The Farm Girl’s Charismatic Fortune
Chapter 190 - 186 Planting Mushrooms

Chapter 190: Chapter 186 Planting Mushrooms

Xuanyuan Que saw that Ruo Xuan’s little hands were not injured, only dirty, and glanced again at her back. Fortunately, there were plenty of dry leaves, and her pants were not too dirty, only a little bit at the cuffs.

He took out a handkerchief and carefully cleaned her small hands, dusted off the fallen leaves on her body, and after making her as spotless as a flower, he finally said, "Let’s go, your mother should be taking the villagers up the mountain by now."

The clean Ruo Xuan’s mood improved, and she habitually grabbed Xuanyuan Que’s hand and hopped forward happily.

Xuanyuan Que, afraid that she would fall and cause himself more trouble, tightened his grip on her small hand and let her hop along the way.

When the two reached the outskirts of the mountain, Madam Liu was leading a dozen villagers up the mountain.

Madam Liu usually hired people who were on good terms with her family to do work.

Upon seeing Ruo Xuan and Xuanyuan Que, everyone greeted them in succession.

Ruo Xuan sweetly called out to one auntie after another, complimenting one madam for looking younger lately and praising another auntie for looking especially beautiful in her new clothes.

This amused the village women, who could not stop praising her, saying she was smart and well-spoken.

Xuanyuan Que stood beside Ruo Xuan, not saying a word.

After the greetings, Madam Liu smiled and said, "Xuanbao, you come and teach everyone how to pick mushrooms."

The women were mildly surprised upon hearing this. Did picking mushrooms require teaching?

The village chief’s wife said with a smile, "What’s the purpose of these mushrooms? Are they for selling or for gifting? We’ll be careful not to break the mushrooms and try to pick the bigger and more uniform ones."

Others also thought that the Ruo Family was most likely hiring them to pick mushrooms to sell and shared their opinions.

"If they’re for selling, we can sort the mushrooms by size when we pick them. Put the similar-sized ones in the same basket."

"We could pick separately; each person can be responsible for a type of mushroom, so we don’t have to sort them again later."

...

Everyone shared their experience and advice energetically, one after another.

Ruo Xuan raised her small hand, signaling for them to quiet down, and then said, "My dear madams and aunties, I’m not planning to pick mushrooms to sell, but rather to try and grow mushrooms. So today, we are not picking mushrooms but collecting mushroom spores, which are essentially the seeds of mushrooms."

Ruo Xuan’s words left the village women dumbfounded, and they all rushed to say:

"Xuanbao, can mushrooms actually be grown?"

"Collecting mushroom seeds? Do mushrooms even have seeds? I’ve never seen them."

"No way! Mushrooms don’t flower and bear fruit, how could they have seeds?"

...

The village chief’s wife hastily said loudly, "Alright, everyone quiet down and let Xuanbao finish! Before, we didn’t know it was possible to grow rice three times a year, but now haven’t we succeeded? Why are you all in a rush? Let Xuanbao finish speaking!"

Upon hearing the village chief’s wife’s words, everyone decidedly closed their mouths.

Ruo Xuan continued, "Mushroom seeds aren’t really seeds, they’re spores. Follow me, and I’ll show you how to distinguish which mushrooms have produced spores and how to collect the spores to bring back for mushroom cultivation. If we can succeed in growing mushrooms, then we won’t need to wait for a rainy day to eat them. Moreover, mushrooms grow quickly and yield high quantities. All the excess can be sold to earn silver. You can sell them fresh or dry them and sell that way."

The village chief’s wife heard this and got excited, "If we can eat fresh mushrooms, there’s the freshness of that, and dried mushrooms have a different flavor. As a mountain delicacy, dried mushrooms can sell for a good price per pound! If we can grow mushrooms, it’s like finding a path to wealth!"

The other villagers were not unaware of the high demand for mushrooms.

Usually, when they picked mushrooms, they kept the broken ones to eat themselves, and most of the intact ones were taken to the city to exchange for silver.

Sometimes when the quantity they picked was small, they would dry them, accumulate a stash, and sell it in the city at the end of the year.

The price of dried mushrooms varied from a dozen to several dozen wen per pound, depending on the type of mushroom.

Anyway, the people in the city love to eat them and are all scrambling to buy them.

"Xuanbao, you need to teach the aunties how to collect those, what are they called, spores quickly!"

"Exactly, quickly collect them. There are spores in mushrooms? What do they look like? Are they like little grains?"

...

Ruo Xuan: "The spores are invisible to the naked eye, but I have a way to tell everyone where the spores are. Auntie, come with me!"

Madam Liu was worried that everyone would be disappointed if they couldn’t successfully grow the mushrooms later, considering that one should always leave room for error and not speak too confidently, so she added, "The method of growing mushrooms was accidentally discovered by Xuanbao in a book. Her dad looked at it and thought it was feasible, so our family decided to give it a try, but we can’t guarantee it will succeed. Today we’re asking everyone to go up the mountain to pick mushrooms to try planting them, so don’t have too high expectations, I think these things are probably not easy to grow."

"We know, we don’t have much expectation; if we can grow them, that’s great, and if not, it’s normal."

"I also think they’re not easy to grow. Xuanbao is amazing, being so young and able to read books, and even discovering how to cultivate mushrooms."

"Discovery is one thing; the fact that Xuanbao dared to try it is what’s most important. How many people can pore over a vast number of books, learn a lot of things from them, but how many dare to try?"

"That’s true, anyway, none of those scholars are as impressive as our Xuanbao..."

...

The crowd followed behind Ruo Xuan, showering her with praise.

Ruo Xuan loved listening to people’s compliments, her smile radiant like the sun in the sky.

She cheerfully led the people to a patch of mushrooms that she had accelerated the growth of using her Spiritual Power, and personally demonstrated with a small shovel how to transplant the mushrooms.

The mushrooms had all been accelerated by Ruo Xuan, and they all had spores.

After Ruo Xuan demonstrated once, the women understood, and even if they didn’t, it didn’t matter because she had Spiritual Power. She could just send them back to the mushroom house and accelerate them again!

Many hands make light work; in less than an hour, they had filled the baskets and winnowing trays they brought.

Ruo Xuan led them back to the mushroom house.

The women were astonished at the sight of the gigantic mushroom house!

"This house looks like a big mushroom!"

"The mushroom house is actually a mushroom house! But isn’t it a waste to use such a beautiful mushroom house to grow mushrooms?"

"Indeed, it’s even prettier than my own house!"

"If I could live in such a beautiful house, I’d want to become a mushroom too!"

...

Ruo Xuan knew they were envious, and she was envious too!

"Auntie, aunties, please pour the substrates with spores you’ve just collected onto the shelves in the house in rows.

There are already some substrates on the shelves, which were made according to the formula Ruo Xuan gave to Shopkeeper Gu. They were ground so finely that it’s hard to tell what the original ingredients were. Shopkeeper Gu did this to avoid others copying it."

But Ruo Xuan had no intention to keep it a secret. Once the mushrooms were really grown, she would teach everyone how to do it. Then she would buy the mushrooms they grew and sell them in the city for silver.

The silver at home and her own were almost all spent!

It was time to figure out ways to earn more silver!