Chapter 223 – Perpetrated By A Xiantian Master?
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“Ouyang Dihua has died….” Bai Yuanpei mumbled, as if he were unable to believe this himself.
“What!?” Bai Jingyun cried out in surprise. She thought she misunderstood his words.
“Ouyang Dihua was assassinated in the Headquarters of the Allied Trade Association, without even his corpse remaining. The President of the Allied Trade Association, Zhang Fengxian was also turned into an idiot, with his spiritