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墨書 Inktalez
Lin Dahe did not rush to exchange, but instead took out a cloth bag from his pocket and carefully dug into the soft soil around the roots of the plant. The damp clumps of earth crumbled at a touch, revealing four or five tubers the size of pigeon eggs beneath. These wild potatoes were much smaller than modern varieties, their skin displaying an unhealthy bluish-green hue.
"The solanine content might be too high..." He scraped at the surface with his nail, hesitating over whether to harvest them. Suddenly, a clanging sound echoed from afar, the hoarse voice of the night watchman drifting through the darkness: "The air is dry—be careful with fire—"
The brightness of the torch was too glaring in the graveyard. Lin Dahe quickly extinguished it and crouched motionless in the grass. The sound of the clanging grew closer, and the watchman's lantern swayed twenty paces away, threatening to illuminate his hiding spot.
"Crack!"
A dry twig snapped under his knee. The watchman's lantern swung sharply in his direction: "Who?!"
Lin Dahe's heart raced like a drum. He grabbed the freshly dug potatoes and was about to run when he was suddenly knocked off balance by a shadow that darted out from behind a grave mound. The cloth bag slipped from his grasp, and the potatoes rolled across the ground.
"Thief! Grave robber!" The watchman shouted, his voice piercing through the night as the gong clanged loudly.
Lin Dahe could not afford to pick up the potatoes; he scrambled down the hillside. The footsteps behind him multiplied, and the torchlight merged into a sea of flames. In his panic, he tripped over a tree root and fell headlong into a stinking ditch.
"There he is!"
Dozens of torches quickly surrounded him. Lin Dahe wiped the mud from his face and saw that more than twenty villagers had gathered behind the watchman, some wielding pitchforks, others carrying heavy sticks. At the front stood an old man with a white beard—identified by the system as Seventh Uncle—who pointed his cane at Lin Dahe's nose and scolded:
"Heartless wretch! You dare to dig up our ancestors' graves!"
In a moment of desperation, Lin Dahe grabbed a yellow-flowered plant growing by the ditch: "It's a misunderstanding! I'm here to collect herbs to save lives!"
The crowd fell silent for an instant before erupting into even louder chaos.
"Nonsense! Can grass from a grave cure illness?"
"Look at how bulging his pockets are; he must have touched something buried with them!"
"Take him to court! He must be punished!"
Lin Dahe was sweating profusely, suddenly catching sight of an elderly man on the outskirts of the crowd carrying a medicine box. He dashed over and grabbed the man's sleeve: "Doctor Li! Can you recognize if this is Artemisia annua for treating malaria?"
The old man recoiled two steps from Lin Dahe's foul-smelling mud-covered body, squinting at him: "It does look like Artemisia..."
"I told you!" Lin Dahe immediately seized on this opportunity, "Isn't Aunt Wang's second son suffering from high fever? I came all night looking for medicine!"
Seventh Uncle approached skeptically, suddenly frowning: "Then what do you have hidden in your pockets?"
Lin Dahe cursed inwardly; the two potatoes he had stashed were now digging painfully into his ribs. As he fumbled for words, a clear female voice rang out from afar:
"Make way! The village chief is coming!"
The crowd parted to create a path as the village chief rode in on a donkey with a grim expression. After listening to Seventh Uncle's account, he fixed Lin Dahe with a cold smile: "A scholar? More like a fool!" He turned to address the villagers: "Everyone disperse! Tomorrow I will personally take him to the county office!"
Lin Dahe was locked in the woodshed of the ancestral hall, listening to the sound of the door being secured outside. Frustrated, he pounded on the pile of straw. Moonlight seeped through the cracks in the window, illuminating the two potatoes he had hidden in the soles of his shoes. Suddenly, a new message from the system popped up: [Crisis Management Performance Rating: C, Reward Delayed].
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