The next morning, Su Qing left home with a basket on her back well before dawn. At this hour, most of the villagers were still asleep, so no one saw her leave Lihua Village.
Lihua Village was adjacent to a county town called Xiyuan County. The town wasn't small and was home to several large factories. As a result, the residents of Xiyuan County enjoyed a much better standard of living compared to those in the surrounding villages.
The journey from Lihua Village to Xiyuan County was roughly thirteen to fourteen li. Su Qing walked quickly, arriving just outside the town in a little over an hour.
However, Su Qing didn't rush into town right away. She glanced around, and seeing no one, slipped into a nearby grove of trees. Then, she took a small cloth bundle out of her basket.
Inside the small cloth bundle were some plant leaves and roots Su Qing had collected on Baihua Mountain the day before. Because her Wood Ability was a healing and control type, she had an encyclopedic knowledge of the properties and therapeutic effects of plants. She could even use her Wood Ability to combine several plants into concoctions with a variety of effects.
And these leaves and roots in the bundle were what Su Qing planned to use for her disguise today.
She used her superpower to combine several leaves and roots, then applied the mixture to her face and hands. In no time at all, the image of a woman in her thirties with a slightly tan complexion was complete. Even the scar on her left cheek was now completely hidden.
Next, Su Qing took an outfit from her basket and changed into it. The clothes had belonged to Li Wan. Although the body's original owner harbored resentment toward Li Wan, she had always carefully preserved a few of her mother's garments, keeping them in excellent condition.
Once she was ready, Su Qing shouldered her basket, left the grove, and entered Xiyuan County.
This was Su Qing's first time seeing a county town from the 1970s. It was a far cry from the skyscrapers of decades later, and just as different from the crumbling ruins of the apocalypse. The town before her felt overwhelmingly gray and drab.
The red brick walls of the houses were mottled and weathered by time. People's clothes lacked any bright colors, mostly sticking to shades of blue, black, and gray. Yet, compared to the fast-paced life decades in the future or the desolate bleakness of the apocalypse, this place made Su Qing feel the rhythm of everyday life.
This, she supposed, was the world of ordinary life.
But what Su Qing didn't know was that not long after she entered Xiyuan County, Su Shengli had rushed into town on his bicycle with Su Lihui.
"Ouch! Dad, slow down, slow down." The road from Lihua Village to the county town was far from smooth, and Su Lihui was being jostled so badly it felt like needles were pricking him all over. He had been crying out the whole way, which made Su Shengli's heart pound with anxiety, giving him the panicked feeling that his son was gravely ill.
So how could Su Shengli dare to slow down? He pedaled furiously toward the County Hospital. When the father and son finally arrived, a nurse was so alarmed she almost sent Su Lihui straight to the emergency room, nearly causing a huge false alarm.
Su Qing knew nothing of the false alarm Su Shengli and his son had nearly caused at the County Hospital. She had just found the entrance to the black market. She had brought a wild rabbit and some mushrooms this time mainly to scout things out. She couldn't run a small business openly yet, so she planned to first save up some money at the black market to use as capital for her venture next year.
'As for the five hundred yuan from selling the job and the money and items the original owner's mother hid, I'll borrow a little for now to tide me over. I can put it back once I have money on hand.'
The original owner's resentment for Li Wan ran so deep that she had refused to touch anything Li Wan left behind, even to the point of giving up her own life. Yet, deep down, she must have harbored a glimmer of daughterly affection for her, or she wouldn't have preserved Li Wan's clothes so perfectly. This contradiction made Su Qing feel a great deal of sympathy for her predecessor.
'So, I'll wait until I find Li Wan in the future to decide what to do with the money. If it turns out Li Wan really didn't care for her daughter at all, I'll give her the money and everything else she left behind and sever that mother-daughter bond for good. But if Li Wan still feels affection for her, then I will fulfill a daughter's filial duty on the original's behalf. It would be a form of repayment for using this body, a way to help her predecessor find peace for that lingering daughterly affection.'
Su Qing found the black market by following two men. By listening to their conversation, she figured out the rules for entry and the code phrase.
"Well now, you're a new face, sister. Who're you looking for?" A woman in her thirties sat knitting at the mouth of an alley that served as the black market's entrance. She looked up at Su Qing and asked with a broad smile.
"Sister-in-law, my brother's wife asked me to deliver something to her family," Su Qing replied with an equally friendly smile, discreetly passing five fen to the woman. This was the entrance fee for the black market.
"Oh my, what a good daughter-in-law she is. Go on in," the woman said, pocketing the money with a smile. "You've come at a good time. Everyone's home."
"That's right. Thank you, sister-in-law," Su Qing said with a grin, thanking the woman before shouldering her basket and heading into the black market.
Seeing Su Qing enter, the woman went back to her knitting, though she continued to keep a watchful eye on her surroundings. Su Qing took note of this. 'The people running this black market are certainly cautious,' she thought.
Once inside, Su Qing realized the so-called black market was just a network of several alleys. The alleys formed a labyrinth, branching out in every direction. If there was trouble, people could scatter and flee, greatly reducing the chances of everyone being rounded up at once.
Su Qing didn't rush to buy or sell anything. Instead, she first wandered through the alleys, taking everything in. Thanks to her superpower, her hearing was extraordinary, allowing her to overhear conversations from a distance.
She had to admit, for a county-level black market, it was pretty decent. While there wasn't a massive variety of goods, the basics—pork, rice, flour, vegetables, and some daily necessities—were all readily available. It seemed fish were even sold here occasionally.
Soon, Su Qing got a good sense of the general price range in the market. Most items were traded at roughly double the official market price—and, of course, no ration tickets were required.
With this knowledge, Su Qing felt more confident. She found a spot and set her basket down on the ground. Inside, aside from the wild rabbit, she just had some mushrooms. She knew they wouldn't fetch a high price, but she wasn't in a hurry. Her main goal today was just to get the lay of the land.
Before long, Su Qing had sold both the wild rabbit and the mushrooms in her basket. The rabbit went for three and a half yuan. The mushrooms were just common varieties, but their selling point was their freshness. In the end, two older women bought her entire stock for four fen per jin, netting her another eighty fen.
'Four yuan and thirty fen,' Su Qing thought, clutching the small wad of cash. 'That's much more than a day's wages.' She was filled with confidence.