Chapter 197: Sichakou Cun, the Greedy Villagers

Half a day later, a fork in the road with three different trade routes appeared before Jier.

This was an ordinary village surrounded by several small hills on the left and right; calling it a village was not quite accurate, as the entire settlement's houses were scattered very sporadically because the road split into three trade routes ahead.

Basically, each patch along the road only had a few low houses simply built from rock and wood, with sparse farmland behind the houses that had been painstakingly cultivated along the terrain of the hills. A unique feature was that the village was planted full of trees everywhere; Jier's sharp gaze looked over and could see some green, unripe fruits the size of an infant's fist hanging sparsely on the trees.

It was early summer now, and these fruits would likely need several dozen more days to grow before they could be eaten. However, given this dry, rainless weather this year, it was hard to say how the fruit harvest would turn out.

Jier's caravan was not the earliest group to depart at the crack of dawn; at this very moment, some caravans that had set off early had already arrived here on foot or by carriage, temporarily resting in the open space at the fork in the center of the village. It was mainly because the weather was too hot, and most passing caravans needed to replenish the water stored in their water skins and water bottles.

Jier's caravan, of course, did not need to replenish any water; he had long ago specifically spent money in Dorn Town to buy several large water barrels, which were loaded onto several carriages for all personnel and horses to use at any time.

At this time, Jier still thought his caravan was just passing through here temporarily and would be able to cross this village in no time to officially enter the middle trade route that traversed Ke'er Shan Jun.

But when the first few carriages of the caravan just stepped into this village at the fork, more than a dozen local youths, who had emerged from who knows where, pulled a homemade, wide anti-cavalry barrier out from the farmyards by the road, directly blocking the dirt road that ran through the entire village.

"What are they doing? Aoni, go ask them!" Jier himself was in the middle of the caravan, and seeing the front of the caravan being blocked, he sent Aoni, who was following by his side, to go over and communicate.

Although Jier's caravan was large in scale, and with the cargo carriages of the accompanying caravans, the convoy of more than fifty carriages was over two hundred meters long, and it looked like there were more people in the caravan than the entire population of this village, the village youths blocking the road still blocked the path firmly.

They had no intention of moving aside at all.

"What's going on? What's going on? You locals, why have you blocked the road?"

Aoni hugged the neck of the Nanyangshandima assigned to him with both hands, carefully riding the horse to avoid the carriages of his own side along the trade route, and arrived at the very front where the caravan had stopped at the first opportunity.

At the very front, there was Weier and a carriage fully loaded with Warriors; at this moment, these Warriors guarding the front had already crowded together with the blocking villagers, cursing as they shoved each other.

Weier sat on horseback and loudly scolded the villagers, and the Warriors under his command were not polite either, pushing these people, but the villagers had an attitude of "do whatever you want but we will never let you pass," firmly blocking the anti-cavalry barrier in the middle of the road, making it impossible for the carriages in the caravan to even bypass it.

"Finally, a person in charge has come. Hey! This is Sichakou Cun, and we are the local Militia guarding the village roads! Now we ask you, did you find someone at the checkpoint ahead to get a permit to traverse the trade route? If not, it's still in time to return to the checkpoint down the mountain now to buy a passage permit."

Aoni and Weier looked at each other, only then remembering that they had already obtained the passage permit specifically for the middle route at the checkpoint yesterday afternoon; it was a bright-colored sign the size of half a person, big and eye-catching, looking very silly in one's hand, and they hadn't expected that they would have to use this stupid thing less than half a day after leaving the checkpoint.

"Of course we have one, but if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to pass at all? Must we run back to get that so-called permit?" Aoni asked curiously.

The youths in the village giggled for a while, pointed at their own necks, and said with an indifferent expression: "Of course you can, but then you either kill us, or you pay money to feed us masters well and serve us well, only then can we let you pass through our village. After all, the road surface of our village is maintained by our own hard work; your caravan has so many carriages and so many horses, pressing and walking over it, just one trip is enough to damage the road surface into a mess."

Weier gave a disdainful sneer and asked: "Without a permit, then exactly how much money is needed to pass through your village? Give me an accurate number."

