Turning to Wang Shen, Yao Zhi shook her head and replied, "Aunt Wang, the weather is hot. I want to sell my meat jerky first. You can go do your things, don't worry about me."
After hesitating for a moment, Wang Shen finally nodded and said, "Alright. Then I will wait for you at the teahouse near the market after I'm done."
Yao Zhi planned to take a look around this border town and didn't want to make Wang Shen wait too long. So, she smiled and said, "Aunt Wang, I know the road now. When you are done, you can go back first."
When she heard this, Wang Shen hesitated and asked, "Will you be alright?"
"I'm not a child anymore. I can protect myself," Yao Zhi nodded.
Meeting her firm gaze, Wang Shen finally agreed. "Then, you have to be careful."
"Okay."
After they separated, Yao Zhi finally had time to explore the market. Before selling her meat jerky, she checked the prices in the market.
Half an hour later, Yao Zhi had already gained some basic understanding. Due to the grassland tribes, the price of meat jerky in the border market was not high, but it was not cheap either. A jin of meat jerky cost one hundred wen.
At this moment, she was standing in front of one of the meat stalls.
The stall owner was a young man in his twenties. When he saw her, his eyes lit up. For the grassland people, their beauty standards were different from those of the people from the Mobei Kingdom and the Great Yan Kingdom.
Since they were nomadic tribes, they often faced food shortages, causing them to have thinner figures. So, when they looked for a wife, they preferred someone with more flesh. To the young man, Yao Zhi was so beautiful that his heart skipped a beat.
Not knowing what the young man was thinking, Yao Zhi pointed at the meat jerky on the stall and asked, "Brother, can I have a try of this?"
Hearing her clear, soft voice, the young man was pulled out of his thoughts. He nodded his head like a chicken pecking at rice and stammered, "S-sure!"
Blushing, he quickly cut a piece of meat and handed it to her. Yao Zhi accepted the meat and took a bite. As she chewed the meat jerky, she was surprised.
At first, she thought that the meat would be hard and tasteless based on how it looked. Unexpectedly, it was fragrant and savory. The more she chewed, the more delicious it became.
'No wonder it was so expensive,' she thought inwardly.
The young man watched her taste his family's meat jerky nervously. Not many people from the Great Yan Kingdom liked wolf meat, so when he saw her eyes light up, he finally smiled.
"How is it?" he asked with a hint of pride.
Yao Zhi finished the meat jerky and nodded. "It's very delicious! Brother, how do you sell it?" she asked.
"This meat jerky is made using wolf meat and more than twenty spices. It's my family's secret recipe. So, I only accept barter. Miss, do you have anything good to barter?" the young man asked.
"What do you need?" Yao Zhi asked him back.
When he heard this, the young man looked at her from head to toe. Judging from her clothes, she should be a commoner, so he was skeptical of her claim. "Do you have water, grains, or cotton?" he asked despite his doubts.
Hearing this, Yao Zhi nodded and asked, "So, how much do you want for a jin of meat?"
The young man often came to the border market, so he knew the prices of supplies here. After thinking for a moment, he said, "For a jin of meat, I want fifty jin of grains."
Yao Zhi calculated for a moment. Fifty jin was equal to twenty-five kilograms of rice. She could buy it for twenty points. It was not expensive. "I want two jin of the meat," she nodded.
"Okay. Do you need me to go with you or…"
Before the young man could finish his words, she interrupted him, "I will come back with the grains. Do you have any grain sacks?"
When he left home, the young man had prepared several sacks to carry grains, so he handed them to her. Yao Zhi took the grain sacks and said, "Wait for a moment."
The young man didn't know whether she really had the grains or not, but he still prepared two jin of meat jerky for her. He had good knife skills, and the meat jerky he cut was of the same thickness.
While he was busy slicing the meat, Yao Zhi went to a secluded corner inside an alley.
She looked around and made sure that no one saw her before she bought a bag of rice from the shop. Then, she poured the grains into the young man's grain sack.
After she was done, she stored the meat jerky she bought from the shop and the plastic back into the warehouse. Thinking about the goods sold in the market, she checked the shop and bought sixty eggs.
Before leaving the alley, she covered her bamboo basket with a piece of old fabric.
The young man waited for ten minutes and thought he had been scammed. He stared in the direction where Yao Zhi had left with a deep frown. When he thought she wouldn't come back, he saw her carrying the grain sacks.
Seeing this, the young man quickly went over and took the sacks from her hand. "Let me help you."
"Thank you," Yao Zhi didn't refuse and smiled at him.
Although her body was not as weak as before, it was still tiring for her to carry twenty-five kilograms of rice on her back.
After they returned to the young man's stall, he untied the sack to check the grains. The moment he saw the plump, white rice, his eyes widened in shock. Fearing it would bring trouble, he quickly tied the sacks and took several deep breaths to calm down.