Chapter 233 – The Salt People

Chapter 233 – Salt People
Kevin was dizzy as he manned his stall, it was now midday and he still hadn’t eaten any water or rice, his stomach constantly rumbling in protest to his brain.

But what could he do? He had set up his stall here since the sun had first risen, but had only earned a handful of coins, which Kevin hadn’t even bothered to use to buy food.

He sat down on the ground and folded his arms around his legs, his heart filled with helplessness. The ground in front of him was covered with a piece of rag, this was Kevin’s stall, and on it were several bags of white stuff.

Salt, this was what Kevin was selling.

The village where Kevin was from had always relied on boiling salt to make a living. There used to be merchants who would come every month to collect the salt and pay them a reward.

But gradually things changed, when the merchants came to collect the salt, they began to press down the price hard, and even put on an attitude of “sell or not sell”.

Their village was basically a salt-boiling village, and they had nothing else to do, so they had to accept the traders’ low prices.

However, the price offered by the merchants became more and more unbearable, and the number of times they came to collect salt also became less and less.

Some people from the port of Fulan have learned that the merchants led by the big salt merchant, Ge Dewen, have set up some kind of “Salt Farm Salt Farm” near the port of Fulan, and they don’t know what kind of method is used in it, but they have heard that it can produce tons and tons of salt, which is much more efficient than the method of boiling salt used by their village.

When the salt farm was first put into operation, it could not meet all the demand, and the merchants had to rely on them, the salt people, but as the scale of the salt farm became bigger and bigger and the production became higher and higher, the reliance on the salt people became lower and lower.

The salt produced from the salt farm was no better than the salt boiled in Kevin’s village, and even slightly inferior in quality. But it had an unrivaled advantage – it was cheap.

That was really cheap, Kevin had learned that a subsistence family could buy enough salt to make pickled fish.

With less and less income from cooking salt, the family was soon unable to make ends meet, and at this rate, the already small savings would soon bottom out.

As a last resort, Kevin and his fellow villagers carried their own salt to sell in nearby towns, each choosing a place to avoid competition, and Kevin’s chosen destination was the port of Fullan.

He arrived at the port of Fulan yesterday, but after a day of stalls only earned a tiny bit of copper coins, starving until the night, he bought a black bread to hastily fill his stomach, originally did not earn a few money, became even more little money left.

He checked into the stables of an inn, and the next day he planned to take his chances.

Kevin Cheng had tried to sell his salt at the salt store, but the store had offered such a low price that he was sure to lose a lot of money just selling it to them. He was quickly thrown out of the store after trying to haggle.

Just as he was wondering what to do, he saw a man out of the corner of his eye carrying an iron bucket and a brush.

Kevin guessed that it was probably the city hall that was going to paint some “slogans” again, which was also a propaganda tool invented by the young lord who only succeeded to the throne last year, to paint the so-called “slogans” in the eye-catching public areas, so that people could understand his policy through simple words.

Like “Everyone has the responsibility to take care of the environment”, “Littering will be punished to the end” and so on. Even their small, isolated village had a few slogans, even though the number of people who could read and write in their village could be counted on one hand.

Seeing the bucket-carrying man coming his way, Kevin secretly grumbled about his bad luck and hurriedly packed up his things and moved his stall elsewhere, making way for the open space by the wall.

The men from City Hall came to the wall, dipped their brushes full of paint, and applied it to the wall.

A bunch of people gathered to watch the fun.

Kevin also came over to the side of the crowd and tapped a man who was looking intently at the wall and asked, “What’s written on the wall, this gentleman?”

This person was looking so intently, it was likely that he recognized the writing on the wall.

The man looked back at him and replied, “Don’t you recognize it? It says ‘Raise vigilance, guard against spies’!”

“Guard against spies?”

Kevin was a bit puzzled, he did know what spies did, just why was such a slogan suddenly painted?
“Yeah, don’t you know the recent situation?”

“What situation?”

He only heard the man say mysteriously, “The war is about to start! The lords are going to fight again!”

“War? Why is there a war for a good reason?”

Kevin frowned, he had heard his elders talk about the horrors of military disasters since he was a child, when there was a fight, the lords would bring their soldiers to loot each other’s territories, and would also add war taxes to their own lords and forcibly conscript the common people as soldiers.

He experienced the closest thing to war is the last pirate invasion, and listen to the village elders said, the military disaster is more horrible than the pirate plunder.

“I heard it was this one that was going to war with Emden.”

“Emden? I’ve heard that’s a very powerful territory to the south of us.” “What are you afraid of? Have you forgotten how our Lord Gleeman beat up those pirates and Byrdin rebels?”

The man who spoke to Kevin was incredibly excited, obviously very confident in Arda’s military and dancing around at the mere mention of the young lord.

Kevin grunted in his heart, Port Fulan had a ring of walls to protect it anyways, but their village had no defenses whatsoever.

He twisted his head toward his stall and complained in a low voice, “War, war, we salt people are about to starve to death still care about war ……”

A person next to him overheard his words, and a gleam emerged from his eyes ……

Kevin continued to guard the stall for some time, and finally couldn’t hold out any longer, now he didn’t even have the energy to yell and hawk to the passing pedestrians.

He weighed the few coins in his hand, and with immense pain, he decided to go and buy a slice of bread to satiate his hunger before going to the well to drink a few mouthfuls of cool water.

Just as he got up and took a few steps back, a man stopped him.

“Is this your stall?”

Kevin immediately turned around and responded, “Yes yes. This is my stall, may I ask if the guest is buying salt?”

He got a good look at the visitor, not too tall, not too short, not too fat, not too thin, with a flat face.

“May I ask what the price of salt is here?”

Kevin thought with some difficulty and directly quoted the lowest price he could accept.

The visitor said a little hesitantly, “It’s quite a bit more expensive than what they sell in the store!”

Kevin was anxious, “Guest, my sin salt here is a bit more expensive, but the quality is superior, it is all boiled by hand in our village and carefully ground and sifted, it is not much worse than the refined salt eaten by the noble lords. You look at those salts in the store, big coarse particles not to mention, it also contains so much sand, the taste is many times worse than the ones in my stall.”

The visitor rubbed his chin as if considering Kevin’s words. He dipped his finger into some salt and put it in his mouth and tasted it.

“Well you’re right, the taste is indeed quite a bit better than the ones sold in the stores.”

Hearing the other party say that, Kevin’s eyes revealed hope.

“Then, guest you ……”

“Think about it too, we do need to buy salt in the store, and since the quality of your salt here is good, we’ll just buy it from you. Just this one bag!”

He pointed to a bag of salt and said to Kevin.

“Alright, I’ll tie it up for you!”

Kevin nimbly tied the bag and handed it to the customer, who also readily gave the money.

The customer inquired: “I haven’t seen you before, are you new here?”

“Uh, I just came here yesterday to sell salt ……”

“Will you continue to sell it here in the future?”

“I’ll come to sell salt as long as you need it, Master.”

“Good, if the food is good, I will continue to patronize it?”

He patted Kevin’s shoulder and turned to walk away with the bag of salt.

Kevin carefully shook the small bag full of coins, and the sound of a crisp crash from inside filled his heart with instant happiness.

I can finally have a full meal today.

In the past two days, I was sent to Jiangsu on a business trip, so I hope to apologize for the untimely update. Alas, are almost New Year’s suddenly encountered this kind of thing. ????

(End of chapter)