Chen Mo froze for a moment.
That was true.
Everyone in Honghe County worshiped Goddess Hong Deng and regarded her as a deity. Who would dare wrap up the Goddess's lantern?
Chen Mo put those thoughts aside and followed Li Yuanlong into the stockade.
From the outside, the stockade looked small, but once they were inside, he realized it was much larger than it appeared. It covered a full three or four li in every direction, surrounded by stone walls three zhang high. Inside stood all kinds of stone houses and residences, making it look like a small village.
There were even vegetable gardens and herb gardens in the stockade, where many workers were busy with farm work.
But they grew varieties that couldn't be found outside, and the scents they gave off were quite unusual.
Further ahead, he saw several houses with rows upon rows of Paper Figures arranged outside. A few workers were busy making them.
Several other houses had piles of coffins outside, with plenty of carpenters hard at work.
The place... felt downright eerie.
Making a few Paper Figures or coffins now and then would have been nothing. But there were simply too many of them...
Li Yuanlong seemed to notice Chen Mo's confusion and explained, "Black Mountain Stronghold supports a lot of people, and as a hidden branch of the Red Lantern Society, it has to support itself. We have to make a living somehow.
"The Paper Figures and coffins our stockade makes are especially popular. When someone dies in one of the nearby villages, most families come to the stockade and spend some silver on them—unless they're particularly poor or don't care about such things."
Chen Mo understood.
The strange thing was... there were at least eighty or a hundred people in the stockade.