Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
By the time they had taken care of the five men, it was almost noon.
The situation described by the yellow-shirted man was actualizing. In order to fight for the chance to stay in Qing Shan Town, candidates began to attack each other, and this situation even appeared in front of the inn and the teahouse.
If it wasn’t for the rule that “interference with the villagers’ daily lives is forbidden,” Xia Fan suspected that they would have fought even inside the shophouses.
“Fortunately, they won’t fight in the teahouse,” Wei Wushuang said, still tensed up. “It seems the examiner is still being lenient.”
“Not necessarily.” Xia Fan shook his head.
“What makes you say that?” Wei Wushuang asked in surprise. “The examination rules specify that the candidates must not—”
“Must not interfere with the villagers’ lives. But there’s no rule against smashing up inns and teahouses.”
“Erm…” Wei Wushuang couldn’t process the nuance.
“Think about it,” Xia Fan lowered his voice, “if you make a mess outside the inn and smash a table or two, what will the store owner do?”
“He’ll just ask for compensation. Unless I don’t have enough money…” Wei Wushuang suddenly paused in realization.
“That’s right.” Xia Fan smiled shrewdly. “If you can afford to pay back, the store owners probably even want you to smash all the old tables, and the government won’t deal with such trivial matters. In Qing Shan Town, it’s no violation to make trouble, but it is if you don’t have money to compensate for the losses.”
Wei Wushuang was speechless.
Xia Fan didn’t continue. He knew Wei Wushuang could appreciate the logic behind this.
There were only two reasons why there was no fighting yet.
One was that the candidates weren’t aware of this fact yet, and the second was that most of them didn’t have enough money.
Just because they hadn’t realized yet, it did not mean that no one would soon. Likewise, just because they didn’t have enough money now, things might be different a few days later. With the continuous elimination of candidates, the money would be gradually concentrated into a few hands. This trend was almost inevitable.
By the final days, the remaining candidates would probably have enough to smash a dozen tables.
Being confronted by the scarcity of spirit fire, robbing other candidates would become their only choice. It was obvious. Day and night, every corner of Qing Shan Town would stage this hunger game. In particular, whoever became rich faster would have the advantage to initiate aggression.
Wei Wushuang paled.
Such a situation would clearly be the worst for him.
Or rather, it would be the worst for every candidate.
Trust and cooperation would no longer exist, and even the improvised teams would face a trust crisis. After all, the examiners just wanted jars filled with spirit fire and wouldn’t care where all those came from.
He bid Xia Fan farewell and walked off, clearly still shaken.
Xia Fan found a seat by the railings on the second floor of the teahouse. He ordered some food and watched the situation at the inn as he ate.
By now, the core content of the examination seemed to have surfaced.
But Xia Fan still had a lot of doubts.
No matter how one looked at it, this rule was a little too favorable to the established families. Their teams were definitely much more stable. What’s more, they probably had already reached a consensus on how many successful candidates each family would produce in the end. With this settled beforehand, they could strategize so that a few outstanding candidates would bring the best interest to the entire team.
Of course, the established families naturally wanted to maintain their grip on the mystics. But having too many mystics from the wealthy families probably wasn’t what the royal family wanted.
Of course, the political purpose of the examination wasn’t something he had to worry about. No matter what, his current priority was to get a bottle of spirit fire as soon as possible to be qualified.
…
Midnight, it was dead silent on the streets.
Xia Fan paused his Qi inducement cultivation and heaved a sigh. The fox demon was still not turning up at this hour… She was likely not coming anymore.
Slightly disappointed, he began to prepare for the main event tonight. Candidates were allowed to bring two sets of clothes. In addition to his hooded robe, the other one was his hand-made nightclothes. Unlike the loose clothing popular in this era, the latter completely followed the principle of simplicity and ease of use. No buttons. Sleeves to cap were all made in one piece. Wrists, elbows, and chest areas were sewn with a layer of cowhide to improve durability.
The color wasn’t pure black but dark blue. In theory, the most concealing color would be a deep purple. But purple dye was very difficult to come across. So, he could only choose the second-best option. Black wasn’t suitable because if there was even slight illumination, his figure would be extra obvious.
He took a deep breath and climbed out of the window to the second floor.
Unlike the smooth concrete walls, the outer edges of the wooden houses had many protruding pieces, which were naturally suitable for climbing. Even for a half-wit like him, he could easily climb several floors.
He spent the whole afternoon observing the residences and movements of the candidates from the established families. He finally picked a house closest to his own residence as his target.
