The Fairy: From the Traveling Merchant

Chapter 966 Acquaintance
Am I really a "protagonist"? Ha, if I were, then any work featuring me as the "protagonist" would definitely be something serious...

Hearing Su Xuanbing's words, Zhao Chen inwardly scoffed. He skipped the topic and turned to look at the man digging the hole, carefully choosing his words before speaking:

“The underground restrictions have a sealing effect, which should be suppressing something terrible... and this man has probably been tempted. Judging from his mutterings, he must have prepared a ‘sacrifice’.”

Su Xuanbing's eyes flashed with blue light, and he nodded slightly, saying, "This person is both excited and fearful. He probably knows there is danger underground, but he still chose to take a gamble... He reminds me of the priest of the pseudo-fire god 'Jiaju Tu Ming' in Xiongshan Port."

After the two cultivated together, Su Xuanbing told Zhao Chen how she had suffered such injuries.

Although Zhao Chen was somewhat surprised at the time, he was not worried about the Empress's safety. On the contrary, he felt that if the so-called priest had really dared to enter the volcanic blessed land, he would probably be finished by now.

Even though the Empress was a "Profound" True Monarch, and was seriously injured, dealing with a few juniors who had reached the Profound level was still no problem for her in the blessed land she had created.

“This guy must know a lot of information. Should we arrest him and interrogate him?” Su Xuanbing turned to Zhao Chen and asked.

After thinking for a moment, Zhao Chen said, "We should catch him, but there's no need to rush. At his digging speed, it will probably take him two to three months to reach the location of that restriction."

"Wait until he's far away from that chapel before making a move, so as not to disturb what's sealed underground."

Upon hearing this, Su Xuanbing nodded first, then smiled and said, "Then why don't we go home first? Anyway, it's not far from Villa No. 16, and it's still within the range of our divine sense, so we can monitor his movements at any time."

Ha, those who know understand that you need to replenish your "vitality," but those who don't might think that you, the eldest daughter of the Su family, have completely "fallen"! Zhao Chen glanced at her, how could he not know what she was hoping for by asking to return to the villa?

But Zhao Chen didn't refuse. After all, given the choice between watching people dig in the dirt on the street and going back to a warm and cozy place, he would naturally choose the latter.

Moreover, their original purpose in buying that house was to be able to "comfortably" monitor MI9's activities and obtain valuable intelligence...

What's the point of just loitering on the street all the time?

And so, when it was three in the morning, after Zhao Chen and Su Xuanbing had completed a harmonious "Great Circulation," the man in the black tight-fitting clothes who had been digging the hole in the small church finally stopped "working," dragged his tired body out of the narrow hole, and after resting for a while, he picked up a large stone and covered it up.

After doing all this, the man with graying temples and puffy eyes gradually lost his fervor. He took out two bottles of strong liquor from his backpack in the corner of the abandoned church and drank them down, pretending to be someone who had just woken up from a hangover.

Then, he stood up, staggered out of the abandoned church, and walked towards Queens.

Meanwhile, Zhao Chen and his companion had also dressed themselves properly and quietly followed him, trailing him all the way to 29 West Villaras Street in Queens.

The West End and Queens are home to aristocrats and top-tier wealthy businessmen, with the former being more closely associated with Queens.

As for Siviras, it is the name of a county located in the western part of the Kingdom of Loen, facing the Republic of Intis across the Hornachs Mountains. In the capital, Backlund, there is a street named after it, located on the edge of the Queens District, where the headquarters of the Capital Police Department is located.

Many people choose to settle down on this street for peace of mind, and the middle-aged man digging a hole at night is one of them.

But today, the police headquarters could not protect his safety, because just as he stepped into the room, before he could even let the burning fireplace warm his frozen body, he suddenly lost consciousness and fell into a coma.

At the same time, Zhao Chen and Su Xuanbing appeared beside him, and both of them frowned.

This was not only because of the mess in the house, nor because of the women's underwear scattered on the floor, but also because a young girl was being imprisoned in the basement of this house.

"If I'm not mistaken, that girl is the so-called 'sacrifice,' isn't she?" Su Xuanbing's pretty face was filled with murderous intent, and her gaze towards the middle-aged man was as deadly as ever. In the Great Xia Dynasty, sacrificing ordinary people to an unknown entity was a capital crime, punishable by immediate execution upon discovery; such individuals didn't even qualify to be sent to the "front lines" as cannon fodder.

Zhao Chen felt that the girl looked somewhat familiar, but he didn't investigate further for the time being. Instead, he used the "Infatuation Mind Control Technique" and the "Slow Mind Bewitching Technique" from the Twelve Techniques of Mind Light on the man he had knocked unconscious. He then used the characteristics of the "Five Immortals' True Qi" to put the man in a state of being "controlled" after he "woke up".

Seeing the man stand up again with a blank look in his eyes, Zhao Chen asked directly, "Who are you? Tell me more."

“I am Baron Raft Pound, a fallen nobleman.”

“After my uncle, the respected old viscount, passed away, so many things happened around me. The kind old butler resigned for no reason and disappeared. The servants and maids changed one after another without warning, becoming strange and cold. They were looking for something, yes, looking for something. I was not even 10 years old at the time, and I could only watch. I dared not tell anyone. I was afraid I would never wake up again!” Raft Pound’s words were quite chaotic and broken, but his tone was extremely calm.

This obviously unusual answer made Zhao Chen and Su Xuanbing exchange a glance. The latter carefully said, "He used his mental abilities to hypnotize himself and even pre-set some answers to questions."

“If you hadn’t used two of the ‘Twelve Methods of Mind Light’ in succession, and if his abilities hadn’t been ineffective against Xuan Tian’s magic, you might have actually been fooled by him.”

Zhao Chen nodded: "It seems that quite a few people have questioned him about his secrets before, and he is very experienced in this area."

"In that case..."

At this point, Zhao Chen sneered and placed his palm directly on the top of Baron Raft Pound's head, "I'll just do a soul search."

In fact, he had many ways to circumvent the Baron's self-hypnosis, but there was no need to be so gentle when dealing with scum.

Moreover, although he and Su Xuanbing were interested in the underground restrictions on Williams Street, they didn't necessarily need to investigate everything thoroughly. It didn't matter if they didn't get complete information from the "soul search".

A moment later, Zhao Chen withdrew his hand, and Raft Pound, the middle-aged man, collapsed to the ground with a distorted face, silent.

"Did you find any valuable intelligence?" Su Xuanbing asked curiously, noticing Zhao Chen's strange expression.

Upon being asked, Zhao Chen first shook his head, then nodded and said, "Simply put, this person is a descendant of a family called 'Tuduo' from the previous era of this world. This family has completely declined, and in order to restore its former glory, he even set his sights on the evil spirit trapped in the underground palace by his ancestor."

Even though his father, grandfather, and other relatives died because of that evil spirit, he still wanted to cooperate with it...

"Trying to get something from a tiger is suicidal!" Su Xuanbing scoffed, offering a simple assessment.

Zhao Chen nodded slightly, then scanned the basement again with his divine sense and said, "However, the reason he was so eager to dig the tunnel was mainly because that evil spirit contacted him and asked him to kidnap the girl underground as a sacrifice."

"This gave him the feeling that he had a chance to control the evil spirit."

"As for that girl, she should be one of our 'kind'..."

"The same kind?" Su Xuanbing didn't understand what she meant, but after carefully examining the still unconscious girl, her eyes widened. "True Qi... She's a 'cultivator'?"

"Yes, a cultivator... and an apprentice at the Qingyun Martial Arts Academy in Xiongshan Port!"

(End of this chapter)