Weier's words made the local village youths unhappy, but Aoni had already explained they had a permit, so they couldn't easily flare up, and they explained: "It's not much, a passage fee of twenty Silver Coins for each person in your group, and for the carriages, see if they are fully loaded; if fully loaded, we charge you one Silver Coin, and if not fully loaded, we charge you eighty Silver Coins! How about it, are you shocked by this price? So, hurry up, either bring the passage permit to prove you have already paid the big masters above, or honestly pay the expensive passage fee! If you have neither, then you can just waste time here with me; even if we block the trade route completely, we won't let you pass."

These people were very overbearing, with a look of being complete rascals.

Aoni shouted at Weier to let him stabilize the situation first, and then he immediately rode his horse toward the middle of the caravan.

That half-person-sized, brightly colored, and very stupid-looking permit sign was placed on a carriage in the middle of the caravan.

Aoni returned and quickly explained the situation to Jier, and Jier had Xueya Site hand the sign from the carriage to Aoni to take over, and had it hung directly on the side of the first carriage of the caravan; the bright and conspicuous half-person-sized wooden permit could probably be seen directly by the people blocking the road from far away.

Only then did Jier understand why the permit had to be made so large and decorated with very bright paint; it turned out it was designed that way specifically to be easily seen by people from a distance.

He had thought the Merchant Guild that issued the permit had a problem with their brains, or that the people above had some quirks, but it turned out that this strange-looking thing also had some considerations behind it.

But Jier hadn't been thinking for long before Aoni, who had taken the passage permit over, returned to Jier's side empty-handed on horseback; his face was flushed, and he was clearly very agitated.

"What is it again?" Jier asked helplessly.

"M-Master, the passage permit issued by the Merchant Guild was shown to them, but those scoundrels actually said that since we have a permit but didn't take it out for them to see at the first moment, it caused them to exert effort to move the anti-cavalry barrier to block the road, wasting a lot of their physical strength and time, %%! So they are demanding that we pay them twenty Silver Coins each for the dozen or so people as a handling fee! They will only let us pass if we pay the money; otherwise, even if we have a passage permit, they will still block the road, and we must pay the money before they will allow our caravan to pass."

When Aoni finished speaking, his hands were tightly gripping the Jiansheng, looking like he was gnashing his teeth, clearly furious. Jier had not interacted directly with those local villagers blocking the road, but at this moment, he also felt a significant amount of annoyance.

One had to know that the scale of his caravan now was not small, and there were armored Refining Qi Warriors and fully armed Dwarf Warriors in the caravan, totaling more than seventy people; a single attack by such a small village could directly destroy the entire village of just over a hundred people.

Even so, those people still dared to block the road and demand money?

One had to know that Jier's team had been treated cautiously by the locals everywhere they went along this journey, careful for fear that the two sides would cause a conflict.

As it turned out, as soon as they entered this Ke'er Shan Jun, Jier immediately realized that the locals were truly not afraid of death.

He had originally wanted to personally handle this kind of rascal extortion, but remembering the words that Captain Gulisiman had repeatedly emphasized last night, he calmed down. So he had Aoni find the managers of the caravans that had newly joined last night and let those local Merchants who often traveled these routes handle this matter.

He had also agreed with those Merchants last night that some troubles from local villages on the road, as long as they did not involve armed threats, would be left to those Merchants to handle, and the other party had also readily agreed.

In exchange, Jier needed to have his men protect all the caravans in the entire convoy. After all, besides those local villages that were said to be very greedy, other threats including but not limited to Bandit Groups, Thieves, swarms of wild beasts, man-eating Monsters, and even some legendary strange occurrences that no one could explain, and even the most dangerous Magic Beasts, all had to be solved by Jier and his men.

Upon receiving Jier's order, one of the accompanying Merchants immediately ran to the front of the caravan with Aoni to handle the matter. Jier saw from afar that the somewhat fat Merchant was laughing happily, seemingly knowing the people in this village.

He took some small bundles of pre-packaged dried meat from his pocket and stuffed them hard into the hands of the blocking village youths.

These local villagers rarely ate this kind of meat dried and cured with Fine Salt; after tentatively tasting a little bit, they were amazed. The Merchant then said something and pointed to the side of the road at the blocking anti-cavalry barrier. Afterward, these local villagers immediately moved the homemade anti-cavalry barrier that was blocking the road away; they estimated that it would take some time for Jier's caravan to pass through the village entirely, so they smiled and ran into the village holding the delicious dried meat.

They even completely ignored the trade route facing the Cuikuang side of the village.

