhou Wulang was curious, "I wonder if the herbal shop will buy them."
Manbao was confident, "Since they’re medicinal, of course they’ll buy them."
Everyone’s spirits lifted, and Zhou Liulang said, "Wonder how much they’ll pay."
Zhou Erlang had gathered from their conversation that this too was a medicine, and couldn’t help but hug Manbao into his arms, "Manbao, you’re so clever, you know more than all of us brothers combined."
"That’s right," Zhou Dalang was also proud, "Our Manbao is a scholar."
Scholar Manbao was seated right in the middle of the handcart, as the Zhou brothers excitedly pulled the cart away. If these wild yams could also fetch a good price, they would have to carefully search the mountains—perhaps they could find more.