The Empty Bounty

Greystone Town's bounty notice was posted on the tavern wall, diagonally across from the purchasing shop.

The paper was thicker than an ordinary hunting notice, with a gray pattern stamped along its edges. The reward was twenty gold coins, enough to make a dozen hunters drop what they were doing and spend half a month searching the mountains.

Yet the bounty itself contained only three lines.

Recover a lost item.

East of Sunken Bone Slope.

Deliver it intact. No questions asked.

There was no description of the item's shape, size, or color, nor any identifying feature that could confirm the right thing had been delivered. The people gathered around it grew more excited the longer they looked. They guessed it was a Magic Crystal Core, a secret tome, or a Saint-level relic. One person even claimed the gray-robed man had lost a chest of gold coins.

Helian Yuan stood outside the crowd. After listening for a while, he understood that the notice was not meant for someone who actually found the item.

Anyone who knew what the target was did not need a description in the bounty notice.

Those who did not know would turn Sunken Bone Slope upside down and bring anything unusual straight to the gray-robed man. The twenty gold coins were not buying a lost item, but the eyes of the entire town.

A hunter slapped the wall. "They haven't written a thing. You could take him a rock, and he could claim it was his."

The tavern attendant laughed. "You dare bring it, he dares inspect it. If it turns out to be wrong, you won't get any money, and you might not keep your hand either."

Everyone laughed for a while, but some still copied down the location.

Helian Yuan turned and entered the purchasing shop.

There were no customers inside. The buyer sat behind the counter, grinding a scale weight. When he saw Helian Yuan enter, he did not stop, merely moving the scale pan an inch to the left. Left meant the shop was being watched and he could not stay long.

Helian Yuan placed a package of level-three Split-Tooth Lizard meat on the counter.

"I'm only selling this."

The buyer glanced at the opening of the package. "It's been sitting too long. The price will be low."

"I'll sell it even at a low price."

"Short of money in the mountains?"

"Short of a way through."

Their exchange sounded ordinary enough. Even if the people watching outside heard it, they would only think the hunter was looking to sell his meat and leave.

The buyer cut off a small piece of meat, sniffed it, and named a price twenty percent lower than usual. Helian Yuan did not haggle. Instead, he deliberately raised his voice. "I heard someone lost something east of here. Twenty gold coins?"

"It's written on the wall."

"I saw an iron chest in South Gully."

Footsteps outside stopped for a moment.

The buyer looked up, his expression unchanged. "You can't eat an iron chest."

"But it could be valuable."

"Valuable or not, you have to bring it out alive."

Helian Yuan put the money away, then lowered his head as though swayed by those words. "Which way around South Gully avoids the Blue Rock Panther?"

"I buy meat. I don't risk my life."

The buyer pushed the wrapped silver coins back to him while tracing a curved mark on the counter with his little finger. The curve pointed west, meaning someone had already set up a lookout on the western road outside town.

Helian Yuan did not thank him. He tucked the silver coins into his belt pouch and left. The two unfamiliar hunters outside immediately split up. One entered the tavern, while the other headed east through town.

The false information had been picked up.

Helian Yuan had deliberately mentioned South Gully because the stake-reinforcement team had sealed it off only yesterday. If the gray-robed man heard about it, he would know the lead did not match the route along which the blank card had actually been stolen, but he would still have to send someone to investigate. Once a public bounty stopped checking information brought in, the town's hunters would soon realize the reward was only a way to pump them for information and would stop risking their lives for him.

Helian Yuan had also noticed that the bounty notice bore no town office seal, only the gray pattern. The gray-robed man did not want an official record of what he had lost, yet he used twenty gold coins to create the illusion that "this has already been authorized." Most of the onlookers could not recognize seals. They only saw the thick paper, the reward, and the people standing nearby to keep order. Authority was something put on display; it did not necessarily exist.

