The moment the words “bandit chief’s wife” left his mouth, the air in Hell’s Gorge seemed to be sucked dry.
The noisy gorge fell into dead silence. Even the wind stopped.
The eight-year-old little girl sitting in the carriage and eating melon seeds paused as well.
Su Yaoyao looked at the Chief with the pity one might reserve for an endangered species.
Was this man’s brain crushed in a door?
Robbery was one thing, but he actually dared set his sights on the Crown Princess of Great Yuan?
And he wanted an eight-year-old child to become his bandit chief’s wife?
He must have lived too long and decided to swallow poison for fun!
Sure enough.
The previous second, Su Zhen had still been smiling benevolently as he sized up the bandits, picking and choosing among them like livestock at market.
But the instant he heard those four words, he became like an ancient ferocious beast whose scales had been touched.
The smile on Su Zhen’s face shattered and peeled away inch by inch, visible to the naked eye.
A bone-chilling aura that made souls tremble suddenly erupted.
In his deep eyes, killing intent roiled like a sea of blood, raging and roaring!
Great Yuan’s Living Hades was truly furious!
His precious daughter—the one he held in his palms for fear of dropping her and kept in his mouth for fear of melting her—had been targeted by this group of ignorant peasants?
Exterminate their entire clans!
They had to play a little game of “fun for the whole nine generations”!
Even the earthworms in this stronghold would be stood upright and sliced in half. Even the eggs would have their yolks shaken apart!
A terrifying level of true qi, impossible to describe with words, exploded from Su Zhen’s body.
Carrying an overwhelming pressure capable of destroying everything, it swept across the entrance to the gorge.
The three thousand hardened bandits nearby felt as if a mountain had been placed on their chests. They could barely breathe.
Then something even more frightening happened.
Within a ten-zhang radius of Su Zhen, the ground began to tremble violently.
Fragments of rock and clods of earth, large and small, broke free from gravity and slowly floated into the air!
Countless stones hovered around Su Zhen’s body, rising and falling with his furious true qi.
This was the terrifying might of an unparalleled expert!
With a single thought, he could turn those floating stones into deadly hidden weapons.
In an instant, he could riddle all three thousand bandits with holes, leaving not even enough intact flesh to piece together.
The Chief, whose mind was filled with thoughts of fatty meat, had no idea that the God of Death had already seized him by the throat.
Seeing the rocks floating around him, he assumed that a strange wind had risen in the gorge.
He even thought that his earlier roar had been so imposing that it had triggered an omen from heaven and earth.
He smugly hoisted his hundred-pound, nine-ring broadsword onto his shoulder.
Then he extended his thick left arm and slapped his own gleaming, bulging chest with all his strength.
Smack! Smack! Smack!
His chest gave off a dull pounding sound.
It was like striking a solid wall of flesh.
“Old man! Quit playing tricks!”
“I’m a named disciple of a Great Yan grandmaster! I practice the Iron Shirt technique—blades and spears can’t pierce me!”
The Chief lifted his chin and looked down his nose, arrogant to the extreme.
“With those old bones of yours, you can stand there and hack at me three times. You won’t even break my skin!”
“If you know what’s good for you, get on your knees and call me Grandpa a few times. Then hand over that chubby little girl in your carriage!”
Before the Chief could finish speaking, Su Yaoyao, sitting inside the carriage, had already rolled her eyes so hard they nearly fell out.
She silently activated her miniature interstellar X-ray scanner and swept it across the Chief’s broad chest.
Green scanning data refreshed across her retina.
Su Yaoyao looked at the results and almost failed to hold back her laughter.
Her crisp child’s voice, full of merciless mockery, began spamming her Tyrant Dad’s mind:
“Pfft! I’m dying! This is the named disciple of a grandmaster?”
“So this is the legendary Iron Shirt technique that makes him impervious to blades and spears?”
“Who is this guy trying to fool? He hasn’t practiced any internal hard-body technique at all!”
“With that body type, he simply ate himself into shape! His muscle-to-fat ratio is eighty percent fat!”
“That bulging chest is nothing but full-fat meat!”
“With fat that thick, he wouldn’t need a padded coat in winter, much less fear a blade. He’s got his own built-in insulation layer!”
Listening to his daughter’s commentary, the blood-red tint in Su Zhen’s eyes receded slightly.
But the killing intent surrounding him remained intense, and the stones suspended in midair began spinning at high speed.
Anyone who dared covet his daughter—even a fat pig—would be turned into a dead pig today!
