The wind of the deep winter with a slight chill swept through the trees that had been cistanche for countless years, and the sluggish sun hung weakly in the air, and there was only a little bit of green left to reveal the three points of life.

The air currents that flowed through the dense branches finally found a clearing, like a stream flowing into a river, and the cold wind that scraped the bones of people began to wreak havoc on the forest road.

Suddenly, the sound of jingling bells sounded on the originally silent wild road where only the sound of the wind remained.

Following the sound of bells, a large convoy appeared on the wild road.

It is said to be a wild road, but in fact, this road that is enough for two carriages to run parallel is very clean, and even weeds are rarely seen, although it is not as good as the gravel road in the big city, but in this frontier land, it is already a rare wide and smooth.

The convoy slowly came to a fork in the road, and the carriage at the front gradually stopped.

"Tira, you stinky boy, what's going on, it's such a cold day, you can't stay out overnight, don't you leave quickly!"

Hearing the shouting behind him, the groom of the carriage squinted again at the sign at the fork in the road, which read, "Spring Kite Village, Sunset Town" in standard human language

The two place names are also remarked with arrow symbols, although Tirami does not know one, but this road is not the first time to go, these two place names are naturally not the first time to see, and they have long been known, but... The young groom followed Sunset's arrows and glanced at the road on the right.

"Tira, I see if your kid has itchy skin, and he didn't even hear what I said?"

Just as the young man hesitated, a horsewhip struck him on the head, although it didn't hurt much, but Tila also knew that if he didn't care, he would definitely fall in love with the whip, so he covered his head and said to the visitor.

"Boss, this is the road to the old Sunset!"

"Nonsense! It's not going to Sunset Town, it's going to your house!"

The visitor was much shorter than Tira, wearing a thick leather jacket, and most of his head was hidden in a felt hat, revealing a pair of somewhat cloudy eyes, and after glaring at the young man, he turned his head to look at the road behind him, and then he was stunned.

After looking at it for a long time, the leader of the caravan came back to his senses, trotted a few steps, and stepped on this stone road, yes, this forest road, turned into a gray-white pure stone road, which is not even the infrastructure of a big city.

Unlike the caravan that surrounded the intersection, the others were all stunned to see this road to Sunset Town, as the leader of this caravan, Oshier thought a little more, it was only three months since the last time he walked this road, he clearly remembered that this road was still the same as other sections of the dirt road, although it was often cleaned and dredged.

It only took so much time to pave a stone road of nearly five kilometers completely, although according to his observation, this stone road is actually very rough, especially the two sides of the road are very strangely irregular, but the financial and material resources required in the middle, even those big nobles of Stratholme have to break their bones, it seems that the chamber of commerce's evaluation of this legendary mage lord is about to change again.

In just a few minutes, the caravan leader thought a lot, and when he came back to his senses, he saw that the members of the caravan were still observing the road, and some of them jumped up to test the thickness of the stone slabs, frowned, cursed and reorganized the team, and it took a quarter of an hour for the horse team to slowly step on the stone road again.

In the distance, the towering mage tower can already be faintly visible...

"Oshier!

As soon as I stepped through the door, I heard a shout in my ears, and when I turned my head to look, a corner of the hall was already full of people around a square wooden table. Although it was bitterly cold outside, the hall was much warmer, most of them were simply wearing a coat, obviously recognizing the one who shouted at a glance, the caravan leader patted the cold air on his hands, kicked his feet and walked over.

"Odum, you're here early!"

When he walked into the table, someone had already come out with an empty seat, and the attendant on the side also deftly added a chair. Sitting up, O'Hill glanced around at the people at the table, twitched the corners of his mouth and said.

He had also seen this kind of square table in Sunset Town, and there was usually a fitting - a prototype board surface twice as large as the area, and more people could sit on the back of the table, but now the whole table was made of seven people including him, although it was a little crowded, but almost all the merchants who came last time came, so naturally there was no need to spend any more effort.

"Old Hill, you also saw the stone road you came on!"

As soon as his butt was pressed against the chair, a young man who was clinging to the caravan leader asked softly, and naturally for the few people sitting so close, he could almost hear it.

"I stepped on it all the way, how could I not see it, it was really... Luxury!"

