Chapter 149: Extensive Looting

Eight dark figures slipped into the three mansions, moving through the buildings rapidly in pairs.

Strange to say, a luxurious estate like Number One Saint Glory Avenue should normally have three to five hundred servants and guards. Yet today, in this vast residence, there were only a total of four servants—two men and two women—and a mere dozen or so watchmen.

The male and female servants were ordinary people, easily knocked unconscious by the eight assassins. As for the dozen-plus guards, the weakest was at the Earth tier, while the strongest had already half-stepped into the threshold of the Heaven tier. However, the eight assassins silently launched surprise attacks from behind using various hidden weapons and drugs, bringing down these guards before any of them could make the slightest sound.

In the span of just a single cup of tea, everyone inside the three buildings had fallen unconscious. Wearing masks, Lin Qi and Long Cheng strode openly through the main entrance into the central manor, swaggering through the living room.

Large bouquets of flowers were tossed to the floor, and Lin Qi flung himself like a hungry wolf upon a pitch-black vase as tall as a man's waist. The dark vase was decorated with ancient and mysterious patterns painted in deep red glaze—a genuine treasure passed down from the Dark Era!

Even more precious was that, after withstanding at least several thousand years of wind and rain, the vase was as smooth as new, without the slightest flaw. Lin Qi greedily caressed the captivating curves of the vase, almost drooling. After reluctantly petting it for a moment, he hurriedly pulled off his boots and socks, and shoved the vase directly into the collar of his left shoe.

Long Cheng, who witnessed all of this from the side, nearly passed out—this punk actually possessed a spatial magical artifact? And what was even more maddening was that this fellow actually wore a precious spatial artifact around his ankle? What was the meaning of this? This brat had zero respect for the grandmasters capable of crafting spatial artifacts!

Long Cheng held an exalted status and noble birth in the Eastern lands; he too owned a spatial artifact, but because he had made a wager with someone and the opponent had imposed strict conditions, he had been unable to bring it along. Precisely because he owned one himself, Long Cheng knew just how rare and precious such items were. Unless one had a strong cooperative relationship with those few factions possessing powerful spatial mages, spatial artifacts simply never circulated on the market.

The value of any spatial artifact was exorbitantly high; ordinary grand nobles could not even hope to lay eyes on such rare items. But Lin Qi? He actually wore a spatial artifact around his ankle! "I just hope he doesn't have stinky feet!" Long Cheng cursed maliciously. "I hope the master who forged this artifact doesn't see this, or this brat is bound to suffer. I swear, he's definitely going to suffer!"

While muttering curses at Lin Qi, Long Cheng was also sweeping through the hall like a whirlwind. He had no way of carrying off items that were too bulky despite their high value, but there were plenty of small-sized objects worth a fortune in the hall.

For instance, on the coffee table in the seating area at the corner of the hall, there was a cigar box. The inner layer of the box was made of millennium-old wood, and the lid was inlaid with an aquamarine the size of an infant's fist. An infant's fist in size, cut almost to perfection, with a pure color free of the slightest flaw—a deep blue gem resembling the ocean.

"Worth a million!" Long Cheng quickly estimated the price of the cigar box. He snatched up the half-foot-wide box and thrust it with deep satisfaction into the cloth sack tied to his back. Poor fellow, having no spatial artifact with him, he could only select these small yet valuable items to carry.

Lin Qi had already swept away the most valuable set of furnishings in the hall like autumn leaves clearing away fallen foliage. He stuffed those smaller yet precious items into four vases, and then stuffed the four vases into his ankle chain. Furthermore, eight assassins carrying large black leather bags were busy nearby, professionally plundering all kinds of valuables from the hall.

Aside from the antique furniture, which was far too bulky for anyone to move, every single valuable in the hall was plundered in the time it took to brew a cup of tea—even the gems inlaid in the antique furniture were pried off by the nimble-fingered Long Cheng.

Having thoroughly gutted the hall, the group swiftly rushed up to the second floor. Lin Qi headed straight for the parlor made of bright ebony, rudely and savagely prying a slab of ebony off the wall with his sword. Moving like the wind, the eight assassins quickly cooperated with Lin Qi to pry off these ebony boards one by one, tied them neatly with ropes, and rapidly transported them to the backyard.

A large hole had already been sawed through the fence in the backyard, and a large patch of flowering trees had been violently flattened. A group of burly men with black gauze masks, accompanied by twelve lengthened four-wheel cargo wagons, lay in wait among the tree shadows to provide backup, quickly loading the loot brought by the assassins into the carriages.

While Lin Qi and his companions were working up a sweat pillaging the buildings, the twenty-odd burly men backing them up in the backyard joined the looting frenzy. They wreaked havoc inside the building like a tornado, stripping the main building of all portable wealth in a mere thirty minutes—leaving behind not even a single soup spoon among the pure gold and silver tableware in the kitchen.

Once the main building was cleaned out, they moved on to the auxiliary buildings. The two auxiliary buildings were also constructed with the utmost luxury. A bedroom in one of the auxiliary buildings actually used the ivory of a prehistoric mammoth as its primary building material; correspondingly, a guest room in the other auxiliary building was built primarily using the bones of a single-horned mad whale.

Ecstatic, Lin Qi and his companions violently dismantled these materials, loading them onto the carts along with the antique scrolls and various decorative ornaments.

Even in the dead of winter, Lin Qi was so busy he broke out in a heavy sweat. All the most precious treasures were stowed away in his ankle chain, and his eyes practically glowed with golden light. He had struck it rich! If he could convert today's loot into gold coins, he might not be the richest man on the continent, but he would definitely squeeze into the top two hundred wealthiest individuals.

A giant golden coffin was already flashing before Lin Qi's eyes—by the time he died, he would have earned enough to pay for a solid gold coffin at the very least.

Huffing and puffing as he worked, Lin Qi had just finished looting all the display items in an exhibition room when an assassin suddenly materialized beside him like a ghost. "Young master, we found a secret chamber beneath the main building. Would you like to take a look?"

A secret chamber beneath the main building? Lin Qi immediately associated this news with terms like "treasure." Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he gritted his teeth and commanded, "Of course we're going to take a look. Hmm, watch out for traps, and call Long Cheng along so he can clear the path."

With the items in both auxiliary buildings practically cleared out, Lin Qi swiftly led his men into the tunnel leading to that secret chamber.