Mercenaries and Adventurers

"Well, well. Uh." The slovenly man, who was wrapped in a thick layer of old tree bark to keep warm, rolled his eyes and cautiously said something: "Um, uh, do you know an old man in the village? I heard that the old man could dive into the water for a long time without rising."

Kil narrowed his eyes and frowned. He knew this matter. Regarding the sloppy man in front of him, who was at the lowest level of survival in the village, yesterday the village chief, Old Man Coryden, had formally informed him. I introduced the old man with the nickname.

Although he felt a little bit like he was being teased or deceived, after thinking about it, Kil began to understand the man huddled in the shack.

With a flick of his fingers, an iron coin, like the previous two coins, rotated and slipped through the gap in the shack.

"Ah, thank you for your generosity, thank you for your generosity." The sloppy man quickly put the coins into his arms, but then said: "But I haven't finished yet. About the old man who is very good at diving. information."

Pouting his lips, Kil felt a little impatient.

But he maintained his attitude and expression, just raised his chin and asked the other party to continue.

"Yes, yes. I heard it from the grandson of the old man. When the weather is not so cold, it is autumn. I can often pick up some garbage thrown away by the villagers in the village. Find some food. At that time, ah, those half-grown children would come to play with me when they were bored. Hehe, but they often hit me very painfully. "

Although hearing these words made Kiel feel a little pity for the other party, he still put on an indifferent look: "Tell the important point."

"Yes, yes, that's the point. When we were playing, the boys would talk about the elders in the family. The old man's grandson said that when the old man came to Wumi Lake Village when he was young, he relied on the mud at the bottom of Wumi Lake. They were looking for things to feed their families. Although the things at that time were all sold to businessmen who came and went, they still had some valuable things left at home."

The sloppy man smiled flatteringly at Keir: "You seem to have a lot of money. If you have a lot of money, you can try buying some from that family. Maybe it will be worth it to a big city in the south. It’s a lot of money.”

Keir pondered for a moment.

"It's easy to say, but if it's really valuable, why didn't the family do that themselves? Keep it at home. And since you have this idea, why don't you try to steal one and sell it in the southern town to exchange for some Qian Qian will sort himself out and find a job?"

The sloppy man in the shack gasped twice quickly, and then said with a face: "You are kidding, I only farm, I don't dare to steal, I don't dare to steal. If someone catches stealing, my fingers will be cut off, and I heard people say that next year, the village will renovate the abandoned fields outside, and I will have work then. Hey, hey, hoo, as long as I survive this winter, it will be fine."

"Everything will be fine next year."

Keir replied nonchalantly: "Maybe."

He took out another iron coin and dangled it between his fingers: "What I just said is of some value. Here, watch it. Here's another one."

Keir bounced the coin up, but this time it didn't fall into the shack, but went straight up and down again into his hand.

The sloppy man's eyes followed the iron coin of the lowest denomination, and he grinned and said quickly: "Okay, I have another news here."

"Then tell me quickly."

"Yes, yes. Next to it is the east gate. Walk straight outside the east gate and you will see a windward slope facing north. On the top of the slope, the villagers built three windmills for grinding grain."

"I heard someone say, but it seems that the mill is not working because of the wolf problem." Keir interjected.

"Yes, sir, but although the villagers were afraid of being caught by wolves on the way to and from the mill, they still found an old man with no family to guard the mill and maintain the windmills of the three mills."

"Oh, does this have anything to do with your news? That man is dead?"

The sloppy man waved his hand quickly: "No, no, no, no, no one died. The mill is very big and very strong. I don't think those wild beasts can get in. It's just that the old man occasionally comes in during the day when the surroundings are quiet." He would come back to the mill to drink in the village, and the man would occasionally talk to the village militiamen who were watching the east gate."

