The heavy butcher’s knife was just inches from the back of Su Zhen’s neck when it suddenly stopped in midair.
Above the doorframe, a miniature metal device no bigger than a fingernail flashed with a red light.
Bang!
The device exploded.
A thick cloud of pink smoke sprayed out from the doorframe in a fan-shaped plume, like a fountain.
In the blink of an eye, the pink smoke completely engulfed the guest room.
The ferocious grin on the landlady’s face froze.
Her hands loosened around the butcher’s knife.
With a sharp clang, the heavy blade crashed onto the wooden floor, landing less than an inch from Su Zhen’s head.
At the same time, the dozen or so burly men who had stormed in through the door seemed to have their strength drained away. The nine-ring broadswords, axes, and iron clubs in their hands dropped to the floor one after another.
A series of sharp clattering sounds rang through the room as the weapons hit the ground.
The pink smoke entered their airways and seeped into their internal organs.
This was a weapon painstakingly concocted by Su Yaoyao—a bomb containing a potent itching powder mixed with a hallucinogen.
The medicine took effect far faster than these ancient bandits could ever have imagined.
The landlady was the first to succumb.
The murderous glint in her eyes grew hazy and unfocused, while a strange, watery sheen appeared in them.
Then an unbearable itch, as if worms were gnawing through her bones, surged through every inch of her body.
“ It’s so itchy… Oh, it itches so badly…”
A strange cry escaped the landlady’s throat as she clawed frantically at herself.
Within moments, her exquisite silk robe had been shredded into strips by her own sharp fingernails.
The dozen or so burly men behind her fared even worse.
These hardened bandits, who normally killed without blinking and chopped people down as easily as vegetables, had all been reduced to scratching, twitching monkeys.
“Damn, it’s hot! Why is it so itchy?”
One burly man with a thick patch of chest hair shouted as he tore at his nightclothes.
Riiip! Riiip!
The sound of ripping fabric rose one after another. In the blink of an eye, the dozen men had stripped themselves down to nothing but their undershorts.
The hallucinogen’s effects also erupted in full force.
In their eyes, the “fat sheep” waiting to be slaughtered had vanished. In its place was a tropical beach filled with exotic women in grass skirts, all radiating enthusiasm.
“Come on, handsome. Try to catch me!”
The Scar-Faced Attendant stared dreamily ahead, threw his arms around the burly man beside him, and called out in a coquettish voice.
The burly man, whose body was covered in rolls of flesh, not only failed to get angry but shyly swayed his waist.
“You’re so naughty. Stop teasing me!”
The guest room was clearly too cramped for them to unleash their passionate dance moves.
With glazed eyes, the landlady led the way, swaying her hips as she staggered out of the room and descended the stairs toward the main hall.
“Girls, let’s go somewhere spacious and dance!”
The dozen half-naked men seemed bewitched. Holding hands, they formed a long line and followed the landlady in a grand procession toward the spacious inn lobby on the first floor.
In the dimly lit hall, these men who should have been murdering and robbing travelers formed a large circle.
Holding hands and bare-chested, they twisted their thick waists and began performing a bizarre, spine-chilling hula dance with an unmistakably exotic flair.
As they danced, they chanted in unison, “Hey-ha! Hey-ha!”
Inside Room One on the second floor, the pink smoke gradually dissipated.
Su Zhen, who had been lying on the floor pretending to be dead, dusted off his hands and nimbly rose to his feet.
He looked down at the scene of chaos unfolding in the hall, the corners of his mouth twitching violently.
If he hadn’t dodged in time, that Scar-Faced Attendant had nearly kissed him just now.
“Daughter, your medicine is way too wicked. I nearly threw up my dinner from last night.”
As he spoke, Su Zhen disgustedly kicked aside a torn piece of clothing blocking the doorway.
Su Yaoyao walked over on her short little legs and calmly pulled an enormous woven sack from her portable space.
“Dad, don’t watch them. You’ll get eye infections. We have more important business to take care of!”
At that, Su Zhen’s eyes lit up with renewed greed.
That was right—they had serious business to handle!
Ten thousand taels of official silver were still waiting for him inside the wall!
He strode over to the load-bearing wall and drew a deep breath. True qi surged into his right fist.
With a tremendous boom, his punch blasted a hole more than half a meter wide through the thick red-brick wall.
Amid a shower of flying bricks, gleaming silver poured from the hollow space inside the wall like a waterfall.
Clatter, clatter, clatter!
Ingot after ingot of official silver bearing the seal of the Great Yan treasury crashed onto the wooden floor, producing the most beautiful symphony in the world.
Su Zhen’s eyes gleamed as his breathing quickened.
Su Yaoyao worked swiftly, opening her bottomless portable space. With a wave of her little hand, the silver ingots on the floor seemed to sprout wings and flew into the space in an endless stream.
“Dad! Beautifully done! Keep going—try that floor tile on the left!”
The Little Dumpling excitedly directed him.
