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墨書 Inktalez
Lin Dahe did not rush to exchange but instead pulled out a cloth bag from his pocket and carefully dug into the soft soil around the plant's roots. 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 skins displaying an unhealthy greenish hue.
"The solanine content might be excessive..." He scratched the skin with his fingernail, hesitating over whether to harvest them. Suddenly, a sound of a clapper echoed from afar, the night watchman's hoarse voice drifting through the darkness: "The weather is dry—be careful with fire—"
The brightness of the torch was too glaring in the graveyard. Lin Dahe quickly extinguished his torch and lay still in the grass. The clapper's sound 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 abruptly turned towards him: "Who?!"
Lin Dahe's heart raced like a drum. He grabbed the freshly dug potatoes and was about to flee when he was suddenly knocked off balance by a shadow that sprang out from behind a grave mound. The cloth bag slipped from his grasp, and the potatoes rolled across the ground.
"Thief! Tomb robbery!" The watchman screamed, his voice piercing as the gong clanged.
Lin Dahe couldn't 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 into a stinking ditch.
"Over there!"
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 while others held makeshift clubs. At the front stood an old man with a white beard—identified by the system as the village's Seventh Uncle—who pointed his cane at Lin Dahe's nose and shouted:
"Heartless scoundrel! 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 medicine to save someone!"
The crowd fell silent for an instant before erupting into louder chaos.
"Nonsense! Can grass from a grave cure illness?"
"Look at how bulging his pockets are; he must have found something for burial!"
"Take him to court! He must be punished!"
Lin Dahe was sweating profusely, suddenly spotting an old man on the edge of the crowd carrying a medicine box. He dashed over and grabbed the old man's sleeve: "Doctor Li! Can you confirm if this is Qinghao for treating malaria?"
The old man recoiled two steps from Lin Dahe's stench, squinting at him: "It does look like Qinghao..."
"I knew it!" Lin Dahe quickly seized this opportunity, "Isn't Aunt Wang's second son suffering from high fever? I came overnight to find medicine!"
Seventh Uncle approached skeptically but suddenly frowned: "Then what do you have in your pockets?"
Lin Dahe cursed himself silently; the two potatoes he had hidden were now digging painfully into his ribs. Just as he stammered for an answer, a clear female voice rang out from afar:
"Make way! Li Zheng is coming!"
The crowd parted to create a path as Li Zheng 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? I think you've read yourself silly!" 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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