A small county town.
People streamed in and out of the city gate. Many small vendors had set up stalls along both sides of the road outside, shouting at the top of their lungs to draw customers. They sold everything: game, medicinal herbs, fish, you name it.
Stalls could not be set up inside the city. The shop clerks were vicious and would not allow anyone to set up haphazardly before their storefronts. Even if they did, they had to give the yamen runners tea money.
Those without money or power could only set up stalls along the dirt road outside the city gate. Even then, they could not escape the local thugs demanding protection money. The thugs were diligent; the moment dawn broke and the nearby hunters and poor folk set out their wares, they appeared, even more eager than the yamen runners.
This morning, however, the thugs collecting protection money had met with a slight accident...
Bang!
Three thugs lay on the yellow dirt road, twitching violently, before a petite little girl grabbed them and tossed them into the wild grass.
She took out a bamboo mat and spread it out, opened an oil-paper umbrella and placed it on the mat, then brought out a little stool. Wearing a bamboo hat, she sat obediently by the roadside and drank a bowl of mush bought from the neighboring stall. The mush was made of coarse grains and assorted vegetables, hardly suited to a carnivore's palate. This snake considered that it could replenish vitamins and trace elements. Eating meat every day meant she ought to eat lightly now and then.
Some young master from who knew which household galloped past on horseback, kicking up clouds of dust.
Bai Yujun glanced at the yellow dirt road and waved a hand. Thick