Then he froze. In the room was a young girl, wearing a simple black cloak, but it could not hide her stunning figure beyond human imagination. She leaned her elbows on the table, sitting quietly, her dark brown eyes as soft and bright as water staring at him, so beautiful that it seemed unreal, like a scene in a dream. But Thomas was an experienced adventurer after all, and his sophisticated professionalism allowed him to quickly recover from his distraction. He simply said a few perfunctory words to the girl and prepared to leave, recounting what he had seen and heard to a special person who was waiting somewhere. "If you think you can get away with it, try." However, the girl's playful whisper almost made his heart stop and his blood almost froze. Thomas' principle for accepting orders, in addition to "reasonable price", has one more principle: be quick! He never touches orders that seem to be extremely risky, no matter how high the reward is, such as assassination, robbery, extortion, etc., even if the difficulty seems to be within his ability. In practicing this principle, he often only dared to accept some minor illegal commissions, such as following a factory owner, investigating the mistress of a big businessman, or at most running to a street thug's stronghold in the South District to steal some things. He had no talent for cultivation, and after more than ten years of hard work he had only reached the middle stage of skill tempering. But he was a transcendent after all, so he could handle these commissions with ease. He has been doing this business for nearly ten years. He doesn't make much money, but it is stable because there is a demand for this kind of down-to-earth work every day, and he can find orders whenever he wants. Most importantly, it is safe! He doesn't have to worry about offending some big shot who can't be offended, and then disappearing one night.
Many underground adventurers who were ambitious looked down on him, despising him for being a superhuman who was actually doing such petty things all day long. They would show off to him from time to time that they had "made a big deal", earned so much Ferum, and were valued by their clients... Thomas didn't take it seriously because these young people usually disappeared after a while. In short, he doesn't care about his face and reputation. He will accept anyone who can make money, even if he has to crawl, let alone kneel. As long as it is safe, he will accept it. This time was the same, although he knew very well that this seemingly routine commission must have some hidden secrets that could not be revealed, otherwise there would be no need to release it through underground channels. Wouldn't it be more convenient to place the order directly at the guild? But considering that the commission was pitifully low, he didn't worry whether there was some conspiracy behind this overly easy commission, or whether he would get into big trouble because of it. There are definitely interests involved behind the scenes, but they are probably just small but insignificant matters like investigating the mistresses of big businessmen. If we really want to investigate, it can't be blamed on him. However, at this moment, Thomas realized that he had miscalculated. After a moment of silence, Thomas, with cold sweat on his forehead, swallowed hard, looked at the black-haired girl with a stiff head, and forced a smile: "Miss, are you talking to me?" He still had a hope - what if he had heard it wrong? Or was it just a meaningless soliloquy? "Yes, you heard it wrong. I didn't say anything. Please go away." The girl moved her arm off the table, slowly turned around on tiptoe, facing herself with a faint smile on her face. She... is dangerous! Extremely dangerous! You can't resist! Otherwise... you will die! absolute! The girl's demeanor was nonchalant, and she didn't look like a ruthless or powerful character. But Thomas sensed a huge threat at this moment. This was an intuition that he had developed after more than a decade of working underground. It was inexplicable, but mostly reliable. "I, I'm just a small fry who gets paid to do things for me. I'll tell you everything I know, please spare my life." He acted decisively and raised his hands above his head. He no longer had time to think about the consequences of betraying his employer, he only knew that if he disobeyed the words of the mysterious black-haired girl in front of him, he would be finished on the spot. "Oh, you surrendered so quickly. If you were born in my hometown, you would be very good at making perfume." Qi Ji was amused and couldn't help but make a joke that no one could understand. Then he leaned back slightly and clasped his hands in front of his abdomen:
"Go ahead." Thomas quickly confessed everything he could, his desire to survive almost overflowing. "...Black market?" After listening, Qi Ji looked out the window, his thoughts scattered. According to the adventurer named Thomas, he received the commission on the black market, and he did not know who the client was. Qi Ji realized that the organization behind the scenes was most likely a very tight and complete organization, which could be seen from Thomas: even if he told him everything he knew, Qi Ji could not obtain much meaningful information, and he knew nothing about his superiors, the real purpose, and so on. Most likely, that "special person" is just an insignificant pawn. Even if Qi Ji runs over and tortures him severely, he won't be able to get any information out of him. "Tsk, things are getting more and more interesting." Faced with a mysterious force with ulterior motives, Qi Ji was not worried about his own safety, but became excited instead. Yesterday she was still worried about having nothing to do, but as a result, a strange incident that was obviously hiding a secret came to her door, which made her thirst for knowledge and curiosity suddenly agitated. Puzzle games are the most interesting... Thomas watched Qi Ji's reaction with fear and trepidation. He knew that from the moment he entered the door, his head was already in her hands. If the girl was not happy, his life would definitely be lost. Therefore, when she withdrew her gaze from the window and looked back at him, his heart rose to his throat, his nerves were so tense that they were about to break, and he listened with all his attention to the girl's final decision. "Thomas, right?" She placed her right palm on the table, tapping it lightly with her slender, green onion-like white fingers. "Go find that 'special person' later and tell him what I'm going to say next." Thomas' heart, which was about to burst out of his chest, finally calmed down a little. He nodded vigorously as if he had grabbed a life-saving straw: "Just give me your orders!" Qi Ji was in a playful mood, with a naughty smile on his face, and he spoke a few words word by word. After