Chapter 380: 4 Evil Sects

Chapter 380: Chapter 185: 4 Evil Sects

“Tea?”

Ximen Feng glanced at the chains on his body, then at Jiang Ran.

Jiang Ran smiled. “You can just open your mouth. I’ll help you.”

“…I’m used to drinking it myself.”

“That’s not important.”

Jiang Ran stood up, carried the teacup over to Ximen Feng, and pried his mouth open.

Ximen Feng’s eyes went wide.

“Wait, wait, wait… What are you making me drink?”

“Tea.”

“Is this how you drink tea?”

“It’s also got a bit of poison in it.”

“A bit?”

“A lot.”

“Let me go! I won’t drink it… GLUG! GLUG! GLUG!”

Only after pouring all the tea down his throat did Jiang Ran let go of Ximen Feng.

He then took his wrist and began to check his pulse.

Ximen Feng’s eyes were vacant, as if he had suffered some unimaginable blow.

Watching Jiang Ran check his pulse, he looked confused.

“What are you doing now? Are you planning to cure me after poisoning me?”

“Nothing much. I’m just making sure the poison has spread through your body.”

“If it’s not enough, I’ll add a little more.”

Jiang Ran said, “Brother Ximen, your Divine Techniques are vast. With someone like you, I feel I can’t let my guard down… Otherwise, if you were to slip up and escape, it would be difficult to explain things to the Hundred Treasures Association.”

“…”

Ximen Feng almost coughed up blood.

‘What kind of person is this? Poisoning someone, then checking their pulse to see if it’s taken effect? Does he have to be so damn considerate?’

After a moment, Jiang Ran released his hand and nodded lightly.

“That should do it. The poison has already spread through your body. Oh, and by the way, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should tell you… this isn’t a poison I devised myself. It comes from the Hundred Poison Scripture of the Hundred Poison Sect.”

“It has a rather fancy name: ‘Thousand Flowers and Insects Powder.'”

“That’s an exaggeration, of course. It doesn’t actually have a thousand flowers and ten thousand insects.”

“Ultimately, it’s just a potent poison made from a blend of nine poisonous flowers and five venomous insects.”

“Curing this poison isn’t easy… First, you’d need to know which nine flowers and which five insects were used in the mixture.”

“Then you’d have to get the dosages right. You have to understand that all things in this world follow the principle of mutual generation and restraint.”

“One rises as another falls; it’s all a matter of balance. If you don’t understand the brewer’s methods, the slightest deviation will lead you a thousand miles astray.”

“So, even if you escaped from me and found someone to create an antidote, it would be absolutely impossible.”

“Of course, you’re welcome to test that theory with your own life.”

“What if I’m lying?”

Jiang Ran picked up his teacup, took a gentle sip, and glanced at Ximen Feng.

Ximen Feng’s mouth was still hanging open.

Noticing Jiang Ran’s gaze, he finally mumbled,

“You people are just too despicable, aren’t you? The gourd was a trick, and now you even poison the tea…”

“And you have the nerve to call yourselves the good guys?”

“What’s so good about you? I never should have listened to that old man’s nonsense. If I hadn’t come looking for you, the two of us might not have ended up in this mess.”

At this sorrowful thought, his eyes reddened, and he almost burst into tears.

Jiang Ran, heartless as ever, paid this no mind.

“How did you two meet?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because your life is in my hands.”

Ximen Feng flew into a rage. “Do you think I’m the kind of person who would bow and scrape just to save my own skin?”

“You’re not?”

Jiang Ran raised an eyebrow. “In that case, you seem to be of no use. I might as well hand you over to the Hundred Treasures Association.”

“I am!”

Ximen Feng blurted out,

“The story isn’t all that complicated.”

“After pulling off a big job during the day, you have to properly deal with the things you’ve acquired.”

“I had just stashed the goods when I suddenly heard someone running wildly through the woods.”

“It was already nighttime, and someone was running around a desolate mountain in the middle of the night… no, not a forest, a desolate mountain.”

“That’s highly unusual…”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I assumed it was the Hundred Treasures Association coming to catch me.”

“So I decided to sneak a peek and see what they were planning.”

“But as it turned out, it wasn’t the Hundred Treasures Association.”

“It was a group of strangely dressed practitioners of the unorthodox arts… and they were carrying a large chest.”

“The chest looked magnificent and very valuable.”

“So I got an idea—I decided to steal it.”

Ximen Feng was a thief, and he had always lived by the motto: ‘A thief never leaves empty-handed.’

With such a prize right in front of him, how could he possibly let it go?

So he followed the group, looking for an opportunity.

The opportunity came even sooner than he had expected.

A group of uninvited guests appeared in the night, disrupting the group’s planned route and forcing them to retreat temporarily.

Ximen Feng used this to instigate a chaotic fight between the two sides.

He seized the chance to hoist the chest onto his shoulder and run… Only after fleeing for several miles did he open it to have a look.

But inside, there was no gold or jewelry at all—just a living person.

Ximen Feng was dumbfounded.

It’s normal for a thief to steal things, but stealing people was a bit outside his area of expertise.

After all, he wasn’t some lecher who abducted women, and the person in the chest wasn’t some ‘flower’ either—it was an old man in his fifties.

After agonizing over it for a while, he was about to abandon the man.

But in the end, he hesitated and pulled the man out. After all, he’d always styled himself as a ‘great philanthropist’—how could he see someone in mortal danger and not offer a hand?

But before he could even revive the man, members of the Hundred Treasures Association found him.

They nearly captured them both.

To escape the Hundred Treasures Association, Ximen Feng carried Cheng Tianyang on his back and fled, with the Association in hot pursuit.