"What? Not enough?" Young Master Liu raised his chin arrogantly and looked down his nose at Qin Chen, sneering. "I'm in a good mood today, so I'll bestow five hundred spirit stones on you to buy yourself a coffin. On Penglai Immortal Island, anything my Liu Family takes a fancy to belongs to us! An outsider bumpkin like you dares haggle with me?"
The four early Golden Core stage guards behind him burst into laughter, looking at Qin Chen as though he were already dead.
Elder Sun climbed up from the floor, clutching his swollen, reddened cheek, his face full of bitterness and helplessness.
Although he was an appraiser for the Ten Thousand Treasures Pavilion, he could only swallow his anger before a local tyrant like the Liu Family.
The Liu Family patriarch was a supreme expert in the Void Insight realm, and its family head was a mighty Nascent Soul stage cultivator. Here in the South City Market, the Liu Family was heaven itself.
"Young friend... a wise man doesn't fight a losing battle. You... you should take the spirit stones and leave." Elder Sun lowered his voice, urgently transmitting his words to Qin Chen. "As long as the green hills remain, you needn't fear running out of firewood!"
Qin Chen ignored Elder Sun's advice. He watched Young Master Liu quietly, his gaze as deep as a bottomless abyss.
"I'm curious." Qin Chen spoke slowly, his tone utterly calm. "I've been in the Ten Thousand Treasures Pavilion for less than an incense stick's time, and I haven't even stepped outside this private room. How did you know I had top-grade materials and pills?"
Young Master Liu's expression shifted slightly, his eyes flickering before he flew into a humiliated rage. "How I found out is none of your damn business! Cut the crap, leave the goods, and get lost! Otherwise..."
"Otherwise what?" Qin Chen interrupted.
"Otherwise, I'll teach you how to write the word 'death' today! Get him! Take his things and cripple him!" Young Master Liu completely lost his patience and barked the order.
"Yes, young master!"
The four early Golden Core stage guards grinned viciously and attacked at once.
Four sharp streaks of sword qi, mingled with raging spiritual power, sealed off every avenue of retreat from four directions like four venomous snakes, shooting straight toward Qin Chen's limbs.
They clearly intended to cripple Qin Chen's ability to move first, then torture him at their leisure.
Facing the combined attack of four Golden Core stage cultivators, Qin Chen did not even lift his eyelids.
He merely raised his right hand slowly and clenched his five fingers into a fist.
Humm-
Within his Shanzhong acupoint, the Micro Star-Dust suddenly erupted with dazzling light.
A surge of Star Force, even more violent and vast than when he had killed the Black-Scaled Sea Python, flooded into his right arm like floodwaters bursting through a dam.
Qin Chen used no flashy moves. He simply threw a punch.
Boom!
He made no deliberate effort to restrain the force of this punch.
The raging Star Force formed a nearly tangible radiance around his fist, tearing apart the four guards' sword qi in an instant like a storm sweeping away rotten wood.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Four muffled explosions rang out in succession inside the private room.
Those four overbearing early Golden Core stage guards did not even have time to scream before the terrifying force of Qin Chen's punch blasted them into four clouds of scarlet mist!
Shredded flesh and blood splattered across the walls, and the thick stench of blood instantly filled the entire room.
A deathly silence fell over the private room.
Elder Sun's legs buckled, and he collapsed onto the floor again, trembling like chaff in a sieve as he stared in terror at the scene before him, which resembled an Asura hell.
One punch! Just one punch!
Four early Golden Core stage cultivators, and not even a scrap remained!
What... what kind of monster was this?!
Meanwhile, Young Master Liu, who had been so arrogant and domineering just moments earlier, was now utterly stunned.
A few drops of his guards' blood still dotted his face. His eyes bulged, his mouth hung wide open, and meaningless croaking sounds emerged from his throat, like a duck being strangled.
The guards he had taken such pride in, the foundation of his bullying tyranny, had been like mere paper before this young man, vanishing into dust and ashes in an instant!
