Chapter 261
Young Constable: If you ask me how I knew about Rouge City... I actually bought his books. I bought them for people. Whether it was colleagues or friends, anyone with a weak mind or struggling with life loved reading his books, and some even saved up a fortune to buy his books. With the commissions I earned from buying books for others, I've saved enough to buy three carriages for my family.
"Oh..." Another constable nodded repeatedly after hearing this: "Then you can't blame others, and they didn't beat you." Because they had seen people being beaten for writing storybooks before. Those people would just gather together with masks and beat the writers, and then run away after beating them. Even if the beaten writers wanted to report the case, in the end they could only... hey.
"No, they splashed water on me!"
"Oh, maybe it's the Water-Splashing Festival? Splashing water for blessings or something, right?" The young constable didn't want to get involved in this matter at all. Last time, his wife accidentally flipped through the book about Rouge City that he bought for someone else, and she cried uncontrollably that night, saying that all men were bad. He had to coax her for a long time, and she almost cried unjustly.
"No..." Songkran Festival is not at this time!
"If you keep dawdling, it won't matter to us, but will you get caught by someone else who wants to beat you up?"
“…”
Although she was very angry, Yanzhicheng also knew how much the book she wrote hated some people. After being reminded by the constable, she could not stay any longer and hurriedly ordered the coachman to buy her a new set of clothes. She hurried back to the carriage and frantically wrung out her soaked clothes.
Seeing this, the manager of the Qiao Family Escort Agency took the initiative to ask Yanzhicheng if he wanted to change to a clean carriage. Knowing that there was no charge for the change, Yanzhicheng decisively accepted the offer. When the new carriage arrived, he immediately jumped out of the old carriage with his package and jumped over. In the new carriage, he took off his half-wrung clothes and changed into the new clothes that the coachman had bought for him.
Although the clothes were not his favorite style, at least they were the right size and were clean new clothes. Yanzhicheng, who did not dare to leave the carriage by himself, wanted to be picky, but the escort agency was not there to help him do this. He was also in a hurry to escape, so he finally chose to keep his mouth shut and asked the coachman to drive away from this place of trouble: the complaint could be made later. If he offended the coachman now, he would suffer on the rest of the journey.
Bei Qiao watched the carriage leave, then, seeing nothing else to see, turned away with a bored look and continued walking. Passing by the shop where he'd bought the wound medicine, Bei Qiao went in and posted a message about what he'd seen.
Bei Qiao: I don't have any particular purpose, I just think it's a bit of a waste to watch this excitement alone... Hmm? How come someone replied so quickly?
Bei Qiao, who had been planning to leave after posting, stopped and stood in the store to answer the other party's questions. The player who came out from the back was stunned when he saw someone outside, then realized that Bei Qiao must be a player, and then he breathed a sigh of relief.
Because there was another person in the room, the forum suddenly disappeared. Bei Qiao turned around to look at the person who had come. Seeing that he was hesitant, she simply walked to the side to give him enough space. After the person left, she reopened the forum and found that in just a few moments, many people began to reply to the post.
After confirming with Beiqiao that the protagonist's pen name of the gossip was Yanzhicheng, those people hurriedly asked Beiqiao where Yanzhicheng was located. Beiqiao told everyone that Yanzhicheng had already left on the escort agency's carriage and was not sure where he was going. He could only say that he had not left Xiaoyue City when the post was posted.
Player: Currently in Xiaoyue City? Thank you! What kind of carriage is he riding in?
Beiqiao: The carriage of Qiao Family Escort Agency, driven by one person, with a black horse.
Player: What does the driver look like?
Bei Qiao: A middle-aged man of average height and yellow skin. Others call him Lao Li, but I don’t know if he is Muzi Li.
Player: Thank you very much!
Seeing that no one else had any questions for the time being, Bei Qiao was about to close the post and leave the store. Just then, the system prompted her that she had received a reward from someone.
Rewards are given for such things. What on earth did Yanzhicheng write about it... Beiqiao shook his head and did not look at the specific amount of the reward. He just turned off the system's message to beware of fraud, then left the store and walked through the bustling crowd on the street outside towards the Tuntian District: Wow, where did this elephant come from?
Xiaoyue City is relatively close to the border, and to supply the army, it has a large area of military farms. Thanks to these farms, Xiaoyue City remained relatively calm during the siege, and even when reinforcements arrived, the city still had ample food. There was also a minor incident during this time: because the plaque at the city gate was illegible, a group of enemy soldiers following a map, believing they had taken the wrong direction, hesitated and revealed their whereabouts, causing their planned sneak attack to become a forced assault, ultimately leading to their capture.
