As they walked, Heita looked at Lin Rui warily: "I'm warning you, don't play any tricks on me. Don't think that our Dirong tribe is so easy to bully!"
Lin Rui ignored him and waited for him to get closer. When they were very close, Lin Rui opened his pocket, revealing the white salt inside!
"What is this? Flour?" Heita had never seen such fine salt before. It was white and looked just like flour. It was no surprise that he mistook it for something.
"Flour?" Lin Rui gave him a look of feigned contempt. "You said you'd seen a lot of good things, but it turns out you've never seen anything good!"
Heita was no longer able to be angry. His attention was drawn to the salt in his pocket. "What is this?"
"Salt!" Lin Rui said directly.
"Impossible!" Heita retorted immediately, "You think I've never seen salt before, right? How can salt look like this?"
Lin Rui shook his head, pinched some from his small pocket and placed it in Heita's palm: "It's a bargain for you, try it yourself."
In the palm of Heita's dark big hand was only a pinch of salt that Lin Rui had placed. After hearing that it was salt, he did not dare to shake his hand, for fear that it would fall to the ground and be wasted. He used his other finger to dip a little into his mouth, and when he felt the familiar salty taste, his eyes widened immediately: "It's... It's really salt!"
Lin Rui looked at him with an expression that suggested he had taken advantage. "If I hadn't looked around and found that only your cow was barely acceptable, I would never have traded with you today."
Heita no longer had the contempt for the people in power that he had before. Now he wished he could be a dog at Lin Rui's feet. He even wanted to bark a few times to cheer up his master, as long as he was willing to give him the salt in his hand.
He dared to swear to Changshengtian that such good salt had never been seen by anyone, not only their Dirong tribe, but even the nobles and Khans of other large tribes had never seen it. It had no bitterness or astringency at all, just a simple salty taste.
"Switch, switch, switch!" Heita quickly snatched the refined salt from Lin Rui's hand: "I'll switch!"
He took the bait! In that case, Lin Rui unceremoniously imitated Heita and opened his mouth as loudly as a lion: "You can trade, I want your two cows!"
Heita seemed to be frightened by Lin Rui's lion-like mouth. He looked at the handful of refined salt in his arms, then looked at the two tall and strong cows from his tribe in the shack, and frowned: "You are too greedy. How much salt do you have? I have two Mongolian cows weighing more than 600 kilograms each. If I make this exchange with you, I will lose a lot of money."
Lin Rui retorted, unwilling to be outdone: "You should be secretly happy that you can exchange it for my salt. Do you know what kind of salt I have?"
Heita was stunned for a moment, then looked at the salt in his arms: "What salt? Isn't it just ordinary salt that looks a little better?"
"Look at you, you're a frog in a well!" Lin Rui said bluntly.
Heita knew that being a frog in a well wasn't a good thing, but since he wasn't a member of the imperial court, he didn't know what it meant. He then stood there, holding the salt tightly in his arms, waiting for Lin Rui's explanation.
Lin Rui looked at him and asked, "Do these tribes in your grassland often give birth to idiots, deaf-mutes, strabismus, and paralyzed children?"
Heita's eyes glazed over, a murderous intent emerging. He didn't know why Lin Rui knew about their grasslands. When their parents discovered something was wrong with these children after they were born, they would reluctantly drown them. Life on the grasslands was already difficult, with limited food and clothing, and it was impossible to raise a bunch of useless children. Therefore, these disabled children were destined to die.
The incident of children being lost happened frequently on the grassland. People in the grassland thought that they had offended the Eternal Heaven, so they would abandon these children at the sacred stone and wait for the vultures, the messengers of the Eternal Heaven, to come and peck them, so that the Eternal Heaven could bless these children's souls and limbs so that they could cleanse their sins in the next life and grow up healthy.
Heita's wife gave birth to a normal child after giving birth to two sick children in succession, and Heita personally sent his two children to Changshengtian for sacrifice.
He didn't know how Lin Rui knew the long-hidden secret of their grassland. How much did he know?
This is the harm of lack of information flow. Heita regarded what Lin Rui said as a tribal secret, but in Lin Rui's eyes, these had become common sense.
This situation not only occurred among the nomadic peoples in the grassland tribes, but also among the children of ordinary people. The infant mortality rate of children in ancient times was extremely high.
Sanliang calmly walked between the two men, protecting Lin Rui behind him, while keeping a safe distance from the black tower.
The atmosphere was already tense, and Lin Rui continued, "Women in your tribe are prone to miscarriages, premature births, stillbirths, and even children with congenital deformities!"
These words hit Heita's lungs hard. His voice dropped several degrees, and he asked with murderous intent, "What exactly do you want to say?"
Lin Rui glanced at the salt that Heita was holding tightly. "The salt I gave you is iodized salt. Perhaps you don't know what iodized salt is, so let me tell you directly. Only by eating this kind of salt will the people of your tribe become healthier and healthier, and the children they give birth to will become stronger and stronger. The problem just mentioned is not caused by anything else, but because the salt you are eating now lacks iodine. Only by eating this kind of salt will your tribe become stronger and stronger than other tribes."
"If you don't believe it, you can try it for a year. If your wife or your tribe still can't give birth to healthy children by then, you can come and fight me. How about that?" Lin Rui, like a qualified dealer, portrayed salt, which is ordinary to modern people, as a panacea in front of foreigners.
In fact, no matter whether Lin Rui mentioned the iodine element or not, this white refined salt had already made Heita so envious that he couldn't walk. Now that he heard Lin Rui say that eating this kind of salt has great benefits, he was even more reluctant to let it go.
What the Linchao people said was right. It was a buyer's market now. As long as the Linchao people were willing to trade the salt with other tribes, many other tribes would be willing to do so. They would even offer three or four cattle and sheep to seal the deal. In that case, they would have no advantage at all.
Heita pondered for a moment, then handed the ropes of the two cows to Lin Rui: "From now on, they are yours!"
Sanliang immediately took over the two oxen, and Lin Rui smiled happily: "Not bad, not bad, it's a pleasure to work with you."
When Heita was about to leave, he turned to look at Lin Rui and asked, "What if the salt is all gone?"
Even with this little salt, even if we live frugally, it wouldn't last a month. What if we run out of it and can't supply it?
Lin Rui said, "How can such good things be available all the time? This is refined salt that we secretly processed in Linchao. I had to rely on many connections to get this little bit. You should keep your mouth shut when you go back. Don't tell anyone. Otherwise, if the matter of refined salt is exposed, I will be beheaded, and your tribe will never be able to eat such good salt again."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
