In every city, the hotel or inn named "Yuelai" is probably a time-honored brand of considerable scale.

The same is true for Hotel Panda in Okura Castle. Not only is it not small, but the bluestone compound with six entrances, each courtyard has three floors of attics, and there are forty or fifty first-class suites. In the front hall, not only is the decoration luxurious, but also the private room café is also available. With an inn of this size and configuration, there is simply no second inn in the entire Okura Castle.

The location of "Yuelai Hotel" is also very good, facing the east gate of Okura Castle, as soon as you enter the city gate, you can see the hotel's golden signboard.

On the front door of the hotel, in addition to hanging a large plaque with the inscription "Youke Yuelai", there is also a square wooden sign with a long wooden plaque drawn on it, and there are several strange foreign characters next to it: "Inn"

Xiao Qian'er sat on one foot on a wooden chair behind the counter in the lobby. This is where the hotel shopkeeper sits, and Xiao Qian'er is just the hotel's runner, so she shouldn't sit here.

However, in this rainy and rainy bad weather, there are only two people in the huge "Yuelai Hotel", and the shopkeeper Sun is quite fond of antiques and jade, so he has already gone upstairs to play with his treasure, and this place is naturally left to Xiao Qian'er.

Xiao Qian'er is a fifteen-year-old girl, her family is also surnamed Sun, and the hotel's shopkeeper Sun is a distant relative who can only play with seven or eight sticks. She was fair-skinned, fairly good-looking, with very agile eyes, and a black hair tied in a ponytail on the top of her head, which swayed at the back of her head.

Although she was not very old, she had grown into a long skirt of blue and white satin, but a large snow-white neck was exposed, and on her feet were a pair of boots made of sea animal skin.

This outfit is really a bit nondescript, if it is in the towns on the mainland, it is enough to be called a fancy dress, but it is not surprising in Okura Castle.

In this season, there were not many guests, and the great storm that began ten days ago made it impossible for any fleet to sail at sea in the near future, and no ocean-going cargo ships would arrive on Okura Island, and now there was not a single guest in the entire "Panda Hotel".

Since there were no guests, Xiao Qian'er was happy to be idle, and since the morning, she sat behind the counter to trim her nails and paint her cheeks, until it was nearly noon, when she heard the shopkeeper upstairs shouting: "Xiao Qian'er, get up quickly, there are guests here!"

Although she heard the shouts of the shopkeeper Sun, Xiao Qian'er was still a little unimpressed. At such times, there were no ships arriving in the port, where would there be any decent guests, the old man Sun was probably old and dizzy, and when he saw someone entering the city gate upstairs, he thought that they were coming to stay in the hotel, but in fact most of them were just natives who came into the city by the sea to sell fish.

Therefore, Xiao Qian'er still sat behind the counter and did not move until she heard the sound of footsteps, and then with some surprise she saw four people walking in through the door of the inn.

It was raining outside, and these four people did not have umbrellas, but when they entered the inn lobby, they were all drenched, and they were quite embarrassed. And look at their clothes, which are often worn by the natives, the linen shirts woven from local coarse linen, and they are dirty and old, which makes Xiao Qian'er raise her little face even higher.

It is impossible for the natives of Okura Island to afford to stay in a hotel, let alone the "Panda Hotel", which is one of the best inns in the city.

"Hey, you guys! Give me zhanzhu! Your feet are all mud, but don't get dirty on the floor! Tell you that we don't accept fish or vegetables here, and we have food, and we don't lack anything! I won't buy your things, so let's go!"

"Really?" said one of the four, "but it seems that there is still one thing missing from the girl's shop." ”

Xiao Qian'er said, "What's missing?"

The man said, "This huge hotel is empty, and all that is missing is the guests, am I right?"

Xiao Qian'er frowned and said, "What nonsense are you talking about, what does the lack of guests have to do with you." ”

The man: "Of course it matters, because we are the guests." ”

Xiao Qian'er originally thought that these people must be natives who came to the city to sell fish and vegetables, but she didn't look at them at all. It was only at this point that she took a closer look at the four of them.

The four men turned out to be three men and one woman. The person who was talking to Xiao Qian'er just now was a thin young man in his twenties, although his appearance was ordinary, but his face carried an elusive aura. A woman on the side is quite beautiful, with beautiful eyebrows, and can be called a beauty.

A young man as strong as an iron tower, pale, supported by the woman like a sick man, as weak as a stake that would fall to the ground at any moment.

Standing behind the three of them, what Xiao Qian'er saw was another pale man, who was the same age as the young man who spoke before, but much more handsome, but with a dejected expression on his face, which was completely different from the strange aura of the young man.

Xiao Qian'er, as the runner of the largest hotel in the city, of course, will not be completely blind, she immediately saw that although these four people were wearing clothes, they must not be the natives of the island.

"Oh, the four of them turned out to be guests, so please do so!" Xiao Qian'er stood up from the chair behind the counter, her expression still a little lazy, after all, even if these people were not natives, they didn't look like some rich people.

