Chapter 158: The Crux

It was the morning of the third day.

Old Master Liu and Tiger sat listlessly inside the grocery shop.

It was already the final day, but there was still no news of Yi Ji's whereabouts.

These were troubled times, so the two didn't dare conduct their search openly. They could only inquire in secret through the intelligence networks of the stall owners and peddlers on East Street.

Most of those peddlers were intelligence cultivators. Running a stall was just a front; selling information was their true profession.

A few people did provide bits and pieces of information, but it was mostly the same story:

Someone had been seen that day with a camera on their head, the kind commonly used by reporter cultivators.

But as for where that person had gone, no one could say for sure.

One intelligence cultivator had even sold them fake information, sending the two on a wild goose chase for an entire day. When the Old Man found out, he beat the man half to death.

For them, the only good news was that after a few days of rest, the Old Man's strength was gradually recovering, nearly back to the Third Tier.

"Where is he?"

The Old Man frowned, pulling the walkie-talkie from his pocket to fiddle with it again.

"Old Man, stop messing with it. If you keep fiddling with it, the battery really will die,"

Tiger reminded him in a low voice. He had one too, but out of concern for the battery, he hadn't dared to turn it on.

Even though Chen Nian had specifically modified the walkie-talkies to be rechargeable when he made them... Bianliu County didn't have electricity.

It was said that there was electricity over by the Lake, but only wealthy families could afford it.

"How big did that kid Chen say the range on this thing was again?"

The Old Man looked at Tiger.

He was getting on in years and couldn't remember many things clearly.

"About the size of three Rotten Vegetable Villages."

Tiger didn't remember the exact numbers either, but he could give a rough estimate.

"Then that's roughly a fifth of Bianliu County."

The Old Man muttered, "Then we should be able to find him. Is that kid no longer in Bianliu County?"

The two of them had run a massive lap around Bianliu County yesterday. The Old Man had slapped the walkie-talkie until his hand was sore, but its green light had never come on.

Just as the two were sighing heavily, a faint beep, beep, beep rang out.

"Stop practicing that broken suona of yours!"

Furious, the Old Man rushed straight out of the shop and roared at the Funeral Shop across the street.

The exact same thing had happened two afternoons ago. They had thought the walkie-talkie was dying and distorting, only to discover it was the person across the street playing a soul-summoning tune on the suona.

Literally summoning souls.

With a suona in hand, a suona cultivator could send off souls or summon them.

However, the young owner across the street, who was in the middle of eating, raised her head and stared blankly at the Old Man.

Then, as the two stared at each other in silence, the young owner—who looked no older than twenty—slowly went red in the eyes before bursting into loud sobs.

She had already been scolded two days ago, but the Old Man had been relatively tactful back then. She hadn't expected to get yelled at today before she even started practicing.

It was the last straw for someone who had just stepped out into the world and had only been running her shop for a week.

The Old Man blinked at the sight and quickly came up with a defense.

"I've wanted to yell at you since two days ago!"

"I held it in for two days, and I just couldn't hold it anymore!"

He ran back into his shop, cursing and grumbling, then looked at the blinking walkie-talkie with a pleasantly surprised expression.

"Huzi, answer it!"

Equally thrilled, Tiger immediately pressed the button on the walkie-talkie.

From the speaker came the voice the two had long been waiting for:

"Bzz... Bzz... This is... weak... bzz... received... address... I'm heading your way... bzz..."

The walkie-talkie's signal seemed even worse in this Domain than in Old Sin City. The static was incredibly loud. After making out the words, the two hastily spoke up, giving him the location of the shop across the street.

"Bzz... Received..."

The walkie-talkie clicked off.

The two immediately grabbed a pair of chairs, sat at the entrance of the shop, and fell into an anxious, restless wait.

Across the street, the Funeral Shop owner was still wailing. Even with the constant flow of people on East Main Street, her voice was piercing, echoing out toward the sky. The atmosphere seemed to grow even more oppressive because of her crying.