He did not expose it in public. Doing so would only make the gray-robed man replace the notice with a more convincing one. Only by letting the bounty itself incur the cost of a mistake before everyone would he leave a lasting impression.

The more public the rules, the harder it was to admit to deceiving people.

Helian Yuan did not leave town immediately. He bought three ordinary copper bells at the smithy, then went to a medicine stall and traded for a packet of horseradish powder that irritated the nose. Finally, he sat down outside the tavern and ordered a bowl of the cheapest meat broth.

He rarely stayed this long in a crowded place.

Today, he had to let everyone watching him see that he was not in a hurry to flee, nor was he going to retrieve the supposed iron chest. He was merely a young hunter who had happened to hear about the bounty, wanted to make some quick money, but did not dare enter the mountains.

People in the tavern soon began talking about South Gully.

"That kid said there was an iron chest."

"Why didn't he get it himself?"

"He's scared of the Blue Rock Panther, obviously."

"Twenty gold coins. To hell with being scared. I'll find two people to go with me."

Three hunters formed a temporary team on the spot and agreed on how to split the reward. In less than a quarter of an hour, they left town with ropes and hammers. The unfamiliar people watching had to send another person after them.

Only after finishing his broth did Helian Yuan leave through the north gate.

There was indeed a lookout on the western road outside town. Two guards hid behind an abandoned mill, checking everyone heading toward Sunken Bone Slope. Helian Yuan did not go near them. He first tied a copper bell to a stray dog's tail, then smeared horseradish powder on the bell.

When the stray dog ran past the mill, the bell rang wildly, and the pungent powder made it sneeze repeatedly. The guards thought someone was using an iron whistle or medicinal powder to send a signal and immediately gave chase to investigate.

Helian Yuan climbed over a low wall in the opposite direction.

The cheap false signal could only be used once, but it was enough to get him past one lookout.

That evening, he returned to the outskirts of Sunken Bone Slope and found that the gray-robed man's people had indeed gone to South Gully. The three hunters drawn by the bounty were also nearby, arguing over an old iron chest. Helian Yuan had dragged the chest from an abandoned camp the night before. It contained only broken stones and an ordinary iron chain.

The guards could not publicly say the chest was not the "lost item," because the bounty had never stated what the lost item was. They could only take the chest back for inspection and detain the three hunters to question them about where it had come from.

The crowd began to grumble.

"You said no questions asked!"

"First tell us whether the thing is yours!"

"What about the twenty gold coins?"

The gray-robed man's empty bounty had turned around and bitten his authority for the first time. If he did not pay, no one would believe him in the future. If he did, he would be spending twenty gold coins on a chest of stones.

From a distance, Helian Yuan saw the gray-robed man approach. He did not get angry. He simply had the chest opened in public, then took out the ordinary iron chain.

"It's not the lost item," he said. "But the lead was valid. Give them three gold coins."

He had preserved the bounty at a smaller cost.

Then his gaze passed over the crowd and settled precisely on the wooded slope where Helian Yuan had been hiding.

Helian Yuan had already withdrawn.

The gray-robed man had not been held up by an empty chest for long, but the north lookout, South Gully, and the watchers outside town had all been mobilized at once. The actual recovery team had lost its outer support, and there would be fewer people available to block the roads when they captured the Blue Rock Panther that night.

Helian Yuan touched the three copper bells at his waist.

The bounty notice was still on the wall.

But from that day on, when the people of the town saw those three empty lines, twenty gold coins would no longer be the first thing they thought of.

They would think of three.

That night, the buyer quietly copied the bounty notice from the tavern wall and hung it on the back wall of his own shop, but added a drawing of an empty chest beside "deliver it intact." The next day, someone passing by saw it, and laughter soon spread. The buyer had not openly sided with Helian Yuan. He had merely reminded everyone in a merchant's way that in a deal where the goods were not clearly specified, the one offering the price often had the final say.

This limited action exposed no secrets, but it added another obstacle to the gray-robed man's way of persuading the town.