The Eldest Daughter Is Beautiful and Saucy
Chapter 192: with words
Chapter 192: Message
When Xiao Rongyan entered the territory of Southern Yan in a carriage as a wealthy businessman from Wei, he happened to catch the first market of the year in Mengcheng, a border town of Southern Yan.
The early morning glow shines through the clouds, casting a golden hue on the bustling city of Mengcheng.
Xiao Rongyan’s carriage and horse team entered the city in the morning light. The noisy shouts of hawkers immediately came from outside the carriage. Xiao Rongyan lifted the carriage curtain and looked outside. What he saw was a bustling market scene that was completely different from Dayan.
In Mengcheng, a border town in Southern Yan, there were nobles dressed in silk and satin, common people in rags, and even slaves locked in cages and being sold.
The peddler carried his load and boasted about the quality of his furs to the merchants who rode into the city.
The owners of the stalls with straw roofs in the market who had occupied them early were afraid that their spots were not conspicuous enough, so they held up their finest goods and sang jokes in an attempt to attract customers or wealthy families.
There were also women with their hair in a bun and baskets on their arms, arguing with their friends over a penny or two, getting red in the face.
Everywhere is filled with a noisy and bustling sense of the world, a prosperity and noise that is hard to find in Dayan today, and it is truly enviable.
Xiao Rongyan, wearing a fox fur cloak, got off the carriage and walked slowly, surrounded by a dozen sword-wielding guards. It was a grand occasion, which also attracted many vendors who brought rare and precious things from the border town to come forward… They were eager to let Xiao Rongyan see their treasures, but were afraid of the sword-wielding guards around Xiao Rongyan.
Xiao Rongyan walked around the market, looking around as he went. Wherever he went, if he saw something that someone liked, he would buy it all out.
Seeing how generous Xiao Rongyan was, everyone’s fear of the guards around him was reduced a lot. They held up their own goods through the guards and shouted, “Young Master, please take a look.”
Even the slave traders couldn’t help but come forward and shout, “Sir, buy a few female slaves! They are very delicate!”
Southern Yan followed the old rule of Dayan before Queen Ji implemented the new policy. The slave market was rampant, especially in this border city, where it had reached an unbridled level.
A child with a chain around his neck was spotted by the seller, who threw some silver to the merchant and took the rope around the child’s neck away. A woman locked in a cage, speaking the dialect of a border town in Jin, cried hysterically, shaking the cage with her bloody hands, begging the seller to buy her along with her child and not to separate her from her child. But what she got in return was a few cruel whippings from the seller. The woman could only cry bitterly as she watched her crying child being bought like an animal.
Xiao Rongyan walked towards the area in the market that was specially set aside for buying and selling slaves. The slave traders immediately became enthusiastic and started to pull out their own slaves to introduce them.
“Look, sir. Our slave is strong!” The slave trader pulled his tall and strong slave to follow Xiao Rongyan’s steps and introduced him to Xiao Rongyan through the guards with swords. “You can buy him back as a strong laborer. You can let him do anything!”
There were also vendors who were holding female slaves and shouting, “Sir! Sir! Our female slave is quite pretty! Don’t be fooled by her dishevelled appearance, just wash her cleanly when you sell her! The most important thing is that she is still a virgin! She is a good maid or a concubine!”
“Our slaves are the best! Sir… Our slaves are all young, so we can train them from a young age after we buy them. They will do whatever you tell them to do! They will listen to you!”
Xiao Rongyan listened carefully to the movements of the slaves in the cages. He could tell that these slaves were brought here by slave traders from Jin and Dayan.
Most of the slaves from Dayan were pale and thin, looking ashen. Most of the slaves from Jin cried and begged the slave traders to let them go.
The allied forces of Southern Yan and Western Liang attacked Jin, and the border people of Jin suffered!
As for Dayan, because of the continuous natural disasters last year, the people were starving, so they decided to sell themselves to slave traders so that they could at least have something to eat.
Xiao Rongyan went straight through the slave market and headed towards the horse market. The slave traders then left in disappointment and returned to their respective stalls to sell their goods.
Xiao Rongyan saw a white horse from a distance. The horse had a strong body and looked unruly… It was kicking its hooves and spinning in circles, and several horse dealers couldn’t stop it. The buyer went to hold the reins but was thrown away by the horse. The buyer was caught off guard and fell against the wooden fence… He pressed his hand into the hot horse manure.
Seeing the horse was so aggressive, the buyer got up with his face turning pale and blue. He wiped the horse manure off his hands angrily and shook his head and waved his hands repeatedly, saying that he would not buy it!
The horse dealer hurriedly smiled and said, “Master, please take a look at our other horses! They are all strong and obedient, it’s true! Look at them! Look at them…their teeth and their size! You won’t find horses as good and as cheap as ours in the entire horse market! I’ll give you a discount!”
“No, I’ll go look somewhere else!”
Seeing that he couldn’t stop the buyer, the horse dealer got so angry that he whipped the white horse hard with his whip, causing the horse to raise its front hooves and spray rapid white mist from its nose, almost pulling down the wooden stake that the reins were tied to.
For some reason, when Xiao Rongyan saw the horse, he suddenly remembered that Bai Qingyan had a mount named “Ji Feng” a few years ago. Ji Feng horse ran as fast as the wind and was a rare treasure in the world. Later, he heard that Ji Feng died to protect Bai Qingyan, and since then, Bai Qingyan seemed to have never raised a horse again.
“Look! Look! This is the nth buyer?! If I can’t sell this dead horse of yours today… I will kill you and stew your meat tonight!” The horse dealer glared at the white horse fiercely.
“All your horses…I want them all!” Xiao Rongyan said.
The horse dealer turned around and saw a gentleman with an extremely noble and graceful demeanor standing in the morning light, with a faint smile in his eyes, gentle and dignified.
The guard behind Xiao Rongyan stepped forward, took out a bag of money, threw it to the horse dealer and asked, “Is it enough?”
The horse dealer opened his purse and nodded repeatedly, “Enough, enough, enough! Of course it’s enough! It’s just… it’s just that my white horse has a very fierce temper!”
“It’s okay, I like this white horse very much!” Xiao Rongyan said as he walked to the front of the white horse. He gently raised his hand and was about to touch the horse’s coat, but he saw the white horse took two steps back and kept breathing hot air in Xiao Rongyan’s direction, with its muscles tense and resisting obviously.
Xiao Rongyan’s smile deepened, and he looked like a very smart horse.
He didn’t want to tame the horse, he just thought the horse was worthy of Bai Qingyan…
Xiao Rongyan withdrew his hand that was about to stroke the horse’s fur, turned his head and said to the guards beside him: “Send someone to deliver this white horse to Miss Bai at Tianmen Pass!”
The guard was slightly startled, wondering if Xiao Rongyan started to curry favor with the eldest sister of the Bai family’s fourth daughter because he was attracted to her?
My dear ancestors, please give me a monthly ticket…