The Fifty Thousand Words Skipped in the Simulation, Not One of Which Happened in Reality

Lu Ping stopped three paces away, his tone quite polite.

"The Gang Leader sent me to collect something."

The guards were somewhat suspicious, but they asked as required,

"Where's the written order?"

Lu Ping sighed. He had wanted to do this the respectable way, but reality wouldn't allow it.

"Alas, I don't have a written order. What should I do?"

One of the guards scoffed and reached for his saber.

"You dare come to the warehouse without a written order? You must be new here, huh?"

Lu Ping took a step forward and gently released the spiritual power of the Qi Refining Fifth Layer.

The two guards' knees buckled, and they dropped to the floor on the spot, breaking several floorboards.

The hidden lookout on the roof had just raised his whistle to his lips when Lu Ping glanced at him. The blood in his entire body was suppressed, and he couldn't make the slightest sound.

Lu Ping paid the men no further attention, pushed open the warehouse door, and walked in.

The smells of dust, wooden crates, hay, and rust came wafting out.

It seemed just as he remembered.

He walked straight to the third row of wooden shelves in the southeast corner.

Lu Ping flicked a finger, and the hidden compartment's latch snapped open.

Five hundred taels of silver, and a small box.

Inside the box were a Spirit Stone and a token.

Lu Ping picked up the Spirit Stone first. It looked almost no different from an ordinary Low-Grade Spirit Stone.

Only, the Spiritual Qi lay still within the Spirit Blank, lacking a trace of the flowing quality it had after being infused into it.

A Demonic Spirit Stone.

Lu Ping sensed it with his own spiritual power.

The Spiritual Qi inside the Demonic Spirit Stone was no different from that in an ordinary Low-Grade Spirit Stone either.

They looked much the same, and the essence of their Spiritual Qi was the same too.

So why had Han Changqing called this a "Demonic Spirit Stone"?

It seemed this world held no shortage of secrets.

Lu Ping didn't dwell on it. He tucked the Demonic Spirit Stone into his robes and picked up the token.

The intricate patterns on its back radiated a faint chill, but they no longer had any effect on Lu Ping, who was at the Qi Refining Fifth Layer.

Lu Ping tucked the token safely against his body.

He left the five hundred taels of silver untouched.

Lu Ping walked out of the warehouse.

The guards were still kneeling on the ground, their trouser legs trembling.

One of them struggled to raise his head, wanting to speak.

Lu Ping walked past him and gave him a casual glance.

The man immediately shut his mouth.

Lu Ping returned to the woodshed and sat back down on the bedboard.

After the sky had gone completely dark, footsteps sounded outside the door, then stopped.

The man with the bushy beard stood at the door with a ring-pommel saber at his waist, weighing his options.

The news from the warehouse that afternoon had been too outrageous.

The two guards had dropped to their knees after a single glance from the man inside, and even the floorboards had broken.

A hidden lookout had held a whistle in his mouth but hadn't managed to blow it.

The bearded man didn't believe it.

No one knew the man inside better than he did. He had personally brought him in that afternoon, and the man was merely a little strong.

In the end, the bearded man still knocked on the door.

"Lu Ping, the Gang Leader has prepared a feast and invites you over."

Only a single "All right" came from inside.

Then, the moment the wooden door opened, the bearded man instinctively took half a step back.

After retreating, he himself froze for a moment.

A brat who had just joined the gang could make him retreat first?

That half step was far too humiliating.

But his body had already made the decision for him.

Lu Ping glanced at him as if nothing had happened.

"Let's go."

The bearded man's Adam's apple bobbed. He wanted to make some polite remark, but swallowed it back, turned, and led the way.

Soon, Lu Ping arrived outside the main hall's courtyard.

Four gang members stood at the courtyard gate.

The main hall was brightly lit, making the shadows throughout the courtyard look all the darker.

A ring of gang members lay in ambush in that darkness.

Inside the main hall, three people with Body Tempering Realm presences sat at a table.

The Gang Leader of the Black Tiger Gang.

The Second-in-Command, Zhao Tiezhu.

The Third-in-Command, Qian Cuihua.

There were four dishes and two jugs of wine on the table.

The Gang Leader sat in the seat of honor, watching the courtyard entrance.

Zhao Tiezhu sat on the left, a ring-pommel saber beside his hand.

Qian Cuihua sat on the right, her purple brocade robe filling the chair, a piece of candied fruit pinched between her fingers.