Ignoring Elder Sun's terror, Qin Chen took a step, instantly crossing several zhang to appear before Young Master Liu.
He reached out with his right hand, seized Young Master Liu by the throat as though grabbing a chick, and lifted him into the air.
"Urgh... let... let me go..." Young Master Liu kicked wildly, both hands clutching Qin Chen's arm as he tried to break free, but Qin Chen's hand remained as immovable as an iron clamp.
"I'll ask you one more time." Qin Chen's gaze was bone-chillingly cold, as though he were looking at a corpse. "Who told you I had these things?"
Qin Chen absolutely refused to believe this was merely a coincidence.
He had only just arrived on Penglai Immortal Island and had come straight to the Ten Thousand Treasures Pavilion. Aside from the pavilion's people, only those aboard the Windrider knew he possessed sea demon materials.
As a large trading establishment, the Ten Thousand Treasures Pavilion valued its reputation above all else. It could not possibly destroy its own name over a mere thirty thousand spirit stones.
Then the only possibility was that someone aboard the Windrider had leaked the news, or had even... deliberately lured the Liu Family here to rob him.
"You... you dare lay a hand on me?!" Although Young Master Liu was scared out of his wits, his years of arrogance and tyranny still kept him from lowering his head. He struggled to force a few sentences through his teeth. "My... my patriarch is a Void Insight realm expert! My father is a mighty Nascent Soul stage cultivator! If... if you dare kill me, the Liu Family will cut your corpse into ten thousand pieces! They'll exterminate all nine branches of your clan!"
"Void Insight realm? Nascent Soul stage?" A mocking sneer curled Qin Chen's lips. "So what?"
Crack!
Qin Chen applied a little pressure with his wrist, and Young Master Liu's neck bones gave a teeth-grating crack.
"Aah-!" Young Master Liu let out a piercing scream. Tears and snot instantly streamed down his face as the terror of death finally shattered his mental defenses.
"I'll talk! I'll talk! Don't kill me!" Young Master Liu shrieked hoarsely. "It... it was a mortal ship captain named Old Wang! He... he sent someone to tell me there was a fat sheep from out of town carrying a large quantity of top-grade sea demon materials and pills, right here in the Ten Thousand Treasures Pavilion... He... he wanted twenty percent of the profits once it was done..."
"Old Wang?"
A cold glint flashed through Qin Chen's eyes.
It really was him.
I kindly saved an entire shipload of their lives and even paid him a handsome fare. To think that old bastard would repay kindness with enmity and turn around and sell me out.
Wealth stirs the heart. The ancients truly didn't lie.
"Very good." Qin Chen uttered the words coldly, then turned toward Elder Sun, who sat collapsed on the floor.
"Elder Sun, let's continue the transaction." Qin Chen's tone was calm, as though nothing had happened. "Thirty thousand low-grade spirit stones. Count them out."
Elder Sun swallowed and, with trembling hands, took a storage pouch filled with spirit stones from his Storage Ring. He respectfully handed it to Qin Chen. "S-Senior, here are thirty thousand low-grade spirit stones. P-Please count them."
Qin Chen accepted the storage pouch and swept it with his divine sense. After confirming that everything was correct, he tucked it into his robes.
Then he took a small storage pouch from his own Storage Ring and tossed it before Elder Sun.
"There are one thousand low-grade spirit stones in here. Consider it compensation for dirtying your private room."
With that, Qin Chen spared Elder Sun no further glance. Carrying Young Master Liu like a dead dog, he turned and strode out of the private room.
"Senior..." Elder Sun looked at the storage pouch on the table, then at the blood covering the floor, and shook his head with a bitter smile.
This man really was a ruthless character, decisive in killing.
PS: Wishing all you brothers taking the college entrance exam a place on the golden list! (Though I don't know whether any brothers reading this book fit that description, whether there are or not, I wish everyone success in all things.)
Before you continue