Mercenaries and Adventurers

After wandering around the square again, Zhao Ji felt that it was boring, so he set out to visit the wealthy district. From Chengmen Square, you can directly enter the rich area through the street in the northwest direction of the square. As soon as he entered the wealthy area, Zhao Ji felt that the festival decoration style here was different from other places. It was also the theme color of the harvest festival, yellow. The yellow color in other places was ordinary decorative fabrics dyed with yellow ore and other cheap decoration props.

But Zhao Ji couldn’t see all kinds of festive props in the wealthy district, but they definitely didn’t use cheap ones, not to mention that many shops used gold foil to wrap fruits and ears of wheat as the main festive props in each shop. .

Zhao Ji found that many shops here regard such props processed with gold leaf as the main decoration. They are all placed in the center of the shop table, or on the wooden shelf behind the shop owner. In short, they are placed in an eye-catching and safe place. place.

The appearance of these gold decoration props did bring a different feeling to the shops in the rich area, at least Zhao Ji felt so. I always feel that the products in the entire store have also been upgraded.

The main road in the rich area is not as crowded as in other areas, but there are still a large number of people pouring in here, which is why many ordinary people living in the slums can hang out in the rich area in a fair way throughout the year it's time. It's not that they can't come here in normal times, but in normal times, most of them have to work hard to make ends meet. Farming, laundry, childcare, and military service are all imposed on civilians. It makes them have no time and no need to go to places where they do not live to hang out.

And the most important point, although the things in the rich area are of exquisite quality, the price is really beyond the consumption of ordinary people. Only during the few days of the festival, in order to gain popularity, the shops in the rich area will launch some cheap small commodities for display and sale.

Zhao Ji saw many ordinary people wearing new clothes bought at home came to the rich area. In addition to visiting the beautifully decorated houses with different styles, the most important thing was to take out the coins they had accumulated to buy some cheap jewelry or Clothes and hats served.

Zhao Ji is different from everyone else. Although he wears expensive autumn and winter clothes, he brings animal hats made and sold by apprentices in the artisan area. Of course, everyone who saw Zhao Ji also saw the conspicuous badge of the Saturnalia Church hanging on Zhao Ji's chest, and no one dared to express any opinion on Zhao Ji's clothes.

Zhao Ji didn't go shopping or buy those cheap jewelry or clothes, but spent the money on all kinds of food in the rich district.

Unlike the various foods in the slums, the food in the rich areas is no longer a variety of bread or large pieces of meat. Instead, they use all kinds of exquisite dim sum cakes as the main force, and these dim sum cakes are full of sweetness, which is Zhao Ji's favorite. He has been mainly active in the artisan district and the poor district before. He rarely comes to the rich district, and he has never eaten in the taverns and shops that sell food here. He did not expect that the food here is full of sweetness.

In the last life, as a young man who entered the industrialized society to live and work, Zhao Ji naturally had to eat some snacks every day, and the two most important items in modern industrial food were sugar and monosodium glutamate. Basically all snacks and beverages will add more sugar than necessary, and food without MSG is not tasty enough. That's sugar in every meal, and MSG in every meal.

But after coming to this different world, since Zhao Ji did not have a well-paid job, he has not been able to eat well for a few times, and the sweets are even less, and the taste of all kinds of food is very bland. But everyone around him is like this, so he can only do as the Romans do.

But at this time, Zhao Ji discovered that it was not that there were no sweets here, but that all the sweets were in the rich area. If you don't come here to eat, you really can't find it.

Zhao Ji immediately shook off his cheeks, took all the milk cakes and cheese biscuits, and packed the sweet fruit pie,

The honey pudding even asked the store owner to leave one for him. He paid a deposit first, otherwise it would be bad if he was afraid that it would be sold out later.

Candy Zhao Ji even put a bag in a small leather bag, which he hung firmly on his belt and ate whenever he went.

He has a cake in his left hand, a large piece of biscuit in his right hand, and a packaged fruit pie that exudes fragrance hanging on his arm, and the candy in the leather bag on his waist is also moving along with it, shaking and making sweet collision sounds.

In addition to food, clothing and jewelry, some small performance stages were set up in the empty spaces of the streets in the rich district, and some amateur children from rich families rushed to perform on them. After listening to some people's discussions, Zhao Ji realized that the king of the kingdom he was in turned out to be a legendary bard. Winning, the gods reward him and his team with a new kingdom to rule.

Although the country has been established for a hundred years, the king who was once a legendary bard was blessed by the gods and is still in power at this time, but he has already traveled to unknown places, leaving only his son temporarily. Acting on the throne, exercising the rule of the country on behalf of the father.

Zhao Ji felt outrageous when he heard it. Dude, the king is a professional musician who rewarded a country to rule just because he saved face for the human gods when the gods were in a meeting. He loves music more than the country, so he ran out to play and left his son as regent.

He had occasionally heard this information from a drinker in a tavern before, and he thought it was the drinker talking nonsense, after all, he could say anything after drinking too much. But today, in the wealthy area of ​​the Harvest Festival, Zhao Ji couldn't believe it when he heard these rich young people mention these things incidentally when they talked about music. It turns out that this different world is so outrageous. The gods play quite a big game.

