Xiao Wu's Oversight

After returning to the City Lord's Mansion, Dales did not immediately go to the study in the backyard. Instead, he held a small banquet, inviting nobles of all ranks in the city to dine and discuss the issue of Soul Crystal buried under the city's roads.

However, the local nobles in Falling Star City knew little about this, only that the successive city lords had begun planning the distribution of roads and buildings in the city more than two hundred years ago.

Upon learning that all the previous city lords had died of illness, Dales' expression changed drastically. He ended the banquet early and rushed to his study in the backyard.

Seeing the bookshelves separate, Dales assumed that the other person had temporarily gone out and forgotten to close the secret passage. He secretly breathed a sigh of relief, but also cursed the other person's carelessness in his heart, and hesitated whether to go down and investigate.

Now, he suspects that he has been kept in the dark by Hu Fangyuan all along. They are not using each other at all, but he has been unilaterally used by the other party!

Once the other party has achieved the desired result, they will also try to "die of illness" in order to keep the secret.

But Hu Fangyuan is a Fallen Ones, and if Dales were to confront him face to face, he was not sure if he would survive.

Not to mention, the opponent is a Soul Ancestor!

In the end, Dales turned on the Soul Guiding Lamp on the desk, closed the open bookshelf, and prepared to wait here for Hu Fangyuan to return and conduct some probing.

But they waited until nightfall, when the city's patrolmen reported, "Lord City Lord, people are digging roads all over the city, and many of them have unearthed Soul Sand and Soul Crystal!"

"Huh?" Dales looked up sharply and cursed, "Those fools are so greedy and ignorant. They've destroyed the city's roads for a few Soul Crystal. They're really audacious. Arrest them all!"

"Lord City Lord, those ignorant people are extremely wicked. At the slightest sign of trouble, they immediately drag their tools and run away. Moreover, there are people digging in every street of the city. The city only has five hundred soldiers. If we mobilize them all, it might be an overreaction. Furthermore, many of them are related to the city's residents..." The visitor said with some concern.

"What do you mean by making a mountain out of a molehill? They clearly stole from Falling Star City! That's a serious crime! Anyone who dares to cover it up should be punished even more severely!"

Dales roared.

Why are Soul Crystal and Soul Sand buried underground?

He didn't know, but it was definitely related to Hu Fangyuan. He had to find out the truth; how could it be poached by someone else?

That Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect...

We can't afford to mess with them.

But how dare the ignorant people in the city bully him?

That's completely the opposite!

However, just as his subordinate was about to carry out the task, Dales suddenly stopped him and said, "Wait, this matter is indeed not suitable for a large-scale operation. Tomorrow, we will arrest a few criminals and execute them in the street as a warning to others. We will also make those who stole the Soul Crystal Soul Crystal in the city return them obediently, not a single one missing."

"But what if they still keep it to themselves?"

"Then keep killing."

Dales said coldly, "What my Falling Star City has in abundance is a large number of ignorant people. If I kill more than twenty people, those people will be terrified and will obediently return the Soul Crystal! I will then reward them and show that I am fair in my rewards and punishments!"

"The city lord is wise!"

——

At the same time.

Since the outer gate of Falling Star City was closed, Zhou Qing, Tang San, and Xiao Wu could only walk around the outer wall and finally found a dog hole to crawl through.

"I actually crawled through a dog hole! What bad luck!" Xiao Wu was the last to crawl out of the dog hole, dusted herself off, and cursed.

"Isn't your Martial Soul the Soft Bone Rabbit? Soft Bone Rabbit live in burrows, right? It's normal for them to burrow." Zhou Qing brushed the dust off his body and back, saying this aloud while inwardly complaining:

As a transformed Soft Bone Rabbit, shouldn't crawling through burrows evoke memories of your childhood?

"Normal my foot!"

Xiao Wu rolled her eyes. The Soft Bone Rabbit did live in a cave dug underground, but after transforming, she preferred a more spacious place and disliked narrow, cramped caves and passages.

"A true man can bend and stretch." Tang San, who had also crawled through the dog hole, looked rather grim, but he still managed to find a plausible reason for himself.

Zhou Qing smiled, cleaned the dust off his body, and walked along the narrow passage between the houses to the dimly lit street.

As far as the eye could see, the lights in the houses on both sides of the street were off, but there were intermittent, light knocking sounds and flickering flames.

Following the sound and the firelight, the three men saw three or five men digging a road, removing the blue bricks from the ground and piling sand and soil haphazardly by the roadside. When they got tired, they wiped the sweat from their foreheads; when they were thirsty, they picked up the water bags hanging from their waists and took a sip.

The woman next to her was carrying a bag filled with Soul Sand. Once it was full, she hoisted it onto her shoulder without complaining about the weight and ran into a nearby path.

When one of the men saw Zhou Qing, he immediately stopped what he was doing. Seeing their youthful faces, he breathed a sigh of relief, but then scolded a capable-looking man standing outside, "I told you to keep watch, how could you let anyone get close?"

"Big brother..."

"Forget it, luckily it's just a child, let's not worry about it. Just be more careful next time! If the patrolmen in the city find out, even though I have a brother-in-law in the army, if we get caught, we'll be in jail!"

The man didn't scold the lookout, but looked at Zhou Qing, Tang San, and Xiao Wu's clothes and said, "Kids, your family members are also digging up the road. Did the noise wake you up? Go back and tell them not to dig up the road in front of their own house."

"Thanks, we were just curious and came to take a look." Zhou Qing said, then beckoned Tang San and Xiao Wu to walk past them and continue forward.

"Strange kid." The man didn't think much of it and just told his brothers to keep digging.

"Brother, this Soul Sand is valuable too?"

"Of course! I've inquired about it. It costs one Gold Soul Coin per pound. It's said to be used for making ink, which is for high-ranking officials and nobles to write on."

"We're not lucky enough to have access to the treasures buried by the successive city lords of Falling Star City. We'd rather dig up some more Soul Sand; this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"

Such exchanges were common along the way.

Tang San said, "At this rate, it will probably take less than three days for all the residents of the city to take action, digging up the roads and removing most of the Soul Sand and Soul Crystal underground, thus completely destroying the Soul Tool Core Formation in the city."

"It can only damage a part of it. After all, the 'gaps' between these houses still exist, and the Aura Field of Falling Star City will still have a negligible effect under the influence of the wind direction and speed."

Zhou Qing shook his head slightly, "Moreover, the commotion among the people in the city is not small, yet Dales has not taken immediate action. He probably wants to make plans for tomorrow."

Xiao Wu asked, "By the way, when I came down, the entrance to the cave above wasn't closed. Did Dales discover what happened down there because of that?"

Zhou Qing: "???"

"Never mind, we've already closed the other side of that passage anyway. According to Hu Fangyuan's diary, Dales didn't know there was another secret passage leading out of the city, so it's not a big deal."