In the capital of Cangzhou, a single steamed bun stuffed with minced horsemeat cost four copper coins, double what it fetched in Cloudford three weeks ago.
Pei Jing stood beside a greasy vendor’s handcart at the mouth of the West Mule Market. He handed over twenty coppers for five hot buns. The vendor, an old man with a rag wrapped around a missing ear, wrapped the steaming dough in cabbage leaves without looking up.
“Eat them while they steam, traveler,” the old man wheezed, his breath puffing white in the frost. “By sunset, the price goes to five. The guard post quartermasters were at the canal grain barges at dawn, stamping red seals on every sack of wheat. Whatever flour is left in civilian stalls will be cut fifty with millet chaff.”
Pei Jing took the bundle, stepped under the shelter of a timber awning. Then he ate three of the buns in measured bites.
His teeth, strengthened by Bone Cleansing into enamel as hard as river flint, crushed through the tough wheat crust with minimal effort. Yet as the warm mass reached his stomach, his internal senses delivered a cold math. Five buns provided barely twelve hundred calories of coarse carbohydrates.
