"It turns out to be the grain collection team. Has the day come this year?"

Balon was stunned.

The villages under the jurisdiction of Baiyuan City have to pay agricultural taxes. Grain collection teams visit each village every year and remove part of the grain as tax. The villages receive the protection of the towns, and the lords are obliged to deal with any possible incursions by strange beasts that the villages may encounter.

Zhou Jing turned to look at Baron.

"Do we need to go help?"

"It's not necessary. The village chief will summon the villagers to carry the food, so we won't be needed." Balon shook his head.

"Okay."

Zhou Jing rolled his eyes and responded like this, but he still wanted to take a look and see what was going on.

Balon didn't take the grain collection team seriously, paused and said:

"By the way, you should go to the town in two days. Wes will share the money from selling the prey with us. Go and get it."

"You're not going?"

"I'm too lazy to move. Anyway, you already know the way." Baron waved his hand.

He only went to the city when he needed to do errands, and stayed in the village the rest of the time.

Some exotic beast hunters have been wandering on the line between life and death all year round and need to vent. Many hunters like to go to hotel maids. Balon doesn't know if Zhou Jing has a hobby in this area. Anyway, he has no interest and only likes to play with iron.

So Balon didn't plan to follow him this time, lest "Jason" would be embarrassed to have fun.

"Okay, then I'll wait until tomorrow. Weiss should have received the money by then."

Zhou Jing nodded in agreement.

He has been to Baiyuan City several times in the past three months. He is already familiar with the roads and has no problem being alone.

Balon's visit this time was mainly to express his support for Zhou Jing to go out and have a career. After the matter was said, he also said goodbye and left.

After watching Balon leave, Zhou Jing thought for a while and walked to the entrance of the village.

At this time, the entrance to the village was very lively, with beasts of burden pulling carts parked at the entrance of the village. More than a dozen Baiyuan City soldiers were guarding the village. The tax collector of the grain collection team and his men were negotiating with the villagers of Shuangmu Village.

The atmosphere was quite peaceful, and many villagers didn't seem to have much resistance.

The two sides quickly concluded their discussions, and the village chief organized the villagers to move bags of grain from the mill to the entrance of the village, while the manpower brought by the tax collector was responsible for counting and loading the trucks.

Zhou Jing looked at it for a while and found that there were no villagers rioting or anything like that.

When he searched for information about the medieval period in various countries in the main world, he saw many records of grain collectors being stabbed to death by pitchforks, but the villagers in the world of alien beasts were quite cooperative in paying taxes.

'It seems that it is also because of the threat of alien beasts that the village cannot live without the protection of the town, so it is willing to pay taxes.'

Zhou Jing nodded, confirming that there was nothing wrong, and was not going to stay here any longer.

Just as he was about to leave, his eyes glanced at a person in the grain collection team and suddenly stopped.

In the crowd, a man with a goatee was counting grains with a list, which looked familiar to Zhou Jing, as if he had seen it somewhere.

"This person..."

Zhou Jing thought for a while and remembered this person.

When I first went to White Plains City, I almost bumped into someone in the pharmacy, and it was this man with a goatee.

If I remember correctly, this person seemed to be a pharmacy clerk, but he was no longer wearing the pharmacy's coarse cloth uniform.

However, they are familiar because they are familiar, it is just a casual relationship, there is no need to come up and talk to them.

Zhou Jing looked at it twice, then walked away and went to the training ground to start a day of exercise and sweat.

…

The time soon arrived in the afternoon.

The grain collection team had finished counting the grains and did not want to travel at night. They planned to stay in the village for one night and set off early tomorrow morning.

Although Shuangmu Village is small, it also has a simple tavern. It temporarily hired a few villagers to help in the kitchen and reluctantly received the people of the grain collection team. There were about ten tables lined up in the open air to provide meals to the grain collection team.

The people in the grain collection team chatted about the mountains while eating and drinking, leaving the villagers in Shuangmu Village stunned.

Reiner and a group of village children gathered around them and listened to the stories outside, fascinated.

When Zhou Jing returned from the setting sun covered in sweat, he saw a noisy scene.

Glancing at the dozens of people from the grain collection team who were eating and drinking, Zhou Jing ignored him and thought about just dealing with it directly. He went straight to the back kitchen of the tavern and got two freshly cooked meals, which were similar to potatoes.

The same thing, steaming hot and white.

