Chapter 2648

Chapter 2648: Chapter 1524:

When Ding Ning appeared, those aunties immediately asked her where she was going.

“Aunties, I’ve arranged to go out shopping with a female classmate.”

“Ding Ning, the brother and sister next door are sick, aren’t you going to check on them?”

One aunt asked, clearly gloating.

“What? They’re sick? But I already made plans with my classmate, it wouldn’t be right to break them. I’ll see what my classmate thinks, and then decide whether to visit them or not.”

“Ding Ning, don’t listen to this aunt, it’s just diarrhea, not some serious illness. You girls should just go have fun.”

As this aunt spoke, she even winked at Ding Ning, telling her to go out and play, and not let herself get dragged into anything.

Ding Ning wasn’t actually going to hang out with a classmate. Leaving the family compound was mainly to let people see her walking out of her room.

Let others see her appearing in the crowd, not looking frail or sickly.

Ding Ning went into the bathroom, found a spot nobody was paying attention to, and stuck an Invisible Talisman on herself.

Then she covered her nose and walked out of the bathroom.

She took out a Flying Artifact and flew toward the neighboring county.

Today’s plan, of course, was to buy ginseng.

The Flying Artifact reached one county, and then she used a disguise technique; every time she appeared as a teenage boy. The boy’s face would be different each time, so even if those pharmacists could remember faces, when they thought back later, it would only be a blurry image.

In the first county she sold four ginseng roots, each going from 1,500 to 2,000. Offloading four roots netted her 7,000; plus yesterday’s 4,500, and the condolence money left by her mother and father, she already had more than 10,000.

If she wants to buy an apartment in the capital, an ordinary place might be between 10,000 and 15,000.

And that would only be buying one unit; there’s still renovation, and living expenses.

If she wants to become a landlady in the future, she has to buy more ginseng now.

Today Ding Ning was only going out for one day, but she could afford to come back a bit late, around one in the morning. She didn’t choose to go to farmhouses to buy chicks and goslings.

She first sold her ginseng in the four nearby counties. These counties varied in size, and she sold the ginseng to both herbal pharmacies and the black market. In every county she sold four roots, all over a hundred years old.

But within that range—one hundred, a hundred-plus, a hundred-fifty, a hundred-eighty, up to one hundred ninety years—the age differed, so the sale price differed too!

And since every buyer offered a different price, the money she got was different as well.

Flying over these four counties, she also picked up some seeds in transit: sweet potato slips, corn, wheat, rice seeds, and peanut seeds.

Each time she flew into a new area, she might pass over some fields, and Ding Ning would casually, in passing, take a bit of seed.

Not much, not enough to be easily noticed, and in some mountain forests she even got a few little rabbits and wild pheasants—this trip’s zero-cost “prizes.”

With these things, Ding Ning wouldn’t have to worry about food and drink later on.

In the future, if she gets the chance, she’ll raise sheep and dairy cows too; that way she’ll never lack mutton or milk!

Ding Ning’s schedule for the day was packed, and her meals were all cooked in the courtyard kitchen.

Although the Flying Artifact was very fast, she still spent some time resting in the courtyard. During those breaks she ate and drank, took a short rest when she was tired, and also made some Invisible Talismans, Truth Talismans, and prank talismans.

Of course, Ding Ning also noticed that every time she sold ginseng, once the dealer handed over the cash, someone would follow her!

Those people obviously couldn’t track her. As soon as she stepped out of a pharmacy or black market stall, she would vanish on the spot.

In the time it took to blink, her figure would be gone, and the person trying to follow her would be frozen in place, unable to wander around.

News from a single county might take one or two hours to pass along; news from several counties could take a day or two to get connected.

But when those buyers contacted each other, they would mention in passing how they described the person—everyone’s description of her appearance was different. Not just the clothes and style, but the face too. The only thing they agreed on was that the quality of the ginseng was consistently excellent.

Ding Ning left in the morning and came back at dusk, and when she returned she was only carrying a small basket with some leafy greens and a few eggs.

She knew very well how people think: if another family eats better than they do, they’ll feel jealous and resentful!

If they find out someone dresses better than them, they’ll hate that too.

Plenty of people know she has condolence money; they just don’t know how much!

On top of that, other families all cram into one unit, while Ding Ning has a whole unit to herself. When others are eating vegetables and she’s eating meat, what will the neighbors think?

If they smell something delicious, is she supposed to share or not?

When others were in trouble, they still helped her out—does she have to repay every single favor?

It’s not that she doesn’t want to repay them, not that she doesn’t want to show gratitude; she just has to keep a low profile and not let people know she’s well-off and loaded with cash.

The neighbors might have thoughts but not act on them, whereas the local punks are a different story.

Ding Ning has already set up Formations inside her unit, so she’s not afraid of people breaking in.

It’s just that with male and female leads like that living nearby, with that kind of character in the vicinity, she really has to stay low-key.

In the morning when she went out, she’d said she was going to the countryside to buy some produce, so a few eggs and some vegetables after running around all day fit that story.

The excuse, of course, is that she went with a classmate and didn’t dare buy too much.

If she bought too many vegetables, she couldn’t finish them, and as for eggs, she didn’t dare buy a lot.

She was afraid that if she carried too many, they’d break on the way back.

When Ding Ning came home she naturally ran into some familiar faces on the road; she smiled and greeted them, whether their attitude was friendly or tinged with something odd.