Chapter 248: Turn the tables on them

Nearly a hundred paces away, looking from afar, the torch in Fei Rongbao’s hand looked like a flickering ghost fire.

Ding Suian and Chest Hair followed for another cup of tea’s time until Fei Rongbao reached a relatively wide intersection in the tunnel.

The torch suddenly dimmed and then went out.

With the disappearance of the only light source, the surroundings were once again plunged into endless darkness.

“Boss!” Chest Hair, who was following behind, had a noticeably tense voice.

Ding Suian focused his vision ahead and saw more than ten orange-red silhouettes lurking behind the cross-shaped tunnel ahead, positioned in a stealthy formation.

Apparently, the slight noise from earlier had been noticed by Fei Rongbao after all, and he had set a trap in advance.

Retreat first? If he retreated now, not only would the night’s effort be wasted, but it would also startle the other party into hiding even deeper.

As he fumbled his way forward in the darkness, he carefully sensed that the breathing of these dozen or so heat sources was short and shallow, and he didn’t detect any strong flow of Protective Aura.

At most, they were just some Body Refining Martial Artists.

The advantage is mine!

“Don’t panic, follow me.” Ding Suian whispered a reminder.

The two walked for a while longer and finally stepped into the ‘trap’.

Due to a Martial Artist’s natural perception of danger, even Chest Hair vaguely sensed something. He suddenly tugged at Ding Suian’s lapel and whispered a warning, “Boss, something’s wrong!”

No sooner had he spoken than more than a dozen torches suddenly lit up in the tunnel, instantly illuminating the place as bright as day.

A dozen or so men with their faces covered by cloth masks stepped out quickly from three directions of the tunnel, surrounding the two in a fan shape, their steel blades reflecting the flickering torchlight.

The leader looked the two over with amusement, then said in a hoarse voice, “Two friends, what brings you to my Wangchuan Ferry?”

Ding Suian scanned the circle and cupped his hands, saying, “Good heroes, there’s a misunderstanding. Our family’s pig and dog are lost, and someone saw them run into this culvert, so the two of us brothers came in to look for them.”

The hoarse-voiced leader laughed with a wheezing sound, as if a glob of phlegm was stuck in his throat, and teased, “So, did you find them?”

Ding Suian turned back and smiled at Chest Hair, “Maozi, did we find them?”

As brothers for many years, Chest Hair knew exactly what Ding Suian was up to the moment he moved. He couldn’t help but grin and laugh loudly, raising his hand to point at the crowd, “Young Master, we found them! Aren’t these the pigs and dogs right here?”

Chest Hair, not bad! A top-tier straight man.

“You’re courting death!” The leader had originally intended to probe their background, but was provoked by the two men’s double act, and immediately shouted, “Kill them!”

Four men heard the order and rushed over, brandishing their blades. Ding Suian stepped aside, leaving this chance to shine for Chest Hair. If Chest Hair couldn’t handle these small fry, he might as well change his profession to a wet nurse.

He truly didn’t let Ding Suian down. Now in the Chenggang Realm, Chest Hair’s burly figure spun like a top as he took the initiative to charge at the four men. As a cold light flashed, one was cut down, and another had his knee smashed by a backhand strike, rolling into the dark canal while screaming in agony.

In just one round, one was dead and one was wounded. The remaining two hurriedly braked, panicking, “Fifth Master! These are tough targets!”

An expert shows their worth the moment they strike. The leader, known as Fifth Master, saw at a glance that the newcomers were trouble. He hurriedly retreated two steps, shielding his minions in front of him, and simultaneously whispered, “Reward them with some work~”

Before the words fell, everyone pulled a small cloth bag from their bosom and shook it violently at Ding Suian and his companion. The white powder inside the bags was sprinkled over the two from all directions.

Chest Hair thought these people were using the low-down trick of ‘blinding with lime’, so he reacted extremely quickly, raising his hand to block his eyes while shouting, “Boss, watch out for the lime!”

But the next moment, he smelled a strange fragrance. Huh? It doesn’t seem to be lime!

Just as this thought crossed his mind, his body swayed, his steel blade slipped from his hand, and his sturdy frame crashed down like a drunkard.

He hadn’t guarded against drugs like this at first because, after entering the Chenggang Realm, ordinary folk drugs had very limited effects on them.

Yet, unexpectedly, these people at Wangchuan Ferry had such a potent drug, causing even a Chenggang Realm Martial Artist like him to fall victim.

As soon as Chest Hair fell, everyone looked at Ding Suian in unison.

“.”

Ding Suian was stunned for a second, then held his forehead, “My head is so dizzy~”

As he finished speaking, he flopped to the ground in a sultry manner.

“Heh, Fifth Master’s ‘Immortal-Confusing Powder’ is truly powerful! Such tough targets, and they just collapsed like that~”

Seeing the two fall one after another, a minion walked over to Chest Hair flatteringly, kicked the burly man with his toe, and asked, “Fifth Master, shall we kill them?”

Fifth Master had already walked to Ding Suian’s side, holding the torch and looking down for a while. He tore off the red thread ball from his waist with a look of clever confidence, “No rush. I keep feeling that this pretty boy looks familiar. Wait until dawn to ask Big Brother to come and identify him. Take them back first~”

“Yes!”