It is impossible for military settlements to be visited by the public. Theoretically speaking, this is also not allowed for civilian settlements. However, people are not so rigid in doing things. As long as you pay some money, someone will take you to take a look at the military settlements. You can only look at them and cannot touch them. If you want to touch them, there will be a different price.
Bei Qiao: Who on earth has nothing better to do than spend money to watch others farm...Oh, it's me.
There were many people like Bei Qiao who saw the farming as a spectacle. The demographics of the people involved were complex, and some novice spies also came to gather information. To deal with these people, the local government of Xiaoyue City had specially opened a number of farmlands, the locations of which were not confidential, for people to visit and cultivate.
Since most of the visitors have never farmed before, after opening these fields, local officials need to send extra people to take care of them to prevent them from being abandoned. Sometimes, when business is so good and there are too many people, they even have to open up a few extra pieces of wasteland to outsiders who can't get a number to farm for fun.
"The weeds in the field need to be replanted." The clerk in charge of one of the fields, accustomed to this routine, pulled out his notebook and crossed it out. There were no crops in the wasteland, but to enrich the tourists' experience, they took the trouble to dig through the dirt and find some weeds to plant in the fields, since these people didn't know what grains looked like anyway. Unsurprisingly, these weeds, not buried deep enough, were dug up several times a day by inexperienced tourists. Thankfully, they weren't real crops, as that would have been heartbreaking.
The petty official had his own land and knew the hard work of farming. After all, food was the primary need of the people. But he couldn't understand why so many people who didn't need to farm insisted on trying it, especially since many adults would bring their children to work, claiming that hard work would pay off, leading to promotions and wealth... What a load of bullshit! If hard work paid off, then his grandmother's old ox would be an official by now!
"Suffering, suffering, what's so good about suffering..." the clerk muttered in a low voice: other people suffer in farming for the sake of harvest, and they can get rewards if they farm well, but these people farm purely for the sake of suffering, and after they go back they still don't know what to do in their own fields... The grass grows faster than the crops, and after a while they have to find someone to weed it again.
Bei Qiao didn't hear what the clerk said. When she arrived at the edge of the military farm, she happened to see a family accompanying their child to experience the feeling of plowing. Following the demonstration of the elderly farmer nearby, the child dragged farm tools taller than themselves around with a sullen face. If they accidentally stepped on the nearby seedlings, their parents would scold them: "Don't you know that every grain of rice is hard-earned? If you step on a seedling, a whole bunch of millet will not grow!"
"Millet? Didn't they say that the fields were planted with rice?"
"Nonsense! Rice is grown in paddy fields! Do you see any water here?"
The old farmer, who was used to giving up on correcting others, said: "..."
Bei Qiao, who only paid the admission fee and stood by the field watching, said: Is it possible that those are just weeds?
Whether it was the scorching sun or the discomfort of being watched, the family ultimately left the field before they had spent enough time. They berated the child as they left, complaining that he couldn't endure the hardship and had wasted the money he'd spent on the farming experience. The child, shoved around by his parents, rolled his eyes, pouted his lips, and seemed ready to fly over to his parents to show his disdain and indifference. He'd occasionally wave his fist in the air to pretend he'd vented, only to be kicked by a sharp-eyed parent, causing him to stumble and nearly fall.
There were many children like him, brought in to work. Most of those working in the fields were children, but there were exceptions. In a field near the center, a man who didn't look particularly young was holding a hoe and cursing, cursing the heavens, the earth, and the old farmer. He looked like he didn't want to work at all, but he didn't dare run away. Ever since he noticed that everyone working around him was younger than him, he'd felt uncomfortable and wanted to cover his face with a piece of cloth.
"Why are you hiding, big brother? Are you feeling ashamed now? Then when you were spending money to hire someone, why didn't you consider that money is hard to come by?" The little girl sitting by the field drinking tea saw that he didn't have the energy to scold him anymore, so she ordered someone around to bring him some water to prevent him from getting thirsty. "You spent a full thirty taels of silver. You're such a spendthrift! The person you hired is unreliable. He took the money and disappeared. So much money is just down the drain."
"Our family is not bankrupt. It's just thirty taels of silver..." The man took the bowl of water and drank it all in one gulp unconvinced.
"Even if it's just a few dozen taels of silver, you didn't earn it yourself..." The little girl made a face at the man, "Forget it, my mother won't let me say any more. You're still embarrassed now, but if you get angry one day and don't even care about your dignity, you'll be in big trouble!"
"What are you talking about? I'm not the only one in my family who doesn't make any money and eats for free..."
Thirty taels! Upon hearing such a large sum of money, the people in the nearby fields tilted their ears, eager to hear what was going on. The brave ones approached the man directly, hinting that they could help find the person, even if the reward was not as much as thirty taels.
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