Qin Xun hurriedly asked, "Is there any way to save Brother Shui?"
Smoker shook his head. "I don't know."
"No way at all?"
"Brother Shui was captured by the Dark Pavilion. If nothing unexpected happens, he'll be taken to the Dark Pavilion's headquarters in Great Xia. It's heavily guarded and full of experts. With just the few of us, we couldn't even get through the front gate."
"Doesn't your group have more than four hundred people? They can't all have been captured, can they?"
"Not counting their families, a little over thirty of us were captured. But even if everyone left got together, there's no way we could rescue Brother Shui from the Dark Pavilion!"
"What about the Sharp Sword Guild? Would the other groups help?" Qin Xun asked.
"Brother Shui has always been well liked. If our boss put out a call, plenty of people would probably answer! But their bosses wouldn't agree. The price would be too high, and a great many people would die!"
Glasses said calmly, "There's another way Brother Shui could survive: he could join the Dark Pavilion. But given the kind of person he is, he'd rather die than do that."
Smoker looked at Glasses and said, at a loss for words, "My head's a mess right now. From now on, try to keep that kind of nonsense to a minimum!"
"Oh." Glasses lowered his head.
Smoker turned back to Old Crab. "Let's leave that for now. Old Crab, hurry back, pack your things, and take your family away. We'll wait for you outside the city!"
"All right, I'll go back now!"
Old Crab was frantic. He knew how urgent the situation was. Once his identity was exposed, things could go badly wrong.
"I'll go with you. If anything happens, we can look out for each other," Xu Chao said.
Old Crab didn't refuse. He knew what Xu Chao and Mengmeng could do.
If something really did happen, having Xu Chao and Mengmeng there would help him avoid a lot of danger.
"Qin Xun, stick with Smoker and the others. Go wherever they go, and take good care of your sister." After giving Qin Xun those instructions, Xu Chao and Old Crab hurried away with Mengmeng.
Ten o'clock that night.
A light rain pattered down on the pitch-black streets. Everywhere, from the main roads to the alleys, was silent.
Smoker walked quickly at the front, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
Qin Xun walked in the middle, carrying Qin Ling on his back with a white quilt covering her.
Glasses and Song Jie followed at the rear.
They walked faster and faster, and everyone's clothes were soon soaked by the rain, except Qin Xun's and Qin Ling's.
Fortunately, the hotel wasn't far from the city gate. They reached it in about a dozen minutes.
At the city gate, a dozen or so members of the Guard Team stood in raincoats, sheltering from the rain as they smoked and chatted.
People still entered and left the city at night, but there were few of them.
From a distance, a Guard Team member shone a flashlight at them.
When Smoker reached him, he swept the flashlight over each of them. "What are you doing?"
"Leaving the city!"
"Leaving this late at night?"
"We've got something to do. Help us out."
Smoker pulled a stack of magic coins from his pocket and handed it to the guard.
Seeing that it was a substantial sum, the guard didn't make things difficult and let them through.
In fact, he had seen at a glance that there was more to these people than met the eye.
How could anyone who could produce that much money in one go be ordinary?
They were most likely wanted criminals of some kind.
But as long as they weren't people the higher-ups had specifically named and ordered them to capture, the guards would turn a blind eye.
The reason was simple.
Although capturing a wanted criminal would earn them a hefty bounty, none of the people who were wanted were ordinary.
It was one thing if they were just ordinary wanted criminals, but what if they ran into a Psionic Power user, or even a powerful one?
With what little strength they had, if someone wanted to force their way through, there was no way they could stop them!
It wasn't worth risking their lives for that bounty.
Besides, letting them through had its benefits too, didn't it?
Anyone who wasn't a fool could tell the difference between eating their fill once and eating their fill every day.
After Qin Xun and the others left the city, the guard didn't pocket the money. Instead, he went into the guardroom and handed it all to their vice captain.
If someone had given him the money in private, he could have pocketed it.
But in front of so many teammates, if he dared keep it all for himself, they'd make life difficult for him the next day.
"Take this half and divide it among the brothers."
The vice captain split it in half and kept the other half.
The half he kept wouldn't all go into his own pocket, either.
After all, above him was the captain, and above the captain was the commander-in-chief.
Above the commander-in-chief were the nobles in power.
Of course, those nobles naturally wouldn't care for such a paltry sum.
A minute later.
After taking a phone call, the vice captain went to the guardroom door and shouted, "From now on, people are only allowed in. No one is allowed out!"
"Captain Li, what happened this time?"
"Don't ask what you shouldn't. Stop smoking and stand guard properly. Load your weapons!"
Outside the city, the group followed the road until they entered the Misty Forest.
As soon as they stepped inside, Qin Xun heard the sound of chains scraping in his mind.
A moment later, the sound stopped.
Qin Xun guessed there must have been a monster nearby.
But it was very weak and had run away after sensing someone approaching.
After turning this way and that and walking about a hundred meters farther,
they came to a cave.
The cave wasn't large, but it could hold seven or eight people.
Firewood had been stocked inside, and there was a pile of burned charcoal in the middle.
Clearly, someone had also spent the night here not long ago.
The firewood crackled once it was lit, and warm firelight illuminated the cave.
As soon as she sat down, Song Jie asked, "Was Brother Shui really captured?"
"That's what Three Eyes said. He has no reason to play such a huge joke on us!"
Smoker lit another cigarette. From the moment Qin Xun had met him until now, he hadn't been without one in his mouth.
Noticing Qin Ling's pained expression as she smelled the smoke, he stubbed out the cigarette he had just lit and put it back in the pack.
Song Jie thought the same as Xu Chao. She didn't believe the Dark Pavilion could have found the camp; there had to be a traitor among them!
Sitting beside Qin Xun, Qin Ling asked softly, "Brother, what happened to Brother Shui?"
"It's nothing." Qin Xun rubbed her head.
Song Jie asked again, "What about the boss? Is the boss all right?"
"Three Eyes said the boss wasn't at the camp when it happened. There were only a dozen or so people from the first team and a dozen or so from the second team there. He was the only one who got out!"
"Where do we go next, then? Did Three Eyes say where to meet up?"
"No. He said he barely managed to escape, and the Dark Pavilion is hunting him everywhere. If he's lucky enough to get away, he'll go find the boss!"
"Where's the boss?"
"I don't know. He hung up before I had a chance to ask, and told us to be careful."
"Can we still use our old contact points?"
"What do you think? Even Old Crab is packing up to flee with his whole family. People like him in the other districts have probably done much the same if they got the news. If they didn't, it depends on how hard they are to kill!"
Song Jie said worriedly, "Old Crab and the others will be all right, won't they?"
"Don't worry, they should be fine." Glasses pushed up his glasses with his middle finger. "The guards at the city gate were so lax when we came out just now, so it can't be too serious. They should be out in half an hour at most."