The Snake in the Shadows
With their questions answered, Sang Ying and her companion stopped troubling Shopkeeper Zhao.
Shopkeeper Zhao smiled as he went downstairs to the kitchen, not forgetting the good things the Min family had sent earlier that day.
Although he had eaten his fair share of delicacies in his life, he could never have too much of food imbued with Spiritual Qi.
Thinking that he could bring Xiao Sanzi along to try it today, Shopkeeper Zhao quickened his pace.
As he walked, he called out to Xiao Sanzi, "Xiao Sanzi, quickly bring up the food that the Min Household sent. Those two distinguished guests have already Grain Avoidance, so they left all the food for us. Today, I'll show you what true delicacies are!"
But shortly after these words were spoken, a shattering sound rang out.
Immediately after Shopkeeper Zhao entered the kitchen, he smelled an overly strong aroma of food. His eyelids twitched, and he sensed something was wrong. Turning his head to look, he saw Xiao Sanzi cleaning up the leftover food on the floor with a pained expression.
"Oh dear, what's going on?!" Shopkeeper Zhao immediately recognized that the food was delivered by the Min Household.
Seeing the food scattered all over the ground, none of it spared, Shopkeeper Zhao felt so sorry for it that he wanted to rush over and scoop it up with his hands.
Xiao Sanzi pushed his hand away. "Shopkeeper, don't touch it, it's already dirty, too dirty to eat."
Shopkeeper Zhao knew, of course, that the food was dirty, and that it was thoroughly stained. He said with distress, "The food was perfectly fine just now, how did it suddenly spill, and become such a mess!"
"It's me..." Xiao Sanzi lowered his head. "I heard that the food was left for us, and I was about to take it out when I lost my grip and this happened."
Shopkeeper Zhao was furious at his answer and was about to scold him, but seeing that Xiao Sanzi looked like he was about to cry, he held back the scolding that was on the tip of his tongue.
He looked around and asked, "Didn't they also send soup? The soup spilled, so where's the meat?"
When the Min Household delivered the gifts, Shopkeeper Zhao deliberately took a few extra glances, afraid that he wouldn't notice if something was missing. So he knew very well that one of the gifts was a spirit chicken soup, which was also stewed with a lot of spirit herbs, and was probably extremely nourishing.
The quality of the spirit chickens inside is also quite good. When Shopkeeper Zhao walked this way just now, he was thinking of leaving both chicken legs for Xiao Sanzi.
Xiao Sanzi moved his lips slightly upon hearing this. "That stray cat just ran over, and before I could stop it, it snatched it away."
As he spoke, he looked up at Shopkeeper Zhao with deep remorse. "Manager, I'm so sorry, it's all my fault. Why don't you deduct the cost of these meals from my wages?"
Shopkeeper Zhao shook his head, looking at Xiao Sanzi with pity. "Forget it, if we deduct it from your wages, you'd probably have to work for free at my inn for a thousand years!"
Xiao Sanzi seemed shocked by the high price of the food. After cleaning up the mess on the floor, he stood to the side with his dirty hands clenched, head down, not daring to say a word.
Shopkeeper Zhao only kept him at the inn out of pity; otherwise, with such a sparsely populated inn, he could manage on his own, so why hire a waiter?
Seeing Xiao Sanzi's timid and hesitant appearance, Shopkeeper Zhao sighed again, "Never mind, I just wanted you to eat something good with me. This is all thanks to our two distinguished guests, so it's not a loss for me that you've spilled it."
Shopkeeper Zhao quickly helped clean up the kitchen. He was initially just a little distressed, but when he discovered that the kid had spilled all the food, leaving not a single piece of meat clean, he felt both distressed and amused.
Xiao Sanzi seemed to have sensed Shopkeeper Zhao's intentions, and even swore an oath to the manager, saying, "Don't worry, I will definitely make sure you live a life where you can eat these good things every day."
Shopkeeper Zhao was taken aback, a strange feeling welling up inside him. "Alright then, I'll be waiting for you to give me your tribute then."
Xiao Sanzi smiled but didn't say anything. In the end, he carried the dirty food to the back door to throw it into the swill bucket.
The alleyway at the back gate was fairly secluded, and the stench of the swill hadn't escaped.
Xiao Sanzi casually tossed the things aside, seemingly worried that someone might take them and eat them, then grabbed a handful of dirt from a corner of the alley and sprinkled it in.
As he did these things, a thin, sharp meow echoed through the alley.
Xiao Sanzi walked towards the direction from which the sound came. At the corner of the alley, in a small gap created by a wall, a cat with filthy fur was lying on the ground, its belly heaving with difficulty.
Its mouth was smeared with vomit, and there was even a trace of blood. But next to this kitten was a plump, tender chicken that had been gnawed in half.
A few green vegetable leaves were hanging on the spirit chicken. If someone recognized them, they would immediately recognize that these vegetable leaves contained a lot of Spiritual Qi and were a kind of spirit medicine that could nourish the human body!
"Sigh, how pitiful." Xiao Sanzi watched quietly, showing no intention of helping him. "I told you long ago that you couldn't eat that stuff, but why wouldn't you listen?"
The meows gradually faded away, and the kitten soon fell silent.
Xiao Sanzi reached out his hand towards the spirit chicken, and a black mist instantly swallowed the plump spirit chicken, accompanied by the crunching sound of bones being gnawed on.
Then he withdrew his hand, leaving only a dead cat in the gap, nothing else.
The old man gasped for breath, slumped to the ground, and sat there for a while before finally catching his breath.
He glanced at Wuming, who was lying on the bed fast asleep, and said irritably, "Hmph! You're so unconscious you don't think about anything anymore, but I, an old man, have to go through all this trouble for you!"
The Curse on Wuming erupted suddenly. Over the years, the old man had suffered great damage to his body due to too much divination and glimpsing too many heavenly secrets. After expending so much effort to temporarily suppress the surging Spiritual Qi within Wuming, his already damaged body became even weaker.
After catching his breath a few more times on the ground, the old man finally managed to stand up.
He rubbed his empty stomach, wondering why his Wuming nephew hadn't brought him food yet, when he caught a whiff of a strange fragrance.
The old man narrowed his eyes; he recognized the incense as the very same message incense he had once sent out.
He chuckled, his expression unusually relaxed. "Oh my, I never expected the Min Household to be so lucky, finding their benefactor before me!"
With his stomach growling loudly, the old man clapped his hands and got up to head towards the house that had absolutely no connection to the slums.
"This is a good opportunity for me to get to know that important person. I've been searching for her for so many years!" The old man happily stepped out the door, completely ignoring the Wuming still lying on the broken bed behind him.
That's why he missed the scene where the red mark Wuming's eyebrows flickered several times and then suddenly disappeared.
A note from the author:
I didn't sleep well last night, and my head and eyes hurt a bit today, so I'll only be posting two updates. Sorry!
See you tomorrow~