The shopkeeper, after ascertaining that Lu Qian didn't have the money to settle the bill, gave a completely un-cushioned face, glanced down at the corners of his mouth, and went to complain to the boss's wife.
Only a few steps away from Lu Qian, the shopkeeper was complaining, and at the same time, he turned back to despise this customer who didn't have the money to pay the bill.
Lu Qian was not too friendly to respond to that contemptuous gaze, he half lowered his head, his peach blossom eyes, which were born with a little smile, raised up, and gazed at the shopkeeper through his long, dense eyelashes.
A pair of sword eyebrows that appeared to be low on the inside and raised on the outside due to the handsome profile of the brow bone, modified the natural smile in Lu Qian's eyes to be extremely provocative, giving people the illusion that this teenager could play with the world like a mole cricket when he laughed and laughed.
The young man's imposing manner distracted the boss's wife for a moment, and then with an almost blank smile on her face, she walked towards Lu Qian, saying that this meal was on her, and asked him to come more often in the future.
Lu Qian does not want her to buy this meal, if he accepts this alms, he will have to accept together with the shopkeeper's contempt, so he said fiercely, "I will send someone to send the money for the meal later".
"Yes, yes, yes!" The boss's wife realized that her help was too subtle and would frustrate the young man's sharpness, and immediately took the initiative to make it clear that she was worried about offending him as a valued customer, and made it sound as if her store would close down if Lu Qian didn't come and order a "few days' worth of remote" in the future.
Women of this age are accustomed to maintaining manly self-respect by showing weakness.
But this kind of thing only happens to the boss's wife when she treats very few men, she is a tigress even to her husband, but because of some kind of aura on Lu Qian, she will degrade herself into a thirty-something year old woman.
This kind of disguised pettiness can only be understood by those who know how to understand it, the store boy on the side can only be puzzled, blankly and jealously glaring hard at the teenager who ate the bully's food, not understanding why the boss's wife was open to him.
The boss's wife was not the only one who had this kind of weird tolerance towards Lu Qian, there were also many people who were familiar or only had a one-sided acquaintance, which also included Xue Yao.
Xue Yao himself did not realize this little secret of his own, and in the course of living together, he always intentionally or unintentionally let Lu Qian live up to the addiction of "being a family member".
In the long run, it all became a habit, so much so that Xue Yao became pure and simple in front of Lu Qian without thinking much, as if she really needed protection.
Occasionally, when Lu Qian encounters danger, only then will Xue Yao unseal the seal and change back to the identity of the protector who plans and improvises, but subconsciously doesn't let the other party find out, so as not to strike Lu Qian's little manly heart.
Lu Qian himself, who was able to cause this wonderful self-mutilating behavior in many people, was not aware of the truth.
He didn't realize that these people were intentionally or unintentionally acting weak in front of him just to fulfill his natural desire to be tough.
Under such treatment, Lu Qian had always thought that he was everyone's protector, so powerful that he couldn't be forced to look at him, so he thought that Xue Yao would never dare to leave him of her own accord in a dangerous situation.
However Xue Yao was now leaving him of his own accord.
This gave Lu Qian his first fresh sense of frustration.
He didn't like to be disturbed by these obnoxious emotions, because the emotional disorder made it difficult for him to digest such strange emotions, and like the pain caused by his father's disappearance, there was no way to drive it away.
Lu Qian couldn't do anything about this kind of pain, he was rarely this powerless.
If there were a few more such losses, the pain that could not be driven away would fill his world.
The only way Lu Potential could come up with was to drive out these people who had entered his world, one by one.
If these people had never existed in the first place, the loss would not have become that wave of pain that cannot be dispelled.
It had been over a year, and he was satisfied with the results of his exorcism, for he had grown accustomed to the absence of his little companion.
He equates escaping the attachments of the real world with getting rid of the dependencies of the spiritual world, mistakenly believing that he no longer has a soft spot.
