Early one morning at the end of August, when Bai Jiaxuan got up to wash his face and rinse his mouth, his wife, Xiancao, who had broken the ban and showed signs of pregnancy, was sitting in front of the spinning wheel and buzzing and turning the handlebars, and a white thread the size of a white thread had already formed on the spindle. My mother had already gotten up and was spinning the spinning wheel on the kang in the back room where she lived alone. He sat on the chair that his father used to sit on during his lifetime, drank tea, and used the white copper hookah left behind by his father after his death to live his early addiction. After his father's death, he sat in the back room every night in front of his mother's pillow and after waking up early in the morning. The buzzing sound of the two spinning wheels is connected with each other and coincides with each other, and the sound of this intermittent sound and the other sound, permeating the calm and harmonious atmosphere to every corner of the courtyard. Bai Jiaxuan was immersed in this ancient, long-lasting and fresh and lively music, and his muscles and blood swelled.

Changgong Lu three ploughshares and ropes were packed, took out the red horse from the horse number and tied it to the stone carving tethered horse stake in the yard, strode into the courtyard, and asked loudly about the seeds. Jiaxuan came out of the back room: "You take a sip of tea first." Lu San stood in the courtyard and said that he didn't drink, and still asked about the ratio of wheat and peas, twenty-eight or thirty-seven? Jiaxuan said: "This land grows medicinal herbs. You don't care about the seeds, I'll take them. So saying, he took out a puff of smoke, blew the ash out of the hookah, put down the hookah, drank the last cup of tea, and walked out of the street and into the horse. Lu San untied the red horse and led it, and put on the plough stick. Jiaxuan carried a heavy iron-toothed rake, a pickaxe and a bamboo broom under his arm. Lu San turned around and asked, "What are you doing with a broom?" Jiaxuan didn't explain: "It's useful to take it." Lu San didn't ask anymore. The master and servant walked through the alleys, out of the village, and down the riverbank, and the red horse dragged the empty plough on the dirt road in the field to make a banging sound.

The fields have changed their appearance, the colours of autumn have faded like feathers, and the rivers have taken on a quiet aftermath of noise. Along the irrigation canals and on the well platforms are piles of freshly cleared stalks from the fields. The wheat planting is almost finished, and the fields that have just been planted are bare with wet soil, and the fields that were planted early are already showing the tender green of the young leaves of the wheat seedlings. The rainy season of autumn has come to an end, and the gloom and gloom that has long permeated the rivers and villages has been cleared. The earth is simple and elegant, and the sky is open and far-reaching. The air conditioning in the early morning makes people feel refreshed.

The red horse dragged the plough stick into the land, and Lu San put the ploughshare into the land, turned around and asked, "What kind of medicine do you plant?" I haven't planted it. What do you say?" Jiaxuan told him that it was still necessary to cultivate it like wheat, and the seeds should be slipped down at intervals of one plough or two small furrows, and it was like planting grain. In order to spread evenly, the seeds need to be mixed with fine soil or sand, because the seeds are too small and too small. The deer shouted at the red horses and ploughed up, ploughing one plough next to the other, ploughing more delicately than the furrows of the wheat. Jiaxuan looked at the ploughed soil and changed his mind: "Plough it first, rake it again, break the dead mud blocks, and then open a ditch to sow seeds." It's not okay to plant like this now. "After the summer and autumn floods and the trampling of the harvest, the sticky yellow mud soil is severely compacted, and large chunks of dead mud are turned out on the ploughshares, and the tiny seeds are covered in the soil before they can break through the mud. Lu San couldn't help asking, "What kind of medicinal herbs are more delicate than wheat?" Bai Jiaxuan said: "Poppy." Bai Jiaxuan said that poppies are as plain as wheat or peas. Lu San didn't ask anymore. He doesn't know about poppies, and it's not surprising that he can't even remember the names of ten of the hundreds of Chinese medicinal materials, and poppies are just a kind of traditional Chinese medicine, or they are precious and rare.