Keir narrowed his eyes: "Oh, you are very close to the gate, so you heard it?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes. I heard it. The old man drank a lot, so he was in a trance every day, but he said that he once felt a wolf on the top of the mill during the full moon! Hehe, Do you think this is a strange thing?"

Having said this, the slovenly man stretched out two pairs of dirty hands from the bark of the old tree, pretending to be walking like a wolf or dog.

"The mill is so tall, how could a wild beast climb up it, don't you think? But although the old man always drinks too much, people in the village say that guy never lies. If it weren't for the fact that his family members were all killed by the previous few The wolf that broke through the village wall in 2010 was bitten to death, so I guess he won’t be like this.”

"It's interesting." Kil rubbed his chin and flicked the coin to the other party with his other hand.

"It seems I have to find time to meet this person." He whispered to himself.

After getting what he thought was valuable information from the house near Wolf's house, Keir left after a few casual remarks.

Walking on the dirt road back to the center of the village, Kil whispered to himself: "Now is not the time. Let's wait for two days to stabilize that guy. Well, I will take action after the other party puts down their guard."

In order to prevent the people who might be spying on him or the villagers who were curious about him from finding out where he had gone, Keir then went south one after another, to the south gate of the village, and then walked back to yesterday. Ximen passed by and looked at it.

In fact, there was nothing interesting to see, but Kil pretended to be curious about the special houses in Wumihu Village and walked around all these places.

In this way, even if other people see him, they will only think that he is like an outsider who comes here for the first time. Especially since he is so young, it is normal for him to be a little out-of-the-box and lively.

At the end of the morning, he arrived at the pier on the north side of the village.

-

The village's dock is not blocked by the tall surrounding walls.

The village wall was built to both sides of the pier, and then extended part way into the lake. Apparently when the village was first built, the village managers did not expect that the village would encounter such a difficult disaster as the wolf problem.

Because northern wolves can swim.

It is estimated that compared to other parts of the village at that time, the north dock was the place where the village militiamen were most nervous when the wolf infestation first broke out.

That's why he hurriedly prayed to the young priest, the Lord of Rivers and Lakes, to ask the god for a few carnivorous sunfish to stop the Northland wolves that would attack from the lake.

But according to the information that Keir learned, these sunken fish that are currently causing trouble for the villagers are indeed very good. Because in the end, those northern wolves, led by the ‘Wolf King’, indeed invaded Wumihu Village from other places in the village with tall wooden walls.

This illustrates from the side how difficult it is to deal with those capsizing fish in the water, so that the large group of northern wolves give up attacking from the water.

Not long after walking north from the main building in the middle of the village, more and more water-related objects appeared in the village houses on both sides of the road.

The exterior walls of the house are decorated with lake clam shells, and a pair of huge, clean fish bones are inlaid with wooden nails on the door of each house. Each one was large and seemed to represent the largest fish the owner of the house had ever caught from the lake.

This is a symbol of skill and honor for the fishermen, and it probably also implicitly represents the strength of the men in each family and the ability to support their families.

After walking around and taking a look, Keir felt that it was similar.

The family with a big fish bone at the door, even the wooden house built just a few years ago, is one level higher than other families. This roughly means that the family has a larger population than other fishermen's families around it.

In addition to fish bones, simple fishing nets are also hung outside the door. It is probably because the smell of fishing nets is not small and it is not good to leave them at home.

There are few people on the rural streets in winter, and because ordinary people do not have the conditions and habits to have lunch, the only stone chimney in the wooden house basically does not raise the smoke that represents fireworks.

This gave Kiel the winter slump.

But a few steps further, the pier of Wumihu Village is quite lively.

The fishing boats that went out early in the morning to dig through the ice to catch fish have returned by now, although they have to be careful of the capsized fish that break out of the ice at any time, resulting in not much fish caught. But these rare fresh fish in winter have already made some people waiting on the dock happy.