listening to him, Thomas couldn't help but widen his eyes... A few minutes later, Qi Ji stood by the window, looking down at the bustling street. Thomas, who had just left, was walking away quickly with mixed feelings. "Okay, what should we do next? Just waiting is too boring." She was in high spirits and doing nothing was too torturous. Just as she was racking her brains to think of how to have fun, she suddenly had an idea and abruptly raised her head to look in a direction outside. "That guy seems to have some problems... Anyway, I have nothing to do, so I'll go check it out." Chapter 15 Man is about to die In the southern district of Steio, in an inconspicuous alley. Jack, a textile factory worker who had just finished his night shift, dragged his exhausted body and staggered forward. He was clearly a young man in his twenties, but his figure was like that of an old man in his twilight years. "I got hurt again... It's going to be hard to go on duty tonight." There was a dark red stain on his left trouser leg, and the tearing pain made him grimace from time to time, but he was not concerned about his own injuries. "I can get 166 ferrums this week... probably." Jack quickened his pace despite the pain, thinking, "Maybe only 150 ferrums, or even less... In that case, I'll have to eat one-third less rye bread in the evenings... Hang in there! My brother's fever will be cured next week! He'll be over it soon... Oh, the salt block is almost finished, should I buy another one... What is it?" A black shadow passed by overhead and disappeared behind the roof opposite in a flash, so fast that its entire shape could not be seen clearly. "...never mind, it could have been a bird - the price of a block of salt is..." He shrugged and continued walking, not realizing that if it was a bird, the shadow it cast couldn't have been that big. But even if he was found out, what would happen? Jack didn't care. He just wanted to get back to his home built with discarded wooden boards as soon as possible, fall into a coma on the hard, cold narrow bed, and hope that sleep could heal the work injury on his leg so as not to affect his work at night.
Such scenes are common in the desolate South District. For the hungry and cold residents of the South District, is the movement on the roof important? Can it make the owner of the handicraft workshop give them a raise, or can it make this deadly fever completely disappear? Not long after, a swift black shadow descended from a roof and landed steadily on the overgrown wasteland. “It’s so far…” Qi Ji took off his hood and looked up at the dilapidated shantytown in front of him. Searching for the familiar spiritual fluctuations in her perception, she crossed most of Stio, from the prosperous commercial north district through the central aristocratic district, all the way to the opposite south district, and finally arrived at the source of the fluctuations. "How can a warrior at the Righteous Mind Realm live in such a shabby place?" Being at the initial or middle stage of Right Mindfulness was certainly not worth mentioning to her, but in this border city where the highest level was just the Dao Expounder, which was equivalent to the spiritual realm of a warrior, it was considered to be of medium to high standard. She shouldn't be unable to even rent a decent house, right? "Maybe it's not a residence, but just a temporary shelter?" With all kinds of questions in mind, she walked into the shantytown and approached one of the wooden houses. That’s right, Qi Ji came here this time just to find the strange guy who sneaked into his room last night, left inexplicably and took away a cup. Originally, she wanted to put the matter aside for the time being. However, when she was still in the hotel just now, she suddenly felt that there was something strange about this person's spiritual fluctuations, and then it slowly weakened. She guessed that something was wrong. So she came to observe the situation with the mentality that she had nothing to do. Soon Qi Ji walked to the wooden house. The condition of this house was extremely bad. It was just a few blackened broken wooden boards put together casually. It could neither keep out the cold nor block the wind. It was too shabby to be used as a doghouse. According to the perception, the guy was inside and in a fixed position without moving. After paying attention to her surroundings and making sure that no one could see her, she pushed open the door and walked in. There wasn't even a lock on the door...just a board tied to a wooden frame with ropes. "Squeak-" Along with an unpleasant and harsh friction sound, a dark and dilapidated scene appeared before her eyes. The wooden house was very small and one could see the inside out - it was more like a crude woodshed than a residence: there were several rows of shabby cabinets in the corners filled with straw, wood and all kinds of sundries, and a crude bed that was also in a mess. At a glance, it feels like the things in this wooden house don't look like a place for people to live. Instead, it looks like a wild beast's den with a disgusting smell. But according to what Qi Ji had seen and heard in the southern district, owning such a house was already considered lucky. Many people did not even have a fixed place to live and could only wander the streets, using the sky as a blanket and the ground as a bed. Enduring the stench of decay and mildew, she turned her attention to the corner of the cabin. The thin man from last night was now slumped in the corner, his face was as haggard as paper, his cheekbones were high and protruding, and in his deep sunken eye sockets were a pair of bloodshot eyeballs. His thin lips were completely bloodless, revealing a dark purple color. Hearing the noise at the door, he turned his head weakly. At this moment, his pupils, which were empty without a trace of light, suddenly contracted, and his body trembled violently with excitement. "Cough, cough, cough...ah ah...mm, wow!..." He struggled and twitched, and his dry throat squeezed out rough bubbling sounds, as if he was trying with all his strength to do something, to say something. "You're going to die." Qi Ji walked over with a blank expression. As soon as she entered the room, she noticed that there was an iron cup beside the man. It was not the one he took from the hotel last night, but his own cup. A small pool of liquid flowed out of it. It was water, but not entirely water. Qi Ji's sensitive intuition instantly discerned a trace of unusual breath from it. It was spirituality. There was spiritual remnant in a glass of water! The water was poisoned, a poison that contained spiritual properties and was difficult for even warriors at the Righteous Mind Realm to resist. "Giggle... ugh..." The man's muscles twitched like a drowning man, and his neck was taut with blue veins. Was this the last struggle of a dying man?
