No wonder Li Banfeng found this man familiar.
No wonder Li Banfeng felt the whole village was very familiar.
Iron Gate Fort, a gathering place for Home Cultivators.
Li Banfeng couldn’t quite understand how this gathering place came to be.
Home Cultivators didn’t like to interact with others. The word "gathering" posed a considerable difficulty for them.
Moreover, Home Cultivators all had fixed residences and wouldn’t easily move. Imagining them living together was simply unthinkable.
Yet, Iron Gate Fort did indeed exist, with a substantial number of Home Cultivators residing there. Gazing across, Li Banfeng saw house after house with no end in sight.
A squabble interrupted Li Banfeng’s thoughts.
A young woman had come out to buy rice and found quite a bit of sand after rummaging through the rice bag.
The woman questioned the old man driving the donkey cart, "Every time I buy rice from you, there’s sand in it, and the amount of sand increases each time. This is just too much!"
The old man snorted. "Grains are transported from far away. It’s common to have some mud and sand mixed in. If you’re so delicate, then don’t eat rice," he said. "Eat meat every day. There’s no sand in meat."
The old man was shameless and unreasonable, but the woman didn’t argue with him and left with her head down.
In the fort, there was also a vendor pushing a cart selling grains, and even his rice and flour were adulterated with other substances.
Moreover, their grain prices were very high. In Puluo State, due to the presence of Farming Cultivation, grains were never expensive. Even in Greenwater City, a catty of rice would cost around 1.8 yuan.
Yet here, it was actually sold for 2.5 yuan.
It wasn’t just rice; there were vendors selling other things as well.
There were vendors for cotton, fabric, rouge, newspapers and magazines, paper and stationery, and various daily necessities.
There were also those who offered haircut services at home. They would not enter the house but would cut hair right at the doorway. The Home Cultivators would provide their own stools and take a seat at the entrance. The barber would drape a large cloth over them and start cutting. After the haircut, they would settle the payment, and the Home Cultivators would go back home to wash their hair themselves.
There were also those who collected chamber pots. They would pick up last night’s pots and replace them with clean ones, charging a fee each time.
All of this was door-to-door service.
Li Banfeng soon discovered something.
The vendors who came to Iron Gate Fort not only sold goods but also bought goods.
The middle-aged woman selling fabric collected quite a few finished garments and embroideries, which were quite skillfully made.
The man selling miscellaneous goods collected a lot of pottery and porcelain, all finely crafted as well.
There was a Home Cultivator who was particularly adept at making smoking pipes, and several vendors waited at his doorstep to collect the goods; business was brisk.
The vendor selling newspapers and magazines had a good eye. He collected paintings and obtained more than a dozen pieces, each with exquisite workmanship.
This meant one thing: the Home Cultivators who sold the paintings were likely at the Fourth Layer cultivation level.
Influenced by their Technique, the painting skills of Fourth Layer Home Cultivators were inevitably exquisite, although there were exceptions, as Li Banfeng’s painting skills were slightly lacking...
Unwittingly, Li Banfeng had wandered around Iron Gate Fort for over an hour, and he was reluctant to leave.
This place, Iron Gate Fort, made Li Banfeng feel very comfortable, a comfort that was indescribable.
Of course, there were also things he disapproved of. The vendors who came here to do business set their selling prices much higher than the market price, and the prices at which they bought goods were much lower than the market rates.
This resulted in very slim profits for the Home Cultivators.
Of course, making a bit more profit from door-to-door sales was understandable, but adding sand to grains, Li Banfeng felt, was too much.
He thought about teaching these grain sellers a lesson when he suddenly heard a shout from behind.
"AIYA!"
A girl had fallen to the ground, surrounded by scattered fresh flowers and a walking stick.
This was no ordinary walking stick. It was a blind man’s cane, used by the blind for navigation. Old Lady Wu from the welfare home, who had poor eyesight in her later years, had used one of these.
The girl was blind and seemed to be a flower seller.
From the looks of it, someone had knocked her to the ground, scattering flowers everywhere.
