When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

#470 - The moon on Qiumu Island is particularly round

On the southern lakeside of Autumn Twilight Island, the ruins of a castle stood atop towering cliffs.

Amidst the cobweb-draped and mosquito-infested remnants of shattered walls, a small fire crackled, casting its glow into the late summer's starry night, where the air still held a damp moisture.

The leaping bonfire emitted light and warmth, gradually illuminating five weary faces.

One of them clutched his shoulder, blood slowly seeping through the gray bandage binding his wound.

To remove the remaining shrapnel from his body, he had nearly doubled the original wound, yet some fragmented pieces remained lodged within the muscle and bone, impossible to extract.

"Curse this devil's lightning rod!" Aigaron, his face pale, sipped sparingly from a low-alcohol rice wine to suppress the pain.

"I told you to run the moment you saw that screaming lightning stick, or your flesh would be devoured by evil spirits. See, it came true." Favarelli, the leader of this band of witchers, wearily packed away his herbal kit and sat down.

Aigaron shifted, making room for Favarelli: "How was I supposed to know there would be several veterans in the yard next door?"

"Avar is dead. What's the point of saying all this now?"

"We have work early tomorrow. Say what you need to say quickly."

Unlike the fully armed Aigaron, the remaining witchers, including Favarelli, were dressed in light, simple attire.

Their fingernails were caked with mud, and they sat on rotten logs, each clutching their backs.

"Don't any of you care who killed Avar?" Aigaron looked at his companions in disbelief.

"In our line of work, death is common. It's the undying that's surprising," one witcher said, pounding his lower back. "I'm telling you, don't be stubborn. We witchers live today and die tomorrow. Who are we busting our asses for? No kids, no family, risking our lives for nothing."

"Died from natural disasters, died from gang thugs, died from lords trampling, died from farmers' pitchforks... it's just one death. Just report it and be done. What's there to care about?"

"This...?" Aigaron looked at Favarelli, unable to comprehend.

Favarelli coughed dryly, shooing away flies, "Avar was, after all, our comrade. We should still care. Aigaron, what are your findings?"

"Last night, I went back to the construction worker's hut, planning to meet Avar, but Avar wasn't there." Aigaron scratched his head. "I heard from his roommates that he went to unclog a slime-blocked drain.

The next morning, I woke up early and asked again, but he still hadn't returned. I sensed something was wrong.

Pretending to go to work, I climbed over the construction site fence, changed my clothes, and went to the alley where Avar was.

But by the time I found him, he was already dead, cruelly killed with lightning magic that cooked his insides. His clothes, staff, and hair were all charred black.

There were also three innocent bystanders who were killed along with him."

Although not particularly interested in the cause of Avar's death, the witchers, eager to return quickly, used the little knowledge they had gained in the witcher's castle to ask:

"Was there an evocation wizard with lightning spells involved?"

Aigaron shook his head: "I suspect so, but if it were really them, the Papal Palace would have already posted notices. They wouldn't suppress the news and investigate in secret."

"Are you saying there's a third party?"

"Maybe. Perhaps the secret society from Black Serpent Bay has infiltrated as well."

"Impossible." Favarelli immediately shook his head. "The war in Monde to the north has closed off the roads, and there are checkpoints along the way.

The only road to Daze Swamp in the south is through the Wild Spider Forest, and there are layers of inspections. The road we came in on is probably only known to us."

Thinking of that eerie tunnel and the piles of white bones and sinister twin statues, even the seasoned witchers couldn't help but shiver.

"If we leave later, we should take the waterway or go through the Wild Spider Forest."

"Agreed."

"I support it too."

"Yes, we have to think about how to escape," Aigaron said helplessly, trying to straighten his arm, but he winced in pain.

"Wait." The witcher sitting opposite Aigaron suddenly stopped rocking back and forth. "What do you mean by thinking about how to escape?"

"Didn't Favarelli tell you?" Aigaron blinked. "The town's witch doctor dissected the body. The witchers on the island have been exposed and are now being investigated. If we don't act soon, they'll probably get to us."

