409: Chapter 325 409: Chapter 325 Some girls would even make themselves look ugly on purpose so that others wouldn’t know they were beautiful, just to escape disaster.
Waiter, with so many of them falling onto the street, not a single person came out to help.
Their accomplices knew the gravity of the situation and did not dare show themselves, rushing to the stockade to report the situation.
With Luo Yaxuan acting alone, he had already dealt with those people.
Lai Jianlin gave his brother a thumbs up.
The different spells they knew each had unique effects and could easily handle the situation, saving them trouble and effort.
Luo Yaxuan smiled and instructed the two men who followed them to wake up the shopkeeper.
The shopkeeper came to his senses, looking dazedly at the people in front of him.
He turned to assess the situation inside the shop and discovered that all the customers had fled.
A hole had appeared in the wall of the teahouse, and he knew he had encountered a formidable challenge.
He had no choice but to beg for mercy, hoping the others would let him go.
“Kind sirs, please spare me.
I haven’t done anything egregious.”
Upon hearing the shopkeeper’s words, Luo Yaxuan and Lai Jianlin laughed but did not respond.
The two men with them struck the shopkeeper on the head.
“Still so defiant when death’s at your door?
Don’t tell me you need to see the coffin before you shed tears, right?”
“Do you want to end up like them?
Take a look at the people on the street.
Aren’t they your buddies?”
The shopkeeper peered through the hole and indeed saw the teahouse’s staff soaked by the heavy rain on the street below, wondering how the previously clear sky had suddenly turned stormy.
“Gentlemen, we don’t know you at all.
Why would you smash our teahouse and hit our staff?” The shopkeeper grew bold from desperation, feigning ignorance and outright denial.
“Oh, you don’t recognize us?
Then tell me, where did the six men and women who were here two hours ago disappear to?”
Luo Yaxuan didn’t want to waste words with the shopkeeper and got straight to the point.
“Sir, all our teahouse guests are just that—guests who leave after having their tea.
Are you mistaken?
We’re law-abiding citizens; how could we commit heinous acts?”
The shopkeeper’s words might have convinced others of his innocence if it weren’t for the information from the Voice Transmission Conch.
His expression could have fooled anyone into thinking he was a genuinely kind-hearted businessman.
“Enough with the nonsense.
We wouldn’t have found this place if we didn’t know what’s going on here.
You should be aware that the people you’ve kidnapped can be tracked.
My brother has sent me their location; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to find this place with such precision.”
The shopkeeper was taken aback by Luo Yaxuan’s words.
He had indeed heard rumors about the high-tech communication devices in the Martial World but had never seen one.
It wasn’t that they were stingy with money; they simply didn’t need such a device.
Who would dare touch them here?
He hadn’t anticipated encountering someone so formidable, nor did he expect to be caught red-handed.
Facing someone as powerful as this young master, they had managed to capture such individuals only because they were caught off guard.
Despite the use of underhanded tactics during the recent fight, his men hadn’t been able to defeat the opposition.
It seemed he had to provide an explanation today, but he would rather die than betray the big boss.
He decided to give these people a direction, hoping his associates on the street could warn the boss and prepare the people in the stockade.
“Gentlemen, I’ll show you the way, but you aren’t going to kill me, are you?”
One of the men brought by Luo Yaxuan scoffed at the shopkeeper, speaking harshly.
“What’s with all the pointless talk?
Hurry up and lead the way.”
The shopkeeper, who had never been so humiliated before, had a trace of viciousness flash in his eyes.
He decided to lead them into the most dangerous mountain forests, ready to use them as a cushion for his own demise even if it meant his own death.
The shopkeeper was dragged downstairs, then made to lead the way on foot.
As he passed by, onlookers showed schadenfreude but dared not laugh or clap.
These bandits were too fearsome in the surrounding areas, and no one dared provoke them.
Knowing that they had been captured, the onlookers kept silent, fearing that these few might not be able to handle the bandits.
If they said too much while the bandits were captured, they could suffer revenge.
The people who had been knocked out on the street were bound and carried by the men brought by Lai Jianlin and Luo Yaxuan, following the shopkeeper’s direction, leaving the bustling street behind.
