“What are you lot making all that racket about in broad daylight?”
Just as Zhang Yang was about to send Shen Zhi flying with a gold brick, a woman’s voice came from not far away.
The Red Name guards hurried over, clasped their fists in greeting, and leaned in to quietly explain what had happened.
The woman’s eyelashes fluttered.
She glanced over from the corner of her eye, then nodded and murmured something.
Shen Zhi keenly noticed that Zhang Yang, who had been trying to kill him just moments ago, suddenly let up.
Though he didn’t know why, he breathed a sigh of relief.
If things got out of hand now, the two of them might not even get a chance to escape.
The woman wore a long, blue-green dress beneath a round-collared coat embroidered with flowers in a contrasting color.
Her cheeks were a little plump, giving her a well-fed look, but strangely, her complexion was poor.
Above her head was the title “Mysterious Woman.”
None of that was what Zhang Yang was most curious about.
What intrigued her was that the woman’s name was green.
That’s right.
On this Homestead Side Quest Map, where Red Name NPCs and Yellow Name NPCs ran about everywhere, this was the first time she’d ever encountered an NPC with a Green Name right from the start.
The key was that it would have been one thing if only the woman had a Green Name, but after she appeared, the guards, who had originally been Red Names, had also bizarrely turned Green.
Green Names meant friendly, which meant Zhang Yang couldn’t attack them without resorting to special methods.
She simply put the gold bricks away.
The woman asked with a smile, “Are you the Third Young Master Shen?”
Zhang Yang glanced sideways at Shen Zhi, then took a step back.
Shen Zhi pressed his lips together and said nothing.
“You don’t have to admit it, but you look so much like your eldest brother that I’d be hard-pressed to mistake you.” After saying this, the woman instructed the guards, “Go on, all of you. It was just a misunderstanding.”
The guards looked troubled.
“If our superiors hold us accountable…”
“If they do, tell them I took him away.”
Only then did the guards clasp their fists and stand aside.
Shen Zhi’s mind was full of questions.
As far as he could remember, he had no recollection of this woman, and his eldest brother had never mentioned her either.
He kept his questions to himself until they entered a private residence in the city.
Only after the woman took off the coat draped over her shoulders did he speak.
“You knew my eldest brother?”
“I studied with the Eldest Young Master Shen for two years.”
In this world, the barriers to education were astonishingly high.
Only those from powerful families could easily afford it; for poor scholars or commoners, pursuing an education was exceedingly difficult.
Unless the woman had extraordinary talent or a wealthy family behind her, there was no way she could have studied alongside his brother.
“Sit down. Did I startle you?”
The woman’s friendly manner made Shen Zhi feel a little uneasy.
“Forgive me for asking, but what’s the situation with Tianbian?” What Shen Zhi was even more curious about was who this woman before him was, this woman who claimed to have been his elder brother’s classmate for two years.
What was her identity?
Which side was she on?
What was her position?
The woman said, “Take a guess.”
Shen Zhi: “…”
Seeing the boy’s faintly angry expression, the woman laughed.
“You react just like your elder brother. I was only teasing you. Tianbian Garrison had some of our people planted inside. We took the city with little effort, and there’s been no trouble since we entered.”
The scene Shen Zhi had feared never came to pass.
“So you’re with the rebels?”
The woman didn’t like hearing that word.
She poured herself a cup of tea.
“Young people shouldn’t be so hotheaded. Tell me, what makes someone a rebel? And what makes someone the Royal Army? The royal house has lost its way, the princes are all fools, and the whole realm is in chaos, with people unable to make a living…”
“No matter how you put it, you’re still traitors and bandits.”
Shen Zhi wasn’t buying her argument.
He had his own standards for judging right and wrong.