Thinking back to the road just now, Oshier said with a grin, but finally hesitated for a moment before spitting out a luxurious adjective, yes, for a merchant like him, the use of stone roads on this kind of forest road is completely an extremely extravagant behavior, after all, in these days, even most of the roads in the big cities are just gravel roads.

"That's the power of magic!"

Following O'Shir's words, Odam, who had called out to him at the beginning, sighed similarly.

"It seems that that one is getting more and more powerful!"

"Whew! This kind of thing can't just be done with two mages!"

"Oh, Louis Lime, you seem to know something, you should be the first to arrive!"

Seeing the sneer of the young man beside Oshier, Oshier didn't care, but asked with interest, and the other people at the table also turned their attention away. Everyone here is at least the leader of a caravan, and some are even high-level members of the Chamber of Commerce, more or less backstage, but the young man in front of him is a real noble child, and the family behind him is also a deep-rooted old family of Stratholme, and the aristocratic education and environment naturally make him have more insight and information than them.

"The total construction time of the whole road is actually only a little more than a month"

Feeling everyone's concentrated gaze, Louis Lime was silent for a long time before he hesitated to say a word, and then no matter how everyone asked, he was silent. Except for him, a hairy boy, all of them were old headlines of at least forty years old, but after a few questions, they all kept their mouths shut and didn't say anything, only occasionally a few people looked at each other privately and exchanged something with their eyes.

Although the table in the corner fell silent, the whole hall gradually became lively, this is the only bar in town, the large hall and the private room of the Aquigo upstairs, it is one of the few entertainment facilities in the town. In the evening, the townsfolk came in droves, and the merchant's table was obviously no stranger to the scene, but watched with interest the increasingly lively bars.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Lord Louis is already waiting for you upstairs, come with me!"

An abrupt voice suddenly appeared in everyone's ears, startling the caravan leader at a table, and then a figure slowly appeared not far from the table, dressed in light blue linen clothes, with a hood made of unknown animal skins, the young man smiled and made a gesture of invitation to the slightly frightened merchants, and then turned and walked towards the staircase.

The first to react was Oshier, who was sitting on the outside, and after patting the young man beside him who was a little stunned, he got up and followed.

Louis Lime, who was woken up by O'Shill, turned red, and then became cold, as a noble child, the reason why he was so downtrodden to become a caravan leader was not because he didn't have the qualifications of a professional at all, so that now even a wild boy in a country town dared to scare himself with the skills of a little shadow man, and lowered his head for a long time with a gloomy face, until the people on the table were almost gone, the young businessman raised his head and got up, and after a trace of killing intent flashed in his eyes, he kicked his feet and followed the team...

"It's a pleasure to see you again!"

This is obviously a large room specially used to meet guests, although it is different from the last meeting place, but the layout has not changed much, a long table takes up most of the space, on the main seat of the long table, the master of Sunset Town, the representative of Baron Kelris, Louis Butler is sitting with a smile on his face, beside him, the young man who scared everyone just now is half of his body faintly in the shadows, standing quietly,

With Louis's gesture to sit down, everyone looked at each other silently after taking their seats in turn.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this Chamber of Commerce trade is still the same as in previous years, and it is not the first time that you have participated, so I will not explain it again. ”

After a long time, Louis said to all the team leaders, knocked on the table, and then the door opened, and several teenagers walked in, put a piece of parchment in front of each team leader's table, and retreated behind Louis.

"This is this year's category list, if you think it's appropriate, you can hang your offer behind the category. ”

Louis said as he stroked his glasses in satisfaction. This is a gift specially made to him after the baron found out that he has some farsightedness, although there is only one function of automatic adjustment of power, but in the eyes of old Louis is still a precious magic wonder, he has to be carefully cleaned up every day, and after automatically wearing this eye, he finally has the temperament of a noble butler.

This kind of chamber of commerce trade is held every six months, and it has been carried out five times in a row.

That's right, nearly three years have passed quietly.

Most of these caravans from Stratholme were originally invited by Baron Kerrith to trade for the first time in two years at the Mage's Tower Square in Sunset, and since then, the number of caravans has increased every year, up to the current seven. The parchment is the goods provided by Sunset Town, except for some forest products such as flavor resins, most of them are the products of the Kelreth Mage Tower, of course, they are the lowest level and can be provided in large quantities.

