Chapter 27 - Food for the Soul
Benton felt bad about eavesdropping on the mayor’s conversation, but the situation was simply too important for him to leave things to chance. The information he’d overheard was crucial for informing his actions in the immediate future.
First, though, it was time to see about acquiring new disciples. His thinking was that an orphanage in a village where food was scarce would be a good source of potential recruits. He just needed to make a good first impression, and the perfect start to that goal would be to supply dinner.
Once he and his disciples were out of the sight of the mayor, Benton started looking for someone he might be able to buy supplies from. He had a decent amount of meat, but even with rationing, his fruit and rice had been used up weeks ago.
An older lady—well, older than Su’s body at any rate—was picking vegetables in a rather large garden.
“Excuse me, Honored Miss, could I purchase a basket of produce and maybe some rice from you?”
The woman looked him up and down.
“I assure you that I can pay, Honored Miss.”
“Taels aren’t much good to anyone around here anymore, and I don’t see you carrying anything for barter.” Her tone was cool but not outright disrespectful, though the lack of honorifics pushed the remark closer to the realm of an insult.
Su’s memories went to him literally killing a mortal who had failed to use honorifics. Of course, there were extenuating circumstanced in play regarding sect internal politics, but still disrespect equaled instant death. Benton was much more understanding. He was a complete stranger to this lady, and he and the kids looked like vagrants. If someone looking like he did approached him on a street back on Earth, he would have been skeptical, too.
“If I did have trade good available for barter, Honored Miss, what in particular would you take in return for vegetables and rice?”
The woman frowned, having obviously expected her initial salvo to send the group away. “The same thing anyone else in this village wants and that I doubt you’d be able to supply—meat.”
That information was useful and, upon reflection, something he should have figured out on his own. The villagers were obviously making use of every available space to grow crops, not to keep livestock. Without the ability to leave the town to hunt, meat would be much harder to acquire, especially since mortals couldn’t handle eating the qi-infused flesh of spirit beasts. Not to mention the fact that the beasts had driven away all the mundane animals.