“If you’re not rebels but the Royal Army, then tell me: who were the ones who killed innocents and claimed the credit? Who was it that massacred cities? On the road, I saw troops escorting over ten thousand prisoners and leaving tens of thousands of corpses behind. Which side were they from? Spare me the lofty, self-righteous nonsense, and don’t try to cozy up to me by bringing up my brother. A weasel paying respects to a chicken—what good intentions could you possibly have?”
The woman patiently waited for Shen Zhi to finish, then said coolly, “What war doesn’t involve massacring cities? Besides, the point of a massacre isn’t to kill people; it’s to get your hands on their wealth. Unless you’re a depraved monster, who would take pleasure in killing for no reason? If you won’t let the soldiers plunder, why should they risk their lives for you? Third Young Master Shen, do you really think your brother has never done anything like that?”
“My brother, he—”
“Your brother, what?” The woman rested her chin in her hand, taking an amused look at Shen Zhi’s face as it flushed red, then pale.
“You’ve got nothing to say either, do you? Isn’t this how war has always been waged?”
“But just because it’s always been done this way, does that make it right?”
It wasn’t Shen Zhi who asked.
It was Zhang Yang.
“May I ask your name, young friend?”
The woman turned her attention to the speaker.
Before Zhang Yang spoke, the woman had thought of her only as Shen Zhi’s female companion, probably someone he had rescued along the way. New chapters come out on novelping.com first.
But as soon as she spoke, the woman changed her assessment.
“Zhang Yang. Zhang Boyuan.”
“Little friend Boyuan, why do you say that?”
“Raiding ordinary people for so-called military supplies and rewards is downright foolish and shortsighted. How much wealth can you squeeze out of a poor family that can barely afford to eat? If they can’t pay, you kill them. The more people you kill, the fewer living people there are. But does that mean you’ll end up with more money? Not necessarily, right? I don’t think it’s wrong to call them a ‘rabble.'”
Zhang Yang spoke so casually, yet her words made Shen Zhi’s heart pound.
From time to time, Shen Zhi glanced at the woman out of the corner of his eye, afraid she might suddenly lash out.
To his surprise, though, she didn’t get angry.
Instead, she smiled and asked Zhang Yang if she had a solution.
Anyone could spout a few lofty principles.
But if all you did was talk and you couldn’t offer a practical solution, then it was just a pile of useless hot air.
She thought Zhang Yang wouldn’t have anything concrete to say, but she promptly dropped a bombshell.
“Of course you go after the group with the fewest people and the most money. It’s efficient, it brings in more, and it takes less effort.”
Zhang Yang suspected the developers hadn’t given them the intelligence stats from the backend.
“Can’t you think of something this simple?
“Shake down ten thousand poor people with only 100 yuan in their pockets, and you’ll only get a million yuan even if you empty their wallets. But shake down a hundred rich people with hundreds of millions in their pockets, and then you’ll really make a fortune. What if they refuse to pay? Do to them what you do to the poor.”
“Any method that can squeeze a little profit out of people with no money can surely squeeze even more out of the rich. You really can’t think of that?” Zhang Yang looked at her as if she were an idiot.
Shen Zhi wasn’t smart, and neither was the Green Name NPC.
The woman’s mouth twitched.
“You’ve certainly got some nerve…”
“Give me the chance, and I’ll do it.”
As a matter of fact, Zhang Yang had already done something similar.
Which brings us to the players’ terrifying inflation.
These human players carried billions of Alliance Coins in every pocket.
A jianbing stuffed with egg started at 50,000, while food and medicine that boosted your stats cost several million or even tens of millions.
If your equipment was badly damaged, it was perfectly normal to spend eighty million on a single repair.
A substantial portion of the money Zhang Yang used to buy her Homestead Plot had been looted from players.
When a robbery succeeded, the player’s death would make them drop 10,000 Alliance Coins.
A player could only be robbed ten times a day.
At most, you could rob ten players a day.
The Homestead deed cost 888,800,880,000!
Every morning, the moment Zhang Yang opened her eyes, she went out to rob people.