Chapter 261 - 260: Looting for a Gift

Ling Yanzhi glanced at the severed tongue on the ground. "How nice. My corpse is feeling warmer already."

Putting some low-level punk in their place once in a while was a great mood adjuster.

His gaze shifted. Ling Yanzhi charged the door and sent the men trying to escape flying with a few kicks.

"Trying to run."

Another flurry of blows echoed through the room, leaving the walls of the Slave Market scarred and battered.

As the sounds of fighting stopped, Yan Mingjiao’s previously muffled sobs became clearer.

"Uuu..." Yan Mingjiao was utterly despondent. She covered her mouth, sat on the ground, and kicked her legs while she cried.

"How are you not dead yet?" Xi Yu continued, his face devoid of expression. "Just die already."

Yan Mingjiao: "..."

Yan Mingjiao stared at him in astonishment.

Blood oozed from between her fingers as she made strangled, airy noises from her throat.

Her eyes, a mixture of rage and terror, glared at him. "Uuu, uuuu..."

Xi Yu retracted his oppressive aura, his expression turning blank. "Ayan, I can’t understand her."

Ling Yanzhi strolled back over, nonchalantly translating, "She’s saying she was wrong and is begging for your forgiveness."

Xi Yu leaned down, his posture radiating the oppressive dominance of someone looking down on an inferior. "I won’t."

His deadpan expression held a hint of naive innocence. "I’ll forgive you after your eyes have been gouged out, so you can’t stare at us so disgustingly anymore."

At his words, Yan Mingjiao looked as if her soul had left her body.

She wanted to run, but her limbs were so weak she had no strength at all.

She had no strength to fight back and no voice to curse. All she could do was glare, her eyes wide in a futile attempt to intimidate him.

Xi Yu raised his hand.

Terrified, Yan Mingjiao squeezed her eyes shut and shuffled backward.

’One second, two seconds, or was it three?’

She didn’t know how many seconds had passed. When she cautiously peeked open her right eye, she saw a soul blade flying straight for it.

The sound of it slicing through the air was like a gale howling against a windowpane.

She forgot to scream. The pain was so intense she could only curl into a ball, letting out a muffled, broken, and raspy whimper.

A strange noise echoed from her eye socket. Warm blood trickled down her cheekbone, pooling at the tip of her chin before a single drop fell onto her collarbone.

Yan Mingjiao felt like her mind was malfunctioning; everything was becoming sluggish.

She didn’t dare open her other eye. She only cautiously raised a hand to touch her right eye socket.

Her fingertips first brushed against the torn flesh of her eyelid, then sank into a hollow, empty socket.

As the pad of her finger explored the rim of the hollow socket, she could feel the jagged edges of shattered bone.

’How vicious.’

’I’ve never met anyone so sinister!’

Yan Mingjiao had thought she could avoid it by closing her eyes. As it turned out, whether her eyes were open or closed made no difference to someone intent on gouging them out.

But when the next soul blade flew toward her, why did she suddenly lose consciousness?

Yan Mingjiao sat there for a long while, unmoving.

Her face took on an ashen pallor, as if invisible threads had instantly snatched away all her strength.

It was strangely eerie.

"Ayan." Xi Yu tilted his head, his eyes filled with confusion.

He hadn’t killed Yan Mingjiao.

But now, Yan Mingjiao looked dead.

A snake emerged from beside Ling Yanzhi’s feet, slithering over to check the pulse on Yan Mingjiao’s neck.

Nothing. Her pulse had stopped.

Ling Yanzhi narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Dead?"

Pei Yin had conducted many experiments. Half-awakened like Yan Mingjiao wouldn’t die so quickly, whether from a severed tongue, gouged eyes, or even severed limbs.

Even without any Healing, they shouldn’t die within two hours.

Ling Yanzhi couldn’t be bothered to think about it.

He looked at Xi Yu’s inquisitive expression, paused, and said, "Maybe she was scared to death."

