The village that was briefly stopped did not have an official name, and the people, like most of the other areas of the Crescent Continent, simply referred to their hometown with the simple word "Mura", which means village in the Japanese language.

The next village is directly called the neighboring village or "that village", which is understood by the locals but often confused by visitors from other places, so after a long time, there are some common names obtained by local industries or geomorphological characteristics.

For example, the village where the group is located is simply called a hot spring village.

Thanks to the local rice production and the famous hot springs, the size of the village and the living conditions of the people here are relatively good. Not everyone is living a hard life, people will always make the mistake of reducing a complex group to a single stereotype, such as Zhangzhou, who is generally poor, and thinks that everyone is too poor to eat rice. But a small village is like a miniature version of the country, and it also has its own class division between rich and poor.

The richest man in the hot spring village is probably the innkeeper here, because the roof of his house is made of tiles that are common in the city rather than the thatch that is more common in the countryside.

The poets of Xinyuezhou in the past once had a poem such as "The soil in front of the door is exhausted, and there is no tile on the house" - the potter burns the clay all his life, but his roof can never afford to use beautiful and durable tiles, so he can only pave it with thatch.

It is common for the working people at the bottom to not be able to afford to use their own products, and for the farmers who grow rice, yellow rice is the daily ration, and only the common people in Taizhou, where there is plenty of production, can eat rice more often, and it is usually only brown rice.

Therefore, even if you don't consider the floor space of the hotel itself, the solid wood materials used and the delicate tiles on the roof are already a status symbol.

Most of the innkeepers in Crescent Island are owned by more prestigious local presences, as the country lacks Rigalese adventurer culture, and commoner travellers are not common here – or not common.

Most of the commoners, even if they travel, mostly live in broken temples or borrow free places such as local firewood houses to stay for a night, and those who will spend money to stay in a hotel and eat are either rich businessmen traveling with their families or young nobles who travel abroad, and these people have a high pursuit of food and all aspects.

In the end, any business depends on the network it has built up – and it's intuitive to dissect it in detail.

Take rice, for example.

Although the hot spring village produces grain, it is preferentially supplied to the Chinese people in Pingshan County. The finest polished rice and white flour were given to the Chinese, and the inferior was used by the sergeants. Eating rice is a status symbol in itself, and even if you want to buy rice from a farmer in a country with a strict class, most of them will refuse or even try to report it for fear of not handing in enough money and being punished by the nobles.

Therefore, it is necessary to have connections, either with local nobles or close relations with tax collectors and grain collectors, and be able to obtain a certain share of rations through negotiation and bribery, and to open up all kinds of relationships in order to obtain a stable grain ration.

In addition, various etiquette should also be paid attention to, and the samurai had a great privilege called "rudeness" - if the commoner lacked etiquette to the samurai, or the villager lacked etiquette to the sergeant, as long as it was deemed offended, then the high-ranking person had the right to draw a sword in the street and kill the other party without being questioned.

This privilege is rarely used by people nowadays, but even so, if the main customer of the inn is the nobles, the servants and the chef still need to learn the corresponding etiquette, and strive to serve the nobles comfortably.

Training comes at a cost, and there are people who know proper etiquette and the nobles have information about dining, incense, and even the softness of the tatami mats and beds in the room. It can be said that if you have money and no relevant knowledge, even if the hotel is forced to open, it will eventually close down due to various difficulties. Therefore, the owner of an inn that has been in existence for a long time must have quite a lot of intertwined connections, and to a certain extent, he will have a status similar to that of the squire of the world in the local village, and he will be respected by the locals, and he will consult them in case of trouble.

Power is a terrible force because it can easily lure people down the path of abuse.

Even a countryman like Lao Qiao, who is at the bottom of the samurai class on horseback now, has a status that allows the people of the hot spring village to obey directly.