The next second, as if reaching a certain limit, his body collapsed and his vital signs dropped to the lowest point. “……” A long silence. Just when Qi Ji thought he had fainted completely, he suddenly raised his haggard head and looked at her blankly, revealing relief and an indescribable calmness. "This... is... my ending..." Perhaps it was a last burst of energy, the man actually started to speak, although his voice was hesitant and as thin as a mosquito's, and his pronunciation was unclear, but compared to the previous situation, it was truly a miracle. "So you... are the angel who will lead me... to heaven... Ah, it should be hell... Hehe, someone like me... actually has the qualifications... to go to hell..." Qi Ji didn't say anything, but just stared at him silently, his black eyes as cold as water showing no emotion. “I am guilty… I deserve it… No matter how severe the punishment is, it is what I deserve…” No one knew if the man was still conscious at this moment. He kept talking to himself, almost in a delirium, “I, I killed three people… They were all young men in their prime… Before they died, they all… begged for mercy from me… I… had no… mercy…” "Ha...ha...I have been on the run for so many years...ha, I am so stupid...I actually expected...a gang in a border city...to help me...clear my name..." He murmured weakly, already on the verge of his limit, his pupils gradually dilated. "I... I accept this... ending... without any objection... If all this... is arranged by God, then He... He is too merciful... to actually let me... see such a beautiful scene... in the end..." The man leaned against the wall, his cloudy eyes dull. His unfocused pupils seemed to be looking at Qi Ji's face, but also seemed to be looking into the infinity behind her. The last beat subsided, and the spirituality surging in the body also stopped fluctuating, lost its activity, and settled into an inert spirituality without breath of life. "Gulu..." His shirt trembled, and a round object fell out. It was a cup, the drugged cup that he had taken from Qi Ji's room last night. It fell on the dirty and wet floor, rolled to Qi Ji's feet and stopped, symbolizing the final goodness of an unforgivable sinner. Chapter 16 Humanoid Spectrum Analyzer Qi Ji had a general understanding of the basic situation. In fact, it is very simple. There is a mysterious force in the local area. They hired a fugitive murderer in exchange for the promise of clearing his name. They asked him to sneak into her room in the middle of the night and put drugs in her water cup. As a result, the fugitive felt guilty and gave up his mission and ran away at the last moment. In the end, I don’t know whether it was because of a sudden change of heart to punish him, or because that force had originally intended to kill him to silence him afterwards, the fugitive was poisoned to death here... Qi Ji's reason told her that the latter was more likely, because in her perception, Thomas's spiritual fluctuations were still moving, which meant that he had not yet conveyed her situation and her words to the "special person", and the forces behind the scenes probably did not know that last night's plan had not succeeded. In short, it seems that the several things that happened from last night to now can be connected together. Qi Ji tried to deduce what would happen to him if everything developed as planned by the forces behind the scenes. The fugitive put drugs in the cup at midnight yesterday. The next morning, she woke up, poured water into the cup and drank it... I don't know the specific effect of the drug, but it will definitely put the target into an extremely passive and even at the mercy of others. Then Thomas came into the room and informed the “special person” of her situation…and then what? Qi Ji put himself in the other person's shoes and continued to deduce logically from the perspective of the forces behind the scenes. The most likely possibility is that the "special person" will report it again, and then another pawn will run to her room and take away Qi Ji, who has lost her ability to resist. This is indeed time-consuming, but also... safe.
There is no way to imagine what happened next. There is too little known information, and if you force it, it will just be pure imagination, which is meaningless. But even so, Qi Ji could still glimpse a huge, tight and vicious force. "They are really cautious. Those who acted on the front line were just small minions who were used and discarded. The people behind the scenes kept their hands clean. Even if the matter was exposed, they would not be implicated." She sneered and looked at the cup of water that had rolled to her feet. "Fortunately, the clues are not broken..."