The sun rose on the top of the white deer and the top of the original pole was high, the land of more than one acre was ploughed, the plough was unloaded and then put on the iron tooth rake, Bai Jiaxuan pulled the two ropes and commanded the red horse rake to grind it again, and the ground became smooth and loose. Lu San untied the rake again, put on the plough stick, and cut a ditch and sow seeds on the ground that had been sharpened by the ploughing rake. Every two small plows, Jiaxuan followed Lu San's ass to slide down the seeds mixed with fine soil, and then dragged them along the furrow that slipped through the seeds with a long-handled broom, and covered those tiny and delicate poppy seeds with a thin layer of soil.

At this time, many men who were working in the fields stood near and far to see the strange behavior of the master and servant, and how they swept into the furrow with the brooms that swept the yard and the yard. The farmer was very interested in these things, and rushed over to see what Bai Jiaxuan was doing. They squatted on the edge of the ground, kneading the soil, carefully picking up a few seeds that had just slipped into the ditch, twisting them in the palms of their hands, rubbing them with their fingers, and the small seeds were twisted into the soil, shining like black and purple gems. They giggled and asked curiously, "Jiaxuan, what kind of crops are you growing?" Jiaxuan said flatly: "Medicinal herbs." They also asked, "What herbs?" Jiaxuan still said in the same tone as when he said wheat and grain: "Poppy!"

After about ten days, a small green life sprouted from the furrow that had been swept over with a broom, and it appeared in the eyes of the owner with a shy and delicate appearance, and it also made the farmers of Bailu Village see the poppy. "Hmm! Is this how the poppy is?" Well! Like mustard, like cabbage!" The farmer's analogy is always appropriate, and the poppy seedlings are almost the same as the mustard seedlings that choke the nasal membranes. If Bai Jiaxuan said that this was "opium smoke", they would be so shocked that they would never compare it with some rotten mustard again. In order to prevent freezing to death in winter, Jiaxuan and Lu San used an ox cart to pull a cart of wheat straw and sprinkle it into the ditch to cover the small seedlings.

In the spring of the following year, green and crystalline young leaves sprang out from under the wheat straw that had been blackened by the rain and snow; After the Qingming Festival, it began to pull out the joints and stalks to separate branches, which is more like the shape of mustard or rapeseed; It was not until the flowering that the essential difference from the latter was revealed. Rape and mustard are commonplace golden-like yellow flowers, while poppies produce red, white, pink, yellow, and purple flowers, which are colorful and gradually grow into a dark green oval fruit.

After a while, people saw Bai Jiaxuan and his family's long-term worker Lu San, as well as his mother, who rarely went to the field, and even his wife, who was quite bulky, came to the field together, pierced the dark green oval fruits with thick needles or triangular knives, and scraped the viscous milk-like slurry that flowed out of the cracks. The family of four left the village early in the morning and returned to the house when the sun came out, which seemed to add to the mystery of this strange medicinal herb. No one could figure out what could be cured by taking that milky white slurry, but they mysteriously repeated to each other, "That's poppy." The poppy is the poppy. Medicine!"

At night, when Jiaxuan was refining and processing these slurries in a small iron pot according to his father-in-law's instructions, a strange and faint aroma almost intoxicated him, his mother Bai Zhao was also intoxicated on the kang in the inner room, and Wu's fairy grass sitting in the stove and pulling the bellows was also intoxicated. The faint aroma spread from the courtyard, spreading to most of Bailu Village in the gentle night breeze of April, and adults and children were frowning their nostrils greedily to inhale the beautiful air, and they were all intoxicated. It is a kind of smell that makes people can't stop once they smell it, so that people will immediately get rid of all their worries and flutter like immortals. When they woke up early the next morning, in the streets and alleys of Ma Ma Liang, the farmers seemed to suddenly come to their senses, repeating over and over again: "The poppy is opium." ”

Bai Jiaxuan put the successfully refined opium into a porcelain jar, which was packed in a blanket and placed on his shoulder, and went into the city in an ox cart.