Zhao Ji wandered the streets of the wealthy district while eating sweet food.

In addition to the above-mentioned festivals where everyone makes things, there is another interesting thing in the rich area, that is, someone held a small art exhibition in an open space.

The art exhibition was carried out in an open space full of lawns, and the art exhibition was surrounded by various colored ribbons to distinguish the inside and the outside. Zhao Ji saw from the outside that there were many paintings inside, about one hundred or more, all of which were erected high on special wooden frames for painting. Because Zhao Ji was holding the food he was eating, a middle-aged painter at the entrance of the art exhibition blocked Zhao Ji from entering, saying that Zhao Ji had to finish eating before he could enter to visit and buy paintings.

This is what it should be. Zhao Ji hurriedly finished the cake in a few bites. The biscuit was too dry and he couldn’t finish it in a hurry. Zhao Ji stuffed it into the fruit pie package and showed it to the middle-aged artist with both hands free. Look, they finally put Zhao Ji in, probably because they saw the badge on Zhao Ji's chest.

Zhao Ji himself also thinks that this badge is really convenient to wear on his body, after all, this is a society that depends on social status. Zhao Ji guessed that if he didn't wear a badge, even if he ate all the food in both hands, people would not let Zhao Ji in because Zhao Ji still brought an uneaten fruit pie.

If Zhao Ji's clothes were shabby, Zhao Ji didn't need to guess, he was sure that the other party would not let him in to visit and buy paintings.

This painting exhibition requires a fee of one copper coin to enter and visit. After Zhao Ji paid ten copper coins, he finally walked into the painting.

The paintings on display are held together by five or six painters. At this time, except for a middle-aged painter at the door, some other young painters are introducing to the visiting guests in the exhibition. with their own paintings.

Zhao Ji also followed several painters, listening to them explain where each painting was created, when and why it was created.

To be honest, although Zhao Ji doesn't understand art paintings, he lived in the information age in his last life, and he has seen all kinds of art masterpieces from various countries and time periods through the Internet.

How should I put it, the paintings of these painters are actually not bad, and most Zhao Ji thinks they are good. It's just that although most of the paintings are highly skilled, the content is a bit plain, and most of them are religious paintings. Although there are also paintings describing human beings and natural scenery, they are all a bit too rigid.

But obviously, the rich and wealthy in Kendall City seemed very satisfied with these paintings. Hearing that the other party was a student of the Kingdom Academy of Art, they even expressed that they would pay for them to study art.

Zhao Ji reckoned that if it weren't for the fact that those rich men probably didn't have daughters in their families, they would definitely have taken these painters to be their sons-in-law. Judging from his experience in the rich district and his little understanding of this kingdom, the rich and powerful people here really like art, whether it is painting or singing, whether it is drama or playing musical instruments, they are very interested like.

Zhao Ji estimated that this might have something to do with the upper-class nobles in the kingdom. After all, the king and the largest nobles all started their careers through art. This trend must have passed through the noble class to the lower rich class.

As for ordinary people, hey, no matter where they are, ordinary people have to devote a lot of energy and time to life and survival. Where is there any chance to engage in these arts?

Zhao Ji had learned about the world beyond Kendal in pubs and chambers of commerce. The kingdom under his feet is a newly established country. Although life is not easy, at least it is better than the original homeland of the people who migrated. Although the new kingdom is full of dangers, there are many lands and few lands. Under the development law, the vast majority of people can have their own land to survive.

But I heard that in the empire before the migration, most of the local land did not belong to the farming households themselves, but was owned by various nobles, churches and big merchants. Moreover, in order to compete for land, various nobles have waged wars year after year. The churches are not as remote as the kingdom, and the empire has a large population. Therefore, in order to compete for the belief of the large population, armed confrontations frequently broke out among the various churches. Each church will also organize a religious army to crusade against the hostile churches. If it gets too big, it will cause the gods to intervene. The big merchants even monopolize various economic crops, and monopolize the value generated by the large population for their own interests, making people work for a whole year but cannot afford to buy many commodities.

Zhao Ji looked at all kinds of prosperity in the rich area, and heard the young painter next to him tell the rich people that he only needed five gold coins for a painting of the God of Wealth.

Zhao Ji thought to himself, this is higher than the annual income of ten farm families. This is because the farmers in Kendall City can exchange the local agricultural products for coins, and if it is a place with underdeveloped commerce, then How much food is needed for a painting? Is it a cart of grain or a small warehouse? How much of these things does he think can be enjoyed by ordinary people?

Hey, although there are all kinds of magical supernatural powers here, Zhao Ji feels that for ordinary people, it is still not better. Think about it carefully, ordinary people have no chance. The whole society has formed a stable structure due to supernatural power. It is difficult for the people at the bottom to fight against the upper class. They can only obey or flee.

If Zhao Ji's predictions are correct, like the kingdom where Kendall City is located, the gods will create a new country every once in a while, no matter how absurd the reason is, they will establish a new kingdom. This is, how to put it, a buffer against the perpetuation of the crisis of governance.

But Zhao Ji estimated that no matter how buffered, it would be difficult to maintain a huge country like the empire.

Zhao Ji suddenly felt a little thirsty. He needed some beer now, which would make him feel better.