When the tavern chef saw that it was Zhou Jing, he didn't stop him. Alien beast hunters must have this privilege.

Zhou Jing returned to the house with the meal and dealt with Rose casually. Then he stayed in the house and instructed Rose to practice breathing techniques.

This is what he must do every night when he comes in person. It is almost as troublesome as tutoring children with homework.

The red clouds fade away and the moonlight shines.

The visiting grain collection team was well fed and had a rest.

The night gradually deepened, and the noise outside the house stopped and became as quiet as usual.

After a tiring night of tutoring, Zhou Jing was not angry and asked Ross to make the bed. He walked to the window and prepared to close the curtains and turn off the lights to sleep.

But when he was about to lower the curtains, Zhou Jing suddenly noticed a few sneaky figures moving in the village through the window. They just turned the corner not far away and disappeared from his sight.

With a startled glance, he recognized one of them, it was the man with the goatee found that morning.

"Huh? What are you doing wandering around the village if you haven't slept these past few nights?"

Zhou Jing's heart moved.

He thought for a while and asked Rose to follow him. The two climbed out of the window and followed these people quietly.

Zhou Jing's agility is amazing and difficult for ordinary people to detect. Ross has stealth characteristics such as [Night Camouflage] and [Light Steps], and is better at tracking. Zhou Jing sometimes doesn't notice his existence, which is no problem.

The two of them followed Goatee and the others, and soon discovered that these people were walking towards the outside of the village.

The direction ahead was obviously the apothecary's hut where the witch doctor lived outside the village.

"Oh, there's something going on!"

Zhou Jing's eyes lit up and he immediately became energetic.

After staying in Frostwood Village for half a year, the witch doctor Gama has always kept a low profile and has never been in trouble. It is not easy for him to cause trouble for others. Unexpectedly, he encountered a clue today.

After leaving the village, there was a stretch of wilderness that was difficult to hide. Zhou Jing and Ross walked and stopped until a few people walked into the sparse woods surrounding the pharmacist's hut before they followed in.

Zhou Jing hid behind a tree and saw the scene in the pharmacist's cabin.

A man with a goatee knocked on the door gently, and Gama quickly opened the door and welcomed several people in.

The door was closed again.

Zhou Jing rolled his eyes and hid under the window, hiding in the blind corner of his field of vision. He pricked up his ears and listened carefully to the sounds coming from the room.

The alien blood enhancement slightly enhanced his perception, and the sounds of conversations in the room were captured by his hearing.

"Gama, where are the goods this time?" This seemed to be the voice of a man with a goatee.

"Here."

When Gama spoke, his voice was no longer as old-fashioned as usual, but full of energy.

There was a sound of rummaging through boxes and cabinets, followed by the sliding sound of some kind of mechanism, and then the sound of several boxes being slammed on the ground, mixed with the crisp clink of bottles and cans.

After a while, the man with the goatee became dissatisfied and said, "Why is it so small? It's far from the previous quantity."

Gama said in a helpless tone: "The hunters in the village have suffered a lot. During this period, they have been busy training new people. There are fewer opportunities to bring me medicinal herbs. There are not enough materials. I can only do so much."

Man with goatee: "Forget it, the price of each bottle is still the same."

Ding-li-ding-dong...

There was a sound of coins colliding.

Gama laughed twice, and then whispered: "When you came here, no one noticed you, right?"

The man with the goatee didn't take it seriously: "Don't worry, the whole village is asleep and no one will see it."

Gama was unhappy: "You should be more cautious. There are outsiders in the village. A guy named Jason Wood came to live in the village half a year ago and became a hunter of exotic beasts. He is an unstable factor..."

The goatee man laughed: "Looking at your timid appearance, what about outsiders? Will they definitely notice you?"

"I..." Gama said in distress.

The man with the goatee shook his head: "If you are so afraid, then we don't have to do business in the future. Anyway, I have other pharmacists supplying goods."

"Don't!" Gama said hurriedly, "I can do it."

Zhou Jing listened for a while and although he didn't see the scene, he almost understood the situation.

If there is no mistake, Gama is reselling potions to the goatee man, and this transaction may have lasted for several years.

‘Shuangmu Village supports Garma, and Garma provides medicines and medical services. The two parties cooperate, but he hid some of the medicines and lied that making medicines is easy to fail. In fact, he left a lot of inventory and has been using it to make extra money?'

Zhou Jing probably guessed it.
To be continued...