Once Wang An had walked far enough away, Li Youcai said to Sun Dafu
"Uncle Sun, I reckon that 'cannon-egg's' head is a bit too big; it doesn't seem like the one Li Tie's wife described."
After Li Youcai finished speaking, Sun Dafu merely smiled, showing no sign of surprise, and said
"Mm-hmm. I've seen the head of a wild boar king, and it's not much bigger than this pig head he brought over. This 'cannon-egg' the two brothers killed... hmph, it must have been a cannon-egg weighing seven or eight hundred jin."
It is not for nothing that the old saying goes that the older a person gets, the craftier they become; at this moment, Sun Dafu embodied this point quite vividly.
Sun Dafu clearly knew that the cannon-egg Wang An had killed was not the one Li Tie was looking for, yet he had remained silent from start to finish. Not only did he not say anything, but he had also very cooperatively given those 10 mu of wasteland to Wang An.
Hearing this, Li Youcai gave Sun Dafu a shocked look, then blinked and said
"Then we just gave those 10 mu of land directly to those two? What happens if someone else disputes it later? We can't have some kind of mess breaking out, can we?"
Sun Dafu said nonchalantly
"A four or five hundred jin cannon-egg—if you run into one before entering the deep mountains, people still have a chance to run, just like Li Tie. But if you run into a seven or eight hundred jin cannon-egg inside the mountains, who the hell could run away?"
Pausing for a moment, Sun Dafu pointed at the pig head Wang An had left behind, his tone becoming somewhat excited
"Look at this pig's skull; even a Type 56 semi-auto wouldn't fucking penetrate that. Tell me, if someone had the bad luck to run into this fucking thing before entering the mountains, holy shit, what the fuck would they do?"
Hearing Sun Dafu's words, Li Youcai's eyebrows couldn't help but twitch.
As the village leader, mainly because more than a quarter of the people in the village shared the surname Li, there was a twenty-five percent chance that anyone encountering this cannon-egg would be a member of the Li clan. As the head of the Li family, Li Youcai naturally worried about the safety of his entire clan.
Thus, Li Youcai nodded and said
"That's true. If Little Tie had run into this cannon-egg this time, there's an eighty percent chance he wouldn't have come back."
What Li Youcai didn't know was that it wasn't an "eighty percent chance," but a certainty that he wouldn't have returned.
One must realize that when Wang An killed this cannon-egg, the creature had been very strange, possessing an extreme hatred for humans.
Sun Dafu pointed again at the gunshot wounds on the pig's head and eyes, saying
"Look at the marksmanship of those two brothers, how fierce (nē) it is! Four shots straight to the forehead, two shots straight to the eyes. Even Old Xiao Pao from Su Family Village doesn't have that kind of technique."
Li Youcai nodded
"Mm-hmm, indeed very fierce (nē). There's no problem giving those 10 mu of land to them."
After leaving the village headquarters, Wang An went straight home.
Mainly, those pig stones needed simple processing; if they were left soaking in gallbladder fluid for too long, they would all be ruined.
Mu Xueqing was naturally surprised by Wang An's sudden return and immediately asked
"Why are you back? Where's Old Five? Why didn't he come back with you?"
Wang An pinched Mu Xueqing's small cheek and said with a smile
"He didn't come back; he's still in the mountains. We found some good stuff, and I brought it back first. Otherwise, if too much time passes, this stuff will go to waste."
Seeing that Wang An had returned to deliver something and that nothing bad had happened, Mu Xueqing asked with a smile
"Good stuff? What kind of good stuff? Enough for you to make a special trip back?"
Wang An gave a mysterious smile, pulled out the small cloth bag containing the pig gallbladders, and said
"Pig stones. Ever heard of them? I'm telling you, this stuff is incredibly valuable, almost as valuable as a black bear's golden gallbladder."
Wang An wanted to explain further, but Mu Xueqing interrupted him
"I know about pig stones. I even know the Three Treasures of Traditional Medicine."
Wang An pinched Mu Xueqing's cheek again and laughed
"Aiya, you know quite a lot, don't you? Hahahaha!"
Truth be told, because Mu Xueqing stayed home for long periods and didn't get much sun, her small face was white and tender, and it felt quite good to pinch.
Mu Xueqing rolled her eyes at Wang An and said
"It's all written in those books at my house. Besides, many of the medicines my father used to take were dug up from the mountains by me, my mother, and Xueli. I know more about herbs than you do."
In this era, treatment was still primarily based on herbal medicine. For medicines that needed to be taken year-round, many people would enter the mountains to gather herbs themselves to save money; they would only pay to buy herbs that weren't available locally or were difficult to obtain.
Since Mu Hua had been taking medicine for years, it was only normal that Mu Xueqing and her family did this.
Wang An smiled upon hearing this, pinched Mu Xueqing's cheek one more time, and then continued walking into the house.
Wang An took a small stack of scrap paper from under the coffee table and spread it out. Then, taking the gallbladders, he went to the back room, carefully poured the gallbladder fluid into the slop bucket, and walked back to the table.
Using scissors to cut a slit in the gallbladder skin, Wang An poured the pig stones inside onto the dry scrap paper.
Processing pig stones was simple; the method was identical to processing bezoars from cows, horses, or dogs.
The main task was to wipe away the gallbladder fluid, peel off the thin membrane or mucus film on top, and finally leave them in a cool, ventilated place to air-dry.
The last point was crucial: they had to be air-dried. If they were sun-dried or heat-dried, cracks would appear, which would affect both the price and the medicinal efficacy.
Inside the gallbladder skin, there were over 60 pig stones in total, varying in size. The largest was about the size of a soybean, while the smallest was smaller than a grain of millet.
However, this was normal; after all, pig stones were essentially gallstones from a pig, so it was impossible for them all to be the same size.
Of course, this wasn't just true for pig stones; bezoars from cows and horses were the same. Not only did they vary in size, but their quantity and shape differed as well.
For example, with bovine bezoars, the amount found in a cow was completely uncertain. A large amount could be over 1 liang (over 50 grams), while a small amount might only be a few grams, or even less than 1 gram.
As for the shape, while round or oval were most common, there were also triangular, square, flake-like, or powder-like forms.
All of these were, without exception, normal.
By the time Wang An finished processing the pig stones, half an hour had passed, mainly because the membrane on top was difficult to peel.
After finishing, Wang An used a household scale to weigh the pig stones; they were roughly 3 liang.
Calculating based on a 3:1 ratio for air-dried weight, these pig stones would weigh nearly 1 liang after drying.
This kind of natural pig stone had a price that could rival bovine bezoars, meaning these stones could be worth eight or nine hundred yuan!
It was hard to imagine that a lucky accident could earn this much money.
(End of Chapter)