A few minutes later, just as the young owner's eyes were growing swollen and red, a figure draped in a long robe appeared in front of her.

A voice interrupted her weeping.

"Are you open for business?"

"Yes, yes, we are."

Seeing a customer arrive, the owner immediately stopped crying. Wiping her tears, she nodded frantically.

"Thirty minutes of the suona."

A piece of broken silver was tossed in front of her.

"This is too much!"

The owner probably wasn't a native of Minhu. She stood up, trying to return the money.

"I'm happy to listen to your music. Consider the rest a gesture of friendship."

Leaving those words behind, the figure turned and walked away.

The owner stared at the broken silver, her expression going blank.

Since coming here, she had never met such a nice person...

...

Soon, the screeching, utterly awful sound of a suona began to play.

Just as the Old Man stood up, ready to start hurling insults, a voice rang out:

"Do you sell Vanishing Cream?"

Hearing that incredibly familiar voice, the two froze for a moment before the Old Man was overcome with joy:

"Yes, we sell it!"

The group went into the back room. Yan Jing took off his long robe, revealing his familiar camera head.

"It's been a while, Old Man, Mr. Tiger."

He smiled faintly.

"You kid!"

Seeing Yan Jing, both the Old Man and Tiger were thrilled.

The Old Man stepped forward and gave Yan Jing's right arm a hard pat. "Where have you been these past few days?"

A hint of helplessness showed in Yan Jing's eyes, and he chuckled. "I went to a place filled with wooden dummies and all sorts of tools. I almost didn't make it back."

"The Mechanism Alley Entrance?"

The Old Man suddenly realized. "You ran off to there! No wonder!"

The Mechanism Alley Entrance was a part of the Sixth Domain.

Moreover, it wasn't a semi-wasteland. Similar to the Crop Plains, the people there were all mechanical cultivators.

"Some of them insisted on chasing me down to study the structure of my head."

Yan Jing smiled helplessly. "I took some injuries before managing to escape, and some of them still haven't given up looking for me."

"I was afraid of bringing trouble to your doorstep, so I've been hiding all over the place lately."

"I see..."

The Old Man sighed.

He had originally planned to bring the 'Yi Ji' standing in front of him back to meet Luo Sheng, but looking at him now, that probably wouldn't work.

Luo Sheng was already caught up in trouble and being watched by so many eyes. Add in 'Yi Ji,' who was burdened with his own troubles, and the situation would only become even more complicated.

Suddenly, his expression changed.

"Crap, this is East Main Street. I wonder if the intelligence cultivators overheard what we just said..."

Those intelligence cultivators had sharp eyes and keen ears, especially on East Main Street. If you didn't want them overhearing your business, you had to keep your voice down.

But just now, Yan Jing hadn't lowered his voice much when he spoke.

However, listening to the suona blaring in his ears and the curses gradually rising on the street outside, his eyes lit up in realization, and he looked at Yan Jing.

"It was you, kid..."

Yan Jing smiled.

"Tell me what's been going on with you, Old Man, Mr. Tiger."

This was exactly what the Old Man wanted. He immediately gave a rough rundown of everything that had happened over the past few days.

Naturally, that included the lethal trap Luo Sheng had fallen into and the note he had received.

"The problem now is that the Young Master wants to find the killer."

The Old Man looked expectantly at Yan Jing, hoping he could spot something in the story that the Old Man himself had missed three days ago.

At the time, he had felt something was off, but he just couldn't put his finger on it.

"I didn't expect that you used to be a butler, Old Man."

Yan Jing smiled, then his expression grew serious.

"The clues are still a bit sparse right now, but just going by what you've told me, there really is one suspicious point."

"Most of your deductions are sound, Old Man. The part you missed, I believe, is a contradiction."

"A contradiction?"

The Old Man paused, mulling it over carefully.