If Old Joe had been an evil nobleman, he would have been tempted to have a peasant girl who asked for his service, and if he had demanded that all the peasants surrender such a supply of rice, there would be no one in the right position to contradict him.

If the low-level peasants dare to refuse, then he can directly use "rude begging" to draw his sword and kill him.

The only right given to the peasants was to send someone to the nearby samurai's house with a higher rank than Lao Qiao to report the trip, and since the grain was handed over to the Chinese in Pingshan County, the samurai had to report it to the Pingshan County Commander first, and then send someone to deal with it after the ruling was made.

And the handling here will involve a lot of complicated struggles - for example, if the peasants refuse to give Lao Qiao the rice that was to be handed over to the county order of Pingshan County, then they are guilty of being rude to the nobles and should be killed, and Lao Qiao occupies the rice of the Chinese people in Pingshan County, which is an offense to the Chinese as a village priest, and it is reasonable to say that he should also be killed.

So which of these two crimes should be counted first? At the point in time when it was reported through the bureaucracy and then dealt with, it was possible that the impatient old Joe would have drawn his sword and killed the peasants, and if he had killed people without taking away any food or only a small part, the matter might have been closed in the end.

Because it is very labor-intensive to investigate.

In the end, the most serious losses under the conflict are the working people at the bottom, although the Chinese who are in power in the territory will be disgraced and usually try to save face, but in the end, in fact, the most is to let the villagers who committed the crime go to the mansion and kneel down to apologize.

Apologize to the lord, not to the farmer he killed.

As for why, it was, of course, because it was not a mistake for a privileged samurai to kill a peasant. Since it's not a mistake, then an apology is inexplicable, right?

The existence of power is such a terrifying force. It is not a physical weapon or a strong body, something that can be seen with the naked eye, but it is more powerful than the real thing. Based on this characteristic, it is not surprising that when they come to a small country inn where there are relatively few samurai, the host will try his best to serve them well.

The children of the Ziyun martial arts family walking everywhere will give people the illusion that there are many samurai, but even if the samurai class in Xinyue Continent has been peaceful for many years, it is indeed a bit too widespread, and it actually accounts for less than one percent compared to the total population of the country.

Although the annual income of this 1 percent of the population is as high as 30 percent, Xinjing still has to support them in line with the idea of raising soldiers for a thousand days and using them for a while.

Samurai were basically placed in the places where people could be released, and in many places there was even a phenomenon of people floating around, and there were seven or eight tax collectors alone, and they came again today after collecting them once yesterday. The people at the bottom are miserable but have no power to resist, and the upward declaration is often detained layer by layer, and finally sinks into the sea, even if it can be sent to the front of the official master, how can it be guaranteed that the person at the top is really innocent.

Reporting does not necessarily bring good results, even if it is just the hope that the other party will not be overly oppressed when collecting taxes, once the grassroots executor reports to the upper level and is known to the person, the farmers will often usher in murderous revenge.

The majority of the people live in abundance or misery, all in the thoughts of those in power. The livelihood of the people in the territory is closely related to the Chinese who are responsible for the management, and under the governance of a terrible aristocracy, there are often nobles who live a hedonistic life day and night, while going out of the city to look out at the village is the contradictory phenomenon of "ten thousand acres of fertile land is wasted".

Peasants who could not afford to pay their taxes often ended up in the mountains and forests, and had to survive by plundering weaker existences than themselves—and from this point of view, it was clear that Pingshan County was more secure than the rest of Zhangzhou.

Although this may not be the credit of Torotaro's father, the Iwakura prefectural commander, it is simply because Ryunosuke's original struggle consumed the strength of the gentry clan in this prefecture, and the new prefectural commander's lineage has not yet developed and grown, and for now, greed can still be satisfied.

Ironically, the samurai, who were supposed to defend the people, suffered a setback in the infighting, but instead made the people more prosperous.

At breakfast time, sitting by the propped up papier-mâché window, looking out at the children playing with the paper windmill, the little master even stopped his chopsticks, and his favorite desserts seemed to be a little tasteless.

