Xiao Gun took a deep breath to quell the heaviness within his chest. Yao Chang did not seem to be doing too well either, as he clenched his fists hidden within his sleeves.
Yang Qing’s brows raised slightly when he noticed a peculiar reaction from both Lin Guiren and Branch Manager, Yao De.
Lin Guiren didn’t do much other than slightly furrow his brows before he relaxed them again, and as he did, the branch manager seed to flinch slightly before he went back to normal.
Lin Guiren’s reaction was that of soone hearing sothing for the first ti, while the branch manager’s reaction was that of soone who had been caught.
Yang Qing couldn’t help but find the whole thing curious. A palace realm expert hiding sothing from a domain expert, was not sothing one would do lightly not unless you had no other option than to do so, like let’s say adding yourself a few more days or weeks or months of leave because you feel you deserve it for doing such a good job and your organization didn’t appreciate you enough for it.
In such an instance, the deception could be understood. Yang Qing couldn’t help but wonder about the branch manager’s motivation for concealing things from his boss.
...
"Having already decided on what to do, we settled on the Golden Bamboo Pavilion, though in part we decided on them because of their Red Maple Empire Branch. That was the key decider on where we wanted to sell the cauldron.
Red Maple Empire was an Empire famous for dealing in spiritual herbs and alchemy. It thus stood to reason that the Golden Bamboo Pavilion branch opened there would purposely be set there with that the in mind. Its affairs were bound to center around that subject, and if it were, they would more than likely be able to realize the value of the cauldron.
Other than that, the other reason we decided on the Red Maple Empire was we judged it an easier place to escape from. It checked all the boxes. It was well established in alchemy, had a rank two branch rchant shop within its territory, and was a rank three organization with troubles.
When we decided on that branch we investigated everything we could about both the Golden Bamboo Pavilion and the Red Maple Empire. The forr was to find out about their reputation, while the latter was so we could get the layout of the land.
What we dug up convinced us that the Red Maple Empire was the perfect place for the deal. The Golden Bamboo Pavilion was known to give a fair price, and when it ca to the empire, they may have been a rank three powerhouse, but they were riddled with infighting which ant that their palace realm experts were mostly preoccupied.
This left the general running and administration of the empire in the hands of core formation experts. In such a setting, in case anything went wrong with the deal, it would be easier to make a clean getaway.
Ideally, a rank-four organization would have been the safest place for us to conduct the deal but the value of the item we were dealing with rendered them useless for consideration. We could only thus settle on the weakest, well-connected rank three organization we could find, and the Red Maple Empire fulfilled that criteria to a tee.." Xiao Gun callously said ignoring the twitching and angry expression on Gong Jie’s face, who looked like he was inches away from taking a swing at him.
"We thus decided that the strongest of us, which was Fu Yong, would go to the deal, while we waited in one of the towns in Snowturtle Mountain Kingdom. We chose one of the towns close to its border with the Red Maple Empire.
As per the agreent, Fu Yong would do the deal, if successful, he would et us where we were and we would leave together. But if sothing went wrong, Fu Yong would have to find a way to get away alive, and as per our agreent, if leaving with the cauldron proved difficult, then abandoning it at the threat of life would be acceptable.
We already had pre-arranged signals and tilines to know if he was in trouble, and if he was, we would all split and et up three weeks later at a predetermined location.
If one of us didn’t show up, then that ant they were either dead, incapacitated, or compromised sohow. Those who make it can either choose to extend the waiting period, flee the area to a location that the other doesn’t know, or search for the missing mber or mbers if two of us are missing.
Even though we made those plans, and have in fact used them a couple of tis, I can’t speak for Yao Chang, but personally, I wasn’t expecting us to use them..."
"I didn’t expect it either..’ softly interjected Yao Chang which elicited a bitter smile from Xiao Gun.
"Maybe we were too afraid of being pessimistic, clinging on to the fantasy that maybe, finally, our luck had finally turned, before the world reared its ugly head and reminded us of our place in it..." Xiao Gun gloomily said.
"Sothing did end up happening to Fu Yong when he went there. A few hours after we separated we received a distress call from him, telling us to run. The mild panic in his voice was all the confirmation we needed that sothing had gone awry, we thus split up and went in different directions, promising to et up in the agreed location in three weeks.
So part of had been tempted to ditch the escape plan and head toward Red Maple Empire to find out what was going on..
Part of worried for Fu Yong’s safety, but the other part.." Xiao Gun paused slightly, as a troubled expression riddled with guilt colored his face.
"The other part of , though it was a small part, it was a part that filled with great sha for just thinking of it. So part of worried that he had betrayed us, and the ssage had been a ruse, and he was absconding with the cauldron.
It was just a second, but in that second, I had imagined all kinds of scenarios that gave credence to my suspicions. Our 800 years of trust waivered in that second.
In the end, my cowardice saved from going too deep down that line of thought. I chose to flee, but those few seconds of suspicion haunt to this very day.." Xiao Gun painfully said as he rubbed his face as a ans to contain the tears that were threatening to drip down.
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