"I wonder if you're going to stay or eat?" she asked.

"To stay in a hotel, I want four upper rooms. The emaciated young man replied.

I didn't expect these people to be quite generous, at least their tone was not small. However, Xiao Qian is not a person who can be bluffed casually, and she sang: "Okay! The upper rooms in the store are empty, so Xiao Qian'er will take the guests over." However, please pay for the order first, ten silver dollars for one room, and forty silver dollars for four rooms. ”

As she spoke, she put her palm in front of the young man.

"Silver dollars?" The young man seemed a little surprised when he heard this, but then he said, "We have run out of broken silver, and I wonder if your shop may exchange a large amount of silver tickets? ”

"It's okay to get the money ticket, bring it!" Xiao Qian'er said.

The young man took out a crumpled stack of paper from his pocket, as if it had been soaked in water and then dried, and took one of them and handed it to Xiao Qian'er.

Xiao Qian'er took it into her hand, glanced at it, and asked, "What is this?"

The young man was stunned and said: "This is a thousand taels of silver tickets from Hongxiang Qianzhuang, which can be exchanged for silver taels in all realms of the Ming Dynasty, is there anything wrong?"

Xiao Qian'er said: "I haven't heard of Hongxiang or Luxiang, in our Dacang City, we only recognize the money ticket of Wanbao Yinhao, if the guest officials don't have it, they can't help it." ”

Sure enough, she was a liar, holding a few pieces of torn paper, and she dared to pretend to be a thousand-yuan ticket, and she was simply playing her little Qian'er as a monkey!

However, the young man pretended to be quite similar, with a stunned and innocent look on his face, and his acting skills were first-class. I saw that he took the broken paper back again, put it in his pocket, and said: "Since the honorable number does not accept the silver ticket of Hongxiang Qianzhuang, is it possible to exchange jade agate for some silver taels?"

"I'm sorry, this master, this is an inn, not a pawnshop, except for silver dollar tickets, nothing else is accepted!" Xiao Qian'er refused. Failed to defraud with fake silver tickets, and came up with the idea of using stones to pass off as jade agate? Hmph! Xiao Qian'er is well-informed, what liar has not seen before, how can she be fooled like this!

But at this moment, a voice came from the stairs: "Xiao Qian'er, don't be rude to the guests!" A big fat man walked down the stairs, it was the shopkeeper Sun.

The hotel shopkeeper was not tall, wearing a blue silk gown, his face was white and beardless, and the fat on his face and body was bulging, and he walked like a big ball of meat rolling.

He clenched his fists and said: "I am the palm of this inn, my surname is Sun, all the dignitaries are new to this Okura Island from the mainland, right? Hey, this little girl Qian'er is not sensible, she is offended, don't be surprised!"

The young man also returned the salute and said, "Shopkeeper Sun is polite, we are indeed new to this place, and we don't know the rules of your city very well, so it's no wonder that this little girl is not known." ”

Shopkeeper Sun said: "Yes, yes, in our Dacang City, in fact, most of them are Han people who crossed from the mainland, and everyone was the same when they first came, how can there be any unknown." Xiao Lao'er also came here eight years ago and opened this small shop, at that time, this Okura Castle was not half the size of the current one, until the last year or two, the number of new arrivals here has gradually decreased. ”

"Could it be that this place is no longer the realm of the Great Ming?" was asked by another handsome young man with a pale face standing behind.

Shopkeeper Sun said: "Of course, the realm of the Ming Dynasty is still good, but this Okura Island is far away in the South China Sea, thousands of miles away, and the imperial court and government can't control it, and everything has its own rules, which is a little different from the mainland." ”

He smiled on his face, and said, "The official just said that he wanted to exchange jade agate for silver taels, but is it true?"

The thin young man said, "We don't have any money around us, so we have to do it." ”

He took out an azure translucent wrench from his bosom and said, "This green jade wrench is made by Hetian jade, please take a look at it from the shopkeeper Sun." ”

As soon as he saw this jade wrench, Shopkeeper Sun's eyes suddenly lit up. He took it into his hand, looked at it, touched it again, and said in his mouth: "Not bad, this is indeed carved by Xinjiang Hetian Baoyu Seiko, well, very good! At least worth eight hundred silver dollars, cough, that is, three hundred and seventy taels of silver!"

The thin young man smiled slightly, and said, "Shopkeeper Sun is a person who knows the goods, it's just that, my wrench is three hundred and seventy taels of silver, and it will be sold to the shopkeeper." ”

Shopkeeper Sun was overjoyed. He was a person who was very fond of collecting gems and jade, and he knew that this wrench was sold on the mainland, and it was worth at least four hundred taels of silver, and he had quoted three hundred and seventy taels before, which was deliberately said to be lower, so that he could have room for bargaining. Who knew that the other party was so refreshing, and agreed to the price without paying it back, which really made him overjoyed.