Li Banfeng looked up and recognized the person. It was the young man who had given him directions earlier.
The man had sold two paintings and was hurrying to catch up with the fabric seller to buy some cloth; by accident, he had knocked the girl over.
"My flowers..." the girl groped around on the ground, her hands covered in bloodstains.
The young man hurried to help the girl gather the flowers, sweating profusely.
The fresh flowers scattered on the ground were stained with mud, some had broken stems, and some had lost leaves.
The young man picked them up one by one, placed them into the girl’s hands, and kept apologizing to her.
"It’s okay, it’s okay..." the girl wiped the tears from her face, struggled to stand up, and limped on to continue selling flowers.
"Flowers for sale! Who will buy fresh flowers?"
Just those two calls, laced with vulnerability, misery, and the tremor of tears, were enough to make the young man crumble.
"Miss, wait a moment! I’ll buy the flowers!" the young man called, chasing after her.
"How many..." the girl asked timidly.
"I’ll buy them all!"
The girl had over a hundred flowers with her, large and small, and he bought them all.
Some flowers cost three yuan, some cost five yuan, adding up to several hundred yuan—all gone.
He had just sold his paintings and made a few hundred yuan, which he now completely spent.
To say he didn’t feel the pinch would be a lie. The young man’s cheeks trembled.
But he still handed over the money. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to get over the guilt.
Upon receiving the money, the girl’s face lit up with a slight smile, and her vacant eyes seemed to sparkle with life.
"Thank you, sir. You’re a good person."
The young man shook his head. "It’s nothing... Just be careful when you walk. Watch out on the road."
The girl grasped the blind man’s cane, poking around as she went on her way.
The young man stood behind her, gazing after her ceaselessly until the girl’s figure had completely vanished. Only then did he return to his own home with the fresh flowers in hand.
But Li Banfeng didn’t find it romantic in the slightest.
He only noticed three things.
First, the fresh flowers the girl was selling were mostly common wildflowers found on the roadside. Li Banfeng, being a Traveling Cultivator, was familiar with such flowers. One could simply find a meadow and gather a large bunch effortlessly. Selling these flowers at such a high price was quite unscrupulous.
Second, the girl’s flowers were not damaged from the fall. Many of them were already ruined. The young man’s attention was all on the girl. He didn’t notice the state of the flowers, but Li Banfeng did.
Third, the girl didn’t know how to use the blind man’s cane. When Li Banfeng was taking care of Old Lady Wu, he had specifically observed the method for using a blind man’s cane—sweeping it back and forth to find one’s way, not poking around aimlessly as she did.
Li Banfeng’s brows furrowed slightly as a woman selling miscellaneous goods beside him chuckled. "You see it, right? She’s a fake, the little wretch. She’s young and could learn any decent skill, but she chose this instead."
Li Banfeng looked at the woman and asked, "Do you know her?"
The woman nodded. "That wretched thing is called Sui Donglan. She’s literate, can read, and it’s said she even had a job in the city before.
"But then she got hooked on gambling, lost all her possessions at the gambling tables, and racked up huge debts. She ran off to Iron Gate Fort to hide from her debts and scam money.
"Today she’s a flower-selling girl, specifically scamming clueless young men; tomorrow she’ll pretend to be a beggar to scam kind-hearted souls.
"Yesterday, she dressed up alluringly, claiming she was out for that kind of work. An old bachelor got tricked by her, gave her nearly ten thousand yuan, and didn’t even get to touch her hand. Now, if that isn’t shameless, I don’t know what is."
Li Banfeng nodded slightly and responded, "Indeed, it is shameless."
A man selling cigarettes nearby snorted. "Zhou Yu fighting Huang Gai—one willing to beat, the other willing to be beaten. Who can blame others when these Home Cultivators are so easily deceived?"
The woman selling goods didn’t like the sound of that. "What do you mean ’easily deceived’? They just don’t harbor ill intentions! If it came down to a fight, how many from the Taoist Sect could outfight them?
"This is right at their doorstep. If they truly wanted to harm anyone, which scammer could escape?"