Just a short time after returning from the center of the lake to the village pier, the fresh lake fish had been frozen into freshly frozen fish sticks. This was mainly because the fishing boats in the village did not have an insulating layer, and the fresh fish were frozen from the ice. The lake fish fished out of the cave are left open to dry on the boat, and they will freeze in a short time.

But fortunately, using a modified fishing boat to glide on the ice in winter will be faster and more effortless than moving through the water in warm times.

In the fishing boats that had just returned to the dock at this time, the lake fish were not completely frozen to death.

The helpers waiting at the pier quickly ran down the slope of the pier. One person held a thigh-long fish and ran quickly to the pier. Each family member only made their own catch. On the dock, two village stewards who manage the dock are counting the harvest of each family and boat today next to a boiling pot with a fire.

A simple large scale that combines a wooden frame and an iron weight is placed next to the water boiling pot. Young men from each family hold the big fish that their elders have just caught on an adventure, weigh it next to it, and then automatically weigh it. Ladle out a ladle of warm water from the boiling pot.

One of the village stewards weighed the fish in front of everyone, and then read the weight of the fish out loud. If there were no objections, another person recorded the data on clean wooden boards with charcoal pens.

When one is full, change it to another.

The fishermen scooped up warm water and poured it on their own fish.

As soon as warm water was poured in, the newly frozen big fish softened, and the young man used a sharp knife to disembowel the fish on a clean wooden board nearby.

Remove the parasite-infested gills and set them aside. Scratch off the scales of the fish quickly. Then carefully cut off the fins on the back, belly and tail that the fish cannot eat, and set them aside on the ground.

As for the fish's offal, there are many uses. Some of the edible offal will be taken home and made into soup that day. The intestines of these big fish can be processed into strong gut string, which can be softened and used as intestines. You can use thread to mend clothes, or you can sell it to a grocery store and have them twist it into a special rope for sale.

The fins on the ground on the side will be collected by the stewards of the dock. After boiling these things, you can get the glue used to bind items, which is used to make various items, so according to the village rules, they must be turned in. As for some fish gills and some inedible offal, they will be thrown into a bucket and later distributed to families who raise cats in the village.

In order to control the secret breeding of rats, rat-catching cats are necessary domestic animals.

However, there was not much food, so the village collected these things that were not meant to be thrown away and distributed them to the cats in the village to eat, instead of letting the cats run to the dock to pick up the garbage to fill their stomachs.

The atmosphere at the pier was very lively, so Keir's quiet arrival did not arouse the curiosity and attention of the villagers. Even if some people saw Kil, a foreigner, and ran over, no one would bother to talk to Kil because they were busy with work.

Kiel mainly looked at the modified fishing boats that the villagers glide on the glacial lake in winter, and how the fishermen use a wooden pole with a small iron fork to push on the ice, and use the occasional The cold wind turned the animal skin sail and skated along.

It is probably a newly developed technique after there were sunken fish in the lake. Therefore, even if many fishermen go out to the center of the lake every two or three days, they are still not very skilled in maneuvering the boat.

But Keir also noticed that the two fishermen leaders introduced to him by the old village chief of Wumihu Village yesterday, their fishing boats were both fast and stable.

Although the family headed by Lake Diver Boss was small, they were obviously very skilled in handling this new thing. When gliding and slowing down to enter the pier, the small fishing boat moved smoothly and concisely, and stopped just where it needed to be docked.

The other group is headed by middle-aged fisherman Will. They have more fishing boats, so each family naturally has more manpower. Although everyone's skiing skills vary, as soon as the boat docked, there were many people rushing to push the fishing boat to the dock on the shallow water ice.

Because there were so many of them, the stewards at the pier turned a blind eye to their occasional efforts to scoop out an extra ladle of warm water to rinse the big fish.

It seems that the old man Coryden and his son did not introduce people to Keel randomly. It is obvious that these two people will provide powerful help to Keel in dealing with the sunken fish in the future.

