The original repairer

There is no entrance fee to enter the town, but if you set up a stall at the market, you have to pay half of the money as town transaction tax.

He Laosan does not sell his dried fish in the trading area. Some restaurants and grocery stores buy them directly and are exempt from transaction tax, but the price is relatively low.

Several people followed He Laosan to a grocery store.

The dried fish weighed a total of 11.5 pounds, and the shopkeeper offered ten copper coins per pound. I didn't exchange the dried fish for copper coins, so I traded it for thirty pounds of taro powder and five pounds of salt. It wasn't worth that much, but since I was a regular customer, the shopkeeper gave me a discount.

The currency here is uniformly formulated by the immortals and issued by various countries. There are three denominations in circulation, namely copper coins, silver coins, and gold coins. In the past, one gold coin was exchanged for one hundred silver coins, and one silver coin was exchanged for one thousand copper coins.

The consumption level in the town is about one copper for a vegetarian bag, ten coppers for a pound of fine grains, six coppers for a pound of coarse grains, three coppers for a pound of taro powder, ten coppers for a pound of coarse salt, and four coppers for a pound of salt.

Mortal realms can produce their own coins, but the materials must be obtained from the Immortal Sect. If ordinary gold, silver, and copper materials are used, and if copper, silver, or gold ingots that haven't been refined by the Immortal Sect are used to mint coins, the difference between them and the circulating coins will be significant, primarily in color. The Immortal Sect has already prevented mortal realms from privately producing coins through the use of certain materials.

After He Laosan completed the transaction, Shi Chen said to the shopkeeper, "I have some dried wild mushrooms here. I hope to sell them to you. I wonder how much you would buy?"

Looking at the unfamiliar Shi Chen, the shopkeeper said softly, "Wild mushrooms are delicious, but they can easily cause confusion. In serious cases, they can be life-threatening. I don't sell them here."

"I have tasted these dried mushrooms and have not had any problems with them. I wonder if your store can sell them?" Shi Chen asked again.

In the end, the grocery store owner refused to purchase the dried wild mushrooms.

Shi Chen also didn't want to set up a stall in the trading market. There weren't many dried mushrooms to begin with, and he had to pay transaction tax.

The villagers agreed to meet at the west gate. There was still more than an hour left, and Shi Chen wanted to exchange the dried mushrooms for money or some supplies.

There are still quite a lot of people in the trading market, and the goods on sale are mostly mountain products, furs, medicinal materials, etc.

After walking around for about quarter of an hour, Shi Chen felt hungry. Looking at the restaurants and inns next to the trading floor, inspiration came to him.

I walked to a decent restaurant with a sign bearing four ancient characters: Lai Fu Restaurant. Judging by the decor and the storefront, it was a boutique establishment, typical of a trading post. The people entering and leaving were dressed in a way that distinguished them from the poor peasants: they were merchants, petty officials, and the like.

Shi Chen asked He Laosan and the other two to wait for him at the door of Lai Fu Restaurant. It would take about an hour to sell the dried mushrooms to the restaurant. He Laosan took his two children and squatted in the corner outside the restaurant waiting.

Shi Chen put down his clothes and walked in carrying a bamboo basket.

"Sir, what can I do for you?" The waiter at the door asked Shi Chen as he entered.

"I have some mountain products here that I want to sell to a restaurant. I wonder if your shop owner would like them?" Shi Chen said as he put down the bamboo basket on his back.

The waiter took Shi Chen to a counter in the inner room and said to the old man with a goatee behind the counter, "Shopkeeper Xu, this customer said he has some mountain products to sell."

The man with the goatee stopped using his abacus and looked at Shi Chen and said, "I wonder what local produce you have to sell to our restaurant? If it's something rare, price is not a problem."

Shi Chen pulled aside the leaves in the bamboo basket, revealing the dried wild mushrooms underneath. He said, "Hello, Shopkeeper Xu. I picked some wild mushrooms in the mountains and dried them to sell in town. I wonder if your restaurant will accept them?"

