Yefutidaolu

Chapter 458 Thieves also have their ways
At this moment, Gao Jian seemed to be tilting his head slightly, gazing at the night sky, which was cut into a line by the narrow alley and dotted with scattered floating islands. His profile was clearly defined in the light and shadow, and his eyes were deep, as if he was thinking about something.

Ye Qingmu's heart suddenly clenched, almost leaping out of her chest.

She instinctively wanted to retreat and find a way out, but found that her aura had been subtly locked by an invisible force, as if she were stuck in an invisible spider web in the darkness. Any rash move could invite a thunderous strike.

Why is he here?

Is it a coincidence?
Or... what does he want to do?
A wave of immense panic washed over her instantly, like ice water.

When facing Baili Qingbo, she is a hunter with ease; but when facing Gao Jian, she seems to turn back into the weak liar whose disguises are easily exposed and whose life and death are in his hands.

She forced down the turmoil in her heart, took a deep breath, and forced a faint smile that seemed normal, yet contained a hint of surprise and delight. But beneath that smile lay a stiffness and fear that only she knew.

She stepped forward slowly, stopped a few paces away from Gao Jian, bowed slightly, and tried to keep her voice steady:

"Senior Gao... What a coincidence, I didn't expect to meet you here."

“Unfortunately,” Gao Jian’s voice was calm, but it shattered Ye Qingmu’s last shred of hope, “I came to find you.”

Ye Qingmu's heart sank completely.

Gao Jian continued, "Are you doing something with Uncle Huang?" Although it was a question, his tone was already certain.

Ye Qingmu forced herself to remain calm and maintain a respectful demeanor, and answered with a stiff upper lip: "Senior Gao, please understand, it's just... just some of the previous jobs I did to make a living..." She tried to be vague and get away with it.

"Oh," Gao Jian responded softly, his tone unreadable, but his next words sent a chill down Ye Qingmu's spine, "Another family is going to be destroyed, isn't that right?"

These seemingly casual words instantly caused Ye Qingmu's forehead to bead with cold sweat. She quickly raised her hand to wipe it away, her voice carrying a barely perceptible hint of panic: "No, it's not that bad, Senior Gao, you're too kind, it really isn't that bad..."

She dared not admit it, nor could she deny it.

Seeing her like this, Gao Jian stopped beating around the bush and got straight to the point: "Stop it." He paused, "I need you to do something for me."

These words were like a crack suddenly appearing in a desperate situation!
Ye Qingmu was stunned at first, then the heavy stone that had been pressing on her heart and making it hard to breathe suddenly fell to the ground, turning into a feeling of exhaustion after surviving a disaster, making her almost unable to stand.

They need her help! This means they still have value to them! In the eyes of someone like Gao Jian, valuable people are usually not easily eliminated.

The immense fear instantly transformed into an almost fawning enthusiasm. She spoke almost immediately, her words rapid-fire, tinged with an eagerness to claim credit:
“Mr. Gao! We…we need another two or three days…no! One day! At most one more day to close the net!” She didn’t hesitate to bring forward the closing time of the scam, afraid of delaying Gao Jian’s business. “Please wait a moment, I’ll go back and inform Uncle Huang! Whatever your orders, we will do them without hesitation, even if it means going through fire and water!”

In her view, as long as they successfully obtained the 200,000 gold coins, they would have enough capital and confidence to work for Gao Jian. As for the fate of Liuyun Sect and Baili Qingbo? In the face of Gao Jian's will, they were utterly insignificant.

All she could think about now was how to perfectly complete Gao Jian's task and cling to this unexpectedly powerful and unbelievably strong support.

"I said stop," Gao Jian's voice remained calm, but it interrupted Ye Qingmu's eagerness to take credit. "What net are you closing?"

Ye Qingmu's expression of relief and eagerness to pledge allegiance froze instantly, as if she had been frozen in place.

No...not closing the net? What about the 200,000 gold...we don't want it anymore?

Several breaths passed before she recovered from her shock, her voice tinged with grievance: "M-Sir...I know you're a good person, and you can't stand these sordid things..."

"But...but the Flowing Cloud Sect isn't exactly a clean family either! They have internal strife, incompetent elders, and exploit their disciples. They're not exactly benevolent in the local area!"

As if grasping at a straw, she quickened her pace, her voice trembling with tears as she recounted her "dilemma": "Moreover, Your Excellency, please understand! Since receiving your guidance last time, we have been helping some truly impoverished people in the capital, distributing a considerable amount of money... But, but so many of us also need to cultivate, we need resources! Living in the capital is extremely difficult; without income, we'll be living off our savings, we have no other choice..."

