The sound of howling wind and rain came faintly through the walls. The rainwater splashed obliquely on the outer eaves and dirt floor. The branches on the roadside swayed wildly, and some small stones began to fly on the avenue.
The strong wind and heavy rain reached their peak at about six o'clock in the evening, but the people staying in the hotel protected by the wooden and stone walls seemed to be in another world.
It's like an isolated island in the torrent of time that has been cut off. Although the outside is ever-changing, there is peace inside.
——They rented a four-person room. We have said before that this hotel covers a very vast area. One thing to note here is: this kind of hotels in the wild, or in villages or even towns, are usually larger than large ones with a larger flow of people. The area occupied by city-states is larger.
Most people may have doubts about this fact. After all, according to common sense, in a city-state where people come and go, buildings like hotels should be larger and can accommodate more guests.
People who are caught up in this kind of thinking usually don’t know much about the overall structure of the city-state and other related planning contents. First of all, we have to give the definition of the city-state or the main city - the first point: there must be a lord here. The government exists; the second point: it must have city walls - yes, it is just that simple. However, even with such a simple definition, taking into account many comprehensive factors, the city-state is still a complex existence.
The city wall is an important guarantee for protecting the residents inside from attacks by wild beasts or bandits, but the high construction cost also directly leads to it becoming a barrier that limits the size of the city-state.
People who don’t understand may think that there are not too many difficulties in governing a city-state. Due to space constraints, we will not go into too much detail here. However, even if it is briefly summarized, the problems raised are enough to trouble the average person. The first two are bigger.
Let’s do the simplest numerical calculation. Taking an ordinary adult and an ordinary comfortable and pleasant temperature as an example, a person needs to drink at least one liter of water a day, plus cleaning objects and food processing. Even if you don’t take a shower, you need to use water for work. Combined with food consumption, at least eight to ten liters of fresh water are needed.
So ten people, one hundred liters, one hundred people, one thousand liters - this is just a day's consumption. The problem of water alone has restricted many villages and city-states that are not close to abundant water sources from evolving into large city-states. For a provincial capital with a population of tens of thousands, it is also a city that must send out manpower every day. Important maintenance issues.
After drinking water is solved, food comes. After food is solved, it is important urban sanitation and cleanliness issues.
Along the way, Henry and the others visited several city-states that were relatively hygienic. Because there were water sources nearby, people usually built sewers and used them to take away the filth.
If the domestic garbage and excrement produced by 10,000 people in a day are piled together, it can form a smelly hill. Add in the animal offal and rotten vegetable leaves removed by merchants who go to the city to sell meat and vegetables. If it is a city, If the people in charge turn a blind eye to this, then within a week, everyone will have to live in a stench.
People who don't understand all this tend to only focus on the dazzling aspects of the city itself. However, no matter which city-state it is throughout the ages, it relies on these precise and orderly details in the dark that ordinary people don't know to be able to run perfectly.
——To return to the original point, the city-state’s high expansion costs and the maintenance of people everywhere determine that it must be very expensive. This also explains that those hotels that exist in the main city have greater passenger flow but smaller areas. The fact is that in the wilderness like this, because you can enclose land at will, as long as you have enough manpower, you can even build as big a house as you want.
Of course, you have to bear another kind of expense here. After all, existing in the wilderness means there is no protection and assistance. But let us focus back on the group of four people. In short, what Henry and the others are doing right now is The four-person room in the hotel where I stayed was quite spacious and even had its own bathroom.
In midsummer, people in Thoradin Highlands like to take cold water showers every day. The huge hotel has an indoor well, and you can go to fetch water yourself on rainy days. When the weather is colder, you can also use the stone fireplace against the wall in front of the well to heat the water before taking it back. However, the so-called colder weather in this tropical area actually means that it has changed from unbearably hot to cool. It's just comfortable - the room where the four of them are located is located in the left corner of the second floor. Because they arrived a little late, this is the only one left.
Commonly seen in West Coast hotels, the stairs are located on the right side from south to north. People who have been traveling for many years, whether they are mercenaries or businessmen, will choose rooms near the right side, naturally out of fear of others.
The rooms on the left are difficult to escape from. Except for some exquisite annexes with multi-directional passages, if the people living here encounter robbers or enemies, they will only be surrounded in a blind corner.
