Fang Bie successfully bought a heavy block of black iron, weighing about three or four jin, and then took out the silver notes to settle the transaction with Thunder Duke.
Xue Ling saw it clearly from the side; of those one thousand taels in silver notes, about seven hundred taels were obtained from Ning Huaiyuan, which included four hundred and eight taels for two bottles of medicinal pills, eighty taels for a secret manual, and two hundred taels in scattered silver notes from Ning Huaiyuan's person.
Then, the remaining three hundred taels must have been the assets Fang Bie brought with him, right?
Thinking about it this way, Fang Bie could not be considered too poor, could he?
While Xue Ling was carefully calculating from a woman's perspective on the side, Fang Bie had already completed the transaction, placed the iron block worth a thousand gold into a very ordinary-looking cloth bag, and then slung it over his waist.
Xue Ling had basically determined that Fang Bie was now almost penniless, but she still had no idea what Fang Bie intended to use this iron block for.
"So, are we leaving now?" Xue Ling asked. The incense inside was truly too overpowering, and it was very difficult for her to continue resisting the accumulation of such drugs in her body.
"Immediately." Fang Bie smiled and pulled Xue Ling to a wall in the main hall, where there was only a small window, no larger than a fist.
Fang Bie passed the token in his hand—the same one he had initially shown to the gatekeeper at the entrance of the Dragon King's Hall—through the window.
Before long, a secret door opened in the main hall, and Fang Bie pulled Xue Ling inside.
Unlike the outside, this was a small space like a side room, with a long bench and a wall painted with white paint opposite the bench.
Xue Ling saw Fang Bie's token being passed out from behind the white-painted wall, and at the same time, a voice came out.
"What do you want to ask?"
The voice was neither male nor female, neither light nor heavy, neither biased nor impartial, sounding just like the voice of a living dead person.
Fang Bie remained calm.
"I want to know news about the High Monk Kong Wu of Shaolin."
"Fifty taels of silver," the voice replied coldly from behind the white wall.
Fang Bie rummaged through his robes, took out a fifty-tael silver note, and passed it through a crack in the white-painted wall.
"High Monk Kong Wu of Shaolin returned three months ago from Tianzhu after debating philosophy and preaching Buddhism. He will arrive within the borders of Luocheng in ten days and will return directly to the Shaolin Temple on Mount Song."
"Is he carrying the Buddha's Sarira?" Fang Bie continued to ask.
"That intelligence is worth one thousand taels of silver," the white wall replied.
Fang Bie smiled and nodded.
"Then I have no more questions."
……
……
After walking out of that incense-filled mansion, the first thing Fang Bie did was take Xue Ling to a pool of water in the wilderness.
"You bathe here; I will go to the other side," Fang Bie said quietly.
It was now approaching the Duanwu Festival in the fifth month, and the weather was gradually turning hot. However, for an ordinary person who practices Martial Arts, even bathing in the wilderness in the dead of winter would not cause them to catch a cold.
Fang Bie had already removed his mask, revealing his cold and delicate face, and handed over a cyan package: "After you finish washing, change into this set of clothes."
"Do we have to bathe and change clothes every time we go to the Dragon King's Hall?" Xue Ling asked. "Then why didn't you take me before I went to the Changqing Bathhouse?"
The young woman was somewhat dissatisfied.
Fang Bie smiled: "Of course, every time, if you are not afraid of being tracked. Although I have never been tracked once, being careful is never a bad thing."
"And, I intended to call you before you went, but wasn't I a step late?"
As Xue Ling took the cyan cloth package, Fang Bie turned and walked toward the opposite side of the pool.
Yes, he seemed to have no interest in peeking at Xue Ling at all.
The young woman let out a long sigh.
She stood by the clear pool, looking at the water that was clear to the bottom, thinking that this was probably not something Fang Bie had found on the spur of the moment; perhaps this was one of the wilderness campsites Fang Bie had prepared.
After all, when out and about, there was no way to dig a well for water, and finding a safe and clean water source was a very difficult thing.
She opened the cyan cloth package and checked the clothes Fang Bie had prepared. They were very ordinary women's clothes, which looked newly bought and had no traces of being worn by others. Of course, such ordinary clothes were not expensive. Given that Fang Bie had spent a thousand gold today to buy an iron lump and fifty taels to buy a piece of information of unknown use, this set of women's clothing probably cost less than five qian silver.
Thinking of this, Xue Ling sighed faintly again.
All in all, she had been partners with Fang Bie for nearly two months now.
Until now, she still had not seen through what kind of person Fang Bie was.
He was cautious, careful, and handled everything with a level of perfection that was almost pathological.
This made Xue Ling suspect that when she first went to find him, he might have already guessed that she was not the real Lin Xue.
To the point that he said things like "your perfection is your greatest flaw," yet in the end, for some reason, he accepted her.
Of course, Xue Ling had always been completing her work as Bee Wing with the best attitude. These days, she had crammed a lot of information about the interior of the Beehive, as well as the geography around Luocheng and the distribution of various sects. Only by thoroughly understanding her surroundings could she handle things with ease.
But even so, Fang Bie still maintained an attitude that he did not need her at all.
He could handle everything well on his own, and even had the opportunity to help make up for her mistakes. If there was someone in this world who was a Bee Sting capable of completing missions without any Bee Wing, then Xue Ling had no doubt that person was Fang Bie.
As for why Fang Bie needed her—Xue Ling thought about it carefully—it was probably just that she could help Fang Bie cover his tracks.
For example, even now, Xue Ling did not know how strong Fang Bie really was. Even after witnessing one of Fang Bie's assassination missions with her own eyes, she was even more unable to understand his true strength.
He killed Ning Huaiyuan, a veteran Third-Rank Master, without even using his true Martial Arts, relying only on the arrangement of the scene to easily play the opponent in the palm of his hand.
In fact, sometimes, Xue Ling could not suppress the urge to ask Fang Bie what his current strength was, but in the end, she forcibly extinguished the thought.
She was already soaking in the somewhat cold stream water. Fang Bie had even prepared soap locust pods for cleaning her hair, because besides her clothes, the thing most likely to retain the scent of that incense was her hair.
Just at this moment, Xue Ling suddenly heard someone shouting in the distance.
"Help!"
"Murder!"
She was suddenly alert. Just as she was about to get up, a cold wind blew, and she realized she was currently without a stitch of clothing, so she could only bite her lips and shrink her body back into the cold stream water.
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