The more she spoke, the more convinced she became of her point, even adopting a twisted sense of "acting on behalf of Heaven," and her voice rose slightly, carrying a kind of desperate, reckless excitement:
"This...this can be considered robbing the rich to help the poor, even thieves have their code of honor, sir!"

She looked at Gao Jian expectantly, hoping that her seemingly reasonable explanation would salvage the 200,000 yuan that was about to be in her hands, or at least give her a chance to "not do it again."

Ye Qingmu's explanation was not entirely nonsense.

Within this divine dynasty, most of the immortal sects and families that are of a certain size and have developed reasonably well, except for those reclusive sects with very few members who adhere to ancient precepts and are completely self-sufficient, are destined to have a lot of unsavory things involved in their development process due to the consumption of their large number of disciples and the demand for massive cultivation resources.

The law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, is one of the unspoken rules of the cultivation world. The Flowing Cloud Sect, which rose to prominence among mid-sized immortal sects, was no exception. The bloodshed and filth that flowed behind the scenes during its expansion and rise were no less than those of the likes of Uncle Huang.

The core inheritance of the Flowing Cloud Sect is the "Flowing Cloud Tracing Wind Technique". This technique is not an evil art, but rather a righteous one. It emphasizes transforming the body into flowing clouds, tracing the heavens with the mind, and controlling the wind spirit. It combines speed and agility. When cultivated to a high level, it can even resonate with the "wind veins" between heaven and earth, and move by borrowing momentum, making it quite powerful.

However, this cultivation method, which was not inherently evil, engaged in many shady activities during its expansion.

Long ago, the Flowing Cloud Sect coveted a "Void Wind Stone," an ancestral heirloom of a small family. This stone was priceless, as it could help cultivators of the "Flowing Cloud Tracing Wind Technique" better comprehend the ethereal nature of wind. The family, however, vowed never to sell it.

Instead of launching a direct attack, the Liuyun Sect used its exquisite manipulation of airflow to first secretly disrupt the wind circulation in the family's spiritual fields, causing their spiritual grains to decrease year after year. Then, it used a secret method to summon yin winds, which eroded the minds of the family's young disciples day and night, causing their cultivation to slow down and their inner demons to grow.

In just thirty years, the family could not hold on any longer, internal discord arose, and it was eventually swallowed up by the Liuyun Sect at a very low price, "legitimately" and the Kongming Wind Stone naturally fell into their hands as well.

In addition, the Flowing Cloud Sect controls a highly profitable short-distance airship route. If other merchant guilds or independent cultivators attempt to open up a competing route, they will send out experts to either create turbulent "turbulence" in the high sky to interfere with or even shoot down the opponent's airships; or use their speed advantage to fake an accident, ramming or forcing the opponent's ship off course, causing damage.

Over time, no one dared to venture onto this route anymore, allowing the Flowing Cloud Sect to reap the benefits alone.

Third, they would stop at nothing to spy on secrets.

When the "Flowing Clouds and Tracing Wind Technique" is cultivated to a certain level, one can transform into an almost invisible "cloud," possessing extremely strong concealment and penetrating abilities. The Flowing Cloud Sect often dispatches disciples with such abilities to infiltrate the territories of hostile or potential rivals to steal secrets such as pill formulas, formation diagrams, and mineral vein distribution maps. Once, a sect painstakingly explored and discovered a hidden small spirit jade vein. Before it was even mined, its specific coordinates and reserve report were already on the desk of the Flowing Cloud Sect elders, ultimately forcing them to "cooperate" in its development.

Looking at Gao Jian's still calm face, Ye Qingmu seemed to regain her confidence, and her voice became more steady: "Sir, you see... when they expanded, they used trickery and force to seize and plunder, destroying people's foundations; they monopolized shipping routes, forcing countless small merchant guilds into bankruptcy; they are also accustomed to eavesdropping and spying, using any means necessary! This time, we... at most it's just a case of the wicked eating the wicked, getting some interest back for those who were harmed by them!"

She tried to portray their scam as a twisted form of "justice".

Ye Qingmu continued speaking—

While the "major events" she mentioned earlier about the Flowing Cloud Sect certainly demonstrated its domineering nature, what truly embodied this domineering nature were often those seemingly insignificant "minor events" that dealt a devastating blow to the lower classes.

