"Here's far enough."
Yang Ge led the burly men in blue into the market square and spoke.
As though granted a royal pardon, the men set down the handcarts and prepared to bolt.
"Come back!"
Yang Ge called them back, stepped forward, and deftly unloaded the millet from the carts with one hand. "Take the carts back. We'll need them next time."
Watching him casually lift sack after sack and toss them three or four meters away, the men felt their scalps prickle. They didn't dare let out so much as a fart.
Those were grain sacks that held a whole shi-each weighed a full hundred and twenty-five jin!
If that kind of strength landed on a person...
The men stood rooted to the spot, too terrified to move.
Yang Ge didn't order them around. With just his own two hands, he picked up sack after sack of millet and tossed them out as easily as dropping dumplings into a pot.
In a minute or two, he had unloaded over thirty-eight hundred jin of millet. Dusting off his hands, he said, "All right, off you go. It's dark and the roads are slippery. Watch your step."
Hearing that, the men actually found themselves thinking... He's a pretty decent fellow!
Once the men had left with the carts, Yang Ge set down the Willow-Leaf Saber and dragged the large pots, firewood, stove frames, and other supplies he had prepared out of a dark alley. Rolling up his sleeves, he lit fires, boiled water, and began cooking millet porridge on the bleak, windswept street as though no one else were there.
Daylight soon came.
As the residents near the market square got out of bed, they caught the fragrance of millet.
Burning hunger drove them out of their homes, stumbling toward the