Bai Jiaxuan married the seventh woman, Wu Xiancao, from the mountains, and brought back poppy seeds at the same time. People whispered about whether the very watery woman would become another dead ghost under Bai Jiaxuan's poisonous barb, and no matter what, they couldn't imagine that he could not see that there was a bag of poppy seeds in the pocket under his blue robe. At the same time that his father-in-law, Wu, decided to marry his daughter to him, he also gave him poppy seeds by the way. My father-in-law said that when he passed through Shangzhou and Hankou at the beginning of the year, it took him yellow goods to get the packet of poppy seeds. He said that the climate in the mountains is too cold, and the poppy seedlings cannot withstand the severe cold of the ice and snow in Sanjiu, and the climate in the Bailu Plain outside the mountains is just right. Like wheat, opium poppy is sown in late autumn and harvested around the next year's harvest, making it suitable for growing poppy on any land and climate. He emphasized that he bought it specifically for his benefactor Bai's family, and he also spent yellow goods. He taught him how to plant, manage, harvest, harvest, especially refining and processing, and as for the market, it was not a problem at all. Whether it is in the countryside or in the town, rich or poor, ordinary people or dignitaries, they are all looking for this kind of thing. Some people smoke, some people resell, not to mention how much they collect in the pharmacy. As for the benefits and brilliant prospects of poppy cultivation, his father-in-law, Wu Changgui, did not say a word. Everyone knows the weight of this thing, and opium is as expensive as gold.

Bai Jiaxuan walked into the Rehabilitation Yuan Chinese Medicine Shop with a blanket on his back, which was the delivery point established by his grandfather and his father when he purchased Chinese medicinal materials in Panlong Town, and the relationship of mutual trust has been deep for a long time. He first reported his grandfather's name, then his father's name, and finally his father-in-law's name, and the shopkeeper of Rehabilitation Yuan Kang specially received him, and assigned his men to buy opium at the moment, and enthusiastically pointed out the technical problems of his refining quality, and told him that the grasp of the heat was very important. Bai Jiaxuan said that this is the first time to test the fire, and the next time it will definitely be better. As he went out, he fell unconsciously, and the silver dollars in his coat were much heavier than the jar of opium that had come to him.

For three consecutive years, Bai Jiaxuan planted poppies on more than 10 acres of Tianzihao water land in the river, and only grew grain in the dry plains and original slopes. The great benefits of opium poppy cultivation are more tempting than the aroma of opium. The silver dollars he sold from the opium he harvested and refined in one acre of water land could buy back more than a dozen acres of wheat that could be produced on the spot, and the value of the opium poppy planted in more than 10 acres of Tianzi water land was worth more than 100 acres of wheat and grain. Of course, Bai Jiaxuan would not be stupid enough to buy all those white flowers as silver dollars for wheat. He completely renovated the ancestral old-fashioned houses, removed the old tiles that had been mottled and replaced them with new tiles ordered from the kiln in the village, and removed the front eaves wall of the adobe rampart, and installed screen-style carved doors and windows. The renovation of the hall and wing rooms was completed in the spring, and the renovation and renovation of the gatehouse and gatehouse were carried out in the late autumn and early winter. The transformation of the gatehouse is the most thorough, it was originally made of adobe with green brick skin, and now it is all built with green bricks, and the part above the lintel has been polished by hand. The craftsmen carved the pattern with the best of their effort and skill, with a white crane on one side and a white deer on the other. The entire gatehouse retains only one of the original things, that is, a jade plaque engraved with the words "ploughing and reading heirlooms". It was the year when my brother-in-law was promoted, and my father specially asked him to write down his handwriting. After the renovation, a complete courtyard house is firmly entrenched in the village lanes of Bailu Village with its striking majesty.

The horse was expanded in the spring of the following year, and a row of adobe-tiled houses with spacious storage of wheat straw and dry soil were added; A fence was also built around the sunyard and the tethered horse yard with wooden planks. The red horse gave birth to a brown-red mule foal, and rejoiced in the newly enclosed sunyard.