Fang Shuwen softened his footsteps and trailed far behind the young man.
Ever since gaining the Snake Form Talent, even without deliberately controlling it,
Fang Shuwen could feel that his footsteps had grown exceptionally light. Now that he was consciously controlling them, it was almost as if he left no trace when he walked.
As long as he didn't look back, the young man would never notice someone following him.
The young man walked quickly, sticking to deserted alleys and winding deeper into them through one turn after another.
Before long, he came out of another alley.
This time, the young man emerged pushing a cart.
Two sacks lay on it. From the looks of them, he'd stuffed people inside.
"Looks like this guy's planning to leave the city?"
Fang Shuwen followed at a distance, keeping about twenty paces between them the whole time.
A passerby occasionally appeared in the alley, but none of them gave the pair more than a glance.
These days,
it wasn't unusual for a man to push a handcart.
Nobody wanted to meddle, and nobody dared to.
No one wanted to invite trouble.
After about half an hour, the houses grew increasingly sparse.
The flagstone road turned into a gravel track, with weeds and bushes beginning to sprout along its edges.
Fang Shuwen recognized the route. It led toward Xikou's western suburbs.
The western suburbs bordered the lower reaches of the Clear Water River. The river curved there, forming a small inlet.
A few fishing families had once lived there, but later, rumors spread that water ghosts haunted the river.
The Public Security Bureau came to investigate several times, but couldn't turn up anything.
With no other choice, the fishing families moved away.
All that remained around the inlet were a few dilapidated wooden shacks and some crooked dock pilings.
"Why bring them here?"
Crouching low, Fang Shuwen peered out from the bushes on the slope.
Sure enough, a handcart stood by the inlet, with two filthy sacks resting on it.
Two other men stood beside the cart.
One was tall and thin, wearing a short gray cloth jacket with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His wiry arms were exposed, and blue tattoos covered them.
The other was short, stocky, and bare-chested. A patch of dark chest hair spilled out from his collar, and a short knife was tucked into his waistband.
"Hey, Li Tong, you really have a cold heart, don't you? Isn't this your girlfriend? How can you bear to sell her too?"
The tall, thin man came over, opened one of the sacks, and stroked the schoolgirl's face before grinning.
"She's still a virgin, right? You know the rules! If she isn't, she'll fetch a lower price."
Li Tong looked uncomfortable for a moment at the tall man's question, but quickly forced the feeling down.
He turned his head and laughed. "Ah, she wants me to marry her but won't sleep with me. What a pain. So I brought her to you. Saves me the trouble, doesn't it?"
"Heh?"
The tall man withdrew his hand and wiped it on his trouser leg. Then he took a parcel wrapped in oiled paper from inside his clothes and weighed it in his hand.
"Same deal as always. Fifty silver dollars for the two of them. Count it."
Li Tong took the parcel and tore open one corner. The silver dollars glinted in the dusk.
He counted them carefully. The amount was right.
Silver dollars were the Great Xin Yan Kingdom's standard currency, issued two years earlier, and they contained a decent amount of silver.
Still, he didn't leave. Instead, he turned to the other man with a broad smile.
"Brother Hu, could you add a little more?"
"This is my girlfriend, after all. She's a top student at Public Middle School, and she's still a virgin."
The tall man, whom they called Brother Hu, turned gloomy at that. He asked coldly,
"Hmph. Girlfriend? Which of the people you've brought me wasn't your girlfriend? Cut the crap and spit it out!"
"More money! Just give me another ten silver dollars!" Li Tong said with a chuckle.
At that,
the smile slowly faded from Brother Hu's face. He narrowed his eyes and sized Li Tong up.
"More money?"
"Li Tong, have you got something mixed up?"
Li Tong's smile froze on his face. A fierce, murderous aura washed over him. His Adam's apple bobbed as he instinctively shuffled half a step backward.
"B-Brother Hu, I was just saying. Don't get mad. This girl's a real catch. If you resell her in Shenghai, you'll get at least four times what you paid..."
"Four times?"
Brother Hu suddenly laughed, baring two rows of yellowed teeth.
He stepped forward and patted Li Tong's face.
The blows weren't hard, but each one landed with a sharp slap, knocking Li Tong's head to the side.
"Even if she sells for four times the price, that money belongs to me. What's it got to do with you? We agreed on the price from the start: twenty-five per head. You got what you wanted, and I got what I wanted. Now you're trying to jack up the price on me?"
Li Tong's face stung, but he didn't dare dodge. He even forced a smile.
"Brother Hu, I was wrong. I was wrong, all right? Let's just stick to the original price..."
"Too late."
Brother Hu pulled a dagger from his waist and twirled it in his hand.
"The thing I hate most is a greedy bastard who doesn't know when to stop. There are brothels for men in Shenghai, too. With your pretty face, you ought to fetch a good price!"
Li Tong's lips trembled. He tried to say something, but his calves were already shaking.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the stocky man place a hand on the hilt of his knife. He promptly swallowed every word.
He quickly admitted defeat and begged for mercy.
"Brother Hu, please don't take it to heart. I misspoke. I've got another good catch, too—my new girlfriend, Cuicui. She's a top student in Public Middle School's Elite Class."
"She's pretty, and she's not even seventeen. Let me go this time, and I'll bring her to you."
His voice trembled. The smile he managed to force onto his face looked more like a grimace.
"Elite Class, huh? Fine. That's more like it. Get lost."
As if granted a reprieve, Li Tong spun around and ran. His shoes clattered over the gravel.
The guy had probably been scared senseless. He nearly tripped over a tree root after a few steps, staggered, and kept running without looking back. He disappeared down the path, stumbling and scrambling all the way.
Fang Shuwen lay behind the bushes, watching the whole thing from beginning to end.
The Snake Form Talent made his breathing so shallow and quiet that he almost blended into the plants around him.
He could even feel each hair on his body stirring faintly as the evening breeze brushed his cheek.
It seemed this talent didn't just increase the power of his fist techniques. It had also changed his senses and his body.
"Cuicui's boyfriend is actually a human trafficker!"
"Tsk, tsk. I thought she'd fallen for some lowlife. Turns out he was running a romance scam!"
"To save his own skin, he was even planning to sell her."
Li Tong had a handsome face. His clothes were ordinary, but he was probably a seasoned womanizer.
So an innocent girl like Cuicui, with so little experience of the world, would easily fall for his tricks.
And now she'd been fooled.
"Only two men left. From the looks of them, they're probably carrying plenty of money."
Fang Shuwen's gaze swept back and forth between Brother Hu and the stocky man. His thoughts swayed like a scale, unable to settle.
The two men looked like they'd trained in martial arts, but he couldn't tell their exact cultivation from this distance.
They definitely weren't Bright Force martial artists, though.
At most, they'd reached Three-Sound Bone Crack.
As long as they didn't have guns, he might be able to take them both!
Should he leave?
Or stay?
Fang Shuwen's right hand unconsciously gripped a blade of grass.
His gaze settled on the bulging money pouch at Brother Hu's waist.
The parcel of oiled paper Li Tong had just handed over had been stuffed into that pouch.
It was swollen with money—at least a hundred or so silver dollars.
If Fang Shuwen managed to get it, it would go a long way toward easing his current money troubles.
"Damn it! I'm going for it."