Jier was a bit curious, so when that Merchant rode his horse back and passed by him, he asked: "Mr. Angsinuo, how did you convince those villagers? Haha, what kind of Magic did you use?"

The middle-aged fat Merchant named Pisike Angsinuo answered with a chuckle: "Nothing much, just some dried meat I got from the Western Province. We don't produce this stuff locally, and they haven't eaten it before. Clearly, for these villagers, this kind of novel and delicious dried meat is far more useful than a little money that they don't know if they can extort."

He pointed to the anti-cavalry barrier that had been tossed to the side at the entrance of the village and sighed: "These people look greedy, but actually they just want an attitude from the people passing by; giving them something they haven't seen before is far easier to handle and solve than actually giving them money. Heh, if you really give them money, it would be even worse."

Jier nodded.

After the caravan entered the village and turned onto the correct road according to the road sign, he saw those village youths holding the newly acquired dried meat—not having eaten much of it themselves—all stuffing it to their other family members who were serving the caravans in the village.

The sturdy women carefully tasted a bite of the dried meat and then put it away one after another, carefully preserving it. As for the half-grown children, they were chewing the salty and fresh dried meat in their mouths while bringing fresh water to the caravans.

Basically, most of the small bundles of dried meat given by the Merchant ended up in the stomachs of those village children.

Jier saw that almost the entire village was busy serving the caravans that were temporarily resting, and then looked at the barren and sparse messy farmland behind the village, as well as the various fruit trees planted all over the village.

He sighed, said nothing more, and continued to lead the caravan on the road.

—

The road in the afternoon was still difficult to travel; compared to the wide trade routes of Cuikuang, the roads in this Ke'er Shan Jun were simply as if they had never been maintained.

If it weren't for the passing caravans trampling and crushing the wild grass on the road, Jier really wouldn't feel like they were walking on a road at this moment.

As the caravan gradually entered the territory of Ke'er Shan Jun along the edge of the mountain forest, Jier could clearly perceive that the terrain was gradually rising, and the lush and dense mountain forest was rapidly closing in from both the left and right sides.

A slightly withered green was gradually occupying the entire field of vision.

In the low-lying areas they passed, there were gradually some small rivers with flowing water; generally, the roads they took were to actively avoid these small rivers and low-lying Valleys, even if it meant climbing a small section of a mountain ridge.

But for some river valleys that were truly unavoidable, there had to be sturdy bridges.

And often, these bridges had people guarding them.

Just like now.

A beautiful wooden bridge was built over a river valley more than ten meters deep. This Wooden Bridge was constructed from thick logs produced nearby, many of which were over a meter in diameter; just by looking at it, one could tell how sturdy the bridge was.

Jier carefully followed the road and the bridge with his gaze and discovered that the newest tracks on the road all extended toward the Wooden Bridge. Meanwhile, the old tracks, which had not been traveled for a long time, continued along the road by the side of the mountain.

He took out his map to check and found that he should cross the bridge here. If he did not cross the bridge here, he would have to detour north for a good half-day before reaching the village where they were to spend the night.

In other words, this Wooden Bridge basically saved the entire route a good half-day of travel time.

However, Jier also saw a few wooden houses by the side of the bridge, where seven or eight people were currently walking out of the houses to 'greet' their caravan.

"I hope it's not another extortion," he muttered subconsciously.

But Jier then slapped his forehead: "I shouldn't have said that; after all, the people here generally refer to it as a maintenance fee."

But what he feared came to pass; even though the first wagon of the caravan hung a bright and conspicuous passage permit, these locals blocking the bridge still demanded that Jier's caravan pay a small fee.

This time, without Jier having to give an order, Aoni immediately rode over to call a Merchant who had been traveling this route for years, letting this Merchant go forward to smooth things over.

But this clearly did not work; the people blocking the road gestured at Jier's long caravan, then pointed at the Wooden Bridge spanning the river, and spread their hands—no money, no passage.

Aoni had no choice but to run back and ask Jier what to do.

"Call all the Merchants over and let them handle it. This was agreed upon beforehand; these matters are their responsibility."

After Jier finished speaking, he cast his gaze toward the few wooden houses by the side of the bridge, where, through the cracks in the tightly shut doors and windows, some gazes were looking toward his caravan.

No, Jier could feel that those prying gazes were looking straight at him personally.

It was just that the gazes seemed to lack any chilling intent that would make one alert, holding only some intriguing feelings.

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