Chapter 128: Showing Promising Skill

Female villager Zhou Min left the dyeing shed, and after asking a few villagers, she finally found Li Zhan.

At this moment, Li Zhan was discussing the design of the cafeteria with "A Donkey's Idea Written Backwards". After a day of inspection yesterday, Li Zhan was quite satisfied with the donkey's design. His next step was to have him design a relatively simple cafeteria first to see if it could still meet operational requirements. If it did, he would officially commission him to design the garment processing factory.

Zhou Min approached and said, "Town Mayor, there is a wandering female villager with the 'Skilled Hands' skill who wants to do short-term work in our garment production team. Her purpose is to exchange her wages for a new set of clothes, but she doesn't want to alert you. I wasn't sure if there might be any complications, so I came specifically to report this to you."

Li Zhan had already noticed the female villager lingering around the dyeing shed earlier. Although he desperately wanted to recruit this female villager, it would be inappropriate to approach her directly without any indication of interest from her side. He could only passively wait for her to seek him out, just like the other wandering villagers.

Therefore, Li Zhan had kept his distance and refrained from stepping forward. Hearing what Zhou Min had to say, Li Zhan smiled and replied, "Let her be. Pay attention to her strengths, record her working hours accurately, and tell her to come to my place for her wages after work tonight."

Zhou Min acknowledged the order and returned.

The female villager had been closely watching Zhou Min's movements all along. Seeing her return, she stepped forward and asked, "Who was that player you were talking to just now? Is he your town mayor?" Players and NPCs dressed quite differently, which was obvious even from a distance. However, because of the distance, the female villager hadn't been able to clearly see Li Zhan's title.

Zhou Min did not try to hide it. "Yes, he is our town mayor."

The female villager asked with unease, "Did you mention me to him?"

Zhou Min replied casually, "No, I just talked to the town mayor about some other matters."

The female villager let out a long sigh of relief and looked around. Pinnacle and the two militiamen had already greeted Li Zhan and returned to the tribe. Seeing no sign of Pinnacle or the others, the female villager felt a bit more at ease. On second thought, this was someone else's village. Although she didn't know why Pinnacle had brought her here, surely he wouldn't dare to use brute force or capture people in someone else's territory, right? Doing so would be extremely detrimental to the village's reputation and make the villagers feel insecure. Any town mayor would do their utmost to avoid such incidents.

With this thought, the female villager calmed down. She turned her head and looked at the many female villagers producing garments under the dyeing shed. "Big sister, what work would you like me to do?"

Zhou Min put down the fabric she was inspecting, took a quick glance, and said, "Go do some spinning. That job is very simple. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it quickly."

Then, Zhou Min called out to a female spinning worker, "Lanmei, come over here and inspect the fabric. Let her take over your spot for spinning."

A spinning worker acknowledged the call, stood up, and walked over to Zhou Min. Seeing this, the female villager hurried over to the spinning wheel, sat down on the small stool, and began to spin.

The female villager's "Skilled Hands" skill was indeed extraordinary. In just two short hours, before lunch, she had won Zhou Min's approval and was transferred to the fabric production section, replacing a weaver to do actual weaving. This was something that had never happened in the experience of any other garment production personnel. For ordinary villagers, going from spinning to weaving usually required at least three days of familiarity to fully adapt.

After her job assignment changed, her wages increased accordingly. Full of spirit and finding the work more and more interesting, the female villager's hands moved like busy bees dancing over the loom, operating it so swiftly that many senior cultivation and weaving workers looked on in awe, feeling deeply inferior to her.

At lunchtime, Zhou Min told the female villager that she had already submitted her name to the inn, so she could just go straight there to eat. The female villager thanked Zhou Min and happily headed toward the inn.

Lunch was distributed per capita: two bowls of sorghum rice and four large vegetable-filled dumplings (made with sorghum flour) as staple food, accompanied by stir-fried fish slices and a bowl of egg drop soup as side dishes. In the Pinnacle Tribe, the female villager ate plain sorghum rice every day, and occasionally seeing some vegetables was already a rare luxury. When had she ever laid eyes on such a "lavish" meal? As she queued up for food, she couldn't help swallowing her saliva repeatedly. When eating, she threw all table manners to the wind, devouring her food like a whirlwind and startling many of the temporarily hired male villagers.

After lunch, with a full stomach, the female villager was even more spirited and found her work coming to her with effortless ease. By the time work ended in the evening, Zhou Min had already transferred her to the production team to officially manufacture garments. Changing three different posts in less than a day made all the garment production workers look at the female villager with newfound respect.

