The tea shop held more than a dozen tables, all of them occupied. Even the gaps in the aisles were filled with customers standing there, cups in hand and necks craned in anticipation. It was as lively as a temple fair performance.
For the lower and middle classes, whose lives were monotonous and rigid, listening to storytellers read the newspapers had become one of the few pleasures they could rarely enjoy. At least it was more worthwhile than drinking muddy wine. Coming to listen every few days was affordable, and afterward they would receive a warm welcome from their neighbors as they recounted the colorful stories of the martial world, along with the anecdotes of distant yet seemingly near places such as Yuexi, painting a stroke of color onto their pallid lives.
This was the scene Qian Ping'an saw when he entered the tea shop, but he seemed somewhat absent-minded, his thoughts drifting beyond the heavens as he paid no attention at all to what lay before him.
"Earlier, I heard the proprietor say that the Capital City's four major rice merchants have joined forces to resist grain from other regions entering the city. They hired assassins, recruited martial arts experts, and colluded with court officials, all to restore the price of rice to a normal level. It seems more than a dozen people have already died, including quite a few grain merchants..."
"And the day before yesterday, the Martial World Express published a letter from Tan Hai, president of the rice merchants' association in the Southern Five Provinces. He said he would enter the capital hand in hand with the South Sea Divine Sword Lin Zutong to pay his respects to the Left Prime Minister..."
"For decades, there hasn't been a Great Grandmaster in the martial world. The South