Xue Yao's sudden disappearance broke Lu Qian's assessment of himself.
He realized, vaguely, that that past year or so of being at ease was only because it was clear enough to know that those in his heart were safe and sound.
And now, he didn't know if Xue Yao was safe.
Lu Qian was furious at his own unilateral and unstoppable desire to protect, but blaming himself would not solve the problem, it would only make him angrier and angrier, and he turned to blaming Xue Yao for her capriciousness and wantonness.
Master protects Yao Yao, always.
Lu Qian thought to himself on his way back to the palace grounds: it's not fair for Yao Yao to leave when she wants to.
Bad telekinesis.
However, after returning to the palace, Lu Qian realized that Bad Yao Yao was not waiting for him in the palace to throw a tantrum.
*
Xue Yao and the two boys were led into the secret room by Ah Zhu to what Xue Yao referred to as the "crime site".
He grabbed an oil lamp and lay on the ground for a long time, attempting to confirm by the footprints that his description of the passage was not fictitious.
If one could see the footprints, even if the trajectory was confusing, one could at least tell how many people had been present in the room in total, however in practice this was not as easy to achieve as it was in theory.
Xue Yao pouted and found five vague footprints, but wasn't able to tell the difference between the footprints with the naked eye.
Without a camera, photo matching is not possible.
"What exactly are you trying to pull?" A tied up boy screamed at Xue Yao, "Trying to stall for time, waiting for your accomplices to get the Sword Saint to come and stand up for you?"
These words managed to induce a fearful hostility towards Xue Yao from the surrounding elders.
"Whether or not Senior Sword Saint is someone who protects his shortcomings, all of you know it by heart." Xue Yao raised his head to look at the crowd, "If I really did something like killing and plundering money, it would be too late to hide from the Sword Saint, so how could I possibly ask him to step in?"
"So what are you doing here now?" Pearl asked.
"Check the footprints." Xue Yao said, "At that time, the man who pretended to be the gang leader was standing in this position, and I was standing in that position."
Azhu frowned, this underground chamber was immaculately cleaned, where could a clear footprint be left, there was no way to recognize it.
The two boys also breathed a sigh of relief when they heard this, and one of them said, "Trying to fool our eldest miss? Don't waste your efforts, hurry up and confess the whereabouts of the gang master and return the secret book, our elders will let you suffer less and give you a good time!"
"The secret book was stolen by you two, wasn't it?" Xue Yao coldly opened his mouth to question.
The two boys were suddenly jolted and said in unison, "Bloody mouth!"
Xue Yao stood up, and without moving, walked over to the bogey shelf, raised his hand to flip open the lid of a treasure chest on the left side, and lowered his head to take out the small objects inside one by one.
The treasure chest contains some extremely well-made concealed weapons, most of which are made of iron, with patterns and textual inscriptions inlaid in wrong gold and silver on the upper door, and flipping to the bottom, a pure gold sleeve arrow was also found.
Xue Yao's eyes lit up, as if he had caught some kind of breakthrough point, and after a little thought, he turned back and said, "When we left, we didn't take that book at all, and only took a few objects from this treasure chest."
A flash of disappointment flashed in Pearl's eyes.
"I count on you to be sensible, finally willing to admit it?" The boy laughed coldly, "Since you've admitted it, don't say half and hide half, who would believe that you only took the treasure and not the secret book?"
Xue Yao frowned, ''It's true that I only took two treasures, I didn't take that secret book of mind techniques, the secret book was taken by you two, right?
Also, the night pearl-like jade in this case, I wanted to take it away, but the thing was too slippery to hold, and we left in such a hurry that we didn't rummage around for it, and now that bead is gone, too, so it must have been taken by you as well."
"Don't fool people! Where's the jade in that box!" A boy hastily argued.
