A thick layer of dust covered the Maohe Chamber of Commerce storefront.
Spiders happily spun webs to catch mosquitoes. Only a passage through the middle, where the dust looked somewhat thinner, led to the back door. After hesitating for quite a while, Bai Yujun finally stepped into the shop, which resembled an ancient tomb sealed beneath dust. Her heat sense detected infrared heat sources in the rear courtyard—only two living people.
Creak—
Pushing open the back door, Bai Yujun felt as though she had returned to the mountain forests of the Southern Wasteland.
The weeds in the courtyard stood taller than a person. Perhaps the potted flowers and trees had once been ornamental, but their canopies now covered the courtyard, and some even bore fruit. Only the Stone Slab Path through the middle had not been swallowed up. A young man was laboriously pounding rice.
"..."
Bai Yujun was somewhat speechless. They had been blockaded to the point of pounding rice for self-sufficiency. They must have been watched for at least a year, right? If there had been a pond in the courtyard, they probably would have planted rice too, farming in spring and harvesting in autumn.
She took off her straw hat and slung it behind her back, then coughed to alert the rice-pounding man before greeting him.
"Ahem. May I ask who is in charge of the Maohe Chamber of Commerce in Gushan Market? I would like to inquire about something."
The rice-pounding man paused. He gave Bai Yujun a cold look and reflexively opened his mouth to say something. Perhaps he had thought the people outside had come to cause trouble and was about to curse them out. Yet seeing that she was a pretty girl, he immediately lost the urge to swear, finding it utterly pointless.