The Great Red Pine Root Festival was a tree with forty to fifty root knots, and it had been growing for a good hundred years. A rectangular piece of bark had been stripped from its trunk, about a meter off the ground.
Because pine trees continuously secrete resin, which then oxidizes in the air, the spot where the bark was stripped had become a pitch-black patch.
But upon closer inspection, one could still faintly see the marks of knives and axes.
This was a Pine Tree Omen, which Northeasterners colloquially call an Elder Omen. It was a mark left on a nearby Pine Tree by a Mountain Man after they had unearthed Ginseng in this location.
It recorded the year and month, how many people had harvested what kind of Ginseng here, as a notice to those who came after.
Zhang Yuanmin returned with two sticks and sidled up to Zhao Jun, asking obsequiously, "Brother, what's all this carving on here?"
