The morning mist had not yet dispersed over the Qiang Village, and the wooden ladders of the stilted houses were already ringing with the clinking of carved silver ornaments. At the collar of Moli's cyan tunic was pinned the "neck-guard figurine" newly carved by Huwa—a miniature doll holding a wolf-hair brush, with minuscule green-ox patterns embroidered on its cuffs, and abacus-bead eyes "gazing" toward the trade market at the village entrance. Zhang Yifan leaned against the wooden railing with a faint smile and said, "Young Master Xiao's attire is even more eye-catching than the silver crowns of the Qiang people."
"Noisy!" Moli flicked his sleeve and walked downstairs, the sheepskin ledger at his waist slapping against a wooden pillar and startling a few butterflies resting on the "grain-protection embroidery"—those were smiling faces embroidered by Huwa on the grain sacks with colorful threads, their abacus-bead eyes fixed on the chaff at the mouth of the sacks. Amidst the camel bells of the caravan, the Qiang people were trading silver ornaments for Han medicines, the sun patterns on the silver crowns complementing the embroidered patterns on the medicine packs.
"Watch closely," Zhang Yifan's abacus beads bounced before a silver ornament stall, the sunlight making the beads gleam like a string of glazed glass. "The Qiang people value totems when making silver ornaments; a sun-patterned silver crown can trade for ten doses of Fritillaria." He suddenly pointed to a Han me…
Chapter 84