"What?!"

"Can't you two young guys care about the lives of us old-timers?"

"Can't young people just work hard? Why do you have to meddle in other people's business?"

The witchers stood up, agitated, lowering their voices but unable to hide their anger.

"What, what's wrong with you all?" Aigaron was still puzzled. "We weren't supposed to stay here long anyway."

"Oh, is this your first or second time out? You don't understand!"

According to the witchers' infiltration rules, they would pretend to be vagrants and find part-time jobs to secretly gather information or cause trouble.

But when they actually started looking for part-time work, they realized something was wrong.

The daily wages here were a bit high! They calculated carefully and found that the part-time work was actually higher than their main job!

Most importantly - daily pay! No final payment!

The construction workers in the city, after completing their daily piecework, earned 1.5 dinars per day, paid daily. As long as they weren't afraid of bloody urine, they could earn 45 dinars a month.

Outside the city, the piecework wage for harvesting and bundling one acre of flax was about 1.75 dinars.

And if the reclamation workers were willing to be paid wages, they could earn 6-9 dinars for reclaiming one acre of land at the Holy Plow Monastery.

Flax is sown in April every year and harvested in August every year, and now is the harvest season.

These witchers were strong and agile, and they worked more actively than the convicts. In their peak state, they could harvest 4 acres of land or reclaim 1.5 acres of land a day.

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That's equivalent to a high salary of 7 to 9 dinars per day!

Of course, ordinary people can't earn that much, but the witchers have supernatural powers.

The farmers on the island would even provide free dinner, and occasionally there was meat and dried fish.

Although the meat tasted strange, like chicken but without chicken bones, it was still meat.

Since there wasn't work every day, they roughly estimated that each of them could earn more than 1 pound a month.

Their mission only gave them 4 pounds each, and only 1 pound as a deposit. They didn't know when the remaining balance would be paid.

It's not like they hadn't worked as coolies before. Those priests and knights didn't even give 1 dinar for harvesting an acre of land, and there wasn't a drop of oil in the food.

Most lords didn't even provide food.

The witchers finally decided to put the secondary things aside. When couldn't they assassinate and gather intelligence?

They had to focus their energy on the most important thing: making money!

Wasn't it just harvesting? It's not like they hadn't done it before.

Wasn't it just a little hard and tiring? It wouldn't kill them.

At least they could save up the money to celebrate the New Year's Festival, so they wouldn't have to suffer while others were celebrating, and they would have to look for the damn monsters in the forest.

They also wanted to drink hot chicken soup and drink beer and play cards with the old brothers in the same castle when everyone was reunited.

Maybe even the dark wounds and diseases on their bodies could be treated, although witchers don't live long, they still wanted to live a few more years.

After discovering this, the situation instantly changed.

What should have been 2 people in the countryside and 4 people in the city gathering information separately turned into everyone fighting to go to the countryside to "gather information."

Only the stubborn Avar and the young Aigaron were willing to stay in town. The rest of the witchers all went to the countryside to harvest flax and cultivate fields.

Because the witchers were fast, strong, and good at fighting, they drove the original Beastkin labor gangs from the east bank of the Para River to the west bank.

The witchers and their foreign human laborer brothers basically took over the farms on the east bank. When new laborers came, they even had to pay respects to Favarelli and give him salted fish.

But now, once the island starts screening and searching, and verifying identity information, then these black workers will definitely be exposed.

They were planning to keep working until November, and they were counting on this wave to earn the money for the New Year's Festival.

You know, even if the harvest season is over, they can still work as reclamation workers, earning nearly 100 dinars a month.

This time, they'll lose at least more than half of that, and these witchers are, of course, anxious.

"You idiot, who's going to make up for the pounds I'm missing?"

"I was supposed to earn 3 pounds this trip, enough to fill my belly, but because of you, it means I'll have to go hungry during the New Year's Festival!"

Faced with the attack of several old witcher veterans, Aigaron was almost at a loss. He didn't even understand what he had done wrong.

In the end, he could only turn his pleading gaze to Favarelli, who had been silent all along.