Chapter 1541

"A special pass? Captain, I'm very grateful. I was just thinking that it would be quite troublesome if I had to queue every time."

Xia De raised his glass in a toast to the Captain, and Captain Lei Jiede was very happy that he could help Xia De:

"You've helped me so much, this little thing is nothing. Oh, speaking of which, I forgot to congratulate you."

He smiled and lowered his voice:

"The champion of the 1854 Ring City Equestrian Competition."

As he spoke, he clinked his glass with Xia De's. It was now Tuesday, and news of the competition that concluded last Thursday had long since spread across the entire Old Continent; Captain Lei Jiede naturally knew about it.

"That's nothing."

"You are truly too humble. You can be considered the most amazing person I know."

As he spoke, the Captain brought up some fresh news about his work:

"Don't think that special pass is anything remarkable. The Karsenrik garrison nearby has also set up border checkpoints, and they have similar passes. There's no telling how many of these two types of special passes are in the hands of nobles on both sides; I've heard they've already leaked into the black market."

He shook his head as he spoke:

"If you ask me, the big shots above have their own ideas, but such border inspections, aside from causing trouble for citizens and villagers on both sides, don't actually serve any purpose."

He was still lowering his voice as he said these words, but it was clear he had been holding it in for a long time:

"Yesterday evening, I met a woman with a child who wanted to cross over from Karsenrik. She is a villager from the Karsenrik side who married a villager from Deraerion. She had taken her child back to her parents' home in the south a while ago, but didn't expect that she would have to go through registration procedures when she returned, yet she happened to be illiterate."

"Then what is to be done?"

Xia De couldn't help but ask.

"Make her go back to the village in the south, go to the village to write a letter of proof to verify her identity. Or find someone familiar to have her husband's village send someone to pick her up."

The Captain sighed deeply:

"This is just what I've seen; there are plenty of other messes."

Xia De also pursed his lips, not knowing what to say, and the Captain, seeing that the topic he brought up had made the atmosphere a bit dull, took the initiative to talk about other things:

"What are you going to Mikaela Blast Furnace City for? Do you need my help?"

"No, no, I'm not very familiar with this area yet, so I want to tour both cities before I start my investigation. Besides, doesn't Mikaela Blast Furnace City have the wonder famous throughout the Old Continent—the Glass Blast Furnace? Since I'm here, I have to see it."

"Then you are really lucky. Although I was transferred here to work, I cannot go into Karsenrik territory."

Although he said this, Captain Lei Jiede still gave Xia De quite a bit of travel information about Mikaela Blast Furnace City, which he had heard from his colleagues. In addition to travel information, Captain Lei Jiede also mentioned the famous higher education institutions in the Green Lake area. He still remembered that when he met Xia De in Mid-Hill Fort, it was at a local school, so he also suggested that Xia De try his luck with the folklore professors:

"If that Edwards family wanted to study strange knowledge, they would always have to ask others for advice. This kind of research isn't something you can understand just by reading books, right? Perhaps more than a hundred years ago, they had sought help from local schools."

The Captain said, which gave Xia De a new line of thought.

Captain Lei Jiede still had the task of patrolling the camp, and Xia De also had to hurry to cross the border to the neighboring country, so the two planned to say goodbye after finishing their drinks. Xia De would be active in the area for a long time, and they would have plenty of time to meet again in the future.

Just as the two were chatting, the tavern landlady, wearing an apron and a headscarf, delivered drinks to the table next to them behind the two. The three guests at the neighboring table were using Karsenrik with a very heavy accent, and in their words, they were cursing the Deraerion army's act of setting up checkpoints at the border very rudely; it seemed they had also encountered considerable trouble when crossing the border.

The men talking were dressed like ordinary farmers, their faces reddened by the wind and blackened by not washing their faces for years, their clothes, which looked like they hadn't been washed in a long time, were patched, and their shoes were covered in mud.

They were clearly a bit too drunk, and their voices were getting louder and louder. And unfortunately, people in the Green Lake area, due to the special environment, all understood both languages to some extent.

Captain Lei Jiede, who had his back to them, also heard the dirty complaints, but the Captain didn't want to bother with it. However, when the landlady brought them their glasses and whispered a reminder for them to be quieter, the man sitting behind Captain Lei Jiede, almost back-to-back with him, suddenly grabbed the landlady's hand:

"Oh, you damn Deraerion bitch, do you want to look for trouble too?"

As the vulgar slang was spoken, the sound of a glass falling to the ground attracted the attention of everyone nearby.

