Chapter 493: Chapter 493: Unpleasant Smell Chapter 493: Chapter 493: Unpleasant Smell Ya Molian softly laughed as she held her hand.
He was aware that she wouldn’t want to use his keepsakes in any way, and he only wanted her to stop obsessing over the money she was spending.
Before long, the two of them arrived at the brokers.
As Ya Molian had said earlier, Qianlin County was indeed large, with a diverse population. There were areas extremely impoverished rattling with poverty, and areas overflowing with wealth.
The poor, who were unable to feed themselves, often resorted to selling their less favored children for a few pieces of silver to tide over their difficulties. As a result, many enslaved men and women could be seen at the broker’s.
This brokers’ place was large indeed, dealing in all kinds of businesses – from buying even the wild beast’s skins and furs.
Zhe Jue had been waiting at the brokers for quite a while. The broker, a middle-aged man, had heard that Zhe Jue’s master wanted to buy a sizeable number of slaves, and so he had assigned the most eloquent broker madame to attend to them.
Lin Caisang and Ya Molian arrived and were immediately taken to the backyard.
Upon reaching the backyard, Lin Caisang caught whiff of an unpleasant smell- an odor given off when too many people were cramped in one place and could not clean themselves regularly.
“Madame broker, how many people are detained here? The smell is unbearable. Don’t you clean this place?”
She mumbled with her hand over her mouth, asking the broker madame who was leading the way.
When the broker madame heard her question, she turned around with an apologetic smile.
“I apologize for the discomfort, noble guest. Indeed, our place is comparatively better. There are other brokers’ backyards that are far dirtier. There is little we can do about this.”
She shook her head, and Lin Caisang listened as the broker madame slowly explained the situation of these people sold into slavery.
“The people here are from families who are extremely poor or have committed some offence at home and were sold to us. Some are quite well-behaved, aware that their future depends on us bodhisattvas finding them good work in noble houses. They don’t cause trouble.
However, some are different; they’re troublesome and always wanting to escape. That explains our steel fences, to prevent escapes.
With these fences, cleaning and maintenance become challenging. For each room we send an elder to clean, we need to deploy several guards to prevent chaos—for once an elder was injured while cleaning this place.
As for bathing the slaves, only the obedient ones receive a rubdown. Proper baths are out of question.”
She chuckled again before continuing.
“How can we allocate our limited resources towards bathing the scores of people here who constantly want to escape? We just let them stay as they are. Anyway, our aim is to sell the earliest arrivals first.’
Few customers are like Lin Caisang who purchases so many at once. They usually wait at the entrance while we prepare a few cleaned-up slaves for them—hardly anyone comes to the backyard.
“Not many customers like you prefer to pick from the backyard. We usually clean them up before presenting them at the front so customers won’t be disturbed by this smell.”
“But shouldn’t you at least…”
Just as Lin Caisang was about to mention how the filthiness could lead to diseases, Ya Molian interrupted her.