Chapter 621 - 390: Varying Thoughts

Chapter 621: Chapter 390: Varying Thoughts

"So that’s what happened." Zhu Daqi nodded. He wasn’t surprised by Liu Xiaoyan’s explanation; after all, he’d broken the hands of his fair share of gamblers who wouldn’t pay up.

Then, looking a little confused, he asked, "But I was watching that guy yesterday. He didn’t look like a deadbeat gambler."

"He’s not actually a deadbeat gambler. He just pissed someone off, and a client is paying us to take care of him.

Coincidentally, business at the casino is terrible right now. We’re short on cash and can’t make payroll, so your Big Bro took the job..." Liu Xiaoyan added.

"..." Zhu Daqi was incredibly moved. "Big Bro went missing for our sake. If we confirm something happened to him, we have to get revenge for him!"

Liu Xiaoyan glanced at Zhu Daqi’s moved expression but said nothing. ’This guy is so easy to fool,’ she thought.

Just as Liu Xiaoyan was internally scoffing at how gullible Zhu Daqi was, Zhu Daqi, his face still a mask of deep emotion, was already regretting his own bold words.

’What the hell was I thinking, running my mouth like that? Big Bro is a Second Order Middle Stage Cultivator, and even he went after that guy and ended up missing.’

’If it turns out that guy really is responsible for what happened to Big Bro, then me and the others going after him would be like throwing an egg against a rock.’

The black sedan headed purposefully toward the outskirts of the East District. The man and woman in the driver and passenger seats were each lost in their own, very different, thoughts.

If anyone could have heard their thoughts at that moment, they would have surely cracked a knowing smile.

...

This mountain forest had only been open to the public for a few months and originally had no paths. But as more people walked through it, an uneven yet passable dirt trail had formed.

Carrying backpacks filled with food, Lin Li and Su Yue set out from their campsite for a hike. They chatted as they walked, occasionally stopping to take pictures of the scenery.

Su Yue pulled out her phone and opened the camera, preparing to take a few scenic shots.

Suddenly, she saw a patch of brilliant yellow on her screen and immediately zoomed the camera in.

Once she got a clear look at the orange-yellow objects, she turned and shouted to Lin Li, who was standing behind her under a large tree, drinking water.

"Lin Li, hurry and come look! I found a ton of wild oranges."

Lin Li, who was in the middle of drinking some bottled water, immediately walked over to Su Yue. "Where are they?"

"Over there," Su Yue said, raising her slender arm to point at a spot in the distance.

The golden sunlight was dazzling. Lin Li raised a hand to shield his eyes and looked where Su Yue was pointing. "Wow, you’re right! That’s a lot of wild oranges."

"Hold my bag for me. I’m going to go pick some," Su Yue said, shrugging off her backpack and handing it to Lin Li.

"I should be the one to go," Lin Li said. "The slope is really steep over there. If you slip, you might just roll all the way down the mountain."

He put his unfinished bottle of water back in his backpack, stepped off the dirt path, and headed directly toward the spot where Su Yue had found the wild oranges.

"Be careful!" Su Yue called out, worried he would fall as she watched him move with surprising speed across the rugged slope.

"Got it!" Lin Li replied casually, not slowing his pace at all.

’What a joke,’ he thought. ’If a dignified Peak Second Order Cultivator couldn’t even handle terrain like this, I’d be a laughingstock.’

In just a moment, Lin Li reached the spot Su Yue had discovered, which was thick with wild orange trees.

There were over a dozen orange trees growing on the steep slope. They were all flourishing, and by the looks of them, they were quite old.

However, since these were wild trees, the oranges they produced were not very large—nothing like the ones from meticulously cultivated trees that were sold in markets.

"Lin Li, watch your step in the tall grass! You don’t want to step on a snake!"

Just as Lin Li was about to take off his backpack and pick some oranges, he heard Su Yue’s warning from behind him.

He waved a hand dismissively, plucked an orange from the tree in front of him, and dropped it into his backpack.

As he reached for a second orange, the grass three meters away suddenly shook. A terrifying, one-and-a-half-meter-long, black-and-white creature slithered out and let loose a hiss that would make one’s skin crawl.

’Damn, Su Yue really is a jinx...’ In the quiet orange grove, the faint hiss of the black-and-white venomous snake was nonetheless crystal clear.

"We just need a few to taste, don’t pick too many..." Because of her vantage point, Su Yue had no idea that Lin Li was currently in a standoff with a black-and-white venomous snake.

"Got it," Lin Li called back nonchalantly, all while mobilizing the Spiritual Energy in his Dantian.

A faint golden Spiritual Light flashed over his right hand, and in an instant, a palm-sized, wickedly sharp Cyan Wind Blade materialized.

The triangular-headed, black-and-white snake was just an ordinary wild animal, completely unaware that disaster was about to strike.

It was furious with this human for invading its territory and prepared to strike.

"HISSSSSS..."

Had it been any ordinary person picking wild oranges here instead of Lin Li, encountering such a large venomous snake hissing menacingly would have likely scared them so badly their legs would have given out.

"What are you hissing at? Think you’ve got me figured out?" Seeing the black-and-white snake hissing viciously at him, Lin Li wasn’t the least bit frightened. Instead, he glared right back.

Then, the instant before the venomous snake lunged to attack, a thought flashed through Lin Li’s mind. The palm-sized, wickedly sharp Cyan Wind Blade shot forward.

"WHOOSH."

The Wind Blade was incredibly fast; there was no way an ordinary snake like this could possibly dodge it.

"SLICE."

In the blink of an eye, the black-and-white snake, which had been poised to strike Lin Li, was sliced in two by the razor-sharp Cyan Wind Blade. Blood gushed from the cut, quickly soaking a patch of grass on the ground.

Though its body was severed and its death assured, the snake’s bisected corpse continued to writhe on the ground due to its biology—an unsettling sight to behold.

Moreover, a dead snake’s head can still deliver a bite due to reflexes, so the safest course of action was to bury it.

Lin Li remembered that the black-and-white snake was venomous. To prevent it from accidentally harming someone else, he decided to take precautions.

So he walked a few steps to a spot out of Su Yue’s line of sight, took a shovel from the Mysterious Small Island, dug a small pit, and buried the dead snake inside.

"STOMP, STOMP, STOMP..."

After filling the pit with dirt, Lin Li stomped on the ground a few times, then returned the shovel to the Mysterious Small Island.

"Lin Li, are you done yet?" Su Yue shouted, wondering why it was taking him so long just to pick some oranges.

"Almost!" Lin Li called back. He quickly picked about twenty more wild oranges before heading back the way he came.

Su Yue watched as Lin Li jogged back up the slope to the dirt path, and she walked over to meet him.

Reaching out with her pale, delicate hands, she began picking burrs off his clothes and tossing them into the grass. "Honestly, you took so long," she grumbled. "Weren’t you afraid of running into a snake after being down there for so long?"

"It’s just a snake. What’s there to be scared of?" Lin Li laughed easily. "If I saw one, I’d just kill it."

"Oh, please. You’re just all talk," Su Yue muttered, plucking the last burr from his clothes. "If you really saw a snake, I bet you’d be the one screaming."

Lin Li just smiled, saying nothing. He opened his backpack, took out a few of the wild oranges, and handed them to Su Yue.

"Here, I got the wild oranges. Go ahead and try one. They look a lot different from the ones you buy in the store, so don’t be surprised if the taste is a letdown."

...