Right next to a stall near Kunmen, a man in his fifties, wearing brocade clothes, with a small mustache, tall and thin, and a long horse face, was shouting loudly...
Right in front of him, a man who looked to be about thirty years old, with a strong build, wearing only a blue cloth shirt like a waistcoat, with a machete on his waist and a pair of straw sandals on his feet, was glaring at the old man.
There was a large backpack in front of this man, and in the basket were several wooden jars filled with things, and the jars were covered with a few leaves.
From the dress of the man in his thirties, one can tell at a glance that he is a native of Yulong Mountain. These natives wear simple outfits all year round. And looking at the backpack in front of him, he should be setting up a stall here. In the entire Bianji, there are both gorgeous large shops and businesses, but also some simple stalls to facilitate the choices and needs of different people.
Seeing the old man yelling and cursing at him, the 30-something mountain dweller got angry and pushed the old man away. The old man staggered back a few steps and then sat on the ground. He rubbed his butt and screamed, "The mountain barbarians are beating me, the mountain barbarians are beating me..."
This market is like a huge vegetable market. There are at least eight or ten quarrels and disputes happening all day long. So people around are used to it. Except for a few people, not many people come to watch.
The ones who ran over there faster than Yan Liqiang and his companions were the team of constables who had been patrolling the border today. Ever since they discovered that Yan Liqiang and his companions had entered the border, the chief constable had been wandering around them, fearing that some short-sighted people might cause trouble. Now that the chief constable saw that something had happened here, he started shouting and almost immediately ran over with his men.
"What's the matter? Who dares to hit someone in the border town?" The captain of the police naturally had an aura of authority. He glared at the man and shouted, and the man's expression changed slightly.
"It's him, it's him, it's this man who hit me just now, Captain, you have to help me, Ouch... I fell pretty hard here, it's all swollen, I need to see a doctor and get some medicine, but I can't do it without three or five taels of silver!" The old man got up from the ground, rubbing his waist, frowning, shouting, and pointing at the mountain villager who was setting up a stall.
"It was obviously you who was making a fuss here just now, calling him a mountain barbarian, one sentence after another, which made him angry. He didn't want to argue with you, but just pushed you, and you fell down. Now you see that he looks unfamiliar, a mountain villager, and you want to extort money from him again?" Yan Liqiang walked over with a smile and spoke directly.
"Nonsense, which... which eye did you see it with?" When the old man saw Yan Liqiang coming over, he immediately jumped up and denied it flatly.
Yan Liqiang scratched his ears and said, "I saw it with both my eyes, heard it with both my ears, and the people around me also saw and heard it..."
The head constable was naturally perceptive. When he saw Yan Liqiang had spoken, he glared at him and grabbed the old man by the collar and lifted him up like a chicken. "Okay, you scolded me first and then blackmailed me. You are wrong but you still dare to make trouble in Bianji and bully honest people. You won't learn your lesson unless you suffer a little. Take him away..." After that, he pushed the old man into the hands of several constables. Two constables grabbed the old man and dragged him out...
The old man was so frightened that his face changed and he begged for mercy, "Ah, I was wrong, I was wrong, sir, I won't dare to do it again, I won't dare to do it next time..."
"Damn it, do you still want to eat like us brothers here next time?" The captain of the police waved his hand majestically, and several criminals didn't care whether he shouted or not, they just twisted his hand and took him away.
The surroundings suddenly became quiet again. Seeing that the old man was taken away by the impartial criminals and no longer making trouble here, the tense face of the mountain man also relaxed suddenly...
"Well, I heard that you sell kerosene here!" Yan Liqiang walked over and asked calmly.
The mountain man looked at Yan Liqiang and grinned, "Thank you for your righteous words just now. If you want to buy kerosene, I will give you a can for free!"
Yan Liqiang pointed at the cans in the man's backpack and said, "These are the kerosene. Can I see them?"
"Please feel free to look at it, sir!"
Yan Liqiang squatted down and removed the leaves covering a jar. A pungent smell immediately rushed up...
"This kerosene just smells bad, not as good as pine oil and sesame oil, but it can be used for ignition and is durable..." The mountain villager also squatted down and explained to Yan Liqiang.
Yan Liqiang looked at the contents of the jars with a frown on his face. The liquid in the jars was a dark yellow color, and a little reddish if you looked closely. It looked a bit like crude oil, but it wasn't. The color was wrong, and it wasn't that viscous. Yan Liqiang picked up a little with his fingers, twisted it, and smelled it. He didn't know what it was, but it smelled like a mixture of sulfur and rotten eggs...
Most people have never seen crude oil, but Yan Liqiang had seen it in his previous life because the parents of one of his friends worked in a geological unit. One time, that friend took Yan Liqiang out to play and showed him some oil samples, including light crude oil, heavy crude oil, and high-sulfur crude oil. The things in the jars in front of him looked a bit like oil, but they were quite different from the oil Yan Liqiang had seen in his previous life, in terms of texture, color, and smell. Yan Liqiang had no idea what this thing was.
Yan Liqiang stood up and said, "This thing looks a bit strange. Did you make it yourself?"
The mountain dweller shook his head. "I didn't make it. I found it in the mountains a few days ago. I found that it can catch fire, so I took some to sell to see if I can make some money!"
He gestured, and Lu Wenbin next to him immediately took out a small ingot of silver and gave it to the mountain villager, "I want all your kerosene!"
"Too much, too much!" Looking at the silver handed over by Lu Wenbin, the mountain villager's eyes widened. After swallowing a mouthful of saliva, he hurriedly shook his head, "It doesn't take that much money. This money is enough to buy pine oil and sesame oil..."
"Take it first. The extra money will be used as a deposit. I want a few more cans of this kerosene. When you go back, you can get some more and give them to him!" Yan Liqiang pushed Fu Changde in front of the mountain villager. "This is the steward of my family. I will let him buy from you in the future!"
The villager looked at the silver in his hand, then at Fu Changde, and suddenly became excited, his face glowing. He didn't expect to earn so much silver today. "How much kerosene do you need, young master? I'll get it for you!"
"how much do you have?"
"I have as much as you want. If you want more, I can ask the people in the village to bring it to you..."
"Okay, I'll send 100 taels of silver worth of kerosene first, and I'll pay you the rest when you bring it back!" Yan Liqiang smiled, "By the way, I don't know your name yet?"
"My name is Lu Dahai!" said the mountain villager in a rough voice.
"Han people?"
"Well, my family used to be Han Chinese, but when it came to my great-grandfather's generation, they fled to Yulong Mountain to become mountain dwellers in order to escape the war..."
(End of this chapter)