“Hook, go lead the red thread elsewhere. I’m afraid this kid has a tail behind him. Let them wander around blindly in the culvert.”

“Understood~”

The group sheathed their swords and found straw ropes to tie up Ding Suian’s hands and feet. When it came to Chest Hair, the tool for locking people up was changed to iron chains, presumably because his ferocity earlier had left a deep impression on everyone.

As for Ding Suian? A pretty boy with no substance, he clearly couldn’t fight. Tying him with a piece of straw rope was just a precaution.

After getting everything ready, they carried the two men and walked for another good half-hour in the winding tunnels before the noise hit them head-on.

“Big! Big! Big!”

“Small! Small!”

“Hahaha, Leopard, it’s a clean sweep!”

Ding Suian felt himself being thrown into a wooden cage, and the click of the lock amidst the clamor was barely audible.

He was, of course, feigning unconsciousness. This plan stemmed from a thought he had when he saw Chest Hair pass out. Since Wangchuan Ferry’s lair was hard to find, it was better to pretend to be unconscious and let them bring him here.

According to the original plan, once the lair was found, he could start a massacre. But just now he heard that Fifth Master mention ‘Big Brother’. That must be an important figure, and perhaps he could follow the trail to find Chen Hong. Ding Suian changed his plan on the fly, preparing to wait for ‘Big Brother’ to arrive before taking action. Capture the bandits by capturing their king, after all.

Soon, the footsteps temporarily faded away, and he quietly lifted his eyelids a crack.

This was a low but relatively wide underground cavern. Although dozens of oil lamps illuminated the place brightly, the large amount of smoke produced by the inferior lamp oil made the cavern foggy. Mixed with the smell of sweat and powder, it was suffocating enough to make one retch.

In the center of the cavern sat a large, rough wooden table, where dozens of naked men wearing only loincloths were crowded together gambling.

Ding Suian was currently in a wooden cage made of arm-thick timber. Beside him was Chest Hair, whose hands were locked behind his back with iron chains, sleeping with his butt in the air. Ding Suian kicked him quietly.

There was no reaction; it seemed Maozi wasn’t feigning unconsciousness, he was truly out cold.

Ding Suian turned his head slightly to look around and saw more than a dozen other cages piled up next to his. Each was stuffed with five or six people, mostly young women, but also some male and female children.

They were all hugging their knees with their heads lowered, crowding together like penguins huddled for warmth while avoiding a blizzard.

Ding Suian, who was silently observing, suddenly sensed something. He turned his head slightly and locked eyes with a pair of clear, large eyes in the cage next door. An eight or nine-year-old girl was looking at him curiously through the wooden bars.

Ding Suian’s lips curled up. He winked at her in the shadows, exerted a little force with his wrist to snap the straw rope, then held his index finger to his lips, smiling and making a’shh’ gesture.

The little girl’s dark eyes rolled around, seeming to understand but not quite, yet she quickly tensed her dirty little face and nodded solemnly.

Just at this moment, Fifth Master returned with another person. Ding Suian quickly wrapped the straw rope around his wrist and closed his eyes again.

“Second Brother, these two are the tails that were following you earlier~” Judging by the meaning of ‘Fifth Master’s’ words,’Second Brother’ must be Fei Rongbao, the owner of Warm Fragrance Courtyard.

“Why bring them back? Why not just kill them?”

“I saw that he looked familiar, so I thought I’d ask Big Brother to take a look tomorrow~”

“Oh~”

Fei Rongbao replied, seemingly having lost interest in Ding Suian. After a while, he said, “Are the young goods Big Brother asked you to collect ready?”

“They are ready, four of each gender.”

This was slang; ‘young goods’ referred to children, and gender naturally referred to their sex. Presumably, the little girl who had greeted Ding Suian earlier was one of the ‘young goods’.

“Heh, Second Brother, Lord Linping is too much of a troublemaker, isn’t he? We just sent four pairs of ‘young goods’ to the mansion at the beginning of the year, and they’re gone already?”

“Lord Linping”? Who is that? He immediately realized, could it be the “Linping” of the Prince of Linping?

Unfortunately, Fei Rongbao was very cautious and only said, “Stop blabbering. Do what Big Brother tells you to do and gossip less~” The conversation between the two ended there, and their footsteps gradually faded away.

In the end, Ding Suian didn’t get any more useful information. He leaned against the wooden cage, closing his eyes to rest, and couldn’t help but think of the scene where the Wangchuan Ferry gang sprinkled poison in the cross-shaped tunnel earlier. The ‘Immortal-Confusing Powder’ could knock out Chest Hair in an instant; it was indeed potent. It was definitely not an ordinary drug.

Theoretically, for a drug capable of knocking out Chest Hair, even if Ding Suian could hold out by relying on the perfection of the Hua Gang Realm, he would inevitably experience symptoms of poisoning like dizziness and sluggishness. But just now, he had no discomfort at all. If not for Chest Hair acting as a benchmark, he almost wouldn’t have realized that what they sprinkled was poison. This was a bit strange.

He wasn’t immune to crowd control, but he had never been impervious to all poisons either. Yesterday morning, he had even been poisoned by Xu Jiuxi. Huh? Could it be that what Old Xu did yesterday was like an immunization shot, giving him poison resistance? After all, she had personally warned him that Wangchuan Ferry was good at using poison. If that was the case, hadn’t he wronged a good snake?