Just as she said, in order to force that small family to submit, the Flowing Cloud Sect used the "Flowing Cloud Tracing Wind Technique" to secretly disrupt the wind circulation of its spiritual field.

This method might seem like harmless pressure to cultivators, but for the mortal villages within a two-hundred-mile radius that depend on the spiritual field for their produce, it is nothing short of a catastrophe!
The disordered spiritual energy in the spiritual fields led to a sharp decline in yields and even crop failure, triggering a terrifying chain reaction. Within just one or two years, famine spread like a plague. Villages that were once relatively peaceful were now littered with corpses of the starving, and cooking fires had ceased to rise. Those who were lucky enough to survive had no choice but to abandon their ancestral homes, dragging their families along, becoming faceless, struggling refugees, scattering in all directions, pouring into surrounding towns, where they either begged, sold themselves, or died in ditches, further exacerbating local instability and turmoil.

Those mortal lives, which are like ants in the eyes of high-level cultivators, those lives that can be completely overturned by a mere "touch" of wind magic, are probably not even a cold number in the calculations of the Flowing Cloud Sect. They are merely noises that can be ignored in the process of achieving their goals.

When Ye Qingmu said these words, his tone even carried a hint of "look how despicable they are" as evidence, trying to prove the legitimacy of his "double-crossing".

However, she did not realize, or rather deliberately ignored, that when she swindled the Liuyun Sect out of 200,000 gold coins with Uncle Huang's group, causing its expansion plan to fail completely and the sect to be furious and hold her accountable, the first to be punished would be Baili Qingbo, the true disciple who had already been exploited to the limit. But wouldn't the many low-level servants, laborers, and even ordinary people in related industries who depended on the Liuyun Sect for survival also be affected?

They too will face unemployment, oppression, and even more tragic fates.

Gao Jian's gaze remained calm, but beneath that calm, a cold undercurrent seemed to be surging. He looked at Ye Qingmu as if, through her, he could see the cruel price that was passed down layer by layer beneath the glamorous facade of the capital, ultimately borne by the weakest.

He remained unmoved by Ye Qingmu's "evidence," simply stating, "So, you use one disaster to punish the victims of another. Is this your code of honor among thieves?"

Gao Jian's voice wasn't loud: "So, what's the difference between you and them?"

Ye Qingmu was speechless for a moment, unable to utter a word.

The Huang Uncle Group is a fraud gang, so they can hardly be considered good people. Since being taught a lesson by Gao Jian last time, they do occasionally do some "good deeds" like giving away money to help the poor, but this is more out of fear of Gao Jian and a kind of instinct to seek psychological comfort that they themselves may not even be willing to admit. This is already their limit.

But now, Gao Jian casually tells them to "stop," and they're expected to give up the 200,000 gold coins that were within their grasp! This isn't just a matter of losing a piece of meat that was already in their mouth!
Setting a trap for someone requires substantial upfront investment! Renting venues, hiring actors, bribing officials, gathering intelligence... every step requires real money. If these sunk costs cannot be recovered, it will be a crippling blow to a group like theirs that has no stable industry and relies entirely on "business" for survival! Once the cash flow dries up, internal unrest will ensue, potentially even leading to infighting, with far greater consequences!

If they stopped now, all that money would be wasted. Their gang, seemingly glamorous, actually had countless mouths to feed. The men under their command might not be highly skilled, but they were all running errands, keeping watch, and playing roles—each one of them deserved a share of the profits. And as Ye Qingmu said, they indeed had wives and children to support, and their own cultivation resources to raise.

Thinking this through, Ye Qingmu steeled her resolve, no longer caring about pretense of "honor among thieves." She raised her head and said, with a "what's the use" attitude:
"My lord... Your magical powers are so great, you naturally look down on our despicable methods. Although we make a living by deception, we... we really don't harm any living beings! This scheme has involved a huge investment from start to finish. If we stop now, we'll lose everything... Many of our brothers in the gang... they also have wives, children, and elderly parents who depend on this business for a living! You're telling us to stop, but you're not giving us a way out. This... this is no different from forcing us to die. Aren't you the same as us?"

Her words were partly true, partly an attempt to elicit sympathy, but also a challenge to her insightful opinions.

You're kind-hearted, so you can kill one group to save another? Then isn't that utter hypocrisy? Why should we be the ones dying, and not them? Killing wolves to save sheep—aren't the wolves pitiful too?!

(End of this chapter)