Just as Su Zhen was about to raise his hand and reduce the three thousand men to ash, Su Yaoyao’s next thoughts poured over him like a bucket of cold water, dousing the softest part of his heart.
“Dad, calm down! Don’t do anything rash!”
“If you show off your power and shatter them all, it might feel great, but once you kill him, who’s going to work for us?”
“The terrain of Hell’s Gorge is perfect. There are sheer cliffs on both sides, with only this one road running through the middle!”
“This is the vital passage connecting the Great Yan border to the interior—a proper transportation hub!”
“If we recruit these bandits, block both ends of the gorge, and set up dozens of barriers, we can build a Hell’s Gorge expressway toll station!”
“Every merchant caravan and carriage that passes through will have to pay a toll based on the number of people and the weight of their cargo!”
Su Yaoyao became more and more excited as she calculated, the little abacus in her mind clicking away furiously.
“We can even offer monthly passes, annual passes, and VIP express lanes!”
“These three thousand able-bodied men are ready-made toll collectors and a security force!”
“As long as we control this road, we can make at least sixty thousand taels of silver in net profit every year!”
“Sixty thousand taels! That’s a money tree that will keep producing wealth forever, generation after generation!”
“If we kill them all in a moment of anger, that sixty thousand taels of silver will grow wings and fly away!”
The words “sixty thousand taels of silver” possessed an almost magical power.
The previous second, the Tyrant of Great Yuan had been a murderous demon incarnate, ready to unleash a bloodbath.
But the instant he heard those five words, his body jolted.
The overwhelming killing intent and surging true qi froze in place.
Then he forcibly swallowed them back down!
Clatter!
Clatter, clatter!
As his true qi abruptly withdrew, the stones that had been suspended in midair and spinning at high speed, ready to kill, lost the force supporting them.
They fell like a small shower of rocks, pattering across the dry, dusty road.
The stones struck the yellow earth and sent up rings of fine dust.
The sudden turn of events left the three thousand bandits, who had been standing ready for battle, completely stunned.
The Chief stared at the rocks scattered across the ground and assumed that the old man had run out of strength and that his internal energy had dispersed.
The smugness on his face grew even more pronounced. His nostrils nearly pointed at the sky.
Meanwhile, Su Zhen lowered his head and engaged in an intense internal struggle.
On one side was the death sentence for daring to covet his precious daughter.
On the other was a rolling stream of sixty thousand taels in annual revenue.
The Tyrant’s dignity and a capitalist’s greed battled fiercely within him.
In the end, according to Su Zhen’s already rather flexible moral standards, glittering silver emerged victorious.
His daughter was right. Dead men couldn’t create value.
Only living beasts of burden—working themselves to the bone—could generate profits continuously.
Su Zhen slowly raised his head and drew in a deep breath of dust-laden air.
When he looked at the fat-covered Chief again, the killing intent in his eyes had vanished without a trace.
In its place was an expression so terrifying that every court official of Great Yuan would have been horrified to see it.
The kind of benevolent smile a capitalist wears when he spots an exceptionally fine beast of burden.
Su Zhen’s lips curled upward uncontrollably, the wrinkles on his face crinkling into a brilliant chrysanthemum.
He waved at the Chief, his tone as gentle as though he were coaxing a big yellow dog.
“Easy there, hero. It’s all a misunderstanding—just a misunderstanding.”
“Since you’re the disciple of a Grandmaster, we can consider this a case of not fighting, not knowing one another.”
Su Zhen clasped his hands behind his back, looking utterly harmless and radiating the spirit of peace and prosperity.
“I won’t kill you. Not only will I spare your life, I’ll even grant you a great opportunity.”
“Come over here. A little closer.”
“I’ll show you a treasure. I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like it in your entire life.”
When the Chief heard this, he froze for a moment before bursting into hysterical laughter inwardly.
Just as I thought!
That old bastard is all show and no substance. That little trick with the rocks must have drained every last ounce of strength he had!
So now he’s afraid?
Now he knows the weight carried by a Grandmaster’s nominal disciple?
He thinks he can buy his life with a treasure?
Not a chance!
Once I’ve seen the treasure, I’ll chop him up all the same!
The Chief smugly planted his Nine-Ringed Broadsword into the ground, letting his guard down completely as he strode forward.
As he walked, he turned around and shouted arrogantly at the three thousand lackeys behind him:
“Brothers! The old bastard’s given up!”
“Get ready! We’re about to collect the spoils!”
Inside the carriage,
Su Yaoyao watched the Chief foolishly walk to his own death and let out a helpless sigh.
Silently, she pulled a round metal ball from her pocket and yanked out the ring.
