As the two left the room, Huarui and Huaqing immediately came up to greet them.

With his hands behind his back, Song Xiaodong said, "My wife and I want to go for a walk."

Huarui promptly responded, "Alright, sir, we'll show you the way right away."

Qingluan frowned slightly, about to say that there was no need for the two of them to go, but Song Xiaodong gave her a look and said, "Okay, then you can all accompany us for a stroll, just as we are not familiar with the roads here."

Huarui and Huaqing led the way in front, while Qingluan quietly asked, "Why are you bringing them along?"

"Since they were sent by the City Lord, if we don't bring them, it might cause the City Lord to doubt our true intentions of being here, which would be bad."

Qingluan said, not in a good mood, "Hmph, I think you just want to take these two girls out for a wander."

Song Xiaodong didn't argue, just smiled at Qingluan.

After leaving the City Lord's Mansion, Huarui and Huaqing stepped back to walk behind Song Xiaodong and Qingluan. Huaqing was not very talkative and stayed by Qingluan, while Huarui, who was more lively and talkative, stayed close to Song Xiaodong.

After they had pointed out the directions, Song Xiaodong leisurely walked ahead and asked Huarui, "Where are your parents?"

Huarui answered, "Our parents passed away a long time ago."

Song Xiaodong then asked, "Why did you come to the City Lord's Mansion?"

Huarui casually replied, "We were bought by the City Lord."

"Bought? They can buy and sell people here?"

"Yes, sir, are you thinking of buying two maidservants? I know where they are sold, though not in our city."

Seeing Huarui speak so naturally and casually, Song Xiaodong couldn't help but be a bit surprised and said, "You were bought, do you not feel uncomfortable about it?"

Huarui said, "Being bought by the City Lord is a blessing for us. Now we can follow you, sir, and you seem to be a very good person. We are both very happy."

Song Xiaodong and Qingluan exchanged a glance; the status of women here was evidently very poor. They considered being treated like commodities to be normal.

This might be related to the harsh living conditions here. Women couldn't control essential survival resources and had to rely on men, so they were more often reduced to being tools for childbirth. Moreover, this idea had been passed down through generations, and the women here had long been accustomed to this way of living.

Song Xiaodong said, "So where is this market located?"

Huarui said, "The market is right at the center. Every five days, there's a market. People from the four cities can go there if they want to buy or sell something."

"What currency do they use here? Oh, I mean, what serves as money?"

Huarui looked puzzled and said, "What's money?"

"Then what did the City Lord use to buy you?"

Huarui said with some pride, "The two of us, we cost the City Lord two hundred pounds of cured meat."

"Cured meat..." Song Xiaodong and Qingluan both had black lines on their heads. Two girls as lovely as blossoms were only worth two hundred pounds of cured meat, which meant one person was only worth a hundred pounds of cured meat.

Here, it seemed as though trading was done through bartering, and the most circulated item was cured meat.

In their minds, Song Xiaodong and Qingluan pictured a market with vendors selling goods on either side, while buyers wandered with dozens of pounds of cured meat, and when they took a liking to something, they would cut off a piece of cured meat to buy it. The thought itself was quite amusing.

Song Xiaodong and Huyan Lie mostly talked about power, military strength, and geographical matters, but issues like this, Huyan Lie hadn't discussed with Song Xiaodong.

Yet these matters were equally important, perhaps even being the main cause of war. Song Xiaodong paid particular attention to them for this reason.

Qingluan asked at this point, "It seems like we've eaten quite a bit of meat these past two days, and we've seen a lot of animals. It doesn't appear that there's much shortage of meat?"

Huaqing said, "Right now is the active season for those animals. When it's their dormant season, it will be very hard to catch them, and we'll only be able to eat cured meat then."

"There's a dormant season?" Song Xiaodong asked.

Huarui added, "Yes, about half of the year here is the dormant season, and we will also try to minimize our activities then."

Qingluan was also completely intrigued, saying, "Why does this situation occur?"

"The plants around here, apart from a few that can produce some rice, the rest can't be eaten; other animals can't be eaten either. There's only one type of little insect that can be eaten, and these insects are only active for half the year. When there are a lot of them, there are more small animals that eat insects, and then there are more carnivorous beasts."

This is a very simple food chain. You could say that those little insects form the most critical link in the entire food chain. Without those little insects, the food chain here would probably break.

"Why can't those plants be eaten?" Song Xiaodong asked again.

Huarui said, "They're all poisonous. If people eat them, at best they'll get diarrhea, at worst, it could be fatal."

Song Xiaodong squinted a bit and said, "I see."

There were very few people walking the streets, and even those who were outside were mostly elderly or children. Seeing Song Xiaodong and the others, these people were observing them with curious eyes.

"All the adult males here have gone hunting, and young girls mostly stay at home to avoid trouble."

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