Chapter 8
The Ouli Guild has tens of thousands of members. Under the headquarters there are branches, under the branches there are execution groups, and under the execution groups there are execution teams. The organizational structure is huge and rigorous.
Although Badaozhan was only the captain of the execution team, he had received special management training after taking office. He had learned the art of strategically downplaying the enemy and tactically paying attention to them.
The troops were divided into two groups, attacking from the front and back, and acting cautiously, showing tactical emphasis.
Zhongsu Town is a remote town, and the city walls within its jurisdiction don't even have gates. High-level missions have rarely been born there, and naturally there are no high-level ghouls. With this prediction in mind, strategic contempt was also achieved.
Therefore, it was quite leisurely for him to take a detour to the back door. He did not use the movement skill to go directly to the house, but went through the shop next to Xiao Zhang's coal shop. When passing through, he even had the leisure to ask about the price of coal and improve the NPC's favorability.
Unfortunately, he acted perfunctorily and did not notice the coal shop owner's hesitant expression.
——There was something strange about Xiao Zhang's coal shop next door. No one had been coming in or out for several days. Today, there were repeated roars that sounded like neither human nor beast, and even scared away one of his customers.
Badaozhan completely missed this clue.
He walked out of the back door of the coal shop, considerately helped the owner close the door, and smiled at the owner.
5% favorability gained. The data is not impressive, but who knows if his "luck" in the game is just lacking this little bit at a critical moment?
Badaozhan walked to the back door of Xiao Zhang's coal shop, immediately put away his gentle smile, and sent a message in the team channel.
【Sword Draw: Take your position.】
After the two team members responded "Ready", he raised his foot and kicked the old wooden door open.
At the same time, he picked up a weapon - a mighty saber.
The woman's scream immediately drowned out the creaking of the wooden door.
Badaozhan was startled, and before his back foot even stepped over the threshold, he stopped. On the opposite side, his two teammates reacted similarly, freezing in place.
A woman in a black short-sleeved shirt stood in the middle of the coal shop, her dark hands clenched into fists to cover the lower half of her face. She looked left and right, her screams continuing, making people's heads buzz.
At her feet, a bamboo basket of honeycomb coal was overturned and scattered all over the place, with several pieces broken into pieces.
Obviously scared.
At the main entrance, passers-by passing by the sloppy alley peeked inside, were glared at by the wild flowers, and dared not breathe, and hurried away.
Their attire was too obvious, with arm guards, iron boots, and thin-cord gloves. At first glance, they were the chosen ones whom ordinary people could not afford to offend.
The woman in the shop also recognized him. After finally stopping her screams, she asked tremblingly, "Master...Master Destiny, what do you want to do?"
Badaozhan frowned and walked out of the door. He looked up and gave Yehua a look.
Yehua understood, also stepped back to look at him, and nodded to him.
It’s Xiao Zhang Coal Shop, for sure.
Yehua and Huatielu were closer to the woman and walked in in two steps. Huatielu was unsure, fearing that he would attract the attention of the local police and affect his favorability, so he closed the door.
The coal shop couldn't light candles, only a single chandelier with a dim yellow glow. The woman's face was covered in coal dust, her hair was disheveled, and her body was very dirty. In short, she was not at all pleasing to the eye.
Yehua spoke without being polite: "Who are you?"
The woman trembled even more violently: "Oh, this is my shop..."
Yehua raised his arm and hit the woman's head with the copper short stick in his hand, but was blocked by Huatielu's long sword halfway.
A flash of sparks.
Huatielu: “What are you doing?!”
Yehua: "How can we know if she is a ghoul if we don't try?"
Before he finished speaking, a notification popped up on his screen: [Unnamed NPC's favorability -30%, current favorability 20%, hostile.]
Yehua doesn’t care whether the NPC is hostile or not. After all, the powerless NPC can’t hurt him, but it will affect his destiny value.
He clicked his tongue and switched the light screen to visible mode.
Hua Tielu glared at him angrily, "I told you long ago, don't make things complicated! If you keep doing this, one person's destiny will drag down the fortune of our entire team!"
He was also dissatisfied with the captain's sword-drawing attack, but he didn't dare to say it out loud, so he had to vent his anger on Yehua.
Yehua sucked her teeth, feeling guilty but not saying anything, just looking at the captain who was walking in from the opposite side.
In a short time, Ba Dao Zhan had already refreshed the forum posts and said to Hua Tielu, "The place is right."
The implication is to continue investigating.
Before Huatielu could say anything, Badaozhan had already walked up to the woman, took out a handful of gold coins without saying a word, and tried to be as pleasant as possible.
"I'm sorry to have scared you. Consider this money as compensation for the broken briquettes," he said. "We have no ill intentions. We just wanted to ask you something."
"Really?"
"Of course it's true. I promise not to hurt you." He drew his sword and chopped it down, and the gold coins clattered.
The woman took it doubtfully, drew her sword, and saw the notification of increased favorability as she wished.
For the money-loving NPC, everything goes smoothly.
"You mean, there's no one else in this coal shop except you and your brother?"
Ba Dao Zhan stared closely at the woman's eyes, seeing no signs of lying or omission. In the past, he wouldn't have worried about the NPC lying, but the King's post was so detailed, so out of caution, he carefully scrutinized it.
The results of the investigation showed that there was no bug in the game settings. This is as it should be.
The person most likely to be a ghoul right now is her brother.
"Where's your brother?"
"I don't know either. I went out to deliver coal after lunch, and I didn't see him when I came back. Maybe... he also went out to deliver coal." said the woman.
The three of them had been keeping an eye on the light screen, but unfortunately, no clues to the mission had popped up on the screen until now.
