Pulled Back, Part Two

"Good. As expected of the Young Chief Escort—you have guts." The man in the black jacket clapped his hands and had his men bring out a freshly written contract.

"Since there's no problem, please sign it and leave your thumbprint, Young Chief Escort."

A sheet of yellow paper and a box of red ink paste were brought before Cheng Shaojiu.

Cheng Shaojiu looked at the items before him and fell silent, his blood and qi surging wildly through his body in wave after wave.

After a long while, he slowly raised his trembling hand and dipped a finger into the red ink paste.

His red thumb rose and hovered in midair over the contract, yet no matter what, he could not press it down.

"Young Chief Escort, please." The man in the black jacket urged him again.

He had seen too many scenes like Yonghe Escort Agency's. In these times, fortune and disaster were impossible to predict. Who could say for certain that they would remain steady forever?

In this single day alone, he had dealt with three such ruined households.

Yonghe Escort Agency was merely one of them.

Cheng Shaojiu sat in his seat, breathing rapidly, his entire body ice-cold.

He stared fixedly at the contract, knowing that once he pressed down, there would be no turning back.

But he had no choice.

The other side was the Zhao Family—the Zhao Family of the Seven Families Alliance, ranked second. In all of Feiye City, only the Ou Family was larger than the Zhao Family.

Closing his eyes, he gritted his teeth and pressed down hard.

Creak.

The wooden doors of the reception hall were suddenly shoved open.

Wei He stood at the entrance, panting heavily as he stared at Cheng Shaojiu in his seat and the whole crowd around him.

Crash.

He flung the things in his arms onto the floor.

"Brother Cheng, is this enough?"

With a clattering crash—

The items scattered all over the floor. It was a yellow leather bag, and what spilled out of it was actually nothing but gold notes and gold ingots of all kinds.

Cheng Shaojiu's hand hung in midair as he slowly rose to his feet and looked at the gold notes scattered across the ground.

One stack of large-denomination gold notes was especially eye-catching. The number one hundred was clearly written on them.

At a glance, there had to be at least a thousand taels of gold here!

"Is it enough?" Wei He asked in a low voice. "If not, I'll go back and get more."

Setting everything else aside, that Five Ridges Palm manual alone could be exchanged for quite a bit of gold.

In these times, cultivation arts and secret techniques like that were all closely guarded manuals. No one was willing to take them out for trade.

A copy of Five Ridges Palm could fetch at least five hundred taels, and that was only because it lacked the Fundamental Diagram and the medicine formula.

Of course, if it still was not enough, he could make a few more rounds through the mountains later. A few hundred taels of gold might just fall into his hands again if luck favored him.

Now that he had gotten used to it, Wei He was extremely familiar with the forests outside the city, as though they were his own home.

"You..." Cheng Shaojiu felt that the most right thing he had ever done in his life was becoming friends with Wei He!

He gritted his teeth and forcibly held back the tears threatening to spill from his eyes.

Yet he had no idea what to say.

He did not know what words could possibly be enough, nor did he know what expression he should wear in the face of all this.

But he knew that the only thing he should do now was—

Rip!

Cheng Shaojiu snatched up the contract and tore it cleanly in half.

"Brother! I owe you!" he said earnestly to Wei He.

The man in the black jacket across from him was equally dumbstruck as he looked at Wei He by the door.

So much money. So many gold notes. There was even a little blood on them—

This guy...

He stared at Wei He. For a moment, Wei He's overwhelming opening move had left him speechless.

It was not just him. Everyone in the reception hall—the Cheng Family, the Zhao Family, all of them—was stunned by this reversal at the very brink of disaster.

Wei He had arrived at a moment more perfect than perfect.

"My friend, have you thought this through? Interfering in this matter..." The man in the black jacket narrowed his eyes in warning.

"The money's here. If there's nothing else, I'm leaving first." Wei He pointed at the floor, cutting him off.

He waved at Cheng Shaojiu.

"Brother Cheng, remember to pay me back later. I still need to go back and train, so I'm off."

As casually as if he had merely tossed down the price of a meal, he turned and strode away without a care.

It was as though he had not thrown down more than a thousand taels of gold, but only some loose change.

The man in the black jacket wanted to say something else, but Wei He's series of actions stunned him into silence again.

It was not as though he had never seen wealthy people. More than a thousand taels of gold was an astronomical sum to ordinary people in these times, but to the masters of the Inner City, it was no more than a flick of the fingers.

In an age where the gulf between rich and poor was so enormous, there were certainly people who regarded that amount of money as dirt.

But such people would never include the young man before him, whose entire outfit was not worth even ten taels of gold.

At this point, the money on the ground was already more than enough for the escort agency to weather this crisis.

Cheng Shaojiu rose to his feet and stood before the scattered pile of gold notes.

He stood there without moving.

"Steward Zhao, please return."

He turned toward the man in the black jacket and smiled.

The man in the black jacket opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end, he said nothing. He stood up and clasped his fists toward Cheng Shaojiu.

"Young Chief Escort, I admire you!"

He had his men pick up the remaining gold notes needed to cover the shortfall, then led his group away.

Cheng Shaojiu stood at the entrance and watched them leave the square, pass through the gates, and vanish down the gray-white street beyond.

The sounds of carriages and horses gradually faded away until they could no longer be heard.

"Husband." Madam Cheng walked up behind Cheng Shaojiu and called softly, worry in her voice.

"I'm fine." Cheng Shaojiu raised a hand and said in a low voice.

"I'm fine."

With his back to everyone, tears were already streaming down his face.

But he did not dare cry aloud. He was the Young Chief Escort, the current pillar of the Cheng Family.

