Chapter 199 Townspeople
The courtyard was elegantly decorated. Two banyan trees, one on each side, blocked half of the courtyard, allowing sunlight to enter without being glaring or overcast. The courtyard wall was covered with a first-grade flowering spiritual vine called the Misty Blue Vine. Its flowers could be crushed into a juice for pain relief or used as a supplement in making low-grade hemostatic pills. However, Luo Xuanyi had never considered it an ornamental plant. These six-petal, misty blue flowers held a tranquil beauty.
Four rows of wooden benches sat beneath the shade of a tree, where half-grown children with pigtails sat, quietly pounding something with stone bowls and pestles. The entire courtyard was filled with the familiar medicinal aroma that Luo Xuanyi was familiar with. At each of their feet stood a large wooden barrel.
Before Luo Xuanyi and the others could enter the house, the door opened and a thin, stubble-like man and a girl dressed in white walked out. When the man saw Tian Liu, he called out, "Uncle Tian, let's go check out the barricades."
Tian Liu glanced at Luo Xuanyi, but said nothing and followed the man away. Ma Jiaju had no intention of introducing the man and the girl to Luo Xuanyi. He watched the girl in white sit next to the children, bending over to examine the wooden barrels one by one. He then turned to Luo Xuanyi and said, "Buying spiritual herbs and aggregates, right? Follow me this way."
Confused, Luo Xuanyi followed Ma Jiaju into a large hall on the right side of the compound. She thought that if Su Yang were here, he would definitely frown at the etiquette of these people. She felt that all the tricks she had learned were fine for dealing with monks, but once she started communicating with ordinary people, Luo Xuanyi was at a loss.
The main hall had only large doors and windows on the side facing the courtyard; the other three walls were solidly built. Inside, a white cloth, roughly the entire width and height of the wall, was hung, covered in various inscriptions. Luo Xuanyi took a closer look and saw that it listed the quantities and prices of spiritual herbs and demon beast bones for sale.
There were three or four men sitting on small stools in the main room. When they saw Luo Xuanyi and Ma Jiaju come in, they immediately stood up without saying a word. They looked at each other as if communicating with their eyes.
Ma Jiaju ignored their strange behavior and pointed at the white cloth and said to Luo Xuanyi: "The cloth contains all the spiritual herbs and bone materials that are available now. Take a look at what you want. If you don't understand what is written above, just ask me." After that, he leaned against the corner, folded his arms and remained silent.
At this moment, Luo Xuanyi was finally sure that there was nothing wrong with her communication method.
They're the ones who can't talk! Is this the tone of a normal businessperson? Is this about reading people's expressions? Is this about hospitality?
Luo Xuanyi felt her confidence returning to her heart, and her mood calmed down. She felt that she hadn't experienced such a big emotional fluctuation in a long time, and it was all because of a small thing.
Because this broke Luo Xuanyi's common sense, she was a little nervous. She exhaled, her eyes fell on the white cloth, and looked at it carefully.
The writer had clearly received a good education; even with the charcoal pencil, the handwriting was elegant and clear, making it a pleasure to read. However, Luo Xuanyi's brows furrowed as she read.
It’s not that the price is a problem. In fact, Luo Xuanyi doesn’t care about money anymore. She has plenty of money. Although she worked hard to get it from the dilapidated ghost market, she doesn’t feel real when using it.
She was not satisfied with these spiritual herbs and aggregates. For example, the spiritual herbs were okay, although they were not particularly effective, but they were whole plants. For example, the vines of the wood could be used as auxiliary materials. The white cloth read:
"Two first-grade vines of the Chinese twig, half a spirit coin/thirty strings of copper coins"
There were only two of each type of spiritual herb, and to gather enough to refine seven formation flags, not to mention the experimental losses, it would take quite a while to buy all the herbs together. Luo Xuanyi was thankful that she had refined the main flag first.
But compared to the bone materials, this was still good. The bone materials were all sorts of odds and ends. A brown monkey's leg bone was sold separately, two skylark tail feathers were also arranged in a row, and there was also half a white bamboo deer antler, a giant python's fang...
You should know that these are low-grade monsters that are widely distributed. They are sold by weight in the ghost market. Only those very rare monsters are cut into such small pieces and sold in retail.
Luo Xuanyi couldn't help but ask Ma Jiaju: "Are all the items sold here sold here?"
Ma Jiaju nodded: "Everything that is currently available is listed above."
Luo Xuanyi was still unconvinced. She wondered if it was like the Baose Store in Longlan City's Tianjie, where they treated and sold goods separately to customers of different statuses. "Don't they sell whole monsters with bones and blood? Or even complete skeletons?"
Ma Jiaju looked at Luo Xuanyi strangely. Luo Xuanyi thought he was probably complaining that she didn't understand what he was saying.
"No. What's listed here is everything," he emphasized again, then thought for a moment and added, "If what you want isn't listed here, you can come back later. Town residents go hunting in the mountains every day, and what they can buy varies from day to day."
A one-eyed man standing nearby couldn't help but say, "Sister, if you want a whole monster, you can carve the type of monster you want on the wooden board over here. If we catch it, we won't remove the bones. You can come and claim it then."
Another man said honestly, "But if you don't shave the bones and sell them whole, you'll have to go through the trouble of processing them yourself, and the price will be even higher. If you don't have enough money, it's better to buy them piecemeal."
He didn't think anything was wrong after he finished speaking, and the men beside him also brushed him off as if what he said made sense. Luo Xuanyi wanted to complain that he was sabotaging her, but she couldn't.
Third update~ Oops, I guess I can only update five more before midnight today, but I'll finish six more anyway~
When Sister Yi went to Fuji Town, she met the intellectual Zhang Qiu. Xiaohe City was directly destroyed. This was her first time to truly come into contact with the general public.
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