"Thinking it over, there really aren't many people who could alert the bandits nearby. Most of them would be locals."
"And a wealthy, influential local strongman like this would be all the more likely to associate with bandits."
Lin Ze confirmed this in his mind.
Based on nothing more than a shift in emotion visible in someone's eyes on the surveillance footage, Lin Ze had no evidence that this Zhang Yuanwai had colluded with the bandits.
But compared to having no leads at all, at least he now had someone to suspect.
He fast-forwarded through the rest and quickly finished watching the entire recording, but found nothing else useful.
Lin Ze set down the tablet. Just then, the donkey cart ambled up near Two Rivers Village.
This time, before Lin Ze could even call out, the village had already sprung to life.
"Young Master Lin is here!"
Some villagers who lived at the entrance warmly greeted Lin Ze.
Soon, when the villagers across the whole village heard the commotion, they all came out.
"Young Master Lin, I've prepared plenty of matsutake these past few days, and they're all dried. Will you take them this time?"
"Young Master Lin, did you bring Sugar Frost this time? I'd like to buy some more."
"Have you eaten breakfast, Young Master Lin? Come eat at my house!"
The villagers called out warmly, delighted by Lin Ze's arrival.
Their enthusiasm came both from the good impression Lin Ze had left during their last transaction and from his strength.
The twelve dead bandits had made Lin Ze's name.
Though he clearly possessed great strength, he traded fairly and treated everyone with courtesy. It was hard not to like him.
The strong were always worthy of respect.
"I've already eaten breakfast, but thank you. I brought Sugar Frost this time, and I'm still buying matsutake. The elders in my family really liked what I brought back last time, so they asked me to buy more from you."
"I'm also still buying rare medicinal herbs. If any of you have gathered any, you can sell them to me for a high price."
Lin Ze, dressed in a blue robe today, hopped down from the donkey cart and smiled as he warmly answered the many villagers of Two Rivers Village.
"Young man, were you the one who took care of those twelve bandits?"
At that moment, An Ye, the village chief of Two Rivers Village, asked him directly.
His words made it clear that the twelve dead men had already been identified as bandits.
He wasn't asking to call Lin Ze to account. He was simply confirming whether the story was true.
"Yes. On my way back that day, I ran into some highwaymen, so I took care of them while I was at it."
Lin Ze replied casually, his smile unchanged.
He sounded as though he were talking about crushing twelve ants, not killing twelve bandits who had tried to rob him.
After Lin Ze confirmed it, An Ye seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
A mild-mannered young expert was far more reassuring than one whose temperament and origins were unknown.
He smiled and said, "You were the only one who took that road that day, so everyone guessed it was you. Good, very good, young man. I'll report this to the authorities right away. Patrolman Zhang asked me to inquire after you last time, and said he planned to reward you."
The other villagers nearby wore looks that said they had known it all along.
They gazed at Lin Ze even more warmly, with a hint of affection.
They had only met the young man twice, but the villagers of Two Rivers Village had already been won over by his gentleness and humility, and accepted him as one of their own.
Lin Ze replied modestly, "The elders in my family taught me from childhood to be kind to others. I only did what came naturally; I don't deserve a reward."
"Since everyone has been looking forward to this, let's get right to the trading."
As he spoke, he unloaded the rock sugar he had brought from the Main World and began weighing it out for the villagers who wanted to buy some.
Once that was done, he started weighing the matsutake the villagers had prepared.
This time, nearly all the villagers of Two Rivers Village had gone out specifically to gather matsutake and dry them into slices.
So they had brought far more than last time, an amount that left Lin Ze staring in amazement.
Before long, Lin Ze had bought over a thousand jin of dried matsutake from the villagers of Two Rivers Village.
By the time he had bought up all the village's matsutake, he had collected 1,245 jin of dried mushrooms.
He paid a total of 9,960 copper coins for them.
Fortunately, Lin Ze had brought plenty of rock sugar.
He had brought a full thirty jin, and the villagers of Two Rivers Village, who had made quite a bit of money, bought a total of ten jin from him this time.
He earned 5,000 copper coins from selling the sugar. Added to the 5,344 coins left over from the last sale, he still had more than three hundred copper coins after buying all that matsutake from the villagers. The silver he had set aside for trade between the two worlds hadn't been needed at all.
Buying so much matsutake in one go and taking it back to the Main World would make him a fortune.
"The villagers prepared some really good matsutake. At the average price from last time, I can sell it for 4,500 yuan per jin. My cost was about twenty jin of rock sugar. If I take these 1,245 jin of matsutake, which cost me 80 yuan, back to the Main World and sell them, I'll make over 5.6 million yuan."
"This isn't just a fortune. It's a ridiculous windfall."
As Lin Ze calculated the value of the matsutake, his excitement began to rise.
But then another problem started to trouble him: there was too much to carry.
The donkey cart could only haul six or seven hundred jin. Just the matsutake from Two Rivers Village would take Lin Ze two trips.
If he made the rounds of the other villages in Clear River Township, he felt he could easily collect four or five thousand jin of dried matsutake on this trip.
Transporting that much dried matsutake would be a real headache.
"If only I could unlock the Personal Space."
Lin Ze glanced at the Gates to Heavens in his sea of consciousness and sighed inwardly.
As the name suggested, a Personal Space was a storage space that could be used to access items at will. It was practically essential for trading between two worlds.
Unfortunately, unlocking it required ten thousand points of fortune.
With fewer than a hundred usable points of fortune at the moment, Lin Ze could forget about it for the foreseeable future.
"But you can't let a little problem hold you back. There's always a way around a difficulty."
"If it's too much trouble for me to collect all these things myself, I can just contact a local distributor to buy the matsutake for me. I'd only need to deal with one person."
Lin Ze thought it over briefly and came up with a plan.
His eyes instinctively turned toward An Ye, who stood not far away.
As it happened, An Ye saw that Lin Ze had finished his work and smiled, addressing him by his courtesy name. "Zi Yi, it's getting late. How about coming to my house for lunch?"
As he spoke, he began signaling frantically for Lin Ze to come over.
Clearly, he had something he wanted to discuss with Lin Ze, too.
Before you continue