The Strongest Man’s Fake Wife Wants to Live Chapter 18

In any case, Io eventually displayed her powers and made a name for herself, and thanks to that, they managed to escape the food shortage. Owen also came to feel grateful toward her and take an interest in her, but……

Well, Owen’s emotional arc was one thing. Pesha would be in trouble if he got arrested, though.

His false charges would be cleared soon enough, but if Owen were taken away, Pesha might end up having to take responsibility for Swapro herself while getting through the winter without any food supplies.

Io had awakened her purification power around that time and purified the land, but without purification power, the only thing Pesha could do was somehow prevent the incident from happening in the first place.

“Unrefined wheat can still be eaten even after several years, so even if we have some of the wheat we buy now left over, we should be able to use it all up by next year.”

Owen nodded at his adjutant’s words.

He seemed ready to approve the additional purchase of wheat.

Just then, Pesha spoke up first.

“No.”

Both men turned their gazes toward her.

“What did you just say?”

“I said no. We shouldn’t buy wheat right now.”

Pesha said it firmly without hesitation. The adjutant immediately frowned, while Owen raised an eyebrow as if surprised.

“Is there a reason?”

“The weather this year isn’t particularly better than last year, and the soil hasn’t changed either. Isn’t it strange that there are suddenly rumors of a drastic increase in the harvest?”

The adjutant, who had treated Pesha as though she did not exist until now, spoke to her for the first time.

“What exactly is strange about it? Wheat prices fluctuate every year.”

“When the drop is unusually steep, there’s definitely a reason. If, as you said, the reason is a bumper harvest, then we should first look into why there are rumors of a bumper harvest in the first place. Adjutant, what’s your name?”

“……Penrose.”

“Good. Lord Penrose. The three representative regions in the east that make their living through agriculture are Prudence, Hexter, and Spader. If it were me, I’d formally request their wheat shipment data and check it. If we’re going to buy wheat, we should at least know which region produced it so we can verify its quality, right? And my guess is that there probably won’t be any region where the actual shipments have increased, despite all the rumors.”

“Why……?”

“Because those three regions would have restrictions on production or sales in place to maintain wheat prices at an appropriate level. So if the supply on the market suddenly increased and prices fell, couldn’t it be that wheat produced somewhere other than those three regions was being supplied to the market? Where did that wheat come from? Can we be certain of its quality?”

“…….”

“Besides, it’s strange that a bumper harvest is being predicted this early when it isn’t even harvest season yet. Could a large amount of wheat have recently been circulating in the trade market? If so, why? There must be some intention behind it, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it be rash to urge us to buy it simply because the price has fallen without knowing that intention?”

Penrose looked as though he had been caught completely off guard.

‘Good grief, I practically spoon-fed him the answer.’

When Pesha finished speaking and gave him a look of utter exasperation, Penrose flinched and immediately asked a question.

“Are you saying we shouldn’t buy wheat even though we know there may be a food shortage in winter?”

“I never said that. I’m saying that now isn’t the right time.”

“Then when is the right time to buy wheat?”

At that, Pesha went, “Hmm,” and put her hands on her hips.

That was something she was curious about too.

“I was actually about to start looking into that.”

 

***

 

In short, she had to eliminate the trap Owen was going to fall into.

And to do that, she couldn’t stop at simply not buying wheat. She had to make sure Count Tompkins’s market manipulation failed.

‘The original said that Tompkins’s territory was made up of wasteland. So the wheat that supposedly entered the market definitely isn’t normal wheat.’

First, she needed to check the quality of the wheat.

Pesha ordered Penrose to buy a sack of the cheap wheat that had been put on the market.

“I did as you ordered and bought it, but……”

The next day, Penrose arrived carrying a sack of wheat over his shoulder. Grumbling, he opened the mouth of the sack.

“As far as I can tell, it’s ordinary wheat. There’s no particular sign that it’s spoiled or that pests have eaten it, either.”

Pesha reached into the sack and grabbed a handful of the wheat grains, examining them one by one.

Just as Penrose had said, the contents looked like ordinary wheat grains.

To prove that he was right, he scooped up a handful and handed it to Owen as well.

“The grains are plump and substantial. The quality looks excellent!”

While he exclaimed triumphantly, Pesha silently stared at the grains in her palm.

Then Owen, who had barely paid any attention to the wheat Penrose had handed him, spoke to Pesha.

“My lady, it seems……”

He was just about to say that there did not seem to be anything particularly strange about it.

Suddenly, Pesha thrust both hands toward Owen.

Both palms were filled with wheat.

“The grains really are plump. Which makes them easier to tell apart, though.”

“What……?”

Owen alternated his gaze between the grains resting on Pesha’s small palms.

At first, it was difficult to see the difference, but upon closer inspection, the grains on the left were thicker, larger, and darker in color than those on the right.

“The ones on the right are ordinary wheat. And the ones on the left are something called triticale.”

“Triticale?”

“They look very similar to wheat, don’t they? They’re actually a hybrid of wheat and rye, so it can’t be helped that they look alike.”

Penrose also sensed that something was wrong and stepped closer to Pesha.

“Then are you saying what I bought isn’t wheat?”

“No. It is wheat. The problem is that they increased the quantity by mixing triticale into the wheat.”

The two men did not seem to notice much of a difference between wheat and triticale.

And it was understandable.

Grains all looked more or less the same, didn’t they?

Unless someone had studied herbs and plants as deeply as Pesha had or was a professional farmer, it would be difficult to distinguish the two with the naked eye.

“When a poor harvest causes a shortage of wheat, people usually get through the year by using cheap, fast-growing barley or rye instead, right? But if you could combine wheat’s nutritional value with rye’s rapid growth, you could minimize the impact of a poor harvest. That’s the idea behind triticale.”

Penrose, who had been listening to Pesha’s explanation, furrowed his brow sharply before asking,

“Then isn’t it better? You said it grows faster than wheat while retaining wheat’s nutritional value.”

“As you know, the main use of wheat is making bread. But bread made from triticale doesn’t rise well, it’s tough, and the taste is much worse. That’s why it never established itself as a substitute for wheat and ended up being used mainly as a feed crop for livestock. I wouldn’t necessarily say triticale is bad, but what I mean is that it’s difficult to call it wheat.”

Penrose was visibly flustered by that.

If they had bought this wheat without question simply because it was cheap, they would have been in for a nasty surprise.

At that moment, Owen, who had been listening to their entire conversation, spoke.

“But that is strange. If it causes problems when making bread, a trick like this would be discovered quickly.”

Pesha nodded at that.

“Exactly. The swindler probably only intended to use this fake wheat for a short time. Because his goal isn’t to make a small profit by selling fake wheat. It’s to buy up the real wheat after its price has crashed.”

Owen’s gaze sharpened at Pesha’s words.

“Cornering the market? But market manipulation is a serious crime punishable by imprisonment. Who would be bold enough to pull something like this?”

“If we inform the Merchants’ Union of this, they’ll investigate, but……”

Pesha let the fake wheat she was holding trickle back into the sack as she thought.

‘There’s no way Tompkins would have openly put his own name on it. If I want to bring that bastard down, I’ll have to use another method.’