Miss Fortune: Is the regent ready for today?

Chapter 411 Find a Fate First
There are long streets and narrow alleys in Baizhou City.

Yin Luo patted his hungry stomach and let out a long sigh.

Since she arrived in Baizhou City, she had been looking for a restaurant or teahouse to go in and get some information about the Wanli Mountain Suburbs. However, she did not expect that the flood had such a huge impact on Baizhou City. The streets were full of complaining refugees. They gathered in groups and sat outside restaurants, teahouses, or rice and grain shops, seemingly waiting. But for some reason, the doors of those restaurants and teahouses were all closed, with signs saying they were closed for the day.

Based on her many years of experience with the business saint Yu Ruyi, those shops behaved in this way probably because they wanted to avoid the most difficult juncture after the disaster.

Perhaps the owners of those restaurants, teahouses and grain shops were not as generous and kind-hearted as Yu Ruyi. Perhaps they had reached some kind of agreement in secret, staying shut and not making money from the national disaster, and preventing some unruly and suffering people from coming to their doors to beg for money and rob at the source?

She didn't know the real reason, but no matter what, it was true that she had gained nothing along the way.

She heard that the Pingjiang Escort Agency in the city had set up a charity porridge shop to distribute the agency's stored grain to the disaster-stricken people. From where she was, she could see a long line of refugees in front of the porridge shop. The aroma of hot rice came to her nose through the moist air and kept circling around her.

Yin Luo’s stomach growled twice and he looked up at the sky and closed his eyes.

She'd better not join in the fun. Although the martial arts circles of Cuizhou and Baizhou don't have much intersection, Baiqi Villa and the Pingjiang Escort Agency have always been in competition and opposition in recent years. To be honest, she would rather starve to death than eat the porridge provided by the Pingjiang Escort Agency.

The girl in the black dress reached out to touch the few pieces of silver left at her waist. For the first time, she experienced the pain of having money but nowhere to spend it.

Her action of touching the silver attracted the attention of an old man in a dark blue patched gown in front of her on the left, "Hey! Girl!"

Yin Luo turned his head and looked at him following the sound.

A tattered yellow flag with the words "Know a hundred things, understand a thousand things" written on it stood diagonally on the stone steps. A large gourd filled with water, which was shiny brown, lay on the old man's legs. He was wearing a pale blue coarse cloth shirt with cotton wool worn out at the edges and corners. He had patched it up randomly to prevent the threads from running. The patches were yellow and did not look very clean. The blue shirt was loosely piled on the ground, and he did not care if it got wet.

The old man had sparse grey hair, and must have been over 60 years old. But his eyes were bright and clear.

Yin Luo crossed his arms with doubt in his eyes, and asked as he walked towards him, "What's the matter?"

"Come here, I have two questions to ask you." The old man leaned against the wooden pillar behind him, as if he was going to fall asleep the next second.

The girl in the black dress stood three steps in front of him, with her long eyebrows in the middle. She looked wary, and there was also some curiosity in her wariness. She stood quietly for a few seconds, and finally fixed her eyes on the yellow flag. "Your sign is strange. Are you a fortune teller or a news buyer?"

"I am unemployed." The old man shrugged with a smile, his clear and bright eyes staring at Yin Luo's face, as if he could see through her.

"Okay." Yin Luo was so hungry that she didn't want to argue with him. She squatted down thinking, and when she was level with the old man, she raised her chin and looked back at him, "So what do you want me to do?"

"Girl, do you have money?" The old man opened the lid of the gourd of wine and took a small sip. The aroma of wine lingered between the two of them.

Yin Luo sniffed subconsciously, feeling that this old man had no sense of boundaries. Although Ming Fanlan often advised her to respect the elderly and love the young, there was no reason in the world to ask her if she had money the first time they met, right?

Thinking of this, she bared her teeth and smiled, "No, I'm almost fainting from hunger. You're setting up a stall here, so I guess you've made some money today? How about you lend me two taels? I'll go buy two meat buns and share them with you."