"No?" Xue Yao's pair of phoenix eyes narrowed, revealing a wicked smile of triumph, "I'm talking nonsense, unlike you guys, who purposely rummaged through it and knew that there was no jade in the chest, in that case, you guys should have taken away all the pure gold concealed weapons, right? Otherwise, how come there is only one pure gold sleeve arrow left in the bottom of this chest?"
The two boys rounded their eyes all of a sudden, and one rebuked, "We haven't gone through the chest! But know that our sect doesn't have concealed weapons made of jade!"
Xue Yao turned his head and asked Ah Zhu, "No?"
Aju frowned sideways at the two young attendants and whispered, "Of course I did."
"But there's none in this box." Xue Yao was the one who intentionally said that there was nothing there, these two children were so antagonistic that they would surely catch him in the wrong and retort, arguing that there was no jade in the box, and sure enough, these two boys did not fight.
"Most of the objects in the chest are made of gold, silver, and copper, and as a matter of fact, there should be quite a lot of pure gold, but now there is only one left." Xue Yao turned his head and asked Ah Zhu, "Has the girl seen the contents of this chest? Is it as I speculated, there are many pure gold items missing?"
Azhu was silent for a moment and replied, "That's right, there are a few gold concealed weapons missing."
"Even if the hidden weapon with less gold is missing, it can't be blamed on us!" The boy said anxiously, "You said you didn't touch the box again, so how do you know the gold is missing? It's simply that you took it yourself when you saw the money!"
Xue Yao gave a mocking smile, looking down and slowly reaching for his sleeve pocket.
"Don't move! What do you want!" The surrounding elders were afraid that he would pull out a concealed weapon and held their weapons.
"Don't be nervous, gentlemen, I'll take something to prove myself." Xue Yao slowly pulled out the money pouch from his sleeve pocket and handed it to Ah Zhu, "Please, girl, take out the silver ticket inside and take a look."
Azhu took the money bag with a puzzled face, and according to his request, she pulled out the squarely folded silver bills inside, and when she opened it, it turned out to be four silver bills with a face value of five hundred taels!
Xue Yao was satisfied with the surprise on Ah Zhu's face and smiled slightly, deliberately showing a disdainful attitude: "This is the silver I brought with me, there should be a few thousand taels left, right? If you don't believe me, you can take me to confront the bosses of the grain stores in the two places to prove my family's financial strength."
The boy said anxiously, "You're rich, aren't you? Our Xuan Night Sect can't even afford to offend the government!"
Xue Yao shrugged, "Being rich is nothing great, but it can be said with certainty that with my eyesight, it's impossible for me to still covet this bit of gold when my life is at stake, and it's only the despicable villains who would covet this kind of cheapness, such as the two little brothers who bitched about the lack of jade in the box."
"You wicked thief!" The boy blushed, "If you want to put it this way, don't you also know that there is no jade in this box? You're simply setting up a trap on purpose to frame us!"
Xue Yao laughed blandly, "I just found out that there is only one gold artifact left in this box, and suspected that you guys only cared about stealing the gold, so the box probably didn't have any jade artifacts in it in the first place, so I intentionally said that and waited for you guys to tell me the answer, but I didn't expect that the two of you would reveal yourselves so easily."
"Your words don't make sense!" The boy's lips turned blue with anxiety, "You're deliberately misleading with your words, and you're the one who's revealing yourself!"
"Oh?" Xue Yao asked rhetorically, "You were the first to reveal yourselves, weren't you? If not, why didn't you even remember to add the missing ingredient to the incense in the room when you received us last night?"
"That wasn't our job in the first place!" The boy rushed to his defense: "Who knows what kind of incense is burning in that house!"
Xue Yao took a deep breath and smiled pleasantly, ''So, where are the attendants who were originally serving in that house? Why are you two the only ones left? Didn't you say that the master of the gang was going to meet us? Where are the Master's attendants?"
For a moment, the air froze.
The two boys who had accidentally and completely confessed turned blue and stiffened into stone statues.