Chapter 63 Gum Tree Village and the Slave Collection Team
Unfortunately, such happy things did not last long for the children who came to ask for water, because the next day, Broly’s team was exhausted For money several times more than the price outside, we replenished water and other food in this small town, and then set off again.
In the team, there are four children whose homes are in this area. Their homes are all in the middle of Katisi.
"Boss, why don't we do something?"
On the top of the hill, looking at the small convoy passing by, one of the people who came to the hotel yesterday to rob Broly and others couldn't help but ask To the strong man next to him.
"Yesterday, did your child not drink other people's water, eat other people's bread, or not chew other people's dried meat?
We have met many different kinds of guys, but things like this All the children who have been begging for water have been fed back, so no one can rob them.”
A team of townspeople and guest bandits were lying on the top of the hill with nothing. He did, watching the small convoy of Broly's team go away.
Under the pressure of life, they fall into the trap of being bandits. They are both civilians and bandits. This is also a common behavior among people in the difficult areas of the Western Region.
“Another day when no good people come to the door.”
In the motorcade, Broly was a little nostalgic for the days when he randomly encountered highway robbers.
I just felt some very weak breath on the top of the mountain, and I thought it was that a new good person was finally coming.
As a result, when I walked past that hilltop, nothing happened, which was very disappointing.
. . .
The further you go to the center of Katisi area, the more expensive the water and goods prices become.
By the time we reached the central part, one liter of water was already worth 21 imperial coins.
On the way, Broly and others also encountered some merchants delivering juicy fruits, but nothing good happened.
Broly and others did some business with these merchants and used money to buy some fruits from them. One of them has a lot of juice, but the taste is relatively jerky. If you eat too much, you will have diarrhea. , but its low price and easy storage make it the first choice for most low-income people in Katisi area to replenish water.
As for the taste, Broly can only say that it is slightly better than the long-lasting rain from Wampa Star. On the other hand, if there is no Crystal Palace, his life may be worse than the people at the bottom here. .
Among the four children who arrived in the central region of Katisi and wanted to go home, one of the villages named Dam Boy was quickly located. It was a village that planted natural gum trees and collected gum. The village that makes a living is also known as Guoshu Village.
. . . .
"Have the rubber forests in the south withered?"
The village elder asked.
"There is too little precipitation in the rainy season, and the small trees there are still young and cannot absorb water from deeper in the ground."
The middle-aged patriarch replied.
"How much money is left in the village?"
"Not much. The rubber produced in the village this year is not good, and the price given by the caravan coming over is very low."
"Then what are you going to do? What to do?”
“Village elder, can’t we leave Katisi and live somewhere else?”
“You want to move the village?”
"If you don't move the village, the village will die."
"Then have you thought about the price of moving the village?"
"You can cut down the old gum trees and sell them for money. The money we get will be used to hire guards to escort us to other places, and the remaining money will be used as start-up capital to rebuild the village."
"Hire guards to find trustworthy ones. What if we become bandits and rob us on the way? Even if we can find a reputable village and move to a new place, what should we do for a living?
Our villagers in Jiaoshu Village, After generations of planting and harvesting gum trees, leaving the original living environment is too risky. If you don’t pay attention, it may fall apart. ”
People are cheap when they leave their hometown. Young people who can leave the village and go out have already left a few years ago. Those who remain are those who find it difficult to leave their homeland.
They are like gum trees, they die easily once they are removed from the soil.
But don’t leave. As water prices rise year by year, various living costs continue to rise.
It is like a noose around the neck that gradually tightens. Once it tightens to a certain level, the person will be strangled to death.
And this is also the reason why the middle-aged patriarch seeks change.
“But you can’t just stay here and wait for death, right?”
“Just wait until the wrath of the God of Oasis passes.”
“Then when should we wait? ?”
“I don’t know either.”
"How are we going to spend this year?"
"Inform the slave traders and let them come to the village to select children."
"Selling children again, selling children like this again, Does our village still have a future? ”
“What else can I sell if I don’t sell my children? You or me. I want to sell my old bones, but others don’t want them either.”
“So, just sell me. Can we only sell our children?”
"The children who are sold are not dead. Although they will be sold to others as slaves, they still have a chance to live after leaving this hellish place."
The village elder of Guoshu Village and The clan leaders had a quarrel, which ended with the middle-aged clan leader's compromise. Soon, some clan members contacted the slave merchants in the city.
. . . .
“Children like this who have gum-picking skills can be sold for the most money in the Western Kingdom. There are quite a lot of gum forests there and there is a need for enough gum-picking slaves.”
"Master, do you want to pay a higher price for the goods this time? I heard that the price of water has risen again this year..."
"As long as you give a high price, it's still the same as before. The harder it is to survive, the more people in Guoshu Village will give more glue picking skills to those children in order to get a high price when selling their children, and the quality of the goods If we improve, we can also make more money in the Western Kingdom.”
This is a conversation between the slave trader and his subordinates. He is in the human business, not the charity business.
“Hey, I didn’t expect that the well water business here in Katisi would be so easy to do. If I had bribed the lord to get the right to carry buckets from a deep well, I would be making money now.”
"Then master, why don't we secretly dig a deep well?"
"It's not difficult to dig deep water, but it's too risky to sell the water. I'd better do what I do The population business.”
In the Great Western Region, businesses that can make a lot of money are always controlled by powerful people. For example, in the Katisi region, no one would have thought that water could be dug out by digging a well deeper.
But those who dare to dig, those who can dig, and those who dig out the water and sell it, if they don’t pay a large sum of money as bribes, then wait to die.
The slave merchants have no intention of challenging the rules of the Katisi region. They just want to rely on the poor livelihood of the people here to do some high-quality population transportation business.
"Iron Slave, you collect some goods here. I will go to Bossier City first to present the precious goods brought by this trip to the West to the Marquis of Bossier. I will wait for you to collect the goods here. Catch up when it’s almost time.”
The slave merchant took the first step and went to the famous transit point city for the population transportation industry in the Western Region, but left his loyal servants to collect people in Jiaoshu Village.
The slave merchant left that day, and the servant called Iron Slave also led the slave collection team to Guoshu Village that day. On the way, the slave collection team encountered a convoy of children.
The quality of the children in that convoy was very good, as if they were carefully selected by another slave caravan with sophisticated experience. The iron slaves called them lucky.
(End of this chapter)