Captain Lei Jiede apologized to Xia De in a low voice and then stood up at once. He didn't even ask a question; after leaving the table and turning around, he kicked the man who spoke rudely to the ground.

The man's two drunk companions grabbed bottles from the table and lunged at Captain Lei Jiede, only to be knocked to the ground one by one by the sturdy middle-aged officer with a cold face, which left Xia De, who had originally intended to lend a hand, with nothing to do but stand up.

"Southerners."

The Captain muttered, noticing some unfriendly gazes from the crowd of onlookers. In this tavern, there weren't only three drunks who were Southerners. However, intimidated by the Captain's uniform and the holster at his waist, no one dared to say anything.

The tavern went quiet all of a sudden, with only the three people on the ground groaning in pain.

"You two, go to the camp gate and call the guards, just say Captain Lei Jiede has discovered stowaways."

The Captain said to the man at the table next to him on the left, who nodded and then walked quickly toward the door. So the Captain said to the bewildered landlady standing by the wall:

"Don't worry, I will handle these three people. You should hang the Deraerion emblem on the wall, so these Southerners won't dare to make trouble."

Because it was a border area between the two countries, taverns and inns in the countryside would generally take the initiative to hang the emblem of one country to indicate their nationality.

"Also, put their tab on my bill."

The Captain said again, but the trembling woman just shook her head; it seemed she didn't dare to talk to Captain Lei Jiede.

The camp guards arrived quickly, and after seeing their superior, they didn't ask anything and dragged the three unconscious men away. Captain Lei Jiede also walked out of the tavern and said again to Xia De, who had come out a step early and was standing at the door looking at the rural scenery:

"I'm really sorry to have let you see this scene."

"No, no, this allows me to better understand what the situation in the Green Lake area is like now. I couldn't feel it when I was in Tobesk, but only after coming here did I understand what the forefront of the confrontation is."

Xia De put on the black hat that he clearly didn't have before:

"However, it seems that the landlady here won't welcome you anymore in the future."

He looked into the tavern through the half-open door.

"Yeah, I beat up Karsenrik people at her place, so in the future, Karsenrik people will visit here less often, or feel disgusted by this place. If I hadn't taken action just now, the landlady would just have been taken advantage of a bit; she runs a tavern here, so of course, it's impossible for this to be the first time she's encountered this kind of thing... but I just couldn't help it."

The Captain shook his head and then said goodbye to Xia De:

"Mr. Watson, I've wasted some of your time, so let's say goodbye for now. Come find me when you have time; I'll be at the camp. If I didn't have no time today, I would really like to see your current Luo De deck."

"Thanks again for your special pass."

Xia De said, and then looked at the three men being carried away by the guards. The idle onlookers were discussing the fate of the three; such a small matter didn't warrant hanging, but labor in the military camp should be unavoidable:

"Captain, you will probably get busier and busier lately."

The border area still belonged to the rural area at the junction of the two countries, but it was not very difficult to find a carriage on the Karsenrik side.

The border between the two countries had been a major traffic route for a long time, and there were special rental carriages waiting here to pick up passengers. But this was not the kind of carriage in the city that would depart after picking up one or two guests, but a carriage that would wait until the carriage was full of people before departing.

Most of these carriages had no roof, and if the seats weren't reasonably comfortable, they would actually be no different from grain-carrying wagons. Xia De was the second person to negotiate the price and board the carriage. He didn't wait too long before four more guests negotiated the fare with the driver and boarded, and then the group officially set off.

Such a journey is also a very interesting thing for a stranger. During the journey with the sound of horse hooves and horse bells, he did not forget to observe his fellow travelers. The gentleman who came before him was dressed very similarly to Xia De, both in black coats with dirt-resistant trousers. However, that gentleman's hat and boots looked more high-end, and the handkerchief hanging out of his pocket was not as good in material as Xia De's—Xia De's handkerchiefs were all prepared by Lei Qianya.

And the guests who boarded the carriage after Xia De didn't look as interesting. The four were divided into two groups; the first to arrive were a country woman with a headscarf carrying a basket of eggs and a teenage boy, and the later ones were an old couple snuggling together.

It was not just Xia De who felt bored with such a journey and not very interested in the rural scenery. While Xia De was observing people, there were also people observing him.

Thus, the gentleman who boarded the carriage a step ahead of Xia De, after confirming that Xia De was the only fellow traveler in this carriage who might have common topics with him, took the initiative to strike up a conversation:

"Sir, you don't look like a person from Green Lake City."

"How can you tell?"

Xia De asked with a smile, also very happy that someone could talk to him.