It should be said that without these two people and the people behind them, it would be basically impossible to kill and fish out the huge carnivorous sunfish in the glacial lake in winter.

Unless Kil had the strength of Lanissa Knight that was far beyond ordinary people.

Of course, that's impossible. If Kiel had that kind of strength, why would he be here to deal with the insignificant sunken fish? Just serve Baron Kendall in Kendall City honestly, and then collect your salary honestly and that's it.

-

Keir watched the fishermen busy at the dock curiously, which seemed to have aroused the resentment of some young and energetic fishermen. At this time, it was past the busy period when the fishing boat just came back. Several young fishermen casually wiped their hands covered with half-frozen mucus on the big fish, and leaned in close to each other, arm in arm.

"Who are you? Are you not from our village?"

"Is he a businessman from outside? Do you want to buy some of our fish?"

"Hey, they're very cheap, and they're just pulled out from under the ice in the lake."

"The fish in our Lake Umi are different from the fish in the Kendall River. They are fatter and more delicious."

"Of course, it's also more expensive!"

Keir looked at the five young people on the left, middle and right who were half surrounding him, and asked casually with some humor: "So, how much does one cost?"

Through the sparse wall of people, he saw that the steward on the dock not far away had noticed the incident. He originally wanted to stop the young people in the village from messing around, but as the lake diver Bos secretly signaled to his family to hold back and watch the show, , the fisherman leader Will reached out and asked his brothers to take the initiative to pester the steward.

He knew that yesterday he did not actively participate in the villagers' discussion of dealing with sunken fish in the hotel lobby, but it still attracted "special" attention from the fishermen leaders who mainly rely on fishing for a living.

The young fishermen who were talking to him might have some bad personalities, but maybe this was also a deliberate test by the other party?

Or a lesson?

Or a hint. It means that they are the two most powerful gangs on the village pier. Kil, the too young and lonely hunter sent by the village lord, must pay attention to dealing with sunken fish, and it is impossible to bypass them. .

"How much? It's not expensive. Since we're working so hard, how about selling you a fish for ten copper coins?" As he said that, the young man who was the first to surround Kiel picked up a frozen fish with a rope threaded through its gills. A medium-sized fish stick.

Keir glanced at it. If it were in a tavern in Kendall City, a whole cooked stewed fish might be worth five copper coins. But in the fish-producing village of Umi Lake, this medium-sized uncooked fish , obviously it is impossible to be worth ten copper coins in any case.

Kil smiled and did not answer the other party's words. He just lifted up his wolf fur cloak and patted his exposed sword.

"Don't want to die?"

The long sword with the slightly glowing scabbard made all the young people in the half circle take a step back neatly. The two timid guys turned to look at their family members behind them and gestured with their weapons.

Keir saw a middle-aged man on the pier wave his fist, and upon receiving the instruction, the young fishermen who 'surrounded' him immediately became bolder and no longer looked scared.

"What's going on? Is there a weapon? If I stretch out my arm, do you dare to cut it?"

"That's right, you don't dare, right?"

"And who doesn't have a guy? And if you dare to chop a few of us, the whole dock will beat you into fish mince!"

"Are you afraid? If you are afraid, just pay for the fish honestly. If you are not afraid, then try my fist."

Knowing that it was just a coercion and test, these young fishermen did not dare to make a big deal out of the matter and did not take out the fish-cutting dagger from their waists to provoke.

And Keir naturally understood the hidden meaning: Don't be afraid. If you want to fight, everyone is only allowed to use their fists.

"Haha, it's interesting. I happen to be a little tired recently, so it would be nice to do some exercise."

When Kil said these words loudly, his intention was naturally to address the fishermen and their leaders who were watching not far away.

Untying the wolf fur cloak, Kil threw the cloak aside on the ground, then took off the newly made small backpack on his back and placed it on top of the cloak.

He rubbed his fists and waved to the young fisherman opposite who also put down the fresh fish in his hands.

"Come!"