The family had spent their reunion festival in town, and on the morning of August 16th, the old master took his family back up to the mountain. Wenxuan and Wenchang both returned to school, and Wenhan had nothing in particular to do; there was still a while before he needed to go to the County School, so he followed back up the mountain. People had arrived early in the ginseng field; today was the agreed-upon day to harvest the ginseng, so naturally, they started early.
The Xu family also began harvesting ginseng today. As soon as Zhixin returned, he led the men of the household to the ginseng fields. Now that they had enough hands on deck, the children didn't really need to get involved, but the Xu kids never had a moment of idleness. To state the obvious, this harvest was the year's biggest; how could the kids miss out? So, Mrs. Xue and Mrs. Zhu stayed back to watch the house, and everyone else went to the ginseng fields, Mingyu included.