"Dried wild mushrooms?" Shopkeeper Xu asked doubtfully, "Few people sell mushrooms, because they can often confuse or even kill people, so they're not sold on the table."

"I know that many mushrooms have confusing toxins. The wild mushrooms I picked are all edible. I have eaten them and had no problems," Shi Chen explained.

"There's no guarantee that these inedible mushrooms are free of poison. You'd better find another shop." Shopkeeper Xu ordered the customer to leave.

Shi Chen hurriedly said, "Manager Xu, wait a moment. How about this, I'd like to borrow your kitchen space? This bamboo basket holds about five pounds of dried mushrooms. Take one pound and I'll personally prepare three dishes. I'll try them first. If nothing else happens in a quarter of an hour, I'll ask you to sell them. How's that?"

Shopkeeper Xu thought for a moment and said, "That's fine, but if anything goes wrong, our restaurant will not be responsible. If nothing goes wrong, we will be fully responsible for the sale of the dishes."

The waiter took Shi Chen to the kitchen and explained his purpose to the chef, and then a fat chef made way for him.

There are few ingredients in the kitchen, such as onions, ginger, garlic, oil, salt, rice wine and vinegar; there are many other ingredients, such as fresh vegetables, fresh fish, fresh meat, beef, mutton, chicken, duck, as well as a lot of wild goods, cured meat, cured fish, etc.

Select five dried mountain mushrooms, soak them in hot water in a ceramic pot, then select cured mountain pork, half a fresh chicken, and a fresh fish the size of a palm.

The bacon was roasted over a flame, the hair removed, and then boiled in boiling water for one minute. Removed, cleaned, sliced, and served with garlic and scallions. The chicken was chopped, cleaned, and marinated with ginger, cooking wine, and a pinch of salt. The fish was scaled and gutted, and marinated with ginger slices and a pinch of salt. After the three main ingredients were prepared, the dried mountain mushrooms were soaked. The mushrooms here were unusually large, likely due to the spiritual energy nurturing them. While the average size was palm-sized, Shi Chen's largest was the size of a soup bowl and weighed four or five pounds.

Stir-fried bacon with wild mushrooms, braised chicken with wild mushrooms, and a pot of fresh fish and mushroom soup. All three dishes took about half an hour to prepare, with the fat chef watching from the sidelines.

In front of Shopkeeper Xu, Shi Chen took a bite of each dish and ate it, then drank half a bowl of milky white fish soup.

Looking at the time, a quarter of an hour had passed and Shi Chen did not become ill or confused.

Shopkeeper Xu tried all three dishes.

Every time he tasted a dish, he closed his eyes, as if he was enjoying the food very much.

By the time Shi Chen walked out of Lai Fu Restaurant, an hour had passed and He Lao San was already waiting impatiently at the door of the restaurant.

On the way back, Shi Chen carried a bamboo basket with 20 kilograms of salt ore. Coarse salt has few impurities and is edible, though slightly bitter. Mineral salt, however, contains about 10% to 20% impurities and is much more bitter than coarse salt. Most people don't eat mineral salt, but it's primarily used by livestock.

The villagers looked at Shi Chen with strange eyes as he carried back 20 kilograms of salt. There was pity and contempt in their eyes.

After returning to He Laosan's house, He Laosan asked, "The salt you bought is useless. The cost of making it into coarse salt is much higher than buying it now. It's not cost-effective. Salt mines are for livestock. If people eat it, they will become poisonous after one or two months."

"I know," Shi Chen said as he sorted through the dried bamboo shoots and mushrooms drying in the yard. "I'm not using the salt mine for food. Tomorrow I'll extract the salt from the mine. When the villagers gather to trade in town next time, we should be able to get some coarse or fine grains in return. Just wait."

Looking at the confident Shi Chen, He Laosan smacked his lips without saying anything, feeling regretful for wasting dozens of copper coins.

It was already dusk when he returned to the fishing village. He Laosan was busy preparing dinner: ash dumplings and wild vegetable and mushroom soup. However, the dumplings were half the size today.

After dinner, as soon as it got dark, everyone went to bed early.