"Old Man, you said that the person who harbored murderous intent toward your Young Master probably isn't very strong, or at least doesn't have any highly capable subordinates under them, right?"

Yan Jing asked.

"That's right."

The Old Man nodded.

"Then, why would the person trying to attack your Young Master choose this street as the location to strike?"

Yan Jing smiled faintly.

This sentence was like a sudden revelation, instantly waking the Old Man up. His eyes immediately lit up.

Right! At first, he had thought East Main Street was a good choice because it was crowded, making it easy to hide one's identity.

But... that only applied to experts.

When an expert strikes, it is silent and traceless. Killing in a bustling market takes advantage of the fact that the target's guard is down, allowing the killer to vanish without a trace.

But for someone weak, killing in a busy market would multiply the difficulty. It was absolutely not a good choice.

According to their previous deduction, it was highly likely that the attacker wasn't strong. Otherwise, they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of using a note, and they wouldn't have failed.

Yet that person had still chosen to strike on East Main Street, and against Luo Sheng while he was riding in a rickshaw.

Therefore, there must be something about East Main Street that made the killer insist on striking there.

The crux of the incident was the location of the crime.

There was a problem with East Main Street.

"Right, exactly!"

The Old Man nodded incessantly, his eyes filled with admiration. "Keep going, Yi Ji!"

Yan Jing chuckled.

"Actually, there isn't much more to say. Looking at it this way, there are only two possibilities for why your Young Master wasn't killed last time. Either... the enemy is actually very strong, and writing the note was purely to scare him without any real intent to strike, or... just as we deduced, the enemy isn't strong, which means there must be something peculiar about this street."

The possibility that they hadn't planned to strike was naturally nonexistent, because Luo Sheng had already died.

"And an immovable peculiarity in this place leaves only one possibility: a storefront."

"Old Man, do you remember where on this street your Young Master fell asleep?"

Yan Jing asked.

The Old Man shook his head.

"The Young Master had his eyes closed at the time, but..."

His eyes suddenly lit up.

"We can probably deduce it through a simulation."

The group stepped out the door, blending into the crowd amid the blaring suona, naturally keeping their voices low.

Starting from the North Street Intersection, which was the starting point of East Main Street, the group picked up their pace, moving at the fastest walking speed Tiger could manage.

At the same time, the Old Man spoke quickly:

"Starting from here, the Young Master didn't feel dizzy right when he got into the rickshaw. He said it was at least eight or nine minutes later. Before he closed his eyes, the last shop he looked at was this tung oil shop."

"Then, to be safe... if we trace back about six minutes at a rickshaw puller's speed, this sugar figure stall should be the starting point!"

"After the sugar figure stall, there's the southern goods shop, the grocery shop, the salvage shop, the bowl shop..."

The Old Man spoke faster and faster, and the group gradually increased their speed. Sweat began to bead on Tiger's forehead.

"The grain and oil shop, the dried goods store, the water boiler shop..."

The names of the shops tumbled from the Old Man's lips like he was rattling off a menu.

However, none of these shops caught the group's attention.

It wasn't that these shops were impossible, just that the probability was low. What they needed to deduce right now was the shop most capable of doing what had happened to Eldest Young Master Luo without drawing any attention.

As for the mobile stalls and peddlers, they could slowly investigate them later.

Finally, Old Master Liu's footsteps came to a halt.

The group stopped in front of a storefront.

"Sister Hong's Cosmetic Shop"

This was a shop that sold rouge and cosmetics.

The heavy scent of powder and rouge was particularly pungent amid the mixed, chaotic smells of the street.

Tiger looked at the storefront in confusion.

"They used a scent?"

"But... if there was a smell, wouldn't everyone on the street smell it too?"

"That might be true anywhere else."

The Old Man's face darkened. "But this is Minhu. This is the Domain of cultivators."

"Moreover, the Young Master was in a rickshaw at the time."

"Cultivators are able to use the slightest differences to achieve what others cannot."