Money Ordinary People Could Hardly Save in a Lifetime, Pills, and the Eerie Black Goat Token

"A-Wen, you're back?"

Old Shi saw his son return and called out to him.

Mother Shi silently took the pork and roast duck her son had bought and went back to cook.

"A-Wen, have you found some way to make money? I see your family eating fish and meat every day. You're certainly eating well."

Aunt Chen smiled and teased him from her seat on a stone stool. "If you've found a profitable business, introduce it to the neighbors too."

"Aunt Chen, you're joking. You could sell your land too, and then you'd have money for meat."

Shi Wen replied. Aunt Chen gave an awkward smile and said nothing more.

Shi Wen looked at Old Shi curiously. "Dad, why's it so lively tonight? Did something happen?"

Old Shi said, "I just got back a little while ago. I heard there's work to be had in Peace Lane, so I'm thinking of going with Old Zhang and the others to give it a try."

"That Robbery Gang—I don't know why, but they've changed their name to the Harmony and Prosperity Union. I hear that starting today, the Harmony and Prosperity Union has divided Peace Lane into twenty-eight districts. All those miscellaneous fees have been consolidated into management fees, garbage fees, and service fees. People pay the Red Pole in their district just once a month."

Aunt Chen fanned herself with a palm-leaf fan. "If anyone tries to charge extra, you can report them to the strategist—that Old Song. If your report checks out, you'll get a reward of two hundred strings of cash!"

As she said this,

her face clearly showed how tempted she was.

"Report them? They're all in cahoots. You think you'd dare report them?" An old man nearby scoffed.

Aunt Chen was embarrassed and retorted, "They accept anonymous reports. They won't reveal your information."

"Hehehe. And you believe they're anonymous? You report them today, and tomorrow someone'll come set your house on fire!"

At that,

fear showed on Aunt Chen's face and on the faces of some of the other neighbors.

"I hear the Harmony and Prosperity Union's hiring people for some urgent work. They're building a market on Wulin Street and a building on Fulin Street. Day laborers get five hundred Treasure Coins a day, and monthly workers get twenty thousand Treasure Coins a month."

"I hear skilled craftsmen can earn a thousand Treasure Coins a day, and master craftsmen two thousand!"

"Good work comes with extra rewards too, though they don't provide lunch."

"They don't dock a single coin from your pay, and they even cover the clerks' taxes!"

Old Lin rubbed the calluses on his foot, then brought it close to his nose and sniffed. "Are you going? These terms are much better than working at the docks, and it's close to home."

"I'm afraid it's a scam," one neighbor said bitterly. "How could people from the gangs possibly follow the rules? They might pay you with one hand, then find all kinds of excuses to take the money back with the other."

"Exactly. The Thief Gang finished building that building before and didn't pay a single coin. Would you dare go make a fuss?"

"Working at the docks means getting a lot docked from your pay, but at least you really get to take some money home. As for working for that Robbery Gang... the Harmony and Prosperity Union, who knows what'll happen?"

"I don't really dare go either. What if I end up without even enough money for Potato Cakes?"

Old Lin's expression stiffened, but when he thought of his sick son, he still shook his head and said, "The wages are good. I can do carpentry, so I want to give it a try."

After that,

the neighbors burst into another lively discussion, all talking at once.

Most of the conversation revolved around the Harmony and Prosperity Union building a market and developing a commercial street.

Some vendors were thinking that if a market really did go up on Wulin Street, they could set up stalls selling tea, coarse cakes, or other goods, and probably make quite a bit of money.

Old Shi, meanwhile, was thinking of going to Wulin Street with a fellow tradesman to try selling things.

Competition at the docks was fierce, and the gangs made all kinds of deductions, sometimes charging the same fee more than once.

If there was a place to make money in Peace Lane, then even if the Harmony and Prosperity Union docked a little more from their pay, at least they wouldn't have to travel so far.

Shi Wen chatted with them for a bit, then went home.

After dinner,

Shi Wen returned to his room.

He chewed on some dried meat while hiding the Immortal Mother Wood Carving and the Blessing Meat in a corner, sorting and stashing various things away.

Only then did he have time

to take out the spoils he'd gotten after killing Tong Roushan.

Rustle, rustle...

Shi Wen dumped everything in the bag onto the bed in one go. A pile of odds and ends spilled out, and a stack of banknotes caught his eye.

After sorting through the items, a smile crept onto Shi Wen's face.