The dim light of the candle swayed slightly.
During the violent storm, the windows could only be closed tightly, but even if they were opened, the dark clouds in the sky would make it impossible to see the moon. If you don't look at the moonlight and just rely on guessing, this moment is actually about seven or eight o'clock in the evening.
People on the floor below were still drinking and chatting, and there were many guys bragging about what they had seen. The story about Henry and the others that the businessman told before was just a story to these people. It is normal to pass it on as knowledge or to forget it as soon as you wake up. People who travel all year round are not like those noble ladies with limited contact. They deeply understand the identity of each other and themselves. Due to the gap, coupled with the wariness of other people, those who just come over to hook up after hearing a story are often not kind-hearted.
Mira wrung out the towel, and the clear water reflecting the light of the candle high in the corner of the bathroom slowly flowed down the drain, directly joining the heavy rain outside and flowing into the soil. The special structure of bamboo makes it very suitable for making pipes. The drainage outlet set at the back of the house goes directly down and flows along the outside wall, which is covered with moss due to years of moisture.
"Huh..." The white-haired Luoan girl let out a long breath. Her wet clothes and sweat made her whole body sticky at the end of the day. She felt really refreshed after taking a shower.
"Let's go out." Emmanica next to her also completed her personal cleaning. The two of them dried the water with wrung towels, put on clean and comfortable clothes, and then walked out.
The waterproof leather bag on horseback is really a good thing - Mira thought. When Henry bought it together with the saddle and the like, the girl was a little unable to understand it because of its high price. After all, in her opinion, it would be better to use it. Wrapping cheap linen and the like can also be used to carry things, but Mira has a good habit of not criticizing things she doesn't understand - coupled with her trust in the sage, the girl agreed. This kind of behavior is theoretically a large amount of expenditure from the joint property of two people.
And this has definitely proven to be worth the money, both now and in many situations encountered along the way.
Whether it is an object or a person, if it is dirty, it will definitely be affected on some level. It's natural for mercenaries who travel and sleep outdoors all year round not to take a shower for ten and a half months. To be honest, even the girl herself was like this before due to limited conditions. However, as the weather becomes hotter, it's time to In a place like Latin Heights, she had to insist on cleaning more just to make herself feel more comfortable.
The wind and rain were still howling, and Henry was explaining the calligraphy to Joshua under the light of a candle on the left side of the spacious four-person room. Under the close-range firelight, the red-haired swordsman could still see the general location clearly. He uses his fingers to point and explain verbally, while he uses his own fingers to touch and feel the shape of the words.
'Today - let's just be lazy for a little bit', Mira thought as she sat on the edge of her bed, then turned her head and looked at Emonica beside her.
"What's wrong?" The blonde girl with wet hair looked fairer and fairer under the dim light. Mira ran over and sat beside her bed. Emmanica smiled and pinched her face, Luo Miss An continued: "What is the relationship between you and Joshua?"
She bluntly stated that this is because the concept of love between Luoans and traditional West Coast people is very different. Although Mira has actually received traditional Luoan education for only ten years, and is still at a tender age, perhaps due to her blood, she always reveals a Luoan female style intentionally or unintentionally. Luo Luo generous.
From south to north, traditional women on the west coast play a auxiliary role in society. In contrast, during the war between the Luoan people who advocated force and the Otolo Empire, female generals emerged in endlessly. The difference between the two cultures was particularly obvious in the current scene. When Mira asked, Emmanica immediately blushed and lowered her head, embarrassingly missing the sight of the Luoan girl.
"Hey." It was raining heavily. In addition to singing and dancing, people in this era only had entertainment activities such as chatting and telling stories at night. Mira, who planned to be lazy for a little bit today, moved closer to Emmanica: "Tell me. ." With a smile on her face, she deliberately reached out her hand to tickle Emmanica.
"Don't, don't be like this...Okay..." Because of her fair skin, the blush on the blond girl's face became more obvious. She sighed at the girl who was supposed to be her sister's age, and the two of them sat casually on the edge of the bed. Henry and Joshua on the other side were seriously communicating about words. Emmanica looked at Joshua for a while. Mira next to her saw complicated emotions on her side face, between attachment and admiration. There are natural kinds of things, but compared to all of them, there is still a trace of uneasiness.