Now the spirit fire collection sites were occupied by the Fei, Luo, and Wei families. So, it was almost a guarantee that they would have spirit fire.
And Xia Fan’s plan was to steal a bottle of spirit fire from them!
Although it wasn’t clear who lived inside, people wearing the blue robes of the Luo family had been in and out of this house many times. They were all highly alert, looking around before entering. Considering that they might also be attacked, Xia Fan speculated that they probably stored the collected spirit fire at one place and managed them as a whole, rather than giving it to individuals to carry.
He also noticed that the corridor outside this house led to a total of six rooms, four of which were rented by the Luo family. If someone wanted to break through head-on, almost immediately the Luo family would crowd the corridor and form an impenetrable line of defense.
The family wasn’t even necessarily clear about the content of the examination, much less the possibility of knowing the layout of Qing Shan Town in advance. Undoubtedly, they came up with this idea on their own based on the situation.
Occupying and clustering on the higher floors of the inn made it much easier for them to defend their spirit fire. It must be said that their strategic thinking was indeed more sophisticated than the average candidates.
But Xia Fan had no intention of confronting them head-on from the start.
He moved little by little to the edge of one of the windows, untied the belt around his waist, and wrapped it around the beam to secure himself. Then, he took out a hairpin and pierced the paper window from its corner.
This particular hairpin was thin at its tip and thick on the other end. It was also hollow. Through the pin, he could roughly see the situation inside the house. Xia Fan peered around and found that the Luo family had also arranged two men to keep watch, which further confirmed his suspicion.
Without delay, he took out the medicine bag, filled a mixture of herbs into the hairpin, then lit it with a lighter and carefully blew air into it.
The mixture, made of devil’s snare, raw aconite, night peony, phantom mushroom, and winter fern, was his master’s masterpiece, which many people would pay a huge price to acquire. The recipe was top secret. When the mixture was lit, the smoke was colorless and odorless. Those who breathed it in would first feel incredibly peaceful and relaxed, with all pain numbed. But being exposed for a while longer would result in loss of consciousness, being unable to wake up until the next day. It worked better than any sleep potion out there.
Xia Fan had personally tested it several times, and it proved that this was probably one of the few things that his master hadn’t bragged about. Even for a mystic, it was difficult to detect its presence. Even his master didn’t realize before being knocked out by it many times.
It was also his trump card. If he hadn’t brought it, he wouldn’t have been so daring to spend most of his money on the very first day.
In fact, in Xia Fan’s medicine bag, there were only a handful of herbs that could be used to cast spells. Most of them were therapeutic medicine, sleep potions, and antidotes. For the past ten years, he hadn’t learned many spells from his master but acquired many dirty little tricks.
Therefore, it was very important to be less confrontational and more tactical!
After half an hour, there was no more movement in the room.
Although the Luo family had made arrangements for sentry, they were still teenagers, after all. It wasn’t realistic to expect them to stay alert for hours. Even before Xia Fan lit his herbs, they were already dozing off. It just made the process faster.
Xia Fan picked the window lock with ease, covered his mouth and nose with a wet cloth, and swung himself into the room.
This room was much larger than the one he rented, and they had used a curtain as a partition to separate the room into a living room and a bedroom.
He pulled open the curtain and looked around. Soon, he found it.
As he had expected, the Luo family had collected all the spirit fires here and had hidden them under the bed. Not very creative. With the dim candlelight coming in from the crack of the curtains, he could see at least twenty porcelain bottles stuffed under the bed, each with a string tied to the opening.
That looked like their last defensive mechanism.
Although it wasn’t clear where these strings were connected, most likely, something like a bell would be triggered to alert everyone in the vicinity of an intrusion as soon as the bottles were moved.
Of course, solving it was a piece of cake for him. He cut two strands of cloth from the corner of the bedsheet, rolled them into two thin ropes, and secured them between the string on a bottle and the bed. This way, the mechanism wouldn’t be triggered. After these preparations, Xia Fan cut the string.
The string shrank back a little, but it was soon pulled taut by the ropes and remained in its original position.
At this point, there was no more obstacle to remove the porcelain bottle.
After confirming that the bottle indeed contained spirit fire, Xia Fan tied it onto his back, retreated to the window, and returned to his room along the wall again.
The moment he landed in his room, he finally heaved a sigh of relief.
It was surprisingly smooth. Not even an hour had passed.
“Should I say that it is normal for mystics to be thieves or should I be surprised?”
He was caught off-guard by a voice from behind and instantly broke into a cold sweat!