The name of this town is Nandao County. Although it is not big, it looks prosperous. It gives people the feeling of when Ji Yuan first arrived in Ning'an County.
But after a careful comparison, this side is of course far inferior. At least the obvious difference can be seen from the expressions of the people.
If I were to describe it, the difference is that everyone in Ning'an County can be said to live and work in peace and contentment, while the expressions on the faces of the people here reveal a certain anxiety.
Not long after entering the city, you will see the market. The streets are very crowded with people coming and going as well as carriages and horses. You have to give way to others in some places.
Ji Yuan was wearing a white shirt and walking neither fast nor slow. His hair was loose and a black jade hairpin that looked extremely good was inserted into his bun. More importantly, there was only one person there.
After walking on the street for a while, Ji Yuan found himself being stared at by several groups of people. Judging from the stares he felt and the whispers he heard, these people almost all had no good intentions. They either wanted to steal or even kill him.
"The world is so fickle, the public security here is really not good enough."
Sighing in his heart, Ji Yuan didn't pay much attention to it. He quickened his pace, and after circling around left and right, he left behind several groups of people.
Ji Yuan stopped when he passed a stall on the street corner.
This stall was a dry biscuit shop, but it was different from the ones Ji Yuan had bought before. When he happened to pass by, he saw the boss who made these biscuits used two large iron molds to bake the upper and lower pieces of the biscuit respectively, with some salty dried vegetables embedded in them. After closing them, some sesame seeds with powder were sprinkled on them. Ji Yuan smelled it and wanted to try it.
"Shopkeeper, how much do you sell these cakes for?"
Seeing that there was no sound at the stall for the time being, Ji Yuan stopped in front of the stall and asked.
The old man making pancakes looked up and saw a gentleman who looked like a scholar. This was not extremely rare in Nandao County, but at least not common. His accent did not sound like that of a local.
"This cake is sold individually for two cents each, and a pound is eight cents, which is about five cakes."
"Oh, can you please let me taste this dried vegetable?"
“What does dried vegetables taste like?”
The old man felt a little strange, but after hesitating for a moment he nodded, picked up some dried vegetables from the pottery jar on the stall and handed them to Ji Yuan.
Ji Yuan tasted it and smiled as he savored the familiar salty flavor.
"The shop owner's ancestral home is from Dazhen Jizhou, right?"
"Well, that's not..."
The old man said something, then seemed to suddenly think of something and immediately continued.
"It seems that you are an expert, sir. To be honest, this dried vegetable was indeed taught by a Dazhen man back then. As for where he came from in Dazhen, I don't know."
Ji Yuan nodded.
"I see. Then please weigh ten kilograms of cakes for me."
"Ten pounds?"
"Yes, ten pounds!"
"Hey, hey, hey, sir, please wait a moment. There are only about six pounds of ready-made ones. I will make it for you right away. It will be ready in no time!"
Ten kilograms of cakes are a big business for the old man. If they are sold out, most of today's goods will be gone.
The old man was very skillful. He chatted with Ji Yuan while making the pancakes. In a short while, he had finished making ten kilograms of pancakes.
After weighing the money, Yuan naturally had to pay. He took out his purse, which looked bulging, but when he looked inside, he saw that the copper coins, which accounted for the majority of the money, were all printed with "Yuan De Tong Bao". Since they were coins of the Dazhen period, they were of course not circulated here, so he had no choice but to take out a piece of silver.
"Here, let the shopkeeper weigh the silver first."
"Oh, okay, the guest gave you silver!"
The old man had rarely been out of Nandao County, so he didn't know what the situation was like in other places, but in Nandao County, copper coins were sometimes very confusing. The two cents for a cake he mentioned referred to the standard one.
However, many copper coins do not meet the standards. Some privately minted coins are mixed with other materials. Some copper coins are printed in an exaggerated way to say that one is worth ten, but they are not that heavy, so many people do not recognize them when trading.
In this situation, gold and silver become extremely precious, with purchasing power far exceeding that of Dazhen, and can often be exchanged for copper coins that are more than their own value.
Many people directly used silver to buy a large amount of "real money", then melted it and mixed it with other materials to privately cast it. One tael of silver could be worth three or four taels of silver.
It was very rare to buy cakes directly with silver, and the old man estimated that there were almost no copper coins in the purse.
Seeing the white silver, the shopkeeper was very happy and his face turned rosy. He weighed the weight and thought that with this piece of silver, he could earn 40 cents originally, but now he estimated that he could earn at least 150 cents.
Some people in a few places a little further away had already noticed Ji Yuan's bulging money bag and could see clearly the silver that was taken out. Some people were whispering in the corner behind the truck.
"It's a big fish. The purse must be full of white and yellow fish!"
"That's right... and the jade hairpin, I just took a closer look when I passed by, it's priceless!"
"Shh... go."
At the pancake stall, the silver was weighed and the change was given. The old man at the stall tied the pancakes into a string with a hemp rope and handed them to Ji Yuan while looking around and whispered.
"Sir, you are a foreigner. From what I can see, some people have already set their sights on you. You must be careful!"
Ji Yuan was humorous, friendly and gentle, which made him easy to like. The old man had seen a lot of things, so he naturally noticed that some people around him had bad intentions towards this great gentleman, and he couldn't help but remind them.
Ji Yuan smiled, bowed to the old man and then took the pancake.