He had to be calm. He had to be calm. He had to hold steady.

His wife, his child, and the escorts and escort chiefs who trusted him were all behind him. He could not cry.

He was just a little tired. Just a little tired...

The people behind him silently cleaned up the mess and quietly left one after another, leaving Cheng Shaojiu standing alone before the entrance.

On Shaoyang Mountain.

Wei He let out a long sigh as he looked at the dense, withered trees before him.

After several months, he had finally come here to look for money again.

For no other reason than that on the other mountains, most bandits fled far away the moment they saw how he was dressed, refusing even to show their faces.

He did not even get a chance to approach them, much less make money.

In truth, he could understand. By now, there were no fewer than dozens of bandits who had died at his hands.

And every one of them had been no weakling, but an elite.

After all, with his size and build, ordinary bandits without some confidence in themselves would not dare step up to rob him.

So the ones he dealt with were all confident ones.

"After lending money to Brother Cheng just now, I don't even have enough left to buy groceries. A moment of impulse, a moment of impulse..."

Wei He regretted it somewhat as well. If he had known, he would have kept a dozen or so taels of gold to tide himself over.

Now, he did not even have food money for the remaining half month.

In one impulsive burst, he had even thrown away his gold beans.

Following the dense dry grass on the mountain, he carefully made his way toward the cave Ding Hai had told him about before.

That place was not Natural Dwelling, but merely a temporary resting place Ding Hai used while hunting here.

Wei He planned to go there first and see whether he might run into other hunters.

He was not the only person who knew about that cave. Who knew how many other hunters knew of it as well?

Everyone tacitly left some commonly used tools in the cave as spares, for everyone's convenience.

Walking along the carved-out mountain path, Wei He kept his ears open in all directions, moving nimbly and silently.

He reduced every sound he made as much as possible.

The reason he had come back up Shaoyang Mountain was also because he had received news from the distillery before. It was said that strange beasts had appeared on Shaoyang Mountain lately, and people from Shaoyang Gate could often be seen hunting them on the mountain.

Strange beasts.

The moment Wei He heard that name, he committed it to memory.

He changed into a different outfit, no longer dressed in his previous head-to-toe masked attire. After preparing all his equipment and tools, he headed up the mountain once more.

Though he had killed a Shaoyang Gate disciple, so many days had passed. Who could possibly know he had done it?

Who?

At the time, there had been nothing but weeds and forest. No one had seen him at all.

Even the only people who had encountered him, that group of bandits, were all dead.

So in theory, he was still just an ordinary hunter.

After quietly advancing through the mountains for half an hour—

Before long, a head suddenly appeared ahead.

A saber-wielding bandit with a gray-white headscarf was crouching beside a corpse, apparently searching the body.

Wei He halted and recognized the marker of the white headscarf.

He had killed quite a few bandits recently, so he had learned how these people were categorized.

Everyone wearing white headscarves was a subordinate controlled by Shaoyang Gate.

So the man before him should be the same.

After some thought, he decided not to act rashly and slowly, silently backed away.

If there were any lookouts nearby, that would be troublesome.

But after taking only two steps back, Wei He's gaze swept over the bandit and landed on the bulging money pouch behind him.

The shape protruding from that pouch looked more and more like gold ingots...

"Take this!"

A flying stone smashed viciously into the white-headscarf bandit's head.

Wei He scattered a handful of lime powder, using the drifting dust to conceal the scene.

He rolled and sprang forward, his movements exceptionally practiced as he swept a hand over the bandit's body.

The money pouch and several miscellaneous items instantly fell into his hands.

Before the white powder had even settled, he darted away again and plunged into the grass on the other side, vanishing from sight.

The entire process took less than two seconds.

When the white powder settled—

A lookout bandit leaped out in furious alarm and saw his companion lying on the ground with blood all over his head.

He raised the saber in his hand and was about to shout.

Thud!

Another muffled blow rang out as a stone struck the bandit squarely in the forehead, knocking him to the ground on the spot.

Another cloud of lime powder burst into the air. Two seconds later, everything on the man's body, from his money pouch to his saber, had been thoroughly cleaned out.

Wei He quit while he was ahead and decisively headed down the mountain.

Along the way, besides marveling at how rich the bandits on Shaoyang Mountain were, he had also gained two lime powder pouches.

It seemed that not long ago, bandits had gradually begun carrying lime powder pouches more often.

Lately, he did not even need to buy them himself. He simply took them off the bandits.

Sometimes, his expenditure could not even keep up with his replenishment.

Of the two money pouches, one held five taels of gold, while the other contained only some gold leaves and gold beans. Another poor bastard.

But another item gave Wei He a pleasant surprise. It was a small bag woven from copper wire, crafted with exquisite skill.

Inside were a pile of black, stone-like objects whose nature he could not identify.

Wei He recognized them. They were one of the very difficult-to-buy concealed weapons, known as Black Caltrops.

Once thrown, they would automatically explode and release a large amount of poisonous smoke. They were extremely powerful.

The poisonous smoke could damage the eyes and ears, temporarily blinding people. It could also conceal the user's figure at the same time.

If one was properly prepared and had taken protective measures in advance, a bag of these could save one's life at a critical moment.

Wei He carefully put the item away. This had been taken from a bandit under Shaoyang Gate, and thinking back to the Shaoyang Gate disciple he had encountered last time, that man had also been full of underhanded tricks.

He was even more excessive than Wei He himself.

It seemed that Shaoyang Gate was not only ruthless and vicious, but also rolling in wealth.

Wei He immediately raised his alertness toward them to the highest level.

In these times, high Martial Arts Cultivation alone did not guarantee victory in all things. One also needed methods.