When she saw Lu Ping enter, her previously carefree movements paused for half a beat.

Lu Ping walked straight to the table, took two things from his robes, and set them down.

Two soft clacks: the Demonic Spirit Stone and a token.

The main hall fell silent in an instant.

Zhao Tiezhu's hand went to his saber hilt.

Qian Cuihua failed to swallow the candied fruit in her mouth, and a muffled sound caught in her throat.

The Gang Leader stared at the two things on the table, the wine cup in his hand frozen in place.

Lu Ping spoke calmly.

"Where did these two things come from?"

The Gang Leader slowly set down his wine cup.

"You went to the warehouse this afternoon to take these?"

"A brat who just joined the gang is asking where the gang's things came from?"

The Gang Leader leaned back in his chair.

"Lu Ping, do you think carrying one beam means you can come questioning people in the Black Tiger Gang?"

Lu Ping merely looked calmly at the Gang Leader without answering.

Lu Ping's calm made the muscles in the Gang Leader's face tighten.

"This morning, you were still a slave at the mine."

"This afternoon, you went into the warehouse and took things."

"Tonight, you bring my things here and question me."

"Who exactly are you?"

Lu Ping's eyes darkened slightly. He paused, then said evenly,

"I'm Lu Ping, from Sunset Glow Village."

When those words fell, the Gang Leader tapped his fingers on the table.

Zhao Tiezhu turned his head and glanced at the Gang Leader.

Qian Cuihua spat the candied fruit back onto its dish.

"When our men went there that day, the village had already been slaughtered clean, with corpses all over the ground."

"We just picked up some things we could use."

"Including you."

Lu Ping continued,

"What about this Spirit Stone and token?"

The Gang Leader looked at the token, and in that instant, wariness showed on his face.

The massacre at Sunset Glow Village, the black-robed man, the token, the Spirit Stone.

The Black Tiger Gang was only a small gang in the mortal world. Passing by the ruins, they had merely picked up a bit of trash, only to bring a bomb home with them.

The Gang Leader picked up his wine cup and tipped his head back, gulping it down.

"We picked those up that day too."

"Beside the corpse of a man in black robes."

"The stakes involved with these things were too high. I couldn't make sense of them, and I didn't dare sell them, so I hid them in the warehouse."

"I never expected a little thief like you to steal them."

Lu Ping lowered his gaze.

The Black Tiger Gang wasn't responsible for slaughtering the village.

But the Black Tiger Gang had looted the dead, captured a survivor, and thrown him into the mine as a slave.

The Gang Leader suddenly hurled his wine cup at Lu Ping's face and roared,

"Get him!"

The wine cup was still in midair when Zhao Tiezhu's saber was already out of its sheath.

The saber slashed in from the left, cutting off Lu Ping's retreat.

Qian Cuihua let out a low roar and flipped the entire table. Her thick, powerful legs beneath her purple brocade robe stamped heavily on the floor, splitting a tile with two cracks.

The three Body Tempering Realm cultivators attacked at once.

The gang members lying in ambush outside also drew their sabers and charged in.

They had this routine down pat.

The Gang Leader tested the opponent, Zhao Tiezhu blocked the escape route, Qian Cuihua overwhelmed the opponent with brute force, and the men outside finished the job.

It was enough to deal with anyone in the Body Tempering Realm, even someone at its peak.

Unfortunately, the man before them was not in the Body Tempering Realm.

Compared to the Black Tiger Gang members, who were giving it their all, Lu Ping merely raised a hand lightly and pushed out the spiritual power of the Qi Refining Fifth Layer.

[Bully at Home activated.]

Lu Ping didn't even use a single move, relying purely on stats and mechanics to suppress them.

Oh, the truth was that in his five years at the Greenwood Sect, Lu Ping had been too busy refining pills to learn a single combat move or Law Technique...

The wine cup stopped in midair and shattered with a crack.

Zhao Tiezhu flew backward into a pillar. His saber snapped in two, and half of it stabbed into his own shoulder.

The table Qian Cuihua had flipped exploded apart in midair. She too flew backward, crashing through the screen on the right and scattering pearl and jade ornaments across the floor.

The Gang Leader's chest caved in.

When the three landed, the lights in the main hall flickered a few times, and then all three lay still.

From the first attack to the end, only a single breath had passed.

Lu Ping looked down and retrieved the Demonic Spirit Stone and the token.

Of the fifty thousand words in the simulation, not one had happened in reality.