No matter how good a person's psychological quality is, it is difficult to lie firmly and continuously next to the corpse of his former acquaintance who has been stabbed into a pile of yellow thorns, not to mention that he has revealed a huge flaw.

Lin Hai pointed at the kneeling women at the back and said, "Come here, yes, the one in the flowery dress, come and answer. In this day and age, anyone still wearing clean flowery clothes is obviously not a good person. Come, come forward."

The woman in the flowery clothes was about twenty years old, which was supposed to be the age of a flower. Looking closely, she was quite graceful. She even wore light makeup for such a village. There was a charm between her eyebrows. Although she was not as beautiful as the beauties that Lin Hai had carefully studied on the short video platform in his previous life, she was considered a beauty in this mountain and this scene.

At the rear of the group, about a dozen women knelt, weeping uncontrollably. A closer look revealed that most were crying out of fear or the uncertainty of their future lives. This woman, however, covered her face with tears while observing through her fingers, her attention fixed on the two leaders, Wang Liang and Lin Hai. Lin Hai felt this needed to be addressed; otherwise, if such a woman were brought back like this, it wouldn't be impossible for the group to split.

"Your Majesty, I am..." The woman in flowery clothes came forward and immediately spoke as soon as she knelt down. However, Lin Hai waved his hand and said, "You are obviously the wife of the leader of the mountain stronghold. She is definitely not a good person. Take her away and chop her into pieces."

Huayi didn't expect that this man was so ignorant of romance. He had a thousand tricks but hadn't used them yet. Just as he put his hand on the collar to unbutton it, he was about to chop off his head. Judging from his age, is he still a fool who doesn't know the good of women?

The thought of being chopped off into two parts caused Huayi to lose her temper. She yelled, "Wang Wu is the leader of the stronghold, but you didn't kill him. I'm just a weak woman who was kidnapped and taken to the mountains. Why would you kill me? I didn't do anything so evil."

As soon as he finished speaking, Wang Wu, knowing that he could not hide the truth, suddenly jumped up. Fortunately, he had already knelt close enough to Lin Hai before. As long as he could hold the young man who seemed to be the leader hostage, he would not be hopeless.

Wang Wu thought so while jumping in the air, and then was kicked away by Wang Liang who was prepared.

"Hey..." Lin Hai sighed, "In the early years on the battlefield, there were many people who used this method to feign surrender, or even tried to exchange their lives for the lives of enemy generals. This trick is no longer new."

Lin Hai was too lazy to ask any more questions, so he asked the militia to tie up all the people and take them back to the city for separate interrogation. No one was short of time.

After searching for a while, Lin Hai had to admit that, to some extent, this village was really poor.

There are not many iron tools that can be mentioned. They are mainly weapons used by the leaders. Most of the other iron tools are farm tools, but if you look closely, they have also been transformed into weapons. If you talk about farming tools, they are mostly wooden tools.

Apart from the two carts of food looted from Lu You, there was almost no food left in the village. Several bags of the looted food were thrown into the pot. It seemed that they were very hungry. Unfortunately, most of it had not been eaten yet. Now it became dinner for Lin Hai and the others, which saved them a lot of trouble.

The most abundant thing in the village is money.

This was astonishing. Although there was little gold and silver, the militia, according to their interrogation, had unearthed more than a dozen bags of copper coins beneath the largest thatched hut. It was said that these were the hard-earned sums looted by the various chieftains from the refugees over the past few days. Although there was nowhere to spend them, they were still money, so they were kept.

This helped Lin Hai a lot. Lin Hai even wanted to chop Wang Wu off as a reward to make him suffer less.

As the population of Qinghetun grew, normal material circulation began. However, except for Lin Hai who still had money in his hands, most people did not even have a pair of decent pants when they walked out of the forest. Any transaction could only be done in barter, which greatly hindered economic development.

What's more, in order to facilitate transportation and storage, most of the money in Lin Hai's hands was gold and silver, and the economy of Qinghetun had not yet developed to the point where gold and silver were needed for shopping. The dilemma of lack of copper coins had long been placed in front of Lin Hai, but he was unable to solve it.

After counting the copper coins, Lin Hai immediately opened a bag and began to reward the brothers and militiamen according to their merits. Everyone received a share according to their contributions. Lin Hai also specifically instructed the brothers that although their supplies were now directly distributed and they had everything they needed, they should try to spend all their money after returning. After all, only what was spent was considered money.

As for the remaining copper coins, Lin Hai clamored to use them as reserves for Qinghetun, but he also knew clearly that the smelted copper coins could be separated into copper and zinc, and he could find a way to pull out copper wire. His long-awaited leap, oh no, his leapfrog development was about to begin.

Before leaving, Lin Hai rejected the suggestion of burning down the village to prevent future troubles. Instead, he asked Lu You to stay there with his two sworn brothers and a team of militia. This place was too close to the county town and was considered an important place that had to be defended.

Qinghe Village was a formal administrative agency, and Wang Liang was a legitimate county lieutenant. Since they had taken on the government's banner, many things became difficult to handle. Furthermore, Wang Wu's confession revealed that within the surrounding hundreds of miles, there were at least a thousand bandits and robbers. Most of them were soldiers and farmhands who had been disbanded, and they had taken some refugees with them to the mountains, looting and cultivating land. These people had a natural distrust of the government. They gathered in the mountains and forests, and irregularly collected road management fees on major transportation routes. If the Qinghe Village government didn't intervene, it would lose the support of the people. If it intervened, they would easily be ganged up on. Lin Hai knew that without firearms, even ninety-eight healthy brothers in the forest would be no match for thousands of bandits.

Well, if you can't beat them, you can only join them.

A few days later, a large banner of "Doing Justice for Heaven" was erected at the entrance of the stronghold. Lu You called himself King Zhentian and announced that the battle a few days ago was that he led his brothers to attack the original stronghold and took its place to become the local overlord. He also sent his brothers to inform the nearby mountain kings, hoping that everyone would give him face and recognize King Zhentian's authority in the local area.

Considering that King Zhentian only inherited the original mountain stronghold's territory and did not expand outward, and he only wanted a status from everyone, the mountain kings wisely sent envoys to congratulate King Zhentian after seeing the dozen or so strong men under King Zhentian and their patchwork tattered armor, and also presented him with valuable gifts, mostly a pheasant or a bag of mountain products.

I have to say that pheasant stewed with wild mushrooms is really delicious. Lin Hai felt the other party's sincerity.

As for Wang Liang's question about everyone still going up the mountain to become bandits, Lin Hai explained, "The southwestern border has always had a tradition of being farmers by day and bandits by night. Bandits are rampant now, and as outsiders, we naturally have to adapt to local customs. Furthermore, we can't lose such a good tradition."