Had something happened that I didn't know about?
Or had I misunderstood something?
Chris stared wide-eyed at the simple, guileless-looking Barbarians dressed in animal skins. They stared right back at him.
"Why would they come here to eat when they're hungry?"
Chris asked Mia, but she stood on tiptoe with her hands behind her back, looking off into the distance as though to say, I'm not looking at you, so don't look at me.
Seeing Mia act like that, how could Chris fail to realize where the problem lay?
"You told them they could eat here for free?"
"N-no, I didn't say that."
Mia hurriedly waved her hands in denial. She looked around, took two steps back, then grabbed a large ear in the crowd, pulling Aisha out from behind a mercenary and dragging her over to Chris.
"It was her! She said they could come here to eat if they were hungry."
Mia's words made the people nearby snicker. To them, this was a little girl who had done something wrong and was now scrambling to pin the blame on a pig.
Chris, however, didn't see it that way. When he looked down at the Big White Pig named Aisha, she was straining to look up at him too.
As their eyes met, he actually detected a hint of embarrassment in those two beady eyes.
All right, Mia really hadn't lied. It was hard to understand how this pig could be so clever, or how those Barbarians could understand what she said, but it had already happened. What good would denying it do?
Mia was now looking at Chris pleadingly. Though she said nothing, he understood what she meant... What do we do?
Chris thought for a moment, then looked up at the Barbarians again and did a rough head count.
There were only a little over a hundred of them, with thirty-odd young, able-bodied adults. The elderly and children made up the majority.
Once he had worked out their numbers, Chris waved a hand.
"Mia, tell them to wait here for a bit. I'll go cook now. They can eat in half an hour."
"Really?"
"Really."
Chris answered cheerfully.
Chris was Chinese. Though he had been away from his homeland for a long time, he still identified as Chinese and took pride in it.
And Chinese people generally shared a certain trait: if they encountered a beggar asking for money on the street, some would give a little, while others would assume it was a scam and ignore them.
But if a fellow stopped someone on the street and said his money had been stolen, he was hungry, and he hoped some kind soul would buy him a meal...
Chris couldn't speak for anyone else, but if he encountered something like that, as long as he wasn't so down on his luck that he didn't even have two thousand yuan to his name, he would definitely take the fellow to a nearby fast-food restaurant and treat him to a filling meal.
The situation Chris faced now was much the same.
Though there were a hundred hungry people rather than one, the principle was the same, and treating them to a meal wouldn't cost that much.
Chris returned to the makeshift kitchen and had ten cooking barrels washed, then poured twenty jin of a grain mixture into each, made up of broken rice, cracked corn, sorghum, wheat berries, oats, and other grains.
Chris had bought this grain wholesale from an agricultural marketplace platform. Buying in bulk meant a better price, so he had purchased ten thousand jin at once, bringing the average price per jin down to just over one yuan.
If you cooked grain like this for Chinese people in the modern world, you could easily get beaten up unless you were giving it away for free.
School cafeterias that made porridge with broken rice were especially likely to be called unscrupulous by parents.
But when Chris cooked broken rice and mixed grains for people here, neither the mercenaries nor the caravan workers complained.
In fact, they thought the rule that they could eat as much as they liked, provided they didn't waste anything, was wonderful. It let them stuff themselves to their hearts' content.
Was there anything wrong with grain this cheap?
Of course there was. Its biggest problem was simply that it didn't taste good.
Aside from that, these mixed grains filled people's stomachs just fine, without making them sick or poisoning them.
With grain this cheap, Chris figured that even treating over a hundred people and letting them gorge themselves wouldn't cost much. At the absolute most, they would eat a little over two hundred jin of grain.
As for side dishes to go with it?
Sorry, there weren't any. Chris's willingness to feed them already demonstrated his kindness. He would fill their bellies, but there was no way he would treat these Barbarians to a feast of meat and fish.
He was kindhearted, not a sucker.
Once the grains had cooked for a while, Chris thought it over and opened the barrels anyway. Taking an iron ladle, he scooped two ladlefuls of chicken fat from the nearby oil drum into each, added half a ladle of coarse salt, and stirred everything evenly.
Chicken fat wasn't expensive, and adding it made the food more filling. Coarse salt was even cheaper and would replenish their salt intake.
As for how the resulting food tasted, or whether it was any good, that wasn't a consideration for Chris at all.
Cheap was good enough. Right now, Chris only had to feed a little over two hundred people. In a while, who knew how many would depend on him for food and drink? How could he manage without saving a little money?
Soon, half an hour had passed, and the ten barrels of mixed-grain rice were ready. Chris gestured for people to carry them out of the camp for the Barbarians to eat.
The moment the food was carried out, the hundred-odd Barbarians surged forward and surrounded the barrels under the gazes of the mercenaries inside the camp.
The Barbarians hadn't come empty-handed. They had brought bowls made of iron, wood, and earthenware, so the camp didn't need to supply any.
Moreover, though the Barbarians had rushed forward together, they weren't an undisciplined mob. On the contrary, they had their own internal rules.
Standing beside a barrel with a large iron ladle, Chris could see it clearly. The first Barbarians to come up for food were the young, able-bodied adults. The burly man at their head, wearing a necklace of boar tusks, was presumably their leader. He came first.
The large iron basin in his hands was big enough for Chris to wash his face in.
It took three scoops with Chris's large ladle to fill the basin, and the burly man ran off to one side to eat.
The young, able-bodied Barbarians came forward first, followed by the women, then the children, and finally the elderly.
Chris had originally assumed that, after cooking two hundred jin of mixed grains in ten barrels, at least one or two barrels would be left over. Reality proved he had been far too optimistic.
The Barbarians came back for serving after serving, emptying all ten barrels in just over ten minutes. Even then, some were still scraping at the barrels with their spotless bowls, trying to get a few grains stuck to the sides. Clearly, they weren't full.
Could Chris stand for that?
He couldn't. Chris refused to treat people to a meal only to leave his guests hungry!
So Chris had the barrels carried back and cooked another five barrels of mixed-grain rice. Half an hour later, they were brought out for the Barbarians to share.
This time, when the five large barrels were emptied again, the Barbarians were finally full. Nobody scraped at the barrels anymore.
At last, Chris could breathe a sigh of relief. The mercenaries watching the spectacle were even more astonished.
"So many big eaters!"
"Incredible. Absolutely incredible!"
After all, once two jin of broken rice and mixed grains had absorbed enough water during cooking, the finished food weighed far more than two jin.
With side dishes, a modern person could eat at most two to four liang of rice. These hundred-odd Barbarians had polished off three hundred jin of mixed grains, meaning each had eaten, on average, the oily rice cooked from three jin of broken rice and mixed grains. Their appetites were truly astounding.
Just as Chris was about to have the barrels carried back into camp, the strongest of the Barbarians, who seemed to be their chief, walked over, stood in his way, and jabbered at him.
Mia, standing beside Chris, translated as he spoke.
"Trade. Hides for food."
Before you continue