There were fourteen banknotes, each worth ten taels. Along with some loose silver, it came to nearly one hundred and sixty taels!

One tael of silver was worth thirty strings of copper cash, which meant he had four thousand eight hundred strings of copper cash here.

Converted to Treasure Coins, it would be an enormous sum. Any ordinary person at the bottom of society in all of Black Cloud County would probably struggle to save that much in a lifetime!

Take his family, for example. They could work themselves to the bone for a whole year and still not save ten strings of copper cash!

"Sure enough, killing and burning your way to riches gets you a golden belt, while building bridges and paving roads leaves you a corpse with nothing."

"If I'd just worked honestly, I could've struggled until the day I died, but with crippling taxes and layer upon layer of exploitation, I'd never have saved four thousand eight hundred strings of cash in my whole life. Only by becoming a martial artist can you scrape by in this chaotic world and get the means to stay alive."

"It's just a shame this still isn't enough money."

"I hear that even the shabbiest courtyard in the most remote part of Tooth City costs three hundred taels."

"Once I have the money, I'll buy a courtyard in Tooth City and move the whole family there."

"Then my parents can live in better surroundings, and I won't have to live in fear all the time."

Shi Wen put some loose silver in his pocket and stored the rest away.

Tooth City was the Inner City. It had the best public safety in Black Cloud County, and life inside the Inner City was a world apart from the world outside.

He'd heard that with a Tooth City residence registration, you were not only guaranteed safety but also exempt from taxes.

Even jobs in Tooth City paid more than ten times what they did outside, and there was no gang exploitation or deductions by the clerks!

Shi Wen continued sorting through the things, and soon he had several porcelain bottles in his hands.

He opened them and sniffed.

The pills in two of the bottles made his blood and qi surge faster as soon as he smelled them.

He just didn't know whether they were poison or potent medicine.

Shi Wen walked to the wooden window and whistled. At once, a black cat came sprinting down the deep alley. It quickly leaped through the window and rubbed its little head against his trouser leg.

Ever since he'd fed it a little mutated beast meat infused with Treasure Blood,

the Black Cat had been showing up every few days to beg him for food.

Shi Wen poured one pill from each of the four porcelain bottles, broke off a little, and set it on the ground.

Only after the Black Cat had eaten and gone more than ten minutes without any problems—indeed, it seemed more lively than before—did Shi Wen toss it back out the window.

"These should be pills that nourish blood and qi. After eating one, the blood and qi surge much faster, and they can even strengthen your blood and qi! Each pill increases your blood and qi by one percent. I wonder if there's a limit? There aren't many, though—just twenty-three pills between the two bottles."

"This bottle should contain pills that fill your stomach. One is enough to leave you full, with no desire to eat..."

He sampled the pills as he sorted them.

After identifying the pills in all four bottles and sorting through the other odds and ends,

a hint of worry appeared on Shi Wen's face.

He'd used up a lot over the past few days. He had less than half of his mutated beast meat left, and only five doses of Blood Strengthening Powder.

Although he'd replenished some supplies from Tong Roushan, the situation was still far from reassuring.

Tong Roushan had no mutated beast meat, only pills that nourished the muscles and bones and strengthened the blood and qi. Going without mutated beast meat would cause major problems. It would also be hard to keep his body functioning with his blood and qi demanding food like Taotie.

"I wonder why Tong Roushan didn't have even a single piece of mutated beast meat. Could he have left it at home?"

"But the man carried all his belongings on him, and he was even gnawing on something before the fight. He doesn't seem like the sort who can leave anything behind. Maybe the daily food requirements of the Taibao Hard Qigong are so high that Tong Roushan had no mutated beast meat on him."

"Phew... Looks like I'll have to find some time over the next few days to check out the place Zhang Sheng mentioned where they get mutated beast meat."

"If there's not enough produced there, or if he lied to me, I'll have to make plans for what comes next. I can't run out of mutated beast meat..."

Shi Wen kept rummaging through the items, setting aside the useless things.

Among them were a membership token from Lanchun Brothel, one from a gambling house, and so on.

Then a token made of an unfamiliar metal caught his attention.

The character "Extreme" was engraved on one side.

On the other side,

there was an engraving of an old forest deep in the mountains, shrouded in mist.

The head of an enormous black goat gazed out at him.

Its horizontal pupils were engraved so vividly that it seemed as if a living goat were staring right back at him...