After rounding the mountain, the view ahead opened up. Several hundred meters away lay a flat valley, where the town sat—a uniform spread of detached villas with gardens, crisscrossed by smooth, straight concrete roads.
The town began in the valley and stretched deep into the mountains. Calling it a town was perhaps not quite accurate; a settlement capable of housing twenty thousand people was no small place.
Its extravagance exceeded Xia Zuo's expectations.
On the way here, he had searched for photos of ethnic minority settlements in Bagui Province. Dusty yellow-earth roofs were covered in dark brown tiles, elderly farmers with their trouser legs rolled up led oxen along cobblestone paths, and the only thing with a modern feel was the utility pole standing at the village entrance.
Thus, Xia Zuo had formed a fixed impression of ethnic minority settlements in foreign lands—poor villages that were practically cut off from the world.
Seeing this scene now left him somewhat stunned.
Not only was it neither poor nor backward, it was shockingly wealthy.
Xia Zuo quickly came to his senses. The Green Wheat Branch was the strongest force in Bagui Province, and the funding for every major branch in Bagui Province had to be collected from the Green Wheat Branch. The money the Five Elements Alliance headquarters fed them every year was equivalent to the annual gross profit of a major corporation.
How could such a force possibly live in poverty? It would not have been strange for them to build palaces in the mountains.
Xia Zuo gazed at the distant valley, his pale blue eyes returning to calm. "We've arrived at the Green Wheat Branch."
The moment he finished speaking, a three-meter-tall long-haired giant ape suddenly sprang out of the dense forest to the right front. Dragging a broken log