Chapter 790

The city gate of Rangping County was an old brick and stone gate hole that had been repaired for who knows how many years; the inscription on the lintel had been eroded by wind and rain until only blurred stroke traces remained, and the iron nails on the two iron-wrapped wooden doors were covered in rust, with a few having loosened and barely hanging in their original positions by the curling edges of the iron skin.

The flow of people entering and leaving the city gate was quite dense, including mountain people carrying firewood to sell, local farmers driving ox carts full of grain bags, and refugees in twos and threes traveling together, their accents clearly carrying the northern dialect of the Qi State.

When Chen Yan passed through the city gate hole mixed in the crowd, he deliberately slowed his pace and looked up at the wall inside the gate hole.

There were more than a dozen government notices of various sizes posted on it, the latest one being the spring plowing mobilization order uniformly issued by the Xiazhou Governor's Office, stamped with Zhang Wenqian's Deputy Governor official seal, the ink still very fresh.

Beside this notice, there was also a bulletin with slightly older paper color, densely written with the annual field division detailed rules and grain subsidy distribution standards of Rangping County.

Chen Yan scanned it twice, silently memorized the numbers on it in his brain, and then withdrew his gaze and continued to walk into the city.

The central market of Rangping County was at the second alley entrance after turning south from the main street; the two sides of the street paved with bluestone were covered with wooden frame cloth sheds, selling grain and oil, cloth, iron farm tools, and pickled vegetables and salted meat, with shouts rising one after another.

Chen Yan stopped in front of a grain stall.

He bent down, pinched a small pinch of broken rice grains in the open sack with his fingers, smelled it at the tip of his nose, and rubbed it twice on his fingertips.

"Shopkeeper, how do you sell this millet?"

The stall owner was a middle-aged man, using a brass scale to weigh salt for the old lady in front, and replied without lifting his head.

"Freshly milled millet, six wen per sheng, the old rule."

Chen Yan quickly compared it in his heart with the Xiazhou official guidance grain price reported by Zhang Wenqian.

Six wen per sheng, completely within a reasonable range, even half a wen lower than in Tongwan City.

He walked to the cloth shop next door and looked; coarse hemp cloth was thirty wen per bolt, fine cotton cloth was eighty wen per bolt, and the price was also kept very stable.

Hongye followed behind him, but those cold eyes did not linger on those colorful fabrics, but scanned the crowd and buildings on both sides of the market calmly, silently carving the direction of every alley and the position of every possible hidden sentry into her brain.

Chen Yan turned out of the cloth shop and gave a positive evaluation of Zhang Wenqian's internal affairs dispatch in his heart.

The price system in this market was operating very healthily, and the means of using the huge capital accumulated by the official merchant firm from the grassland trade fair to stabilize and regulate were quite sophisticated; at least on the surface, no unscrupulous merchant dared to go against the wind to hoard and speculate.

He was about to turn and walk toward the direction of the county yamen to check whose name was hanging behind those vermilion boundary stakes.

Hongye suddenly stopped.

She did not make a sound, just flicked the fabric of her cuffs extremely slightly with the little finger of her right hand; this was the silent warning agreed upon between her and Chen Yan.

Chen Yan's footsteps also stopped, his gaze following the direction of Hongye's line of sight, falling on a relatively remote alley entrance on the east side of the market.

The alley was very narrow, with low walls built of adobe on both sides, and the tops of the walls were covered with dead vines.

At the alley entrance, more than a dozen bamboo baskets and bamboo containers woven quite ingeniously were scattered on the ground, which should have been neatly placed on the simple stall set up by the old door panel.

At this moment, that door panel had been kicked over by someone, leaning obliquely against the foot of the wall, with a few scattered bamboo strips still remaining on it.

Four sturdy men with fleshy faces were surrounding the overturned stall; they were wearing indigo short coats unique to the locals, their sleeves rolled up above their elbows, revealing the ferocious blue-black tattoos on their arms.

