Super Zoo-Chapter 369 - 365: Hundred-Year-Old Mountain Ginseng

The "intelligence" of the Taishui seemed unchanged, but its ability to control its body had clearly strengthened. On its blobby, flabby body, a small "meat bun" had involuntarily puffed up without Suming’s intervention. That little clump of flesh detached from the body and floated in the water, drifting over to Suming’s side.

Suming grabbed it with one hand, and let me just say, the texture was indescribable – tender meat slipping through the gaps between his fingers, filled with resilience. He felt a surge of impulse in the water...

"Stay calm, stay calm!" Suming quickly slapped himself in the water. Ever since his time with Nangong in Xiangjiang, he had returned more and more beastly.

Back to the main point, it seemed that the intelligence development of the Taishui was very slow. It was like a person who lived for ten thousand years; if they were a hundred years old, their intelligence would have probably increased at about the rate of a normal person’s over the course of one year – hardly noticeable after just a year.

However, its physical strength and size were a different story. The Taishui was growing larger day by day, and its control over its body was also continuously increasing. At this rate, perhaps one day the Taishui would grow into a colossal being, capable of crushing a building with a single pounce... Coupled with its ability to regenerate indefinitely and its unique physique lacking any lethal weak points, it was almost an invincible existence in the animal kingdom.

Great white sharks, rhinoceroses, they were all chips off the old block. When the Taishui reached a certain size, it wouldn’t need to do anything but lunge at its prey, crushing it to death with its sheer mass of fat!

"So it turns out that a brainless fatty is the ultimate doomsday weapon to destroy the world!" Hugging his strange fantasies of an unknown future, Suming resurfaced and returned to the shore.

He dialed Nangong Huang and asked how things were going on their end.

"Wow, brother-in-law, I’m flying, it’s so thrilling!" came the voice of Nangong Huang from the other end of the phone, raised seven octaves, screaming and shouting with excitement. Suming, worried about time, let Su Meng carry the kid and run through the mountains...

The two parties regrouped at the base of the mountain, and they had gathered everything: morel mushrooms, Taishui meat, and Monkey Wine.

Nangong Huang curiously poked at the pale yellow lump of fat with his finger. There was an introduction to Taishui in culinary school, but such a thing was rarer than gold. Even the most high-end culinary schools couldn’t use Taishui meat as teaching material for students to practice. Nangong Huang had heard of it but was seeing the real thing for the first time.

He asked curiously, "Brother-in-law, where did you get this? This thing is legendary!"

"Picked it up on the road," Suming said truthfully.

Nangong Huang: "..."

There were still two ingredients left. The shad could be disregarded for the moment; Suming didn’t hold out hope of finding wild shad. He would buy farmed ones after returning to Huayin County, which cost only a few thousand dollars.

That left the hundred-year-old ginseng.

First, they went to Yangchuan City First People’s Hospital. Suming found a nurse in the hall to ask about the situation. The nurse, with a puzzled face, shook her head, "Sir, have you been reading too many fantasy novels? Where would you find so many hundred-year-old ginsengs..."

"Brother-in-law, I think we’ve come to the wrong place!" Nangong Huang chimed in from the side: "How could there be old mountain ginseng in a hospital? Maybe American ginseng at best. We should go to a traditional Chinese medicine shop like Tongrentang."

"Let’s go!" Suming instantly turned and led the two of them outside.

Seeing Nangong Huang, the young nurse – no older than twenty – clearly had her eyes light up, chased after them, and tugged at Nangong Huang, her eyes gleaming like peach blossoms: "Handsome guy, can we add each other on WeChat? If the hospital gets any ginseng in the future, I can let you know..."

Nangong Huang glared, "I don’t have time to mess around with you, I’m busy with important business!"

After dealing a critical hit of ten thousand points of damage to the young nurse, the three of them hurried to Yangchuan City’s largest Chinese medicine store, the famous century-old shop, Tongrentang.

Tongrentang’s décor was ancient and fragrant. In the spacious hall, which was several meters high, three walls were lined with medicine cabinets. Several workers climbed ladders, retrieving medicine from the towering shelves.

After taking a number, they lined up. The attending physician had a goat’s beard and, with just two fingers, barely touched the wrist of a young girl in line before Suming and his group, then quickly withdrew and scribbled out a prescription to hand to her.

The young girl glanced at the prescription with a confused expression, "Doctor, what’s with the hawthorn and bayberry?"

"Who told you that you’re pregnant? It’s just bloating. Eat something sour to stimulate your appetite, and you’ll be fine once you let out a loud fart," the old physician said confidently.

The young girl covered her face and ran off. Suming sat down with a grin and asked, "Doctor, do you have any wild old mountain ginseng?"

"You look ruddy and vigorous, too vigorous for your age to be consuming ginseng. You could literally burn up from the inside out," the old physician surmised that Suming wasn’t there to seek medical attention, but to buy ginseng, and warned him before asking, "We have three-year, ten-year, twenty-year-old ginseng, which kind would you like?"

"Do you have anything over a hundred years old?" Suming asked.

The old physician rolled his eyes and glanced at Suming, "Someone in your family on death’s door needing life support?"

Suming rolled his eyes in return, thinking to himself, it’s your family who has someone about to die.

