Chapter 144: Lin Qi’s Suggestion

Long Cheng was sprawled in a wide chair, lazily pouring a drink into his mouth.

His eyes wandered over the tavern ceiling’s ancient, blackened wallpaper for a long time before he finally sighed. “It’s incredibly frustrating. Soon after I got here, I ran out of money. Well, I thought about it for ages and had no choice but to pawn my coat to cover my expenses.”

Lin Qi looked at Long Cheng. They’d only known each other a short while, but he didn’t believe this guy would honestly go pawn his coat. Just think about what Long Cheng had said in the pawnshop! That if the owner made a move, he’d have a perfect excuse to rob, kill, and even take women by force?

This guy was clearly up to no good from the start. He went looking for trouble!

Long Cheng sighed deeply. “This Blue Fox Fur Coat of mine was made from the incredibly rare Mystic Ice Blue Fox pelts from the Odin Ice Plain. I paid a full fortune worth two-hundred thousand gold coins in gold ingots for it. So when I went to the pawnshop, I was hoping to pawn it for eighty to a hundred thousand gold coins. That would be more than enough for my expenses here for a while.”

Indignantly sitting upright, he poured himself another drink. Long Cheng looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “Not having a single coin can defeat even the boldest of heroes! Someone like me—handsome and talented, mighty as a god, wise and decisive, born noble and extraordinary—to personally go to that lowly place and deal with filth just to pawn some clothes!”

He slapped the table heavily, gritting his teeth. “They should have trembled with fear, bowed humbly, like grandsons greeting their grandfather, handing me a hundred thousand gold notes on their knees as they sent me off! But instead, they lowballed me to just three gold coins! And because of my few honest words, they actually dared to try and gang up on me?”

Lin Qi and the other two rolled their eyes simultaneously. With someone so arrogant and insulting, of course the owner would call for his thugs!

Then, they heard Long Cheng sneer. “But how could they possibly bully me? How could sparrows dare strike a phoenix? How could wild dogs dare bark at a divine beast? If they really had dared to attack, it would have been just right for me to wipe out their whole family! Their gold would become mine, their silver mine, and if they had pretty wives or daughters, they’d naturally become mine too!”

He glared resentfully at Lin Qi and shook his head. “Too bad you messed up my nice plan!”

Lin Qi was speechless for a moment. Watching Long Cheng’s sulky face, he chuckled bitterly. “If you wanted to rob someone, you could just pick any wealthy family and charge right in. Even a Duke of the Empire wouldn’t have anyone who could stop you for a while! Even looting one rich merchant could easily net you a million gold notes, right?”

Long Cheng stared at Lin Qi in shock, then said indignantly, “Who do you take me, Long Cheng, for? Am I some greedy, lawless villain? If others don’t provoke me, I don’t provoke them. But if someone does provoke me, I exterminate their entire family! While I admit I enjoy wiping out families, it’s only because they attacked first! Would someone like me really kill people over mere worldly possessions?”

He gave Lin Qi a proud, sidelong glance, then glared coldly at Yulian. “Me? Kill over just a little bit of gold and silver?”

Yulian blinked rapidly. He’d mixed in noble circles for years and seen countless scoundrels, but someone like Long Cheng—clearly itching for mischief while painting themselves as righteous—this was a first. Plenty of young nobles in the Imperial Capital bullied men and women or seized commoners’ property, but they owned it. They never pretended otherwise. But this Long Cheng? How to describe him? Did he just want to rob someone for money? Why make it sound so righteous? Why pretend to be the victim?

Heaving a long sigh, Yulian suddenly understood. Having a black heart and thick skin—these seemed necessary qualities for navigating noble circles. Judging by Long Cheng’s heart and face, he must come from the absolute peak of nobility. No mistake about that.

Lin Qi’s eyes gleamed as he looked at Long Cheng. He chuckled a few dry laughs and said slowly, “The core of it is, you have no money to spend right now.”

Long Cheng blinked. He reached into his sleeve, rummaged around for a long time, and finally tossed three Copper Coins onto the table.

Lin Qi shrugged his shoulders, grinning strangely. “Truth is, you wanted to rob someone, but you just couldn’t quite bring yourself to admit it. Well… deep down, you really did want to rob them, didn’t you? All you needed was an excuse…”

Long Cheng rolled his eyes, declaring loftily, “Even with an excuse, not just any flea-bitten dog is worth me robbing! Hmph! Unless they’ve got assets worth several million gold coins, I wouldn’t even bother. I mean, I’d scouted the place… That pawnshop was the biggest one in the entire Southern City. Its…”

Lin Qi’s expression turned even weirder. Long Cheng suddenly realized he’d revealed too much. He gave a few dry laughs and quickly shut his mouth.

Enzo and Yulian exchanged glances, their faces equally strange. As predicted, this guy truly wasn’t decent. ‘Scouted the place’? If Lin Qi hadn’t accidentally run into him today, that pawnshop would probably be running with blood and filled with smoke right now, wouldn’t it?

Clearing his throat awkwardly, Long Cheng mumbled, “Someone like me… if I’m going to act, how could I settle for just robbing three or five thousand gold coins? Go big or go home. It’s like when I was in the Imperial Capital—what ordinary woman could move my heart? Even visiting a brothel, only beauties listed on the Beauty Ranking Scroll were worthy enough to approach this pure body!”

Enzo nearly choked on his drink. ‘Pure body’?

Yulian’s fingers felt numb and tingly. He’d met shameless people, but never someone this shameless. They’d reached an absolute pinnacle. Even the Empire’s Minister of Foreign Affairs—infamous across kingdoms of the Western Continent as the most shameless man alive—couldn’t match half of Long Cheng’s audacity!

Lin Qi slammed the table hard. Squinting with a smile, he said, “Excellent, excellent indeed! Alright then, listen here. I have the perfect reason and the perfect target… Hah, that family has a grudge against me! If you step in for me, it’s like a hero seeing injustice and drawing his sword! They are unimaginably wealthy—a single vase of theirs is worth hundreds of millions of gold coins! If you… Hahaha!”

Lin Qi threw his head back and laughed.

Long Cheng’s eyes rapidly shifted. Then, he too suddenly began to laugh.

If such a perfectly suitable target existed, why wouldn’t he act? Not acting would be stupid! A grudge with Lin Qi? But he, Long Cheng, had a connection with Lin Qi! Helping Lin Qi deal with them? That was the very picture of loyalty, taking a knife for a brother! No one could say Long Cheng did it just for money.

And while he was at it… extracting a little ‘fat squeezed from the people’ from that family? Take from the people, use for the people! That’s the noblest act—robbing the rich to help the poor!

Of course, Long Cheng would only help those beautiful young girls. But hey, still robbing the rich to help the poor!

Long Cheng suddenly felt a burning interest in the family Lin Qi had mentioned.