At the end of the shift, Ruoyan came online and happened to be under the dyeing shed. Seeing that the female villager's clothes had many tears in them, Ruoyan felt a bit curious and stepped forward to inquire about her situation. When the female villager saw the green "Deputy Mayor" title floating above Ruoyan's head, she was startled at first, then gave a few vague and perfunctory replies. When Ruoyan offered to mend the tears on her clothes, the female villager was struck with awe and stood there blankly for a long moment. It wasn't until Ruoyan had already squatted down and started sewing the tear near her abdomen that the female villager snapped back to reality. Looking down at Ruoyan carefully mending her clothes, a storm of mixed emotions surged in her heart.

Perhaps lord players aren't all that bad after all.

The female villager looked at the deputy mayor title above Ruoyan's head, furrowed her brow slightly, and pondered in secret.

Once the clothes were mended, the female villager expressed her endless gratitude to Ruoyan. Ruoyan smiled and told her not to be so polite, saying that all villagers in Yanhuang Village were like family and helping each other out was a common occurrence, and warmly welcomed her to settle down in Yanhuang Village.

Hearing the word "settle down," the female villager suddenly remembered that she still didn't know where she would sleep tonight. Spending the night out in the open in the dead of night was no fun at all. Right, didn't she have some wages coming to her? Perhaps she could use those wages to stay at the inn. She asked Zhou Min, "Sister Zhou, when can I collect my wages? I'd like to stay at the inn tonight."

Hearing that the female villager wanted to stay at the inn, Zhou Min replied in surprise, "You can collect your wages at any time because you are a temporarily hired villager. However, those wages probably won't be enough for you to stay at the inn. The inn costs twenty copper coins per person per night, and your wages for today are only fifteen copper coins."

A daily wage of fifteen copper coins was already a fairly high income for a villager, but a lodging fee of twenty copper coins was truly exorbitant enough to make people gasp. The female villager had never stayed at an inn before and naturally had no idea it would be so expensive. With a troubled expression, she asked, "What should I do then? Where am I going to sleep tonight?"

Zhou Min suggested, "You can stay in a standard wooden cottage. The village currently has standard wooden cottages available for rent. Five people live in each cottage, costing two copper coins per person per day. Many villagers under the players live in these cottages."

Cramming into a room with five other people—the female villager frowned just thinking about it, but she had no choice. Who could she blame... Oh well, being cramped was still much better than sleeping outside. However, even these wooden cottages required rent, so she still needed to collect her wages first.

The female villager said, "Alright then, I'll stay in a wooden cottage. Sister Zhou, where can I collect my wages? Is it here with you?"

Zhou Min replied, "Not with me. You have to collect them from our town mayor. I've already submitted your working hours."

Hearing that she had to collect her wages from the town mayor, the female villager froze on the spot. After thinking for a moment, she said to Zhou Min, "Sister Zhou, can you help me collect them? I don't want to see your town mayor."

Ruoyan walked over at that moment and asked with a puzzled expression, "Why don't you want to see the town mayor? Can you tell me the reason?"

With her head lowered, the female villager stammered, "I... I'm scared."

Ruoyan and Zhou Min exchanged a smile and asked the female villager, "Then do you think I'm scary?"

The female villager raised her head, looked at Ruoyan, and answered, "No, Deputy Mayor sister is a good person. I'm too grateful to you, how could you be scary?"

Ruoyan said, "Since that's the case, sister will take you to find the town mayor for your wages. If he dares to scare you, sister will help you beat him up!"

The female villager said happily, "Really? That's wonderful!"

Then, remembering something else, the female villager asked, "But... what if the town mayor tries to force me to stay in the village? Sister, will you speak up for me?"

Ruoyan smiled and said, "Don't worry. Li Zhan never forces his will upon others. Sister guarantees you that much."

The female villager thought about it and said, "Alright then. Sorry to trouble you, sister."

The two of them walked and talked along the way, soon finding Li Zhan near a building under construction close to the inn. This building under construction was the newly designed cafeteria. According to Li Zhan's requirements, it was designed as a three-story structure, which was the tallest building that the construction workers of Yanhuang Village could currently erect.

Each floor of the cafeteria had an independent kitchen and could accommodate two hundred people dining simultaneously, making a total of six hundred people across all three floors (Yanhuang Village currently had a population of nearly five hundred villagers). The reason for building the cafeteria on such a large scale was that Li Zhan noticed the villagers' breakfast and lunch times were too rushed, especially the one-hour lunch break, which left no time for cooking. Therefore, he wanted the villagers to enjoy a free, unified working meal in the cafeteria during breakfast and lunch, saving them the time of cooking so they could rest a bit longer and balance labor with proper rest.

As for dinner, villagers could also eat at the cafeteria, but they needed to give notice in advance. If they didn't want to eat at the cafeteria, the village would distribute the corresponding food rations directly to their homes.

Beside a row of scaffolding, Ruoyan brought the female villager to find Li Zhan.