The bald man in the lead had a chain made of copper coins hanging around his neck, and his right foot was stepping hard on the back of the hand of a man kneeling on the ground.

The man being stepped on was about forty years old, his face black and thin, his cheekbones protruding high, and the clothes on his body, although patched, were washed clean, looking at a glance like a refugee who had fled from the Qi State.

His right hand was crushed hard on the bluestone ground by that big foot, and the finger bones under the skin and flesh made a slight sound that made one's teeth ache.

The man's lips were bitten white, and a muffled groan squeezed from his throat one after another, but he refused to cry out.

The bald man had a dry grass in his mouth, ground his soles twice, and the corner of his mouth pulled out an extremely arrogant arc.

"I said you poor ghost who fled from the Qi State, setting up a stall on my territory, don't you know the rules? The venue protection fee is three hundred wen a month; are you deaf or pretending to be deaf?"

The refugee man supported the ground with his left hand, the veins on his forehead protruding one by one because of the pain.

"I... I have only been here for half a month, the fields distributed haven't grown any grain yet, where would I have three hundred wen in my hand? The government's notice said that setting up a stall doesn't charge money..."

"The government's notice."

The bald man bent down, spat the dry grass in his mouth onto the man's face, and a thick phlegm followed.

"You wild dog from out of town are also worthy of mentioning the government to me? The land in this Rangping County has been the Liu family's since your grandfather's generation; Chen Zhuguo distributing fields is for you to plant, not for you to open a shop on it and grab my business."

The three ruffians behind him let out a burst of boisterous laughter, and one of them squatted down, stepping on the scattered bamboo baskets one by one until they were flattened, the crisp sound of bamboo strips breaking exploding in the alley one after another.

"Brother, the bamboo baskets this poor ghost wove are not bad, it's a pity he doesn't have eyes."

The bald man straightened his waist, just about to move his foot away from the back of the man's hand, when his peripheral vision suddenly swept to a small figure shrinking behind the man, holding his waist tightly and refusing to let go.

It was a little girl of seven or eight years old, two withered yellow sheep-horn braids tied crookedly, a pair of big eyes filled with tears of fear, and mud from when she fell just now on her little face.

The bald man's eyeballs turned twice on the little girl's face, and the arc at the corner of his mouth suddenly changed shape, changing from arrogant to a greed and lewdness that made people feel even more nauseated.

He extended that big hand stained with mud and filth, grabbed one of the little girl's sheep-horn braids, and dragged her out from behind the man.

"Can't pay the money, right? Then use something else to offset it."

He lifted the braid and brought the little girl in front of him, looking her up and down twice.

"This little girl is quite neat; Mother Li's brothel in the east of the city is just short of hands; selling her over there is worth at least two taels of silver, enough for your protection fee for half a year."

The little girl screamed and kicked desperately, tears mixed with snot covering her face.

"Dad, Dad..."

Hearing his daughter's scream, a fire suddenly burned in the eyes of the refugee man that had originally dimmed because of despair; ignoring the sharp pain coming from the back of his hand, he struggled like crazy, wanting to pounce over.

"Animal, let go of my daughter!"

The bald man kicked him in the chest, knocking him over, the back of his head hitting the bluestone slab with a dull sound.

Chen Yan stood by the willow tree outside the alley entrance, his gaze not lingering on those four ruffians.

He was looking at two other people.

Under another willow tree less than twenty paces from the alley entrance, two street-patrolling yamen servants with standard single sabers hanging from their waists were leaning against the tree trunk.

One was eating melon seeds, and the other was picking his teeth with a toothpick.

The yamen servant eating melon seeds had a smile at the corner of his mouth, his eyes narrowed into a slit, looking toward the direction of the bald man in the alley.

The bald man also glanced toward his side.

The two gazes touched in mid-air, and the yamen servant eating melon seeds flicked the melon seed shells in his hand casually, revealing a tacit smile, then turned around, back to the alley entrance, and continued to eat his melon seeds.