Chapter 1841 — Hard Days
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
Five hundred yuan was not even enough to buy Wei Zhao's medicine, let alone save up for Gu Pengzhan's medical expenses.
"Xiao Shu... how about we go to Yunyun's house tomorrow and borrow some money?" Gu Mengyao truly had no other choice. She knew that Mother Tang had quite a bit of money, and surely she would lend them enough to buy medicine for Wei Zhao.
"Yes. I suppose that's all we can do..." Shen Yushu nodded.
What they did not know was that Mother Tang had already been taken away by the people from Xue Valley. Tang Zhi had done so partly because she was worried about her parents, who were far away in Songshan City, and partly because she was afraid they might say something to Wei Zhao and ruin all her efforts to make him drink the Forgetting Passion medicinal liquid.
Thus, when Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu arrived at Tang Zhi's home the next day, they were dismayed to find the entire Tang family gone without a trace. According to the neighbors, no one had been there for several days already.
By then, Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu had more or less guessed what Tang Zhi meant to do. The only trouble was that they had no way to contact Xue Valley. As far as Xue Valley was concerned, once Tang Zhi remained there, she was as good as severing all ties with them for the rest of their lives. Naturally, no contact information had been left behind.
With Mother Tang unavailable and Yunyun and Xiaoxiao unreachable, the only person Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu could count on was Old Man Wei.
However, although Old Man Wei had a small medicinal garden of his own and possessed most of the herbs listed in the prescription, his supplies were enough only to keep Wei Zhao in medicine. There was still no way to cover Gu Pengzhan's medical expenses.
Besides, there was no courier service in West Star Mountain Village, and Old Man Wei could not leave the village. Sending the herbs from the courier office in the nearest distant town was another major inconvenience. By the time the herbs were finally dispatched, the daylilies would have gone cold—the water from afar could not put out a fire nearby.
With no alternative, Gu Mengyao and Shen Yushu could only continue scavenging with Granny Sun. But after two days at it, they discovered that this trade had plenty of competition. Besides them, there were other scavengers everywhere, and success depended on sharp eyes and quick hands. It did not matter who spotted something first; what mattered was who got to it first.
According to Granny Sun, scavenging had its own rules in every city. Songshan City was no exception, and people had followed the same rules for years. That was why, even when her legs had once been inconvenient, she had trained herself to be quick-eyed and quick-handed.
Precisely because of that, once she had recovered, she scavenged even faster than before, far outstripping the other scavengers. Her daily haul was therefore quite substantial.
"Truth is, relying only on waste cardboard and empty drink bottles isn't the most profitable way to make money," Granny Sun said. "Sometimes you can find discarded furniture and appliances at the trash collection points in residential areas. Those are the real money-makers. And sometimes, in the discarded clothes people throw away in wealthy neighborhoods, you can even find loose change. It isn't usually much, but every now and then there can be several hundred yuan. Once, outside a villa, I found three thousand yuan inside a leather jacket. I went to the villa to return it, but the housekeeper only said, 'Thank you. You can keep the money,' and sent me on my way..."