"This is an extortion letter."
Zhang Zhi handed the paper to Lu Longjing. He snatched it and quickly scanned its contents, his face turning ashen. Each word came through gritted teeth:
"Fifty thousand taels. What a nerve!!"
Li Yong's dirty trick last year had drawn Third Foot Zhou's attention. Lu Longjing had pressed his advantage, leaving the Li Family utterly defeated over the past year. The Lu Family had become Lingbao County's biggest medicinal materials merchant.
But they were only the biggest medicinal materials merchant. Their business was limited to trading medicinal materials, and they didn't even rank among the top ten merchants.
Paying fifty thousand taels would mean Lu Longjing had to put in everything he'd earned over the past twenty years. The loss would be devastating.
But no matter how much it pained him, he still had to pay.
That was his son.
Forget fifty thousand taels—even if it were a hundred thousand, he'd find a way.
"Any leads? Who could be so ruthless?"
Lu Longjing stared at the bodies of Lu Renjia and Lu Renyi as he asked.
The two bodies had been separated at the neck. The Lu Family must have pieced them together; otherwise, Lu Longjing would have seen four sections of bodies.
Everyone looked at the two corpses, their faces filled with shock and fury.
Zhang Zhi and Steward Shen both shook their heads slightly.
"The people who delivered the bodies were cautious. They paid a cart driver ten taels to bring them here. According to the driver, the person who paid him was masked from beginning to end. He only knew that they were tall."
Lu Longjing closed his eyes and fell silent. Then he said in a deep voice:
"Do everything you can to contact the kidnappers. Tell them I'll pay, but they must guarantee Lu Cheng's safety! They can't hurt even a single finger!"
Steward Shen nodded. "I'll see what I can do right away."
Lu Longjing turned to Zhang Zhi. "Old Zhang, once we've contacted the kidnappers, you'll have to come with me."
"I understand!"
Zhang Zhi nodded solemnly.
"Even if it costs me my life, I won't let anything happen to Little Cheng!"
More than ten years ago, when Zhang Zhi had been gravely wounded, Lu Longjing had saved him. He hadn't left the Lu Family since.
The debt of a life saved, along with more than a decade of affection, could warm even a stone. He'd watched the two brothers grow up, and in his heart, they were no different from his own nephews.
"Haah... haah..."
After running at full speed for thirty minutes and covering a hundred li, Lu Yuan finally stopped. It felt as though a ball of fire were burning in his throat, and every breath threatened to spew flames.
The feeling reminded him of finishing a five-thousand-meter run in his previous life. All he'd wanted then was to collapse on the spot.
"Hm? The smell of blood again?"
Lu Yuan froze.
"Could I have run into bandits again?"
At the thought, he slowed down, bent low, and headed into the woods by the road. After going some seventy or eighty meters, he crouched behind a massive tree that would have taken two people to wrap their arms around and peered out.
Fifty meters ahead, more than twenty people were surrounding one man and attacking him.
Bodies littered the area. At least thirty lay on the ground, blood covering the earth and pooling everywhere. No wonder the stench of blood carried over a hundred meters.
"Bai Haihu, there's nowhere left to run! Hand over the Dao Seed! Do that, and I'll leave you with an intact corpse!" one of them shouted coldly.
The man they had surrounded was dark-skinned, with a stern expression. He sneered at the words.
"If you want the Dao Seed, take it from my corpse!"
The leader's eyes filled with wariness. A cornered beast would fight back. Bai Haihu had killed more than thirty of his men; if he fought to the death, few of the twenty-odd men left would survive.
"If that's how it is, then I'll just take it from your corpse!"
Bai Haihu pulled out the box at his chest and muttered, "A Dao Seed that might not even be real has cost dozens of my Bai Family their lives. Liang Guan, you want this thing so badly?"
"Give it to me!"
Greed nearly solidified in Liang Guan's eyes.
"You want it? Come and get it!"
Boom! Before the words had even faded, Bai Haihu attacked first. He stamped down, his body moving like a dragon. In a single step, he crossed dozens of meters, reaching them so quickly that his attackers barely had time to react.
His fists swept through the air, and it exploded.
Bang! Bang!
Two men had their chests punched through, their bodies sent flying.
Crack!
His hand sliced across three more men's necks. Their cervical bones snapped, killing them on the spot.
Then five or six more were sent soaring as he crashed into them. It was as if they'd been hit by a car; their breastbones shattered, and they died.
Bai Haihu was at least a Qi and Blood like a Tiger expert. His movements were swift and nimble, each one carrying immense force. He swept all before him like a ferocious beast in human form.
"Holy shit!"
Lu Yuan hunched his shoulders.
Against an expert like this, killing him would probably take only a few moves.
In the few seconds he'd spent hunching down, Bai Haihu had killed all but a handful of the twenty-odd men. But Liang Guan had also seized the opportunity to attack, leaving Bai Haihu even more badly wounded.
"Cough, cough... Liang Guan, this is all you'll ever amount to. You're a cowardly rat. Even with me in this state, you still don't dare face me head-on..."
Bai Haihu coughed up blood, along with dark-red fragments of his internal organs. His eyes remained savage, and his Killing Intent was overwhelming.
Liang Guan scoffed. "Say whatever you want. I'm the one who wins."
Bai Haihu suddenly sprang to his feet. Liang Guan jumped in fright and started to retreat, but Bai Haihu tipped backward and collapsed. In an instant, he stopped breathing.
"You three, go check whether he's dead!"
Liang Guan ordered his three surviving subordinates. They looked at one another, then slowly stepped across the bodies toward Bai Haihu.
Throughout the whole process, they kept their bodies tense and their breathing held, staring fixedly at Bai Haihu, who remained motionless.
After checking, the three confirmed that Bai Haihu was dead. Liang Guan smiled faintly. "Bai Haihu, you're finally dead."
He walked over and bent down to rummage through the box.
In the next moment, Bai Haihu's eyes flew open. He slammed a palm into Liang Guan's chest. Liang Guan's scalp prickled, but they were too close for him to dodge. He spat blood as he was sent flying.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The three remaining men had been caught completely off guard. Bai Haihu smashed their heads apart.
"Hiss... How devious..."
Lu Yuan sucked in a breath.
As a mere onlooker, he'd thought Bai Haihu was dead too. He never expected the man to have one last trick up his sleeve, taking his enemies out by surprise.
But after finishing them off, Bai Haihu's life had also reached its end.
Just as Lu Yuan thought they'd both died together, Liang Guan slowly got back to his feet. Staring at Bai Haihu's corpse, he laughed wildly. "Bai Haihu! I still won!!"
His laughter cut off abruptly.
Because he was dead too.
"They should all be dead now, right?"
Only after several minutes did Lu Yuan walk toward Bai Haihu's corpse. He took a small box and two books from him, then searched Liang Guan and the others. Aside from a few bits of silver, he found nothing.
He quickly left the scene. After passing through a small town, he rented a room at an inn and locked the doors and windows. Only then did he eagerly take the contents of the box out.
He was very curious about this Dao Seed.
Inside was an oval, ash-gray bead about the size of a walnut.
Holding the bead in his palm, Lu Yuan examined it closely. He was surprised to find that the patterns on it connected to form a face with glaring eyes.
The face had formed naturally. It definitely hadn't been carved afterward; it was entirely the result of the natural patterns coming together. Yet it looked as if someone had carefully engraved it there.
The gray face was plain and natural, and a faint Daoist charm seemed to emanate from it.
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