Most of them are fire elemental magic materials, these are the main targets of the caravan, as a change of hands can be raised for one or two percent of the price of goods, magic materials, magic items have always been in short supply, and the caravan provides a large amount of food. Whether it's the first time or this time, the Chamber of Commerce in Sunset Town has always exchanged its own products for a large amount of grain.

However, as the hinterland of the kingdom of Lordaeron, apart from the annual cold winter hunting, the Stratholme region has not experienced war for decades, and the temperate climate of the wind and rain makes it the largest grain producing region in the kingdom after the Hilbrad region.

Naturally, the perennial harvest can easily lead to the continuous depreciation of food prices, although the situation is still in a relatively stable and tolerable state because of the intentional protection of the lords and nobles and the strength of the Lordaeron state, but for these merchants who want to exchange a large number of precious magic materials, the ten or so carts of grain they bring can only account for a small head, and in the end they still need to use Jinnar to pay the bulk of the head, but this mage lord in Sunset Town seems to be very loyal to storing grain, and has made a hard rule that at least one-fifth of the amount of each transaction needs to be traded with grain。

Of course, some local merchants have also heard some news, this lord of Sunset Town accommodates a large number of homeless people almost every year, and in less than three years, he has almost wiped out all the homeless people around Sunset Forest.

Although the success has made the original Sunset Town, which originally had only a thousand people, exploded to an unconventional range of thousands of people in just a few years, and just now everyone found that the number of townspeople seemed to be much more than at the beginning of the year, because of the abnormal increase in the number of townspeople, resulting in insufficient food production, so it is not new to buy a large amount of food from abroad. As long as this lord can always provide high-quality magic materials, as a merchant does not care what the trading party uses it for, on the other hand, grain has always been a bargaining chip for large transactions between nobles, and these merchants in front of him, which one does not have the support of the nobles behind them, after all, in this world, the nobles on the ground are the real big grain merchants, and the annual harvest of the lords in the territory is sixty percent of the more benevolent lords, and more is seventy or eighty percent of the collection, and the lords are almost no different from the tenants, for these nobles, although the food is important but also very cheap。 Therefore, it is more advantageous for these merchants to trade with grain, but because of transportation problems and the limited number of transactions per year, the grain that can be carried is also a little stretched.

Louis, who was sitting on the main seat, looked at the group of merchants who were looking at the catalogue and talking to each other in deep thought. That's right, in the past few years, excluding the three attached villages, Sunset Town has almost absorbed seventy-seven eighty-eight of the displaced people in the east of Stratholme, and the townspeople, who were originally only in their early thousands, now have four thousand two hundred and twenty-five. Such an accurate figure also declares that the town has an extremely complete management system, except for the town's buildings, which have been nearly doubled in size, but are still neat and standardized, all kinds of perfect infrastructure have been built in recent years, and the most important thing is that a large area of farmland has been opened up behind the town. In addition, because the secrecy work was done well, the outside world did not know that they had already been able to achieve self-sufficiency in the second year, but what made old Louis incomprehensible was that Kelreth did not cancel the system of exchanging grain, and more and more grain was stored after special treatment by the mage, so that after this transaction, the reserve grain in Sunset Town could almost support the food and drink of more than 4,000 people in the entire town for two years.

"Butler Louis, I wonder what items are being auctioned off this secret meeting?"

Louis Lime, who finally walked into the room, just glanced at the catalog casually and put it back on the table, turned to Louis and said that he was the only merchant who did not bring a convoy, and the purpose was clear, that is, the subsequent secret auction.

"This secret auction is presided over by Lord Baron!"

Coming back from his contemplation, Louis glanced at the other party and spoke softly.

And the businessman who heard the rumor made a lot of waves, although the first time, not only the business meeting on the surface but also the secret auction in the secret was presided over by the mage lord - Baron Kerryth, since the second time, he has never appeared again, I don't know what good things will appear in this secret auction, and this adult needs to preside over it personally, and the original few merchants who were not interested in this secret auction also changed their minds slightly, planning to stay and see. (To be continued.) )