Chapter 144: Lin Qi's Proposal

Long Cheng lay sprawled across the wide chair, lazily pouring a cup of wine into his mouth.

His eyes wandered, gazing blankly at the ancient, blackened wallpaper patterns on the tavern's ceiling. After a long silence, Long Cheng sighed and said, "Anyway, it was bizarre. I ran out of money just two days after arriving here. Well, after pondering for a long time, I had no choice but to pawn my coat to cover my expenses."

Lin Qi looked at Long Cheng. Although the two had only spent a few days together, Lin Qi refused to believe that this fellow would honestly and obediently pawn his coat. Just think about what Long Cheng had said in the pawnshop earlier. If the shopkeeper had attacked him, he would have had a logical and natural excuse to murder, burn, plunder, and ravage?

This fellow had malicious intentions from the very beginning; he was deliberately looking for trouble!

Long Cheng sighed deeply and said, "This blue fox fur coat of mine is made from the extremely rare black-ice blue fox fur of the Odin Ice Fields. I spent gold ingots equivalent to a full twenty thousand gold coins to buy it. That's why I went to the pawnshop hoping to mortgage it for one hundred or eighty thousand gold coins, which would have been enough to sustain my expenses here for a while."

Indignantly straightening his posture, he poured himself another cup of wine and sighed up to the heavens, "A single penny can stump a hero! A man as handsome, dashing, proficient in both martial and literary arts, possessing supreme divine might, wise, resolute, of noble birth, and extraordinary bloodline like myself, actually had to lower himself to go to such a sordid place and deal with such wretched scum just to pawn his clothing!"

Smacking the table heavily, Long Cheng gritted his teeth and said, "They should have been trembling with fear, bowing respectfully, acting like obedient grandsons before their grandfather, and respectfully presenting one hundred thousand gold notes according to the price I set, kneeling as they sent me off! Yet they actually dared to beat the price down to three gold coins! And simply because of a few straightforward words from me, they actually attempted to gang up on and surround me?"

Lin Qi and the other two rolled their eyes in unison. With this fellow being so arrogant yet fond of insulting others with his words, it would have been a miracle if the shopkeeper hadn't ordered his thugs to surround him!

Then they heard Long Cheng sneer, "However, am I someone they could bully at will? How dare a sparrow attack a phoenix? How dare a mongrel bark wildly at a qilin? If they had truly dared to strike, it would have been perfectly logical and justified for me to slaughter their entire family. Their gold coins would become my gold coins, and their silver would become my silver. If they had pretty wives and daughters, those naturally would have become my women!"

Glaring indignantly at Lin Qi, Long Cheng shook his head and said, "What a pity that you ruined a good thing!"

Lin Qi remained speechless for a long time. Looking at Long Cheng's puffed-up expression, he gave a wry smile and said, "If you wanted to engage in highway robbery, you could have just picked any wealthy household and slaughtered your way in. I imagine that even within an empire duke's estate, you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a few people capable of stopping you for long! If you randomly plundered a wealthy merchant, you could easily pocket a million or eight hundred thousand in gold notes, couldn't you?"

Long Cheng stared at Lin Qi in astonishment, then said indignantly, "What kind of person do you take Long Cheng for? Am I the sort of scoundrel who breaks the law and commits evil? I mind my own business unless others provoke me; but if anyone offends me, I annihilate their entire clan. Sure, I love killing people and wiping out clans, but that's only if they provoke me first! If they don't provoke me first, am I the kind of person who would kill others just for those worldly possessions?"

Casting an arrogant, sidelong glance at Lin Qi, Long Cheng fixed his gaze on Yulian and sneered, "Am I really the kind of person who would kill others for mere worldly gold and silver?"

Yulian blinked frantically. Having spent so many years mingling in aristocratic circles and having seen countless wastrels, this was the absolute first time he had encountered someone who harbored the intentions of a villain while desperately trying to gild his own lily.

