After a close to half an hour, there was a sound that rang out in the bar above the secret room.
“Xiao Huo, you and your friends can come back down now.”
Xiao Huo and the others looked around since they didn’t know where that voice came from, but they recognized it as the voice of the owner of the bar. So after a moment of being surprised, they opened the secret door and headed back down to the secret room.
When they came in, they saw Lin Fan and the owner of the bar just sitting at the table drinking some tea that had appeared out of nowhere.
When the owner of the bar saw them, he waved his hand at them and said, “Come, come, sit down. We were just talking about how to handle your situation.”
Xiao Huo couldn’t help looking at the owner of the bar before turning to Lin Fan and then turning back to the owner of the bar to ask, “Uncle, what happened here?”
The owner of the bar just said with a smile, “I just had a simple chat with our friend here about some of the more important details. It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
Lin Fan gave a nod of agreement to this.
But the three kids still had strange looks on their faces.
After all, they had seen Lin Fan holding his sword up to the neck of the owner of the bar. That wasn’t something that could be considered small, but they had brushed it under the table like it was nothing.
Just what had they talked about?
However, since they weren’t willing to say anything to them, there was nothing that they could do.
After all, it wasn’t as if the three kids could force these two to talk.
So they could only sit down and wait for them to start speaking again.
After seeing them sit down, the owner of the bar wasn’t in a rush to start the discussion and slowly poured some tea for them first.
Seeing the tea placed in front of them, the three kids couldn’t help taking a sip of the tea to calm themselves down.
Once they were all settled, the owner of the bar said, “Now let’s talk about your problems.”
At this, Xiao Huo jumped up and said, “Right! Uncle, we don’t have to waste like this! The Mercenary Guild could make their move at any time!”
The owner of the bar waved his hand and said, “Calm down, calm down. The Mercenary Guild won’t move as quickly as you think they will.”
Xiao Huo jolted before freezing in place. After a while, he said in a stunned voice, “Uncle, what do you mean? Do you already know something?”
The owner of the bar waved his hand for Xiao Huo to sit down before saying, “You should know what kind of people I have in place.” Then after a pause, he added, “Even if I didn’t have these people, I know that the Mercenary Guild is already pushing the limit. If they go any further, the people from headquarters will start peeking their noses into this matter and it would be a disaster for them. So they won’t make any big moves right now.”
Lin Fan couldn’t help knitting his brows and saying, “Why don’t you just report this matter to the Mercenary Guild headquarters?”
The owner of the bar shook his head and said, “Who do you think they would trust more? Not to mention that there’s no evidence.”
Lin Fan knitted his brows even more as he said, “But what about the…”
The owner of the bar shook his head again and said, “Not even close to enough.”
Lin Fan fell silent at this.
It was Xiao Huo’s turn to speak, “Then uncle, what should we do?”
The owner of the bar gave a casual shrug and said, “Nothing at all. I’m sure that the Mercenary Guild will be sending someone for you soon, so all you have to do is wait here.”
The expressions of the three kids fell when they heard this and they started looking around as if they were afraid of invisible enemies.
The owner of the bar just said, “Calm down. If you’re here then I can go with you to the Mercenary Guild when they come for you. You can just leave it all to me.”
Hearing this, the expression of the kids all relaxed a bit, but there was no hiding the trace of worry that was still in their eyes.
The owner of the bar could see this, but he didn’t give them any words of comfort. Instead, he stood up and waved for them to follow him as he headed out of the secret room.
Xiao Huo couldn’t help asking, “Uncle, didn’t you just say that we should wait here? Where are you going?”
The owner of the bar couldn’t help putting his hand in his face as he said, “I did say that we should stay here, but that doesn’t mean that we should stay in this room.” After a sigh, he added, “Come, help me get ready to open the bar. We’ll open early so there’s more people here. That will make it harder for the Mercenary Guild to do anything even if they wanted to.”
Xiao Huo gave an ‘oh’ sound before following the owner of the bar up along with the rest of the people here.
After around an hour, the bar was filled with people.
Even though they had opened up early, mercenaries were people that had freedom, so they could drink even if they had opened up early. After all, mercenaries worked as freelancers, so most of the time, they only had to do a single job and had plenty of spare time.
In fact, there were even more people than normal because the owner of the bar had decided to host a special event.
The bar had a famous brand of wine that only made an appearance once in a while and the owner decided to take it out today. It didn’t take long before the smell of the wine spread and the rumours spread among the drunkards of the city.
So the place was even more packed than normal.
It was at this time that a squad from the Mercenary Guild came to the bar.
This wasn’t a normal group of employees, but rather an inquisition squad that was only sent out when things went wrong.
They had heard that Xiao Huo’s group was at the bar, so they had come looking for them. However, when they saw all the people that were at the bar, they couldn’t help revealing ugly looks.
It was clear that if they were to do what they were sent here to do, it would create a scene. That was the last thing that the Mercenary Guild needed with its current reputation.
After all, after a certain point, the bubble would pop.
But this was their job, so they had no choice but to head into the bar still.
When the inquisition squad came in through the door, the lively bar suddenly fell silent as everyone turned to look in their direction.
As mercenaries, naturally the people in the bar recognized this inquisition squad and immediately revealed hostile looks. The inquisition squad also felt uncomfortable seeing the way that everyone looked at them, but they forced themselves to look calm on the surface.
After looking around the bar, the eyes of the leader of the inquisition squad fell onto Xiao Huo’s group who were currently in the center of the party.
They made their way through the crowd who parted to let them go through and they came in front of Xiao Huo’s group.
The leader of the inquisition group ignored everyone and said, “Leader of the Fire Thunder Goose group, please come back to the Mercenary Guild with me. We need to talk about your mission.”
Before Xiao Huo could answer, all of the mercenaries around them started gathering around them as if they were about to protect them. They looked at the inquisition squad with hostile looks and one of them led the rest as he said, “There’s no need for them to do anything, is there? We’re not afraid of you.”
But they were indeed afraid, so there wasn’t a single one of them that had pulled out their weapons.
The inquisition squad could naturally see this, so even if they were afraid to cause a scene, they didn’t back down at this point.
Xiao Huo then said, “Is there a problem here?”
The inquisition squad leader asked, “You were supposed to handle a mission for the Mercenary Guild today. Why are you back already?”
He could see that the situation was getting worse, so he tried using a bit of reasoning to support his case. After all, if this could be solved peacefully, that would be best for him.
But Xiao Huo just said, “We went to scout the area, but we found that it was much more dangerous than we imagined. We came back to the city to gather more supplies before heading out again. Is there something wrong with that?”
The other mercenaries immediately started backing them up.
“Are you telling them to rush to their deaths by going without proper equipment?”
“What do you take us mercenaries for?”
The inquisition squad leader slightly knitted his brows since he couldn’t deny this, but then he said, “Unfortunately the situation has changed and we need to talk to you about this. This involves sensitive information, so if you could come back with us to the Mercenary Guild, we can properly discuss this.”
“Oh, then how about I come along as well?”
When the inquisition squad leader heard this voice, he couldn’t help knitting his brows.