Mo Wen and Ding Ling watched the scene unfold from within the crowd, choosing not to reveal themselves.
Instead, they asked passersby and street vendors for information.
“What happened to those people?
Why were they beaten?”
The person being asked dodged around in confusion, not daring to speak.
In front of such a beautiful girl, if this outsider hadn’t caught the attention of the stockade yet, it was only a matter of time before he would be captured.
“Hey, uncle, I’m talking to you.
Where did you go?”
Ding Ling didn’t expect that her usual advantage, easily asking for directions, and the fact that others would proactively strike up conversations with her because of her beauty, wouldn’t work here.
“Shopkeeper, what’s going on with those people?”
Mo Wen wasn’t idle either.
The vendor he asked looked around and, seeing that no one was paying attention to them and that there were no stockade accomplices in sight, he mysteriously said,
“These people are like living Yama.
It’s delightful that they were caught today.
They’ve harmed many people, and recently they’ve captured some strangers and sent them up the mountain.”
“Are they all bandits?
And which stockade do they belong to?”
The vendor took a serious look at Mo Wen, and seeing that he too was a cultivator and didn’t feel an aura of evil emanating from him, the vendor believed him to be an upright person.
In his heart, he thought that such righteous people might actually be able to rescue some of the victims.
If possible, wiping out those stockades in one fell swoop would relieve the people of this region from their suffering.
He didn’t dare to point with his finger, so he nodded his head toward a direction.
Mo Wen, who had been paying close attention to the vendor, looked in that direction, which led to a range of mountains.
With so many peaks, it wasn’t clear which one it was.
For an ordinary person, it would definitely require many detours, having to search from one mountaintop to another.
But a cultivator like him could see the situation of several mountaintops clearly from high above.
“Thanks for the guidance, pack me a few pork buns,” Mo Wen said.
Mo Wen felt that the vendor surely wouldn’t mislead him.
During his time there, he’d been watching the vendor sell his goods.
While asking for directions and observing his every move, he was convinced that the man wouldn’t tamper with the food.
“Sure thing!”
The vendor, thinking he had no more business, didn’t expect a person who simply asked for directions to buy his buns.
He had almost sold out and was ready to close up, smilingly taking out a paper bag to pack the buns for the customer.
Mo Wen didn’t have much silver on him, so he beckoned Ding Ling to pay.
Ding Ling had grown accustomed to Mo Wen’s gluttonous yet penniless ways.
They had hurried to this place on short notice and indeed hadn’t prepared food.
Mo Wen bought so many buns, obviously for everyone to eat.
Even if he ate them himself, it was no big deal for him to chip in a bit of money!
The shopkeeper, seeing so much silver in his hands, gave them a few extra buns and then looked at Mo Wen enviously but didn’t dare say anything more.
He felt that this man, not very handsome, relied on a beautiful woman to provide for him.
He didn’t have the appearance of a kept man, yet lived off a woman, and was able to have the beauty willingly pay for him—he had some tricks up his sleeve.
As a man, he too only thought about this privately, lacking such luck, yet dreaming of living off a woman one day, or having the chance to strike it rich, or hoping for an opportunity to rise to prominence thanks to a woman.
Unlike him who worked hard from before dawn, in sun and rain; oh, how hard it was.
Mo Wen, unaware of what the vendor was thinking, put the buns into his storage bag and quietly took to the skies with Ding Ling from an unpopulated area.
Luo Yaxuan and Lai Jianlin, leading some people and guarding the captured bandits, weren’t moving quickly and were even misled by the bandits, causing delays in progress.
As Mo Wen ascended to the sky with Ding Ling, he realized that the direction Luo Yaxuan and Lai Jianlin were being led in was different from the one they were heading towards.
“Senior Brother Mo, are we going in the wrong direction?
The direction Senior Brother Lai and the others are heading in is different,” Ding Ling said.
“Junior Sister, I inquired a bit earlier and that person said that the bandit’s stockade is in one of these mountains.
Let’s go scout and observe,” Mo Wen explained.
“Shouldn’t we tell Senior Brother Lai?
They might have been deceived!”
Ding Ling was worried, a look of urgency on her face, her concern for her lover and comrades clearly shown.