This wild shop is located in a valley about 60 miles south of Yangwu County, Henan Province.

This valley is close to the Yellow River, and across the river it enters Kaifeng Province, the former province of Henan, which is not yet under imperial control.

It used to be a first-class prosperous place, but now it has become desolate, almost uninhabited for thousands of miles.

Kaifeng Mansion, a tiny corner north of the Yellow River, isn't much different, after all, Huaxia only really took control of the place last year.

Although a county order was sent to Yangwu County to begin to recruit displaced people, resettle migrants, and resume production, decades of floods, droughts, locust plagues, military plagues, and bandit plagues alternately came, and when no one took care of them, the land on this side was almost completely taken away by the Yellow River, and it was almost as salt-alkali as saline-alkali land.

Therefore, the place is poor and poor.

When people are too poor, it is easy to take risks.

In fact, more than ten years ago, when the predecessor of the Huaxia Empire was still far away from here, this small wild shop had already begun to exist.

Armed smugglers from the south of the Yangtze River would transport all kinds of materials urgently needed by the Mughal people across the Yellow River, and through here they would go north through Weihui and Zhangde Mansions, and reach the grassland along the middle of Ji and Jin provinces, sell the materials, exchange them for cattle, horses and sheep in the grassland, and then return along the same route.

This road is in the three-regardless zone, and the so-called three-regardless is actually a place where everyone can take a bite when they get the opportunity, so the people who take this route are all outlaws.

Outlaws will not give up the outlaw business just because the Chinese Empire has brought this place under its rule.

……

The wind was blowing, and the yellow sand outside Yedian was all over the sky, giving people the feeling that this place was not like Yu Province in the hinterland of the Central Plains, but like a small place on the edge of a desert in the Western Regions.

The actual situation is similar, don't look at the Yellow River here, but the water shortage is very serious, most of the wells and small puddles nearby are very salty, people may be able to rely on this bitter water to support, but horses and mules and other livestock will definitely not be.

Therefore, the wild shop had to go every day to fetch water from the only sweet spring in the area, far away from the small valley, for a specific, distinguished guest and a large number of horses and mules.

It was a very hard job, and it took about two quarters of an hour to walk from the wild shop to the sweet water spring, and it took half an hour to go back and forth, not counting the time it took to fill the water with a scoop.

Therefore, although the work of carrying water is important, the owner of the wild shop will not do it, and the only person responsible for carrying water is the few little babies that the wild shop will raise.

The work that adults regard as chore is naturally heavier for the little ones, but they have no choice but to obey.

The bucket was huge, and any one of the skinny kids carrying water would be stuffed straight into the bucket, and it wouldn't look crowded.

There were six children in total, and every two of them took a bucket and a stick, filled it with a bucket of water, and then carried it back with the stick.

They have to run three times a day, and if there are too many guests and not enough water, this is one of their most important jobs, and it is not negotiable.

The children hate this job because it's too tiring and because it's too dangerous.

It's so inhospitable that wolves and red-eyed wild dogs can often be seen – both of which have been fed up with human flesh in recent years.

It is not uncommon for children to be snatched away by wolves or wild dogs with only sharpened sticks in their hands, so every time they go out to fetch water, it is one of the most feared things for children, not to mention the wind and sand today.

The wind-swept sand and loess swept in the sky, and it was not easy to see anything at all from the first few steps, and it was not easy to find the way, not to mention that the strange fantasies of children would make them even more frightened - a place where they could not see anything clearly, desolate, with wild beasts, and perhaps monsters.

"Xiao Jin, did you hear any strange sounds?"

The little boy who walked at the front of the water-carrying team asked in a frightened tone as he walked:

"There seems to be a voice......

"It's the wind, leave it alone, let's go!"

The girl said angrily:

"If there is a monster, let's go faster, it will definitely catch the one that goes slower first."

"It's not the rumors...... the little boy said reluctantly, "it's definitely not the rumors...... I can hear that...... Ahh ”

The little boy screamed in such horror that the bucket fell to the ground, and a large bucket of water seeped into the dirt and disappeared without a trace.

The little girl didn't care to complain that half an hour's work was in vain, because he also saw that a monster did emerge from the wind and sand.

Well......, not one, it's a bunch, red, tall, with two heads and many legs, like the kind of ...... that only comes out of the worst nightmares.

The children were in a mess, everyone was screaming, the youngest even cried, and the boy and girl who had just walked in front trembled and clenched the sticks to protect their younger siblings as much as possible.

"Monster! Stay back! Shoot you! ”

The girl, whom her companions called Kim, screamed and cheered herself up with her voice.

But her shaky legs were no deterrent.

After a while, Jin suddenly stopped shaking or screaming, because the red monsters were closer, and she realized that they were not monsters, but people wearing red clothes and leading horses.

"Yo, a lot of kids."

Wang Ning smiled heartily:

"There are people here, and that proves that we are not far from the goal."

Hearing this, Xiao Jin was a little angry - aren't you also a child? It's just that I'm a little taller and look better in clothes.

Xu Daizhuo walked up to Xiao Jin, lifted the empty bucket and looked at it, and after a while, he said: "Let such a young child carry such a heavy bucket, it must be from Nayedian." ”

"Not necessarily."

Wang Ning asked Xiaojin with an unchanged smile:

"Are you Han?"

There were slaves in the Chinese Empire, but slaves were certainly not Han Chinese, because it was a capital crime to take Han as a slave.

If it is a foreign slave child, then it is not necessarily a wild shop that is not under the control of the government to treat the child so harshly.

"What are Han Chinese?" Jin asked.

She only knew that she had been captured from her hometown far, far away, and sold to the shopkeeper as a slave, as for whether she was Han or not...... Well, her level of knowledge is really not enough to understand national ideas.

"Do you expect her to understand the nation? It's better to ask directly. Xu Daizhuo returned the empty bucket to Xiao Jin, and then asked, "Little sister, is there a store near here?" We're going to sharpen. ”

"Yes, yes!" Xiao Jin nodded hurriedly: "Our owner is the one who runs an inn!" ”

Since they weren't monsters, the only ones who threatened their lives were the children's owners - because they spilled the water.

But if you can bring these customers to the store, the proprietor can make more money, and maybe they will let them go.

It's just that these children who are too innocent can't see the meaning of each other's smiles.