Chapter 124 - 111: Accident
"I haven’t had anything greasy in days. My stomach can’t take it."
Qi Yishou held a chicken leg in one hand, grease dripping from his mouth, while his other hand clutched his stomach.
At the same time, his stomach rumbled audibly.
"Pedantic Scholar, get over here and carry me. I need to take a shit."
"Right away, Shopkeeper."
The pedantic Scholar trotted over with a fawning smile, hoisted Shopkeeper Qi onto his back, and started walking toward the edge of the camp.
In just a moment, they were dozens of yards away.
The pedantic Scholar glanced back toward the camp. Figures flickered in the light of the bonfire, and he could faintly hear the sound of conversations.
Then, he looked forward again. His gaze turned grim and the smile vanished from his face. His voice, however, remained the same—fawning, but with a hint of coldness—as he said to Shopkeeper Qi:
"Just hang on a little longer, Shopkeeper. This area is full of scorpion grass. It’ll sting your ass if you squat here. Let’s go over there."
"Ngh, alright. Hurry up." Shopkeeper Qi’s stomach ached and his body ached—he felt miserable all over. Naturally, he didn’t notice the change in the pedantic Scholar.
He didn’t look at the ground, either. In reality, there was no scorpion grass here at all, just some common, harmless weeds.
The pedantic Scholar then quickened his pace, carrying Shopkeeper Qi a bit further until they were past a small mound of earth.
"The feng shui here is pretty good. This spot will do."
The pedantic Scholar scanned his surroundings. The night was quiet and still; even the voices from the not-so-distant camp were no longer audible.
"Quick, put me down," Shopkeeper Qi’s voice urged.
But the next moment, he felt a sudden, rapid descent.
"Ouch! You goddamn bastard! Are you trying to get yourself killed? Are you trying to drop me to my death?!"
Unsurprisingly, Shopkeeper Qi took a hard fall.
The moment his ass hit the ground, what little strength he had to hold it in vanished. He couldn’t stop himself any longer as a series of sputtering noises erupted.
Instantly, a foul stench filled the air.
"Bastard! Goddamn bastard! I’ll skin you alive!" Shopkeeper Qi knew exactly what had happened—he had soiled his pants.
The humiliating situation almost drove him mad. He grabbed a stick from the ground beside him and swung it at the pedantic Scholar’s head.
*SNAP!*
With a soft, crisp sound, the wooden stick broke.
At the same time, Shopkeeper Qi felt a heavy blow to his chest that sent him flying backward.
"Heh heh. Feels good to curse me out, doesn’t it? You want to hit me? You want to skin me? Well today, I’m going to skin *you*."
"Speak! Where are the silver taels you’ve hidden away all these years?! Tell me and you might live. If you don’t, I’ll kill you right now!"
"Out with it! Is it in Old Residence Lane on Old Back Street by the Jade River, or is it at Si Hui Lane?"
His body wracked with pain, the reek of his own filth choking him, his chest aching from the kick—Shopkeeper Qi felt like he was standing at death’s door.
But Qi Yishou, a man known as the Smiling Tiger, a man who had ruined countless families, was stunned.
He simply couldn’t fathom that the pedantic Scholar would dare to kick him, let alone say such things.
In a certain courtyard in one of those two lanes, he had stashed all the profits he had skimmed from the gambling den over the years.
It amounted to a full seventy or eighty thousand silver taels.
It was his most important secret, one that not even his own wife and children knew.
’How does this pedantic Scholar know?!’
’No, this person can’t be the pedantic Scholar.’
’The pedantic Scholar isn’t a Martial Artist. He couldn’t possibly have this much strength, nor would he have this much nerve.’
’Who on earth is this man?’
Fear gripped Qi Yishou’s heart. He knew this was a matter of life and death.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’d better let me go, and I’ll pretend none of this ever happened. Otherwise, if I shout, you won’t be able to escape even if you had wings!"
The pedantic Scholar gave a sinister laugh.
"It seems Shopkeeper Qi still doesn’t understand his situation. Looks like I won’t get the answer I want unless I resort to certain... methods."
Shopkeeper Qi’s heart leaped in alarm. He was about to scream, but in the next instant, his entire body went numb, and his tongue grew stiff.
「About a quarter of an hour later.」
Just as a few thugs from the gambling den were getting ready to go look for Shopkeeper Qi and the pedantic Scholar...
"What rotten luck. Almost stepped in dog shit. Zhang San, come give me a hand."
It was Shopkeeper Qi’s voice. The thugs then saw him limping out of the darkness.
"Shopkeeper, where’s the pedan—oh, I mean, the Scholar?" one of the thugs asked, puzzled to see Shopkeeper Qi return alone.
They had just seen the pedantic Scholar carrying Shopkeeper Qi out on his back.
How could it be that only Shopkeeper Qi had returned?
"The pedantic Scholar? Oh, him. He suddenly started missing his old mother, so I let him go on home," Shopkeeper Qi said with a nonchalant grunt.
"But..." The man started to ask another question.
But his companion pulled him back.
The pedantic Scholar was, at best, Shopkeeper Qi’s Dog Head Military Advisor, and he didn’t even have a formal position in the gambling den.
Besides, the man wasn’t well-liked by the subordinates in the den.
So, after Shopkeeper Qi’s explanation, aside from a few who were privately suspicious, the rest didn’t give it a second thought and went back to their own business. It was none of their concern.
"Why’d you pull me back just now?" the thug who had spoken up asked his companion, confused.
"Are you really that stupid, or just pretending? The pedantic Scholar’s old mother has been dead for years. So where do you think he went?" the other man said.
The first man was startled. He quickly pressed, "Ah! You mean...?"
"Some things are better left unsaid. Just think about it. The pedantic Scholar was the one who got the Shopkeeper beaten up like that. You think the Shopkeeper would just let him go? I thought he’d wait until after we got back to make his move, but I didn’t expect it to be this soon..."