Xi Yu pursed his lips, not liking that guess.

Pei Yin often said the two of them scared people to death.

It never bothered him before.

But after meeting Jian Yu, Pei Yin would occasionally make a sarcastic remark: "My god, how have you two psychos not scared your baby to death yet?"

It was really annoying.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

Xi Yu’s gaze shifted.

’Why does an eyeball make such a crisp sound when it rolls on the floor?’

’Like... like a glass marble.’

Xi Yu extended a claw and curled it around the eyeball on the ground.

’The texture is so weird.’

Ling Yanzhi ignored him and searched the entire first floor by himself.

They looked like some kind of personal rest areas.

He focused on checking room 301 on the first floor, which Red Snake had mentioned.

To be precise, it was the address provided by Zhao Jiangyou.

’It’s on the first floor, but it’s labeled 301.’

Ling Yanzhi didn’t go in directly, instead sending a few small snakes to scout ahead.

The switch for the so-called secret door wasn’t very well hidden; a twist of a nearby vase revealed it.

Ling Yanzhi’s pupils turned into slits, syncing his vision with that of the small snakes.

The first snake went in and was chopped in half.

The second one went in, dodged a trap, but ran into a poisonous mist.

The third, the fourth, the fifth...

Each one died more gruesomely than the last.

Red Snake slithered onto Ling Yanzhi’s shoulder. "There’s no presence of the living inside."

’A lot of Zhao Jiangyou’s information was correct. The location of the black market entrance. The shift change times for the Slave Market guards and the heavily guarded locations. The list of the Yan Family’s adopted children and their personality traits. Even the territories he pointed out were, in fact, controlled by the Yan Family.’

Ling Yanzhi had been trying to guess which pieces of Zhao Jiangyou’s information were false, but to his surprise, every single one had been correct.

’But I won’t just blindly trust him. Jian Yu’s message... telling me to judge for myself and not to trust everything... was a clear sign that Zhao Jiangyou couldn’t be fully trusted yet.’

’I’ve been cautious this whole time; I don’t mind being even more so. Can’t go wrong with being cautious.’

’No signs of life.’

’Is Zhao Jiangyou’s brother really in there?’

Red Snake announced, "The danger has passed."

Ling Yanzhi stepped inside.

There were many fully-enclosed, transparent glass tanks, inside which rare Beast Plants were preserved.

There was blood on the wall. The trail led to a hidden door. Beyond it lay several corpses dressed in Slave Market uniforms.

’Tortured to death.’

Ling Yanzhi wasn’t interested in examining their faces. A quick glance to identify them was all he needed.

But he had forgotten one problem.

"What does Zhao Jiangyou’s brother look like? Is his brother here?"

Red Snake froze.

It shook its head, bewildered. "I don’t know..."

Ling Yanzhi was silent for a moment, then chose to take photos and record a video.

Red Snake’s tail hooked gently around his neck as it stared longingly at the rare Beast Plants. "Take them! For our baby!"

The highest-grade Beast Plant was a Level 2S—there was only one. The rest, while lower-grade, were exceptionally rare.

Ling Yanzhi glanced at them and stored them all in his Space Ring.

When he came out, Xi Yu was still fiddling with Yan Mingjiao’s eyeball.

Ling Yanzhi rarely felt disgusted by Xi Yu, but this was one of those times.

He turned and headed up to the second and third floors.

The number of corpses increased with each floor, and the number of imprisoned slaves was also staggeringly high.

According to the Alliance’s requirements, the prerequisite for legalizing slavery on Emperor Wolf Star and several other planets was that the slaves had committed crimes.

Red Snake observed their numb, simple-looking faces. "Master, they don’t look like criminals to me. Do they to you?"

Ling Yanzhi paid it no mind, turning to check the other rooms.

’Until I can confirm it, who knows if these people are actually criminals. What if they really are?’