"Tired? or still my hands still hurt. The girl from Roan, who was sitting opposite, asked, but Yajiro just shook her head.

After a few months of experience on the journey to the south, the young master of the Qingtian family became more restrained from being proud of his samurai identity and swordsmanship, and more or less began to question the meaning of the existence of the class he belonged to.

He no longer blindly believes in the values he used to follow, but like most young people, he has a tendency to try to achieve that imaginary "change" by completely repudiating the form of his past self.

One of the proofs of this is that Yajiro began to learn Lamani and consulted Henry and even Mira more often, and even deliberately did things he was not good at.

He's acutely aware of the contradictions—what he's been through even though he's his peers—and that's what we're going through more of our gray-haired girl, who was also at this stage, bent on distancing herself from her past self, but rushing to get things done often had tragic consequences.

It's just that unlike himself, who met the teacher at the age of 11, the little master has certain achievements and is older, which also makes him more stubborn.

A few words can't make him stop this practice immediately, he can only take time to change slowly, bit by bit.

After arriving at the hot spring village, she has been repaired and soaked in the famous hot springs, and after waking up in a serious bed and feeling refreshed, Mira eats brown rice with chopped seaweed sprinkled with sesame oil, pickled radish slices, and miso soup in the morning. The food served by Wato is mainly light as always, and although it is not bad after getting used to it, I sometimes miss the Rigali diet with a high proportion of meat and fat.

Torotaro and the others are about to part ways at this point, as the son of Pingshan County Ling, as soon as he arrives at the hotel, he is recognized as a coat of arms and served as a distinguished guest, which fulfills Mira's wish not to look at this stinky fart boy anymore. And when the owner of the inn was waiting for him, he decided to stay here until Ah Hui's condition improved.

Torotaro had just come running to inform them of this, and had the trouble of telling Sakura that she didn't need her anymore. In view of her meritorious service, she was given a higher reward than the previous verbal agreement, and then proudly gave the Oiran 5 taels of gold and turned away, which made her cry and laugh for a while.

All of this was apparently done to the girl Luo'an, who was strict with him, and to the old medicine master Jian Ye, who had left the cave at the other table next to him—look!

This kind of behavior is obviously very important to Torotaro, although he doesn't like this boy very much, and he walks away after showing off, taking a big step and pulling the thigh that he had strained before, and limping back after a muffled snort. It's a good thing that he's back in this state of energy.

After all, a resentful aristocratic son brother is still within his family's sphere of influence, no matter how he thinks about it, it means a lot of trouble.

After parting ways, the group will continue south, but they still have a lot of work to attend to before then. Traveling along the way, and the battle of the caves, not only the weapons and armor were consumed, but also some items such as clothes and shoes also needed to be replaced. Rations, new water storage utensils, and various non-staple food condiments need to be replenished. This must be added to the Rigal carriage purchased from Ryunosuke and his party, and the horses that pull the cart also need a lot of grain and grass, and some parts of the vehicle itself also need to be maintained and repaired.

The Ronin Group is still a Ronin Group after all, and even if Ryunosuke and his party know the goods and buy the carriage, they don't necessarily know how to maintain it. As a result, the carriage was actually loose and worn in many places—and this was the reason why the Sage and Narumi were not here at the moment, and they had eaten breakfast early and ran to check the carriage and the horses pulling it.

"I'm going to check it out, too. After breakfast, according to the custom of the people, she put the cutlery on the plate and waited for the maid to come and take it away, Mira got up and planned to run to see it, but at this time there was a sound of hurried footsteps outside.

"Click-" The door was violently opened, and before the people in the shop could get angry, the sweaty villagers shouted, "Where's the shopkeeper, my son, they went to the swamp—"

The dark-skinned short man's linen clothes were stained with blood, and judging by the bright red and unoxidized color on them, it was obvious that it had just been stained.