"Ginseng used for life support doesn’t need to be a hundred years old. Twenty to thirty years is enough, and the shop has a few liang of that. If you want it, go settle the bill. But hundred-year-old mountain ginseng? You can’t find it in the whole of Yangchuan City," the old physician stroked his beard, smiling, "If you have hundred-year-old mountain ginseng and are willing to sell, our shop would make a generous offer."

"You carry on..."

It seemed, then, that acquiring a hundred-year-old mountain ginseng was as unlikely as finding the shad; searching from one shop to another was hopeless.

Suming used his smartphone to search online, wanting to see if there was a special place that sold them.

He didn’t know until he searched, and when he did, he was shocked.

The centuries-old mountain ginseng hadn’t completely gone extinct, just that the prices were terrifying.

Gold has a price, ginseng is priceless. Wild mountain ginseng, due to its scarcity and unrestricted excessive harvesting, was also nearly extinct. The national annual production of pure wild mountain ginseng, all added together, was less than fifteen kilograms, and even the national reserves were less than fifty kilograms.

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Let alone a hundred years, even those that were ten or fifteen years old were rare, life-saving treasures. It was common for a single plant to sell for tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, and yet there was essentially no market for them.

In the past two years, a thirty-gram centuries-old mountain ginseng was unearthed and auctioned for the sky-high price of three million Huaxia currency. The current domestic record is held by a mountain ginseng of not even four hundred years, which reportedly had an opening bid exceeding ten million.

The ginseng sold on the market is basically all cultivated by humans, like Korean ginseng or American ginseng, it’s very difficult to find real, pure wild mountain ginseng.

No wonder the old doctor from Tongrentang spoke of that twenty-year-old mountain ginseng with such exaggeration.

Nangong Huang lamented, "So you’re saying, it’s completely impossible to buy. It’s not like for the sake of wooing a girl, I’d spend millions to buy it, and even if you, my brother-in-law, are willing to spend the money, we wouldn’t have the time..."

"I’ll tell you again, I’m doing this for business, not to woo a girl!"

Business mattered much more than wooing a girl, with a career one could woo girls as one pleased; without a career, one could only watch others wooing girls, and if not careful, even one’s own sister might be wooed away by someone else, that’s the difference!

Suming, looking at the online introduction, was attracted by the last sentence.

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"Due to the scarcity of the species, any intact old mountain ginseng unearthed is immediately hyped to exorbitant prices and is purchased by professionals for collection and monopoly..."

Monopoly, collection... collection...

How could he have forgotten about this?! Speaking of collectors, in Yangchuan City, even in the whole province, the biggest collector was Zhao Yun, and that guy even had a private museum!

Although he mainly collected antiques, based on how he had treasured Monkey Wine before, Suming guessed that Zhao Yun would also be interested in strange things like ginseng. Even if Zhao Yun didn’t have any, he might know friends who collected ginseng.

He made a phone call to Zhao Yun, and after confirming he was at home, he drove straight to Zhao Yun’s villa.

It was almost noon. Zhao Yun appeared just out of bed, wearing strangely patterned pajamas ill-fitted for his age. He came down from the upstairs, yawning endlessly, to open the door.

"Mr. Zhao, is it really good for you to be holed up at home all day?"

"I struggled for half my life just to earn the right to comfortably stay at home," Zhao Yun waved his hand and ushered Suming and his two companions through the door and onto the sofa, where he sat cross-legged. "What brings you here this time?"

"I need ginseng!" Suming said earnestly.

"Your life is going pretty well, isn’t it? You’ve got a business, money, a house, a car, a girlfriend. What’s with the sudden drama in broad daylight?" Zhao Yun didn’t understand.

"It’s ginseng... ginseng!" Suming drew out his words, "Centuries-old wild mountain ginseng!"

At these words, Zhao Yun’s smile disappeared, and for a rare moment, the corners of his mouth twitched twice. With a pained expression, he asked, "How did you know I have it?"

"Ah?" Suming was overjoyed, "I didn’t know, I was just asking casually!" It was pure luck, as if finding what one has spent ages searching for without any effort at all!

Zhao Yun: "..."

After Suming briefly explained the situation, Zhao Yun heard that it wasn’t an entire plant he needed, just a few roots, and finally, his mood seemed to improve somewhat.

"Only you! If it were anyone else, they wouldn’t even get through the door," Zhao Yun grumbled as he led the way upstairs, "Come with me."

Arriving at Zhao Yun’s small study, where he stored his treasures, Zhao Yun pulled back a canvas on one wall.

On the wall was a square ’frame’ about a square meter in size, but instead of a photograph, it contained a century-old mountain ginseng.

Legend has it that ginseng can grow into the shape of a human... but that’s just a legend. At least a hundred-year-old ginseng didn’t have that ability. The main part of the mountain ginseng looked like a gnarled radish, with dozens of thin, dense tendrils extending out from all around the main body. The shortest were four or five centimeters, the longest even exceeding half a meter, densely filling the frame.

At first glance, this ginseng looked like a giant spider with many long legs sprawled across the wall.

Zhao Yun unlocked the ’frame’, turned his back to the window, and without looking back, said, "Do it yourself. I can’t bear to watch..."

"Oh..." Suming chuckled and carefully snipped off six tendrils, wrapped them in red cloth, and carefully stored them as if they were treasures.