The old man laughed loudly upon hearing this. "You little girl," he moved his fingers slightly, pinched back and forth twice, and broke it: "You clearly still have eight taels in your arms, but you have the nerve to ask a poor old man like me who has no money to borrow two taels?"

Yin Luo frowned even more deeply. She carefully reached for her waist. She didn't even know she had eight taels of silver left. Seeing her like this, the old man shook his head and said, "Don't count. There is nothing in this world that I don't know."

As soon as he finished speaking, Yin Luo finished counting and found that there were indeed eight taels left.

The look in her eyes when she looked at the old man changed from playful curiosity to surprised confusion, "You called me over here to tell my fortune?"

"No, I came to Baizhou City for a trip and haven't eaten any food for several days. How about this? I'll tell you a few words. Give me the eight taels of silver in your pocket. This deal is a good deal for you."

"Eight taels of silver to buy a few words? Why don't you just rob me?" Yin Luo curled his lips. "Besides, you look like someone who has been swindling for half his life and has been chased for debts. Why should I believe you?"

"Your parents are both dead, and you came to Baizhou to look for someone." The old man's expression did not change, but his eyes were brighter, as if he was teaching earnestly, and his words became softer and softer: "You have committed many sins, but you value morality the most. Your relatives have been separated one by one, and the person who raised you is of noble status, but she has never had a husband or children. Speaking of this, girl, you should know whether I am a swindler or not, right?"

Yin Luo raised her eyebrows, and the thoughts in her eyes were suppressed by her. She actually retorted: "None of what you said is right."

The girl in the black dress stood up, crossed her arms again and looked at the old man. A bitter feeling welled up in her heart. She didn't know whether she didn't want to listen any more or she didn't dare to listen any more.

A voice in her heart kept shouting: Go! Yin Luo, why are you still standing here?

The old man seemed to understand her thoughts. He drank the remaining half of the wine at the bottom of the gourd, raised the gourd, and found that there was not a drop left. Then he said: "You are the bone of a real dragon. Although you are not the daughter of an emperor, you can be the wife of an emperor. But you have entered the wrong game from the beginning. You will definitely return empty-handed if you come to Baizhou."

"Emperor's wife?" Yin Luo laughed. "I grew up in the underworld, why would I be able to enter the imperial court?" Chi Linjing's face appeared in her mind. After a moment of daze, she raised her eyes and said sarcastically, "You don't have enough skills. Don't give them to others in the future. I'm afraid you'll get beaten up."

The old man just smiled without saying anything, watching the girl in the black dress turn around and leave.

"Girl, if you really want to do something, go back to where you came from. To find someone, you must first find the connection. This is not something you can change."

Without even turning his head, Yin Luo stuffed all the remaining silver coins on his waist into the red lotus cloth bag and threw it back with clever force.

The old man stretched out his hand, and the cloth bag fell steadily into his palm. He opened it slowly and calmly.

There were eight taels of silver in total, not a tael less.

The old man stood up contentedly, leaning on the yellow flag, and walked step by step towards the porridge stall set up by the Pingjiang Escort Agency, muttering: "Girl, you are stubborn and hard-hearted. You believed what I said but still put on airs and refused to admit it. Tsk tsk."

When he walked to the porridge stall, he walked through the queue of people. When he passed a woman holding a baby, the old man tilted his hand, and the red lotus cloth bag containing eight taels of silver slipped into the cloth bag that the woman was wearing across her body.

The crowd was so crowded that when he put the silver down, the woman holding the baby accidentally bumped into his shoulder. The young mother first stroked the baby's face, and after making sure that the child was okay, she bowed and apologized repeatedly, looking weak and pitiful.

He looked over and saw only a pair of gray eyes moving around in panic.

She was blind, so she couldn't even say the right thing when she apologized. She kept repeating to the old man, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"It's okay! My old bones are still strong. There's a puddle ahead. You have to be careful while holding the child."