There were plenty of decadent young nobles in the imperial capital who bullied the weak and seized commoners' wealth, but when they did something, they simply did it without putting any whitewash on it. Yet what about this Long Cheng? How should one describe him? Weren't you just trying to ransack a place to make some fast cash? Why did you have to make it sound so righteous? Why did you insist on positioning yourself as the victim?

Sighing deeply, Yulian suddenly had an epiphany: a black heart and thick skin seemed to be essential qualities for surviving in the aristocratic circle. Judging by Long Cheng's ruthlessness and shamelessness, he undoubtedly hailed from a top-tier noble family—that was an absolute certainty.

Lin Qi looked at Long Cheng with flickering eyes. He let out a few dry laughs and slowly said, "When all is said and forth, you simply have no money to spend right now!"

Long Cheng blinked, reached into his sleeve, and after fumbling around for a long time, finally pulled out three copper coins and tossed them onto the table.

Shrugging his shoulders, Lin Qi chuckled strangely, "Actually, you were prepared to commit highway robbery; you were just too embarrassed to let go of your pride. Well, actually, you still want to commit highway robbery, don't you? As long as you're given an excuse..."

Long Cheng rolled his eyes and replied with arrogant pride, "Even if there's an excuse, not just any stray cats and dogs can make me resort to robbery! Hmph, I wouldn't deign to make a move unless they are worth several million gold coins. Besides, I've already cased the joint. That pawnshop is the largest one in the entire South District, and its owner..."

Lin Qi's expression grew even more bizarre, and Long Cheng suddenly realized that his own words had leaked his secrets. He let out a few dry laughs and hurriedly shut his mouth.

Enzo and Yulian exchanged a strange look. This fellow truly was no good. What did he mean by having "cased the joint"? In other words, if it weren't for Lin Qi's fortuitous and timely arrival today, that pawnshop would already be a river of blood amidst roaring flames, wouldn't it?

Coughing lightly, Long Cheng said sheepishly, "A person of my stature... if I'm going to make a move, how could I possibly rob a mere three or five thousand gold coins? If you're going to do it, you have to do it big. For instance, back in the imperial capital, how could ordinary women possibly move my heart? Even if I visit a pleasure house, it has to be a peerless beauty from the List of Crimson Blossoms to even qualify to approach this pristine body of mine!"

Enzo almost spat out his mouthful of wine. *Your pristine body?!*

Yulian's claws tingled with numbness. He had seen shameless people before, but never one quite this shameless—it reached the absolute pinnacle of shamelessness. Even the Imperial Minister of Foreign Affairs, widely hailed by various empires and kingdoms of the Western Continent as the most shameless man alive, probably didn't possess even half of Long Cheng's brazenness.

Lin Qi gave the table a hard slap, narrowed his eyes, and smiled, "Splendid, simply splendid! How about this? I happen to have an exceptionally good reason and an exceptionally good target right here... Well, that family has a grudge against me. If you make a move to help me, you'll simply be drawing your sword to uphold justice on the road! Their family is extravagantly wealthy, and a single vase of theirs is worth hundreds of millions of gold coins. If you were to... Hahaha!"

Lin Qi broke into a wide grin.

Long Cheng's eyes spun rapidly, and he suddenly began to smile as well.

If there really was such a perfectly tailored target, why shouldn't he make a move? Only a fool wouldn't! He had a grudge with Lin Qi? But he, Long Cheng, was on friendly terms with Lin Qi! Helping Lin Qi deal with that family was an act of chivalry and righteousness, thrusting a brother's ribs out to take a blow for him. No one could ever accuse Long Cheng of doing it out of greed for wealth.

And by the way, taking a little 'blood and sweat of the people' from that family—taking from the people and using it for the people—would also be a glorious deed of robbing the rich to aid the poor.

Of course, he, Long Cheng, would only aid beautiful young maidens, but that still counted as robbing the rich to help the poor!

Long Cheng suddenly developed a fierce interest in the family Lin Qi had mentioned.