Wu Jinsong gave a start. "You..." But seeing He Lingchuan sitting there hale and hearty, he figured nothing was wrong. "You're not hurt, are you?"
"The bailiffs were alerted, so they ran off."
"I need to head back and report this." Wu Jinsong stood up. "The authorities are drafting wanted posters, which will be put up soon. Why don't you come with me and describe the envoy's killers to the portrait artist?"
"How much is the bounty?"
"For an urgent diplomatic matter like this, capturing the culprits would fetch at least a hundred taels of gold." Wu Jinsong could only give a rough estimate. "Even just providing intelligence ought to be worth twenty taels."
Twenty taels of gold was two hundred taels of silver. As expected of Fufeng City, offering such a generous reward just for a tip-off. Loaded indeed.
He Lingchuan extended his chopsticks toward him. "Hand over twenty gold, then."
"You..." Wu Jinsong brightened with joy. "You know their whereabouts?"
"They aren't certain I witnessed them at the scene. At most, they only suspect it."
To kill someone on mere suspicion, choosing to kill an innocent rather than let a threat slip away—that black-clad youth was truly ruthless.
"Since they hold me in such high regard, how could I let down their kind intentions?" He Lingchuan chuckled. "So, I quietly tailed them all the way to where they're staying: Xiliao Inn, right behind the temple in the southern district."
Naturally, the "tailing" he spoke of was done via the eyeball spider.
Wu Jinsong slapped his palms together. "Splendid!"
He patted down his clothes. "Put that twenty taels of gold on my tab for now; I'll claim it for you later! Come, come, hurry and come with me."
He Lingchuan smiled, finished the wine in his cup, and walked out with him.
Why seek revenge with one's own hands when one could kill with a borrowed knife? This was Fufeng City, right at the feet of the Jeweled Tree King, where official authority reigned supreme.
He channeled the eyeball spider's vision once more and found that the burly man it clung to had already returned to Fu Shan's side. The group was currently conferring behind closed doors.
Unfortunately, this man's rank was evidently too low, so he was merely posted outside to guard the door. The eyeball spider attempted to slip inside to eavesdrop, but wards were placed over the doors and windows; the moment it approached, it was repelled and flung back.
Fortunately, it was tiny and weighed next to nothing, or the ward would have raised an alarm.
He Lingchuan shook his head. He wasn't Zhu Erniang herself, after all, and the eyeball spider couldn't be piloted remotely by him, which was truly a great flaw.
Beneath the veil of night, Fufeng City seemed to stir with undercurrents.
The discussion between the black-clad youth and his subordinates was drawing to an end.
They had no other choice. Their target was still alive and kicking, and time was short, forcing them to improvise a new plan on the fly.
The two men patrolling the porch were bored out of their minds. One yawned, and the other, infected by it, subconsciously opened his mouth wide.
In the next instant, an arrowhead drove straight into his mouth, punching clean through his skull!
The other man snapped to attention and opened his mouth to scream. But before a sound could come out, a creature pounced from beneath the eaves—part bat, part bird—with its wings spread wide, smothering his face completely.
His shouts muffled into a pair of groans, audible to almost no one.
The thing seemed to secrete an anesthetic. In his panic, the man failed to hold his breath, immediately grew dizzy, and collapsed before he could even tear the creature from his face.
The thing hopped aside on its own, revealing its true form: a flying squirrel.
It could glide by spreading the skin flaps along its flanks. Four times larger than an ordinary squirrel, its appearance was far from harmless.
At once, dozens of soldiers and bailiffs rushed forward, surrounding the guest quarters. Without hesitation, they struck out with sabers and spears, splintering the doors and windows. The innkeeper had already confessed: this was the only party of a dozen people checking in together, occupying a row of three rooms.
The men braced themselves for combat, yet inside the room, dead silence reigned. No one shouted, and no one leaped out.
The room was empty.
"There's a formation on the wall!"
A soldier looked up to find an array drawn upon the gray plaster, its lines intricate, centering on a bizarre glyph.
"What is this...?"
A deputy general hurried in from the rear. Seeing the formation on the wall, he had no time to ponder it before barking an order: "Search! Comb the surrounding area thoroughly!"
Before his words finished echoing, he felt his foot sink into something soft, as if he had stepped on something.
With a deafening roar, the room was blasted to smithereens. Roof beams flew fifty feet through the air, crashing into the neighboring shop's front gate with a loud bang.
Black smoke curled skyward.
Such a sudden disaster in the middle of a bustling district immediately provoked a chorus of terrified shrieks from all around.
...
A hundred feet away, inside a civilian residence, the black-clad youth and his men watched the black smoke rise.
Behind him, a burly fellow who had previously brimmed with vitality now looked pale and feeble, teetering on his feet, with several strands of hair having turned stark white.
Just moments ago, he had sacrificed five years of his lifespan to barely activate the Great Mountain-Moving Formation and teleport everyone here.
Engaging the city troops in direct combat within Fufeng City was hardly a wise move. The enemy had overwhelming numbers and endless reinforcements, enough to grind anyone down through sheer attrition.
Seeing the youth staring blankly at the black smoke, seemingly lost in thought, a subordinate could not help but urge, "Young Master, we should leave. This is no place to linger."
The Fufeng troops would comb their way here soon enough.
A fierce glint flashed in the black-clad youth's eyes.
Fortunately, he was cautious by nature and always left behind a contingency plan at every new lodging. It was also fortunate that his sharp senses had detected the anomaly; otherwise, breaking through the encirclement of soldiers would have cost immense effort.
From their vantage point, one could see their previous lodging had been surrounded three layers deep.
The authorities had mobilized at least three to four hundred men—showing considerable respect for their threat level in numbers alone.