'Does Joshua have something to hide? 'The white-haired girl thought so, while Emonica slowly began to tell.
"He is... a bit clumsy." The raindrops hit the wall and made a rumble. The wind howled. Emmanica said in a not too loud voice. Henry and Joshua on the other side responded. Not aware at all - she said, and for some reason Mira always felt that there was a hint of sadness in this sentence.
"Clumsy, but very kind." Emmanica continued: "You know...Joshua is actually not completely invisible from the beginning."
"When he was eleven or twelve years old, he was a famous young hunter in the village." Emmanica sighed, then turned her head, glanced at Mira, and lowered her head. Her long eyelashes trembled, as if she was recalling the past: "Joshua's father is a native of Thoradin, and his mother is a naturalized citizen on the other side of the grassland."
"They originally lived in Goodsall." Emmanica said, Mira searched in her mind, and then compared it with the story of the prairie girl who escaped from marriage she met before. That small house The town seems to belong to the ecclesiastical kingdom of Goodsall.
"When Joshua was seven years old, his mother was killed without explanation because she contradicted someone from the Holy See."
"The Holy See treats the grassland people and the locals with two completely different codes of conduct...Ordinary people who commit theft or contradict the church will at most only be fined or paraded in the streets, while converted people, even if they commit the most serious crimes, will be fined or paraded in public. Small mistakes will be killed directly.”
"They said that Joshua's mother openly resisted the church's army, but what she actually did was just say things that no one dared to say..." Emmanica glanced at Mi again. La, the white-haired girl's sparkling blue eyes seemed very beautiful even to her of the same gender.
"You should have also... seen the church distributing food to the poor." She said this, and Mira nodded. It was precisely because of this incident that she still maintained some good impressions of the White Church. .
"That one was...forcibly recruited." "Huh?" Mira was unable to react to Emmanica's words for a moment. The blonde girl sighed again, and then continued: "That year, it was very windy and rainy. , It rained continuously for a week and all the crops in the fields rotted away, so the harvest in Goodsall was very sparse, and it was already very difficult for the residents to make ends meet at home."
"However, under such circumstances, the Holy See still asked residents to hand over their own food in the name of promoting divine fraternity to help refugees fleeing from the south."
"Joshua's mother was executed in public because she was dissatisfied with this kind of behavior." When Monica said this, her voice became softer: "Since then, people have obeyed the church's words, and no one has Dare to resist again.”
"In short -!" As if she felt that the topic was too serious, she raised her voice and covered it with a bright smile again. Joshua and Henry on the other side looked back, but did not pay much attention. We started talking about learning words again.
"Joshua and his father moved to Tremi and that's when we met..."
"At that time, he was one of the top hunters in the village. Although he was not tall and strong, when he used the short bow from the grassland, he could shoot arrows quickly and accurately. He always hunted more harvests than the adults. Yeah." Emmanica said with a smile.
"It's just his eyes..." She lowered her head again: "Joshua's eyes are bad, and it's all because of me."
"When I was 8 years old, I was kidnapped by bad guys." Emmanica said: "That guy was very powerful, and even the adults in the village couldn't stop him. I was caught in a cave at the foot of Mount Tambur and waited. No one came to save me for several days, and I thought everyone had given up, but Joshua showed up..."
"He found me..."
"Obviously he has such a thin body and is covered in wounds, but he took advantage of the darkness and tried his best to escape with me."
"It's just that we still can't run away from that person. We are close to the village. Joshua asked me to run first and go back to call the adults..."
"Then he..."
"It's impossible to beat a guy like that."
"But this person is so clumsy. Even if he knows he can't beat him, he will still stop him."
"Obviously because of this, I can't even hold on to my mother's relics and use them, but she still smiled and told me, 'It's just as long as you're fine'!" Emmanica suddenly became emotional as she spoke. Standing up, Mira held her hand, and Henry and Joshua on the other side looked over.
"That's the kind of guy..." "Squeak!" Emonica began to sob softly, and the two people on the other side pushed away their chairs and came over.
"Such a clumsy guy, that's why I have to take care of him." Emonica raised her face and said with a smile, although there were still tears. (To be continued.)