"Thank you for the reminder, I will be more careful now."
After saying that, Ji Yuan turned around and walked away with the cakes in his hand. After walking around for a while, when he passed by the entrance of an alley, the string of cakes in his hand had disappeared.
Far behind, several men were trying hard to follow Ji Yuan closely.
"Huh...Huh...This person, this person walks really fast."
"Oh... I mean, he looks so gentle... Hey, where's the cake in his hand? Why is it gone?"
"Why do you care about the biscuits? It's OK as long as the person you follow is not wrong!" "Go, go, go, go!"
"Yes, yes, we can't lose him."
The people in front kept walking, so the others couldn't rest either. After taking a few breaths, they sped up again to catch up.
Ji Yuan was striding ahead, while the others were either left behind or gave up, except for the group behind him who kept chasing him.
It's not that he couldn't use some sleight of hand to get away, but hearing them talking about "slaughtering a few fat sheep" and so on, Ji Yuan didn't want to be lost by them.
By the evening, Ji Yuan had already left the city after wandering around, and the nine people following him never lost him, which shows how strong his determination was.
There is a pavilion five miles north of Nandao County, simply and crudely named "Wuliting". It was here that Ji Yuan stopped, took out a pancake and sat in the pavilion to eat it.
Because it was freshly made today, although it is not very soft, it is still easy to eat. At least it is not harsh on the teeth if it is not baked.
The nine people who followed Ji Yuan hid behind a low hill covered with trees in the distance. However, they were now panting and resting to recover their strength.
By the time Ji Yuan slowly finished eating a pancake, the nine people over there had almost finished their rest and were approaching Wuliting little by little with their noose and weapons.
As the saying goes, appearance reflects the heart. The ferocious looks revealed on the faces of the nine people at this moment are more worthy of the word "extremely vicious" than the previous Bazi.
"Scholar, you are very good at running, right?"
"Hey, hand over all the valuables on you!"
The leading man was a burly man holding an iron whip. Before he led his men close to Wuliting, he was already making arrogant threats. They had already checked and there was no one around Wuliting.
Ji Yuan shook the biscuit crumbs in his hand together, put them into his mouth and ate them. Then he clapped his hands, stood up and looked at the person who came.
"If I leave my valuables behind, will you let me go?"
Nine people have surrounded the Wuliting Pavilion. The leader looked up and down at Ji Yuandao.
"We are worried about you letting us go. We have to search for you."
Ji Yuan nodded.
"Then you'll let me go after searching me?"
"Hahahaha... Letting you go will be a hassle anyway. The area around Wuliting is wilderness, full of wild wolves and other animals. We can just kill them and not bury them."
Ji Yuan listened to these words and looked at the people in front of him, and suddenly laughed. Although the people in his sight were very blurry, the hostility in them was very obvious.
"Haha, no room for negotiation?"
Ji Yuan could actually laugh at this moment, which made several people a little afraid.
"You, are you a martial arts master?"
However, Ji Yuan did not answer them. Instead, he turned sideways and looked at the woods beside the pavilion.
In Ji Yuan's ears, the sounds of footsteps and breaking air were getting closer. Just two breaths later, a black shadow flashed out from the treetops in the forest.
"Zheng"
The sound of the long sword being unsheathed, accompanied by the cold light of the sword body, pierced through the person who came. The moment he appeared in front of the pavilion, the sound of the sword blade entering the flesh was heard.
"Someone..."
"Puff puff… "
The sword blade swept past, and the man with the iron whip and the three people around him didn't even have time to react, and fell to the ground after being hit by the sword. The man's sword momentum had stopped, and he spun in the air, stepped on the pillar of the pavilion to gain leverage, and swung the sword when he turned and leaped.
"Be careful..." "Quick..."
"Puff puff… "
Several more people fell down before they could even finish their sentences.
In an instant, the nine people surrounding the pavilion had all fallen down, and the intruder stood outside the pavilion, shook off the blood on the sword, and returned the sword to its sheath.
“Good skills!”
Ji Yuan praised sincerely. From the perspective of a cultivator, such means were naturally nothing, but he was also definitely a martial arts master. He had a thorough understanding of martial arts from aspects such as body movements, moves, and the use of true energy. The person who came was very good at both body movements and swordsmanship.
"Sir, you are still Sir. You are still as charming as ever after all these years! I thought I had made a mistake just now. I didn't expect it was really you, Sir, who came here!"
Ji Yuan opened his eyes slightly wider and looked up and down at the visitor with blurry vision.
"This voice... Are you Young Master Yan? Oh, now you have to call me Master Yan!"
The man dressed in black walked a few steps closer to the pavilion, holding a sword and bowing to Ji Yuan.
"Yan Fei has met Mr. Ji, but I didn't expect that he still remembered me!"
Yan Fei raised his head and looked at Ji Yuan. If ordinary people just took a quick glance, it would be difficult to notice the abnormality of Ji Yuan's half-open eyes, but he could see the pair of eyes that he still remembered clearly.
"Hahaha, I will never forget the voices of you young heroes."
Yan Fei looked at the corpse beside him and asked with a smile.
"Sir, I killed nine people, is that okay with you?"
Ji Yuan shook his head and smiled. He could tell something from the decisiveness of Yan Fei’s sword drawing.
"People die for money, birds die for food. What does it matter if they have different opinions? If they don't listen, you may not listen either."