"Young Master?"
"Fufeng City must have received word of the Yinshan python's death. But if not for that fellow tipping them off, the authorities wouldn't have tracked us down so quickly." He narrowed his eyes. "Good. Splendid!"
That punk truly played one game to his face and another behind his back.
He turned and fixed his gaze upon the men behind him. They felt a chill wash over them, as if they were being scrutinized down to the marrow, but the sensation lasted only a heartbeat before fading.
In truth, the black-clad youth had expanded his divine sense to scan every one of them.
"Strip off your clothes and put on fresh ones immediately."
Right here?
Fortunately, his subordinates were well-trained. Asking no questions, they carried out the order at once, swiftly shedding their old garments for new ones.
"Someone likely planted a tracking spell or powder on us earlier; otherwise, the soldiers couldn't have pinpointed our location with such accuracy." Finding nothing amiss with his divine sense, the black-clad youth clicked his tongue in wonder.
He Lingchuan had displayed a knack for late-arriving surprises: the first time when they slew the Yinshan python, the second during the night raid on the inn, and now this was the third.
Three strikes meant deliberate action; that fellow had definitely tampered with them.
Little did he know that the eyeball spider had originally been clinging to a minion outside the guest room, so it hadn't accompanied them in the teleportation.
"Move the retreat plan forward and scatter into small groups," the black-clad youth said briskly. "There are too many of us together; we stand out too much."
"Are we pulling out and leaving?"
As if hearing the most ridiculous joke in the world, the youth dug at his ear. "Say that again?"
The subordinate fell silent, tongue-tied.
A grin spread across the youth's face, though no mirth reached his eyes. "The objective remains unchanged. The item will be seized, and the people... will be slaughtered!"
...
The next morning, the sun rose from the east as always.
He Lingchuan stretched his arms and got up, feeling thoroughly refreshed.
After opening his second dantian, not only did his true force circulate faster, but his vigor had grown far more abundant as well. Sleeping for just two hours was enough to leave him brimming with energy.
In the past, had he slept less than four hours, he would have worried about dark circles under his eyes.
The black cat leaped in through the window, stretched itself into a downward dog, and then began scratching at the wooden frame, gouging white claw marks into the sill.
"Hey, stop scratching! If you ruin the woodwork, I'll have to pay for it." He paid this black cat by the task. He had no work for it today, yet the cat had come back on its own.
The kittens were off playing somewhere unknown. The mother cat rubbed against He Lingchuan before asking, "If you're going to Mount Baiyun, could you give me a lift? I'd like to watch the ceremony too, but walking there myself is simply too far."
Her legs were short, after all.
He Lingchuan naturally had no objection.
Just then, a knock sounded at the door. Second Master Shi had arrived.
Dressed in a fresh set of clothes, he said with beaming delight, "Time to head up the mountain and watch the ceremony!"
"You aren't busy with business today?" The Jeweled Tree King's jubilee was also a grand revelry for merchants. Traders from within and outside Beijia seized the opportunity to haul rare treasures and exotic flora to Fufeng City, and auctions of all sizes ran non-stop. According to official tallies, nearly a hundred auctions took place each day, allowing treasure merchants to rake in tremendous attention and coin.
"Everything that needed selling has already been sold." Their business was primarily wholesale. "I heard the official highway to Lingxu City has been cleared, and the authorities have stepped up security patrols. So once the ceremony concludes today, we'll hit the road immediately! There's safety in numbers."
The sudden eruption of Emperor's Flowing Dew had disrupted their travel schedule, delaying them in Fufeng City for quite a few days. With the festivities ending today, they needed to make up for lost time.
"Oh, right. Here's the book you wanted." Second Master handed He Lingchuan a booklet. "Sure enough, Fufeng City had it. My clerk found it after checking just two bookstores, and apparently it was placed in a very prominent spot."
"A fine-bound manuscript copy?" He Lingchuan took it and flipped through, sending up a cloud of dust. "*Cough, cough, cough!* Look at all this dust!"
Second Master looked somewhat bewildered. "Brother He, what do you need this for? From what I can tell, nobody ever buys it. That bookstore only stocked two copies, both left to collect dust on a high shelf. Supposedly, it's transcribed anew every twenty or thirty years just to keep it from being lost to time. But as for anyone actually reading it, I highly doubt it."
"A secret, a secret; this humble traveler has his own clever uses for it." He Lingchuan patted the cover, shaking loose another flurry of paper powder. "This book wasn't meant to be read in the first place, and it's this thin? Excellent!"
"Tch." Second Master rolled his eyes and urged him to get moving.
He Lingchuan had little to pack. The two of them fetched their mounts and set out, the black cat hopping onto He Lingchuan's rock sheep to hitch a free ride.
This rock sheep had carried him all the way back from Three Hearts Lake. It ran steadily and swiftly, with remarkably great endurance—no wonder someone had trained it as a mount.
Compared to horses and bo beasts, a rock sheep's jumping ability was top-notch, easily clearing over ten feet in a single bound. Light, nimble, and swift, it was especially suited for mountainous terrain, so He Lingchuan had simply kept it as his means of travel.
Of course, its carrying capacity was rather mediocre; anything over five hundred jin would make its knees buckle.
Dawn had barely broken, yet the streets were already bustling with clamor, pedestrians shoulder to shoulder, nearly all heading north.
Under such conditions, riding was out of the question; they could only lead their mounts and shuffle along with the crowd.
As for horse carriages and donkey carts, they couldn't advance an inch.
Passing by two temples, He Lingchuan saw that the theatrical stages erected out front were already performing. Pipes and strings trilled on stage while the crowd below beamed with broad smiles, and children chased after vendors selling candied haws. It was truly livelier than the New Year.
Chapter 386