The Lin Family's carriages and horses had been invited up the mountain by the bandits.
The news certainly took Yang Qing and the others by surprise.
How could the richest household in Mountain City have old ties with bandits several cities away?
No matter how they looked at it, the whole affair seemed inexplicably strange.
But Jiang Zhizhou had seen everything clearly.
"Master Lin—no, that impostor, I should say—was invited to the seat of honor by the bandit chief."
If the Lin Family had truly been captured by bandits, they were merely hostages. Why would they receive such fine treatment?
A seat of honor, no less.
Yang Qing closed his eyes briefly as a thought flashed through his mind. "Perhaps we were wrong from the start."
Bu Er and Jiang Zhizhou both looked at him. "Wrong about what?"
Yang Qing said, "Perhaps the Lin Family used entering the Imperial Capital as an excuse, while one of their true aims was to come up this mountain and meet the bandits."
And why would they want to meet?
Naturally, they were plotting something.
"Besides, I made a couple of rounds through the bandits' den and discovered something rather interesting."
"These mountain bandits didn't look like bandits. They looked more like a well-trained army."
The affair was growing more and more interesting.
"An army?"
Understanding dawned in Yang Qing's mind. "I couldn't quite understand why the Lin Family had ties with bandits earlier, but now I think we can explain it."
The Lin Family was the wealthiest household in the city. Moreover, they had spent years traveling far and wide on business, so they were more likely to encounter bandits than ordinary people.
"They must be using the roles of bandits and hostages as cover to trade money and provisions."
Hearing Yang Qing's