Still didn't get to the point.
Battrazhan keenly caught a word: "Maybe? Why do you say that?"
The woman quickly changed her tune, "He must have gone to deliver coal. Yesterday, Grandma Liu from Erpingli Lane sent someone to ask for coal, and my brother had promised to deliver it today!"
Still no light screen notification.
Wildflower had little patience and raised his short stick: "Tell the truth!"
"Wild flowers!" Huatielu was unable to stop them.
Yehua then rolled her eyes, and her favorability dropped another 10%. One more point would put her in a "direct attack" state. Even if it was a futile attempt, the NPC would fight her to the death.
If you kill an NPC, regardless of the reason, it will cause great damage to your destiny value.
Huatielu couldn't see his light screen, but he guessed most of what was going on just by looking at his expression. He took a step forward without hesitation, blocking the wild flowers behind him.
If Badaozhan hadn't expressed his opinion, he would have just thrown this guy out the door.
The time matches the description in the post, and the location is also this place, but the clues have not appeared yet.
Seeing that he had asked all the questions he needed to, and that there was no sign of the corpse or ghoul he was looking for, Battuzhan finally considered leaving. However, he still felt a little reluctant after making such a detour.
He planned to make a final effort.
"Thank you. Do you mind if we just wander around the shop?"
The woman was very hostile to wild flowers, but had a 70% favorability towards him. After a slight hesitation, she nodded.
"Um... Mr. Destiny, be careful not to damage the coal cakes."
"Just calm down." Yehua rolled her eyes again and reluctantly threw down 200 gold coins. "Consider this my apology."
[Unnamed NPC's favorability +1%, current favorability 11%, hostility.]
Well, he gave up trying to restore his favorability.
As expected of an NPC who values money more than anything else, he would beg for money whenever he gets the chance, right?
Catching his gaze, An Rou happened to have a similar thought: I was almost beaten to death by you, so what's wrong with asking you for a little more money? Do you really think my life is worthless?
The coal shop had two rooms: the left was where the coal was stored, and the right was where people lived. The three men split into two groups.
The shop was completely bare except for the coal cakes and bamboo baskets, which Yehua left to herself. The room, a combination bedroom and utility room, was in disarray, making it more likely to find clues. Badaozhan brought Huatielu with him to search.
Huatielu originally wanted to be in a group with Yehua and keep an eye on him, but when he saw Anrou following closely, he gave up.
After so many times, she must have become very afraid of wild flowers.
Searching for clues is a meticulous job, and all three are quite experienced, especially in sword-drawing and slashing, and they have to check almost every object. Hua Tielu saw it, but he didn't dare to be lazy, and he didn't realize that the woman had disappeared from behind him since some time.
Wildflower scanned the hidden corners behind the coal pile, but found nothing. Bored, she began knocking on the wall with a short stick. After knocking on two walls, she came around to where the coal cake had fallen and suddenly sniffed.
There were so many people around just now that no one noticed the faint smell of blood wafting around here.
"I said I wouldn't miss it."
Wildflower murmured to herself, her wandering eyes falling on the overturned bamboo basket, and then moving to the broken coal cake.
He frowned and observed the gap in a coal cake.
Since it fell, it should have broken at the bottom, why did it break at the top?
Yehua squatted down, used a short stick to poke the broken coal cake, applied a little force, poked it straight into the ground, stirred it twice, and pulled it out.
The faint smell of blood was noticeably stronger.
He pinched the coal stain on the end of the stick with two fingers. It felt sticky - blood?
As the thought came to his mind, the electric light illuminated a dark shadow that rushed straight towards him.
Yehua shuddered and instinctively used the Wind Step to retreat. He looked up and saw the dirty woman stabbing at him with a Tang sword in hand. She was so fast that she even lost a shoe.
——A shoe that doesn’t fit and is obviously several sizes too big.
Disguised!
The back door was also closed, and his back hit the door panel in the blink of an eye. The woman's momentum did not slow down, and the Tang sword was about to go towards his throat.
Yehua raised her stick to meet the attack and opened her mouth, trying to alert her teammates in the next room.
The stick shimmered with a reddish-brown glow, and the shaft visibly lengthened, even longer than the Tang sword. If An Rou rushed forward, it was unclear whether the Tang sword would pierce the opponent's throat first, or the short stick would break her ribs first.
[Get rich!]
An Rou shouted in her mind.
puff--
A muffled sound.
A bone knife that was more than one meter long fell from the sky, and with unstoppable force, it pierced through Yehua's crown and lower abdomen.
A normal person would undoubtedly die instantly from such an injury. But Yehua was a player after all, with health and physical resilience unmatched by ordinary people. With her mouth and eyes wide open, she actually forced her head back a fraction.
I could barely make out the huge shadow lurking on the roof.
At the last moment of his life, he suddenly figured out how the ghoul was hiding so well - the light bulb.
It was an antique electric light bulb with a disc-like cover on the exposed bulb, which made the area above the bulb and the roof invisible. But people's attention is inevitably drawn to places with more abundant light.
An Rou was afraid that he would make a sound, so she stabbed his mouth with the Tang knife without hesitation, until it pierced his brain.
The first thought that came to her mind was not that she had killed someone, but that she had gotten a corpse - An Rou herself was shocked.
However, her joy was premature, as a faint light like smoke and mist rose above the wild flower and followed the bone knife all the way up. The bone knife was like a straw, greedily absorbing his soul.
Bang, like a bubble quietly bursting.
Wildflower's body exploded into a ball of tiny points of light.
An Rou rubbed her eyes, unable to believe it.
There is not even a single gold coin!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
