Luozi Village is about 10 to 20 miles away from the county seat. In order not to waste time, the group decided to rent a horse-drawn carriage to get there, which would be more convenient.
Zhang San, a petty hoodlum who wanders around, is quite familiar with Shangtang County. He led a few people directly to the place in the county where horse-drawn carriages are rented.
Shen Yu was walking slowly because of a leg injury, but in order not to slow everyone down, he gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep up with everyone's pace.
The four of them rented a carriage, and Pei Yao paid for it before setting off.
Everyone on the way had a tense expression and didn't say a word. The atmosphere wasn't very good. After all, apart from Pei Yao and Niu Qingshan, who were relatively familiar with each other, the other two could only be described as... not familiar.
Pei Yao glanced at Shen Yu, then asked Zhang San how he found them.
Zhang San had a blade of grass in his mouth as he recalled what had happened recently.
"A while ago, I had just left the gambling den when Manager Qian approached me, asking me to inquire about two people. He gave me five taels of silver, which is the rule in the underworld—you have to pay a small deposit before asking for information..."
The shopkeeper Qian asked Zhang San to inquire about the two Pei brothers.
Zhang San had to do things for the money he received, and it just so happened that he knew Manager Qian.
So during that time, Zhang San helped Manager Qian inquire about Pei Dalang and Pei Erlang, and he searched almost every salt field, big and small, around Shangtang County, but he still couldn't find out any news about them.
Zhang San had no choice but to give up.
Over the years, some of the exiled convicts from Kyoto who were sent to work in the salt fields have died.
Anyway, he was an exile, so once he died, he was gone. Once he's dead, it's hard to get any news about him.
Unable to find out the news, Zhang San did not immediately return to town. Instead, he took the silver given to him by Manager Qian and went to the Chunfeng Tower in the county to drink and have fun.
The girls at Chunfeng Tower are the most beautiful in the county. He hasn't been to Chunfeng Tower since his family fell on hard times, but he misses the girls there.
"Especially the young lady Xiao Tao from Chunfeng Tower, her looks, her voice, her figure..." Zhang San said with a look of rapture, his hands still gesturing Xiao Tao's figure in the air.
Pei Yao rolled her eyes speechlessly, then turned to look at Niu Qingshan beside her. He seemed to be listening intently.
Pei Yao glanced at Shen Yu beside her. The boy had his head down, so she couldn't see his expression or whether he was listening attentively.
Pei Yao noticed the blush on the back of his ears.
Shen Yu coughed lightly, glanced at Pei Yao who was looking at him, and interrupted Zhang San's description of the girl Xiao Tao: "Ahem... there's another girl in the carriage."
Zhang San glanced at Pei Yao and immediately shut his mouth. He had been so engrossed in his conversation that he had momentarily forgotten that Pei Yao was still inside the carriage.
He scratched his head somewhat embarrassedly and apologized, "Miss Pei, I'm sorry, I just forgot myself."
Pei Yao didn't care. In her previous life, she was already a woman in her twenties, and she was used to such comments.
However, Pei Yao really didn't want to listen to Zhang San's description of that girl, Xiao Tao.
The women men talk about are always...
After Zhang San entered Chunfeng Tower, he ordered a pot of wine and a plate of peanuts, then found a table and started drinking.
After a few rounds of drinks, he felt his blood rushing to his head as he looked at the girls surrounding him. He then took out all the silver he had and went to sleep at the Chunfeng Tower.
Zhang San thought that not only was the wine at Chunfeng Tower delicious and the peanuts tasty, but the girls were also quite attractive, delicate and pretty.
The soundproofing between rooms in this wooden building wasn't very good, so after a while, Zhang San could hear people chatting next door.
It's roughly about how the county recently reopened its previously closed mines, so they brought in a lot of exiled convicts from Kyoto.
Zhang San gleaned important information: salt fields, people from Kyoto, and exiled convicts.
Doesn't this all match up?
Upon hearing this, Zhang San immediately pulled up his pants, got up, and left Chunfeng Tower, following the news to inquire about it everywhere.
He actually found out.
Although Zhang San was a scoundrel, he did know quite a few hoodlums. These people usually hung out in the streets and, while they couldn't help with big things, they could still help with small things like getting information. So, he asked many people to help him inquire about the Luozi Village mine.
At that time, Zhang San had a friend who was a hoodlum. His cousin from his maternal family happened to be an official in the mine, so he took Zhang San there to inquire.
Zhang San then scraped together some money, bought some fine wine and food, and went to visit his older cousin.
After getting his older cousin drunk, he gave him the last two taels of silver he had borrowed, and only then did he manage to get some information.
Zhang San had a sweet tongue and knew how to coax people. He quickly got his older cousin drunk, and under Zhang San's coaxing, the cousin blurted out the whole thing in a slurred voice.
In Luozi Village, a village under Shangtang County, there was an abandoned mine. Some time ago, some villagers found a lot of ore there.
Mining ore illegally is a capital offense. The man was timid, so he offered the ore to the village chief, who then passed it up the chain of command.
Finally, the county sent people to check out the old mine in Luozi Village, and they found that there really was a lot of ore.
They immediately started posting job advertisements, seeking young, strong adult men, with a daily wage of forty coins.
Because the mines are dangerous, with frequent rockfalls, no family would send their man to work in a mine unless they were so poor that they had to beg on the streets.
So the county spent half a month recruiting but still couldn't find many people.
But the mine still needed to be mined, so someone suggested to the official in charge of the mine that they use the exiled convicts from Kyoto instead.
And the person who made the suggestion happened to be Zhang San's older cousin.
The official was worried about not being able to recruit anyone, and after hearing what his cousin said, he thought about it for a moment and immediately agreed.
However, not just anyone could be chosen for the exiles; those who held high-ranking official positions in Kyoto were not considered.
Working in the mines was much harder and more dangerous than working in the salt fields. These people, who used to hold high-ranking official positions in the capital, didn't want to offend these people, since there was no guarantee that they wouldn't one day be exonerated and reinstated.
Therefore, they set their sights on those who held low-ranking official positions in Kyoto, who were mostly people with little status in Kyoto and generally had no chance of returning to Kyoto.
They don't need to worry about these kinds of people, because even if they die, no one will care. They're dead, that's it... dead.
Nobody cared.
So Pei Dalang and Pei Erlang were lucky enough to be selected, while Shen Jing was selected because he was unlucky.
When Shen Yu saw that her father had been arrested, she volunteered to go to the mine with him.
The mine was remote, and it wasn't exactly honorable to secretly bring exiled convicts from the salt fields to work in the mine, so apart from those inside the salt fields and those working in the mine, very few ordinary people knew about it.
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