Preparation

Sometimes, a person did things that were not one hundred percent rational. For Zhang Tie, freeing a whole group of slaves that afternoon was one such thing.

Perhaps it was reverence for life; perhaps it was a complicated sense of gratitude; perhaps he had felt some pity for the slaves' plight. Or perhaps there was also a tiny selfish motive hidden away—he wanted to see whether freeing slaves would give him any fruit to eat.

And so, Zhang Tie had thrown down over a thousand gold coins to free a batch of the "cheapest" slaves. In many people's eyes—at least in Da Vinci's eyes, as a broker specializing in the slave trade—Zhang Tie was a complete prodigal who had no idea how hard it was to earn money.

When Zhang Tie said he had a castle, Da Vinci naturally assumed it was one built for him by the Zhang family. Anyone who could build a castle on Hidden Dragon Island and bore the surname Zhang had to be a core descendant of Huaiyuan Hall's core family. That was Da Vinci's guess about Zhang Tie's origins.

Da Vinci did not think he could be wrong. Huaiyuan Prefecture might be vast, but there truly were not many youths of seventeen or eighteen like Zhang Tie who could casually spend tens of thousands of gold coins and buy hundreds of slaves at a time.

Perhaps having such a patron behind him, having a great family at his back, was not a bad thing. Thinking this, Da Vinci's depression lessened considerably. Moreover, with his eye for judging people, Da Vinci believed Zhang Tie was not the sort of person with a black belly and a poisonous heart. A man who could sympathize with even the lowliest slaves, who did not hesitate to grant dignity