Small Stakes, Big Returns—A Sudden Windfall

That night, Lu Residence reported the matter to the authorities.

Constable Xu personally escorted the county magistrate into Lu Residence to inspect the corpse.

"Outrageous! Absolutely outrageous!"

The county magistrate roared angrily, "There must have been two thieves. One was killed over an uneven division of the loot, while the other fled into hiding with the stolen goods."

"Find him! You must capture the other thief for me!"

With those words, the case was settled.

Constable Xu and the others sprang into action again, nearly turning Lu Residence inside out.

Though Old Master Lu was displeased, he had no choice but to cooperate with the authorities' investigation.

After all, neither the county magistrate's silver nor his jewels had been found on the corpse.

In the end,

even Mo Chen and all the other chore servants were summoned into the courtyard for questioning.

"Name?"

"Mo Chen."

"Age?"

"Fifteen."

"What did you do tonight?"

Mo Chen looked at the officer questioning him with a bitter smile. "Other than getting up to use the latrine, I slept in my room the whole time."

The officer shot him a cold glance, then impatiently waved him away. "Fine, fine. Move aside."

A fifteen-year-old brat could not possibly have anything to do with this.

"Sure." Mo Chen quickly agreed and obediently returned to the crowd.

Turning his head, he glanced at the constables searching the Chore Servant Courtyard, then shifted his gaze to the county magistrate in official robes in the distance.

After killing that thief,

he had obtained not only a Human Skin Mask, but also a bundle.

Both were now stored in his system inventory.

As long as he did not take them out himself, no one would know they were on him.

There was no need to say much about the Human Skin Mask. Mo Chen bound it directly and kept it in his inventory for future use.

The contents of the bundle were different. Besides eleven ten-tael silver ingots, there were three jade ornaments and two booklets.

Mo Chen briefly flipped through one of the booklets, and his pupils instantly contracted. He immediately stuffed both booklets into his inventory.

The opened booklet contained records of the county magistrate working with mountain bandits to traffic people.

"Landowner Lu, why was this thief in your residence?"

County Magistrate Yu Hezhong stood with his hands behind his back, his gaze sharp as he questioned him.

Beside him, an elderly man in a tall hat and brocade robes smiled bitterly.

"Lord Yu, you have asked the wrong person. This old man is baffled as well. For some reason, a thief being pursued by the yamen entered my residence. I ought to be asking you, Lord Yu..."

Yu Hezhong sneered. "Landowner Lu, harboring a thief is a serious crime."

Landowner Lu cursed inwardly, but his face filled with panic as he said,

"Lord Yu, you must not make such accusations lightly! This humble man has always obeyed the law, unchanged for decades. I have absolutely no disloyalty toward the imperial court!"

At that moment, the black-clad woman who had been following behind Yu Hezhong stepped forward. "Enough, Lord Yu. Landowner Lu likely knows nothing about this matter."

Landowner Lu looked at the woman in black and paused slightly. "And this lady is...?"

Yu Hezhong did not answer. Instead, he hurriedly turned around and said with an ingratiating smile, "Yes, yes, Miss Su has eyes like blazing torches. You will certainly see through any wicked scoundrel."

The woman surnamed Su was seventeen or eighteen years old, dressed in fitted black clothes, with a heroic and valiant air.

A standard-issue curved saber hung at her waist. After looking at it a few times, Landowner Lu's expression abruptly changed.

"Why would they come to Yunyi County?"

Landowner Lu lowered his head, showing nothing on his face, though inwardly he uneasily guessed at the Su woman's purpose.

However,

the woman surnamed Su seemed to have no interest in him.

After the constables had searched the place once, she crouched beside the corpse on her own, narrowing her eyes as she muttered to herself.

"The neck appears to have been severed by a short blade. The skin membrane was torn, and the blade had chips and slight curls along its edge?"

"Who would use such a battered short blade?"

Her gaze flickered as her eyes turned toward the various tools in the tool shed.

In the end, her eyes settled on an ordinary woodcutter's blade.

"All right, all right, it's fine now! Go back and sleep!"

After being tossed about for half the night, the constables finally left.

The night watchman struck the gong for the Hour of the Ox, bang, bang.

With a shout from Wu Baoyin, Mo Chen and the other chore servants turned and returned to their rooms.

"Is it over?"

Mo Chen turned to glance at Landowner Lu and Magistrate Yu in the distance, before finally fixing his gaze on the woman surnamed Su, dressed in short black garments.

[Demon-Suppressing Saber]

[Level: First Tier]

[Standard-issue saber of Martial Suppression Office guards]

[Equip Requirement: Skin Tempering Realm]

[Attributes: Suppresses evil, Strength +120%]

"A First Tier weapon? A standard-issue saber for Martial Suppression Office guards... Was she from the military?"

Perhaps sensing Mo Chen's gaze, the woman surnamed Su gripped her saber hilt and cast an indifferent glance his way.

Mo Chen hurriedly shifted his gaze away without revealing anything, avoiding the woman surnamed Su's eyes.

"Damn, she could actually detect me looking at her?"

Mo Chen had merely thought the woman looked cool, and her weapon had caught his attention, so he had looked a few extra times.

He had not expected her senses to be so sharp that she instantly noticed his gaze.

Back in the room,

all the chore servants were unable to sleep.

Lying on the shared sleeping platform, they chatted excitedly, talking about what had happened that night.

"Did you hear? The man who died tonight was actually the thief who stole the county magistrate's valuables."

"What?! How did he die in our Lu Residence..."

After listening for a while, Mo Chen found it uninteresting. He clasped his hands behind his head and began making plans in his mind.

"Early tomorrow morning, I'll leave the city. First, I'll go to neighboring Rice Terrace County to exchange silver for one tael of gold, then return to Mo Family Village."

The black-clad man's bundle contained a total of one hundred and ten taels of silver.

He would leave ten taels untouched, then take another ten taels to exchange for one tael of gold, completing a system upgrade.

As for the remaining ninety taels, after setting aside some necessary expenses, Mo Chen decided to exchange all of it for cultivation progress.

As for the jade ornaments and silver accessories, he would wait until this wave of trouble had passed before selling them.

"Sure enough, if you want to get rich, you have to be ruthless and bold!"

Take a gamble, and a bicycle becomes a motorcycle.

Mo Chen had made the right bet this time and become rich overnight.

He had unexpectedly gathered all the silver needed for a system upgrade in one go, with another ninety taels left over for martial arts training.

Thinking of this, a smile could not help appearing at the corner of Mo Chen's lips.

In truth, after discovering the Human Skin Mask, he had analyzed several possibilities in his mind.

In the end, based on the various bits of information he had overheard, he concluded that the thief's strength could not have been high.

First, the man had been seriously wounded while being pursued by Constable Xu.

Mo Chen did not know how skilled Constable Xu was in martial arts.

But he knew that anyone truly powerful would never serve as a constable in some poor little county.

Therefore, he had determined that the thief could not have been very strong.

Second, the man was seriously injured.

He was not strong to begin with, and he was seriously injured on top of that.

Mo Chen was then eighty or ninety percent certain that he could rid the people of a scourge.

It was simply ridding the people of a scourge!

Mo Chen chuckled, then summoned the system in his mind.

"System, exchange for another three years of Fierce Tiger Fist cultivation progress!"

[Ding, exchange successful!]

The next moment,

Mo Chen's consciousness appeared once more in the mysterious Martial Arena.