Su Zhen turned around, aimed at the floor tile he had spent so long prying at earlier, raised his foot, and stomped down hard.
Crack!
The solid floor shattered in a spiderweb of fractures, revealing a huge, pitch-black compartment beneath it.
Su Zhen ripped away the broken stones with his bare hands. Inside the hidden compartment were dozens of neatly stacked gold bars, shining brilliantly.
There were also several exquisite wooden boxes filled with pearls, agates, jade pendants, and other treasures.
“Hand them over!”
Su Yaoyao cheered and opened her space.
The gold bars and jewelry vanished without a trace.
Father and daughter worked together with perfect coordination, clearing out the room more efficiently than a professional confiscation squad.
But after looting Room One, they were not satisfied.
They descended the stairs, skirted around the bandits still dancing hand in hand in the lobby, and stormed into the inn’s accounting office.
Su Zhen split open the hidden cabinet with a single palm strike.
The loose silver, large-denomination banknotes, and even several deeds to shops were all swept into Su Yaoyao’s space.
Next came the storeroom behind the kitchen.
Fine aged huadiao wine, air-dried ham, precious bird’s nest, shark fin, and anything else that could be sold for money or eaten was collected into the portable space.
“Dad, I just scanned the area. There’s a high-density metal reading beneath the soil in the pigsty out back!”
Su Zhen was so excited that he had completely abandoned the dignity of an emperor.
“Let’s go! We can’t leave behind even a single embroidery needle from this black inn!”
The two of them slipped into the back courtyard under cover of night and made their way to the foul-smelling pigsty.
The Tyrant Emperor of Dayuan rolled up the sleeves of his expensive fur coat, grabbed a shovel, and began digging energetically beside the pig manure.
Half an hour later, several rusty iron chests were unearthed.
When they pried them open, they discovered that they were packed full of strings of Great Yan copper coins.
Copper coins might not be worth much, but there were simply too many of them—more than a hundred thousand in total!
“Not even the pigsty was spared. This landlady really is ruthless,” Su Yaoyao remarked, accepting all the copper coins without the slightest hesitation.
Before they knew it, the night had faded, and the eastern sky had begun to glow with the pale light of dawn.
This once-grand, century-old bandit inn in the Great Yan Kingdom had been stripped cleaner than if a dog had licked it bare by the father and daughter.
The walls were smashed.
The floor was shattered.
Even two pigs in the backyard had bolted in fright.
By dawn, the effects of the pink smoke had gradually worn off.
In the main hall, the bandits who had danced wildly all night began to slow down.
The dazed looks in their eyes slowly cleared.
The Scar-Faced Attendant was the first to come to his senses with a violent shudder.
He felt a chill and looked down. To his horror, he was wearing nothing but a pair of brightly patterned underpants.
Worse still, his hands were tightly interlocked with those of the burly bandit beside him, their fingers clasped together.
The two men stood face-to-face in an utterly suggestive, backs-bent pose.
“Ah!”
The Scar-Faced Attendant let out a scream like he had seen a ghost. He flung away his companion’s hand as though electrocuted, then scrambled backward on all fours.
That single scream set off a chain reaction.
One by one, more than a dozen hardened bandits woke up.
When they saw themselves and their companions half-naked and tangled together in each other’s arms, their shrieks rose one after another, nearly lifting the roof off the building.
The proprietress also slowly regained consciousness.
She looked down at her silk outer robe, which had been torn into strips and barely covered her body. Then she looked at her half-naked men rolling around on the floor, her mind going completely blank.
“What happened? What’s going on?!”
The proprietress raised her head in panic and looked around.
The moment she did, it felt as though she had been struck by lightning and plunged into an icy abyss.
The inn’s main door stood wide open. The counter had been smashed to pieces, and the accounting room’s door had been reduced to a pile of splintered wood.
She charged up to the first room on the second floor.
What greeted her was a huge hole blasted through the load-bearing wall and floor tiles pried up from the ground.
Empty!
Completely empty!
The hundred thousand taels of government silver hidden in the cracks of the wall, the gold bars and jewelry stashed in the secret compartment—even a single copper coin had not been left behind!
The proprietress’s legs gave way, and she collapsed in despair amid the ruins.
Ten years of hard work, destroyed in a single night.
Covering her face with both hands, she could no longer hold back. She burst into heart-wrenching sobs.
Downstairs, the bandits discovered that even their spare clothes had been stolen. They began wailing miserably as well.
The entire black-market inn echoed with the bandits’ utterly desolate cries.
It was in the midst of this atmosphere of overwhelming grief that a crisp abacus-click suddenly rang out from the very center of the main hall.
Click.
Everyone stopped crying and looked toward the sound.
There sat the Little Dumpling, who had somehow moved a small stool into the middle of the hall. She was perched there with her legs spread wide, looking every inch the little boss.
In her hands was a golden abacus, and the corners of her mouth curled into a devilish smile.
“What are you crying for?”
Su Yaoyao’s clear, childish voice echoed through the empty hall.
“It’s time we settled the accounts.”
