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Chapter 446 Weird

"Have you noticed?" Yan Daoxin asked Lu Qing beside her after stuffing the notice into his arms. "The way those people are looking at us is a bit strange."

"They probably think we're the kind of people who're greedy for money and have come all this way just to die," Lu Qing replied nonchalantly. He had already guessed it from the expressions and eyes of the guards when they entered the city.

More than how many doctors had died before, he wanted to know what kind of intractable disease this Brahma King was suffering from, that even his own physicians were helpless, and that he was resorting to such desperate measures as casting a wide net.

After speaking with Yan Daoxin, he quickly realized that Zhu Yu was also very quiet, and kept frowning slightly, looking around as if searching for something, or as if confirming something.

"What's wrong?" he asked in a low voice, turning his head.

Zhu Yu shook his head: "It's hard to say, I need to observe more."

Lu Qing looked around and remained silent. The group continued walking, passing through a bustling street. They asked a shop assistant at a cloth shop by the roadside where there was an inn, and then left the busy area, heading straight for the inn.

The cloth shop assistant directed them to the only inn in the county. Although it was the only one, business wasn't booming. When the group entered, the young assistant was already drooling as he lay asleep at a table near the entrance.

The shopkeeper was also behind the counter, propping his head up with his hand, looking listless and confused.

Seeing the five people walk in, the innkeeper finally came to his senses a little and asked, "Are you here for a meal or to stay the night?"

The shopkeeper had the typical appearance of a Brahman: short, thin, with a narrow, long face and a somewhat dark complexion.

The people here don't seem very warm-hearted. Even the innkeepers don't know how to attract customers like they do in other places they've been. They seem to have an attitude of "take it or leave it."

Zhu Yu had never dealt with people from the Brahma Kingdom before, so he was quite surprised by this attitude, wondering if the shopkeeper had an exceptionally bad temper.

Think about it, even when they went to the cloth shop to ask the young waiter where the inn was, the waiter's attitude was to answer quickly and get rid of them as soon as possible.

At the time, Zhu Yu thought it was because they weren't customers picking out fabric at the cloth shop that the other party was too lazy to pay attention to them, but now even the people at the inn were acting this way...

Does this mean that most people in Brahma have this kind of personality?
Once they arrived at their rooms, everyone settled their luggage and then gathered around Lu Qing's room. Zhu Yu then asked Lu Qing why the people here seemed rather unfriendly, appearing listless and uninterested in talking to others. Was this just the local custom?

Lu Qing shook his head: "The people of the Brahma Kingdom have always been the most unconventional. They know how to hide their true thoughts and do things so meticulously that it is difficult for you to see through their intentions from the surface."

"So, shouldn't they be quite adept at dealing with people?" Zhu Yu asked.

"Logically speaking, that's true." Lu Qing had also noticed the expressions and attitudes of the people along the way. "So, what you've been wondering about and paying close attention to all this time is these things?"

He thought he had guessed what the confusion in Zhu Yu's eyes meant when she was outside today, but Zhu Yu denied it: "No. I also discovered something very strange outside today."

"On our journey from outside the city, whether we've just entered the city, reached the bustling marketplace, or just found an inn to stay at, have you seen a single young woman on the street?"

Her words startled not only Lu Qing but also Yan Daoxin. Together with the runes and talismans, the four of them recalled the passersby they had inadvertently encountered along the way.

They hadn't paid much attention to these things before, but after Zhu Yu asked them, they recalled carefully and quickly realized what was wrong with what Zhu Yu had seen—the women they had seen along the way until they checked into the inn were no more than three or five, and they were all old women with wrinkled faces like old walnuts and backs hunched over like shrimp.

Besides, you can't even find a woman in her thirties or forties, let alone a young woman.

Zhu Yu could tell from their reactions that they had understood, so he said, "Not only are there no signs of women going out on the streets and alleys, but when we went to that cloth shop to ask where there was an inn, I also found that although the cloth shop was very big, it was filled with dark-colored fabrics such as gray, black and indigo."

The fabrics were either the stiff and thick materials that men preferred for tailoring clothes, or simply cheap coarse linen. There was not a trace of silk, satin, brocade, embroidery, or gauze.

Even ordinary cotton fabric, in colors more suitable for women, was nowhere to be seen.

And then there's that bustling street we passed by, with study rooms, teahouses, shops selling stationery, blacksmith shops, rice shops, and the like.

But there were no cosmetic shops, no candied fruit and pastry shops, and no jade and jewelry shops.

In short, there was absolutely nothing about women, especially young women, to be seen.

Because Yan Daoxin had mostly traveled to the countryside in the past and rarely and unwillingly went to the county town, he could understand what Zhu Yu was saying, but it didn't particularly move him.

The situation with runes and talismans is different. Although neither of the brothers is married and they have been single since birth, they have been living in the capital for a long time with Lu Qing. In particular, Lu Qing has the title of Prince Xiaoyao, so he naturally has to add bricks and tiles to his reputation from time to time. Therefore, the two brothers are quite familiar with the various shops and stalls in the market.

Those bustling streets and alleys, with all sorts of shops, were actually opened to make money off men. Apart from study rooms and shops selling stationery and other items specifically catering to scholars, the main ones that remained were probably restaurants and teahouses.

Women's money is the easiest to earn.

In the markets of the capital, the most prosperous businesses are always those few cosmetic shops vying for attention and those few jewelry stores. Whenever there is news of some good stuff arriving, young women and wives of all ages flock to them.

Even in a place like Shuo Kingdom, which doesn't care much about women, the situation is pretty much the same.

Compared to this, the strangeness of this small county town in Brahma becomes even more obvious.