Chapter 67 — The Sleepless City
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
The blind elder did not know how to explain it to Shen Mu either. He gave a pair of dry laughs and said, "This city is also called the Sleepless Dragon City. Even at night it blazes with lamplight; for a thousand li around, every village brings its trade here. Shen'er, Granny, I won't be going on with the two of you.
Granny — have you any pocket money?
" Leaning on his bamboo staff, his face wreathed in smiles, he stretched out a hand.
Granny Zhu pretended not to see it. The blind elder reached for the beast hides on the cart and said with a laugh, "Shen'er, lend me two hides, and when I win at gambling I'll pay you back double!
" Shen Mu laughed.
"Take them, Blind Grandfather, and no need to repay them.
" "Don't you dare give him any! " Granny Zhu said in a fury. "This old wretch goes to the gambling dens every time he comes here, and every time he loses everything with a clatter!
Two hides of exotic beasts would buy us a fine stock of oil, salt, sauce and vinegar — far better than throwing them in the water!
At least in the water you'd hear a splash!
" The blind elder hastily draped the two hides over his shoulders, took to his heels, and vanished into the crowd. Granny Zhu stamped her foot in anger.
Shen Mu, puzzled, asked, "Granny, what is a gambling den? " Granny Zhu was outraged.
"A moment ago you wanted to play with fallen girls, and now you want to go to a gambling den — Shen'er, you are not learning to be good! " She glared at him and sneered, "And now you want to visit a whorehouse too?
That vixen Fu Qingyun — you had best keep your distance from her.
" Shen Mu was baffled: he had plainly meant to go to a pleasure house to look for someone; how had that turned into visiting a whorehouse? And what sort of place was a whorehouse, anyway? "Come to the city and there are so many rules — this is forbidden, that is forbidden.
" The youth grumbled inwardly. The old woman and the boy drove the ox cart to the marketplace, where the hubbub was even greater.
Goods of every kind dazzled the eye, and there were people of other races too, in strange and outlandish dress, until Shen Mu's eyes swam with the spectacle. Granny Zhu soon sold the ironware and the hides from the cart, trading them for oil, salt, sauce and vinegar. The merchant was likely from the outside world; his accent was peculiar, and he claimed to hail from the Kingdom of Jingping. Granny Zhu, though a woman, had always been free and open-handed and was hopeless at haggling.
She sold the ironware wrought by the Silent Artisan cheaply, and got little enough for the exotic hides as well. The merchant had some conscience in him, and feeling he had taken advantage of Granny Zhu and Shen Mu, he gave them a small pouch of dragon coins, a hundred or so in all. Dragon coins were the currency of Crimson Dragon City, stamped with a dragon-patterned pillar like the dragon pillars at the city's four corners.
Shen Mu sensed that the coins were fortified by a peculiar formation, forged no doubt with a secret art to keep them from being counterfeited. The two of them then sold the oxen and the sheep.
The beasts seemed to know their fate; they could not hold back their tears, and clamped their mouths on Shen Mu's clothes, unwilling to let go.
Shen Mu hesitated. Granny Zhu said in a low voice, "They are all wicked men.
" Shen Mu was startled — these oxen and sheep really had been people, transformed into beasts by Granny Zhu with the Nether Demon Transmutation Art!
"They were a band of brigands," Granny Zhu said, her voice thin as a thread. "Remember when you were small, and I took you out to a neighboring village to deliver a child? By the time we arrived, the whole village was dead. All these years I have been searching for traces of those brigands and never once found any — but a few days ago, I finally found them.