"Five bags of wheat."
The voice was intentionally a bit hoarse and sounded very unnatural. Five silver pence landed on the stall's tabletop.
The stall owner was a middle-aged man with dark skin, whose missing eye gave him a somewhat ferocious appearance. He weighed the silver pence in his hand; they were up to standard, and he nodded slightly.
But when he looked up at his customer, he frowned.
Although the person wore a gray robe, so wide that he couldn't tell their gender, the hood seemed to fit poorly. Strands of fiery red hair peeked out, and with their smooth-skinned cheeks, the customer was likely a woman.
Then he saw the cart behind her, which was already loaded with at least seven or eight bags of wheat.
"If you want five bags of wheat, that'll be eight silver pence."
"What? That's way too expensive! Why don't you just rob me?!"
"Expensive? What's so expensive? Wheat prices in Hereford have always been this high. I know more about wheat than anyone. If you think it's expensive, maybe you should think about whether you've worked hard enough this year! What's so expensive? Don't go spouting nonsense here."
The one-eyed man threw the silver pence back at the red-haired woman, aiming right for her face with considerable force.
"Bullshit! I've already been to three or four other stalls, and none of them were this expensive. One silver pence for one bag of wheat, that's the normal price! This is a scam."
The red-haired woman was exceptionally agile, catching the five silver pence with precision.
"For an English person, it would indeed be a scam. But for a Welsh person, the price is just right! It's what you Welsh pigs deserve! As long as you can survive, you'll put up with any treatment, won't you?
This eye of mine is the masterpiece of a Welshman. A Welsh savage wants to eat wheat? Go eat shit."
"You... I'm not Welsh!"
"Oh, I see. One of those mud-bloods, are you? Those degenerate English must be really desperate, getting hot for livestock."
Faced with the stall owner's taunts, the woman's nails dug into her flesh. A sharp knife slid from her sleeve into her left hand, which was behind her back.
'She wanted to kill this foul-mouthed bastard, but in the end, she held back.'
She had more important things to do. She had to get this wheat back to her village.
She let out a breath and stopped arguing. She climbed onto her cart, flicked the reins, and drove it toward the city gate.
Even though Gwen had encountered this sort of thing many times, she still couldn't remain calm.
'So what if I were Welsh? Do the English have an extra head or something?'
'Of course, those Welsh weren't any better than the English. They were just as hateful.'
Gwen opened a small leather pouch she wore, which held seven or eight small vials. She took one out, unscrewed the cap, and revealed a viscous liquid inside. Picking up a little with her fingertip, she applied it to the wound on her palm.
The pain instantly subsided a little.
'Oh well. Time to think about happy things. At least this trip to Xialing was truly blessed by the Lord. The haul was pretty good, especially that Cultivator's certificate and the market permit. They even have the Count's seal and the Monastery's seal on them.'
'With these, I won't have to pay so many taxes when I travel in the future. Thanks be to the Lord for this gift.'
Just as she was approaching the city gate, her gaze was drawn to a noisy area.
A crowd had gathered by an ornately decorated arena stage. There were probably over two hundred people, with many spilling onto the road for lack of space. The crowd was in high spirits, cheering from time to time.
Hereford held a martial tournament every month, but Gwen had never seen a spectacle like this.
'Is some great noble competing?'
Gwen squinted, and the two figures on the stage gradually came into focus. One of them was wearing Chain Armor, but underneath it wasn't padding, but a Monk's Robe.
'That guy is a Priest.' She thought of the Priest whose pack she had stolen.
Then she shook her head. 'Xialing is a big place. It couldn't possibly be him. That would be too much of a coincidence.'
The match hadn't officially started, but the moment the Priest stepped onto the stage, the crowd erupted.
No matter how you looked at it, a Priest appearing in a martial tournament was just too strange.
The participants in this tournament were mostly Professional Soldiers and Mercenaries, with no shortage of Desperadoes and Noble Knights.
A Priest with no military training participating in such an event could easily get himself killed by accident.
Moreover, this Priest seemed particularly unlucky. His opponent was a Mercenary notorious in Hereford, employed by the Earl of Hereford, and who threw his weight around Xialing City. A man like that, clearly not one for Devotion, wouldn't know the first thing about respecting a Priest.
The crowd, without exception, didn't favor the Priest's chances. Some, out of respect for his station, advised him to forfeit. Others, however, jeered at him, because sharp-eyed observers could see that this Priest was also a Norman.
"Young Priest! Get down from there! Don't throw your life away!"
"The world has truly gone mad. Even a Priest is competing in these games just to amuse the Nobility."
"Seems like life in the Monasteries isn't so easy these days."
"You can say that again. That damned King William seized the wealth of England's Monasteries and gave it to Normandy!"
"Are you blind? This Priest is a Norman too! He's just here for the prize money. Those money-grubbing Normans, they're all the same even if they become Priests. It's an insult to Saint George and the Lord."
"..."
A Cultivator, coming to a martial tournament for prize money... society really is in decline.
Gwen, also feeling critical, shook her head. The match had just begun, but she had no intention of watching. She turned away, ready to continue on her way, but her mule hadn't taken a single step.
The crowd to one side fell silent, so suddenly that it seemed you could only hear the wind.
"Longsword bout. Victory to Priest Eric." Then came the announcer's booming declaration.
Gwen turned her head back in a daze and looked at the stage. The Priest no one had given a chance had accurately thrust the blade of his Longsword into the collar of his opponent's Chain Armor, pinning it firmly against his neck. Meanwhile, his opponent's Longsword had been sent flying and was now stuck in the stage floor far away.
'Is... is this a joke?'
Not even two seconds had passed. This meant that disarming his opponent and pressing the blade to his neck were two actions completed in a single instant.
It was too fast, too quick.
So fast that none of the surrounding crowd could see how the Priest did it; they only saw the result.
After the announcer's declaration, the crowd was silent for three or four seconds, until someone shouted.
"It was Saint George! I saw Saint George! Saint George protected the Priest! This is the Lord's will! The Lord's will!"
"The Lord's will! The Lord's will!"
"Oh Lord, let the glory not be mine!"
Soon, many onlookers were echoing the sentiment. Some dropped to their knees to pray, others raised their open hands to the sky, praising the Lord. There were even some Desperadoes who were also contestants, prostrating themselves on the ground to beg the Lord's forgiveness and repent their sins.
It had all happened so fast, and no one had expected a Priest to defeat a veteran Mercenary so easily.
Of course, there were also many who were cynical and scornful.