At this moment, Ethan Brooks and those outsiders stood on opposite sides of a wooden fence, gazing at each other in pairs.

At that moment, the boy in homemade straw sandals could only feel a bit envious of the thick clothes those people wore—they must be warm and able to withstand the cold.

The people outside the gate were clearly divided into several groups; they were not all together, but they all looked toward the thin boy inside the gate. Most of their faces were indifferent, though one or two had already let their gaze drift past the boy, looking toward the farther reaches of the small town.

Ethan Brooks found it strange. Did these people not know that the imperial court had already shut down all the dragon kilns? Or was it precisely because they knew the truth that they thought there was an opportunity to exploit?

A young man wearing a strange tall hat, with a slender figure and a green jade pendant at his waist, seemed to be growing impatient. He stepped out from the crowd alone, intending to push open the unlocked gate of the fence. But just as his fingers were about to touch the wooden door, he suddenly stopped abruptly, slowly withdrew his hand, clasped his hands behind his back, and looked at the straw-sandaled boy inside the gate with a smiling face, saying nothing, just smiling.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ethan Brooks unintentionally noticed that the people behind the young man seemed to have mixed reactions—some looked disappointed, some amused, some frowned, some sneered. Their emotions were subtle and varied.

Just then, a middle-aged man with messy hair suddenly flung open the door and cursed at Ethan Brooks, “You little bastard, are you obsessed with money? Coming so early to haunt me—are you in a hurry to reincarnate and see your dead parents?!”

Ethan Brooks rolled his eyes. He didn’t take these sharp-tongued words to heart. First, living in this rural place with barely a few books, if you got angry every time someone cursed at you, you might as well jump into a well and be done with it. Second, this middle-aged bachelor who guarded the gate was often the butt of jokes among the townsfolk, especially the bold and brash women—let alone cursing him, plenty had even hit him. On top of that, he loved to brag to little kids in split pants, telling tales like how he once fought at the city gate, beating five or six big men until they were searching the ground for their teeth, blood everywhere, the whole two-zhang-wide road in front of the gate looking like a muddy path after rain!

He said to Ethan Brooks gruffly, “Your petty business can wait.”

No one in the town took this guy seriously.

But whether the outsiders could enter the town or not—that man held the power of life and death.

As he walked toward the wooden gate, he reached into his crotch.

With his back to Ethan Brooks, the man opened the gate and, from time to time, collected a small embroidered pouch from someone, slipping it into his sleeve, then letting them through one by one.

Ethan Brooks had already stepped aside. The eight people were roughly divided into five groups as they entered the town. Besides the young man with the tall hat and green pendant, there were also two children, about seven or eight years old, who passed by—one boy in a festive red robe, and a girl with a rosy, porcelain-like complexion.

The boy was half a head shorter than Ethan Brooks. As he brushed past, he opened his mouth—though he made no sound, his lips clearly formed two words, full of provocation.

The middle-aged woman holding the boy’s hand coughed lightly, and only then did the child restrain himself a little.

Behind the woman and boy, the little girl was led by a burly old man with hair like frost. She turned her head and rattled off a string of words to Ethan Brooks, not forgetting to point at the boy in front of her.

Ethan Brooks couldn’t understand a word the girl said, but he could guess she was tattling.

The burly old man shot a sidelong glance at the straw-sandaled boy.

Just being looked at, whether intentionally or not, made Ethan Brooks instinctively take a step back.

Like a mouse seeing a cat.

After witnessing this, the little girl, who had been chirping like a sparrow, immediately lost interest in stirring up trouble. She turned away and didn’t spare Ethan Brooks another glance, as if even one more look would dirty her eyes.

The young Ethan Brooks truly hadn’t seen much of the world, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t read people’s faces.

Once the group had gone, the gatekeeper grinned and asked, “Want to know what they said?”

Ethan Brooks nodded, “Of course.”

The middle-aged bachelor chuckled, “They were praising how good-looking you are—all good things.”

Ethan Brooks tugged at the corner of his mouth, thinking, Do you take me for a fool?

The man saw through the boy’s thoughts and laughed even harder. “If you weren’t a fool, would I let you deliver messages for me?”

Ethan Brooks didn’t dare talk back, afraid that if he angered the man, the copper coins he was about to earn would slip away.

The man turned his head, looked at those people, rubbed his stubbly chin, and muttered under his breath, “That woman just now—her legs could kill a man.”

Ethan Brooks hesitated, then asked curiously, “Has that lady practiced martial arts?”

The man was taken aback, looked down at the boy, and said with a straight face, “Kid, you really are a fool.”

The boy was completely baffled.

He told Ethan Brooks to wait, strode into the house, and came back with a stack of envelopes—not too thick, about a dozen. After handing them to Ethan Brooks, he asked, “Fools have their blessings, good people get good returns. Do you believe that?”

Ethan Brooks took the letters in one hand, held out his other palm, and blinked. “We agreed—one coin per letter.”