"Right!"
Feng Kucha slapped the dust from his backside. "I'm going to find Liu Yang and get another look at that face of his—the one that looks like his mother just died."
...
「About the time it takes an incense stick to burn later.」
Zhao Ci sat in the tallest teahouse, quietly gazing down at a nearby open space. Thousands of townspeople had gathered there. All of them had lost relatives to the Carp Spirit, and they had all rushed over the moment they heard it was to be executed in their town.
This Carp Spirit had been wreaking havoc in Hanling County for three or four years.
The frequency of its attacks wasn't high; it couldn't possibly hit every single boat that failed to pay protection money to the Cao Bang.
Otherwise, it would be tantamount to the Cao Bang exposing themselves.
All told…
Even if you didn't pay the protection fee, you'd only run into trouble two or three times out of a hundred voyages, at most.