The cigarette seller shook his head. "Do they ever harbor the thought of doing harm?"
"Why wouldn’t they?" the woman retorted. "How do you think those Deceive Cultivators met their end? Did you forget what happened?"
The cigarette seller lit up a cigarette and said, "Those Deceive Cultivators were real scum. They deserved to be killed off."
Li Banfeng was shocked for a while before asking, "What is a Deceive Cultivator?"
"They’re from the Taoist Sect!" the woman selling miscellaneous goods exclaimed. "You can’t mean you’ve never heard of Deceive Cultivators? They can imitate anything perfectly, their act so realistic you can’t tell the difference."
Li Banfeng asked, "Imitate anything perfectly? That Sui Donglan, is she also a Deceive Cultivator?"
The woman selling goods scoffed. "She wishes! But for some reason, she never encounters the Peddler.
"The last time the Peddler came to Iron Gate Fort, she arrived too late and missed him.
"The time before that when the Peddler came, she did manage to be there. But the Peddler didn’t enter Iron Gate Fort then, and there were no other customers around.
"Sui Donglan didn’t recognize the Peddler, thinking he was just an ordinary seller of miscellaneous goods. She didn’t even spare him a glance and just let the chance slip by.
"She was so furious about it afterward! It just goes to show, she’s cursed with bad luck!"
The man selling cigarettes shook his head and said, "It’s not about fate. I reckon the Peddler was intentionally avoiding her. That girl is so cunning; if she became a Deceive Cultivator, she’d become a real demon!"
Li Banfeng then asked the woman selling goods, "You said Sui Donglan didn’t recognize the Peddler last time?"
The woman selling miscellaneous goods nodded.
Li Banfeng picked up a rattle from the woman’s stall. "Who would buy this? For the children of Home Cultivators?"
The woman chuckled. "Not just for children. Home Cultivators like playing with these things too."
Li Banfeng then glanced at the feather duster next to the rattle. "This thing is indeed quite fun. I’ll take everything on this cart. Let’s talk about the price."
The woman was taken aback, not having heard Li Banfeng clearly. "You’re saying you want all the goods on this cart?"
Li Banfeng nodded. "Including your cart, I want it all."
...
Sui Donglan left Iron Gate Fort and stopped pretending to be blind.
When she arrived at a deserted place, she put down the blind man’s cane, wiped the bloodstains on her hands, and began to count her money.
The blood on her hands was fake, the bruised wounds were also fake, and the flowers she sold were casually picked from the wild fields by the roadside.
These flowers couldn’t be sold to women; even female Home Cultivators could tell that these flowers were of low quality.
But it was much easier to sell to men because men only looked at her face, not at her flowers.
After selling half of the flowers, she really didn’t want to sell the rest, so she decided to offload them onto some gullible fool.
The Home Cultivator who gave Li Banfeng directions was the gullible fool she had her eye on. After she bumped into him and took a fall, a dab of red ink on her hands was all it took to make the act convincing.
Sui Donglan had used this trick many times.
As she was pondering, she suddenly heard the sound of a rattle near her.
RAT-A-TAT, RAT-A-TAT.
"Soap, Snow Cream, matches, candles, foreign iron shovels! A cart full of quality goods from a trusted name! Prices slashed, take your pick!"
"The Peddler!" Sui Donglan’s eyes lit up. She rushed to the roadside and saw a man pushing a cart. He wore a felt hat with the brim pulled down very low, beating a rattle and hawking his wares.
Sui Donglan grew suspicious, but then she remembered something else.
Sui Donglan approached the man, her expression shy, and asked softly, "Are you the Peddler?"
Li Banfeng nodded. "Do you even have to ask?"
Sui Donglan whispered another question, "Do you have Medicinal Powder?"
"Yes!" Li Banfeng took out two pickled vegetable jars. "Gold Cultivation one hundred yuan, Deceive Cultivation three hundred thousand. Which one do you want?"
*PS: Without a drawer-equipped cabinet, the pickled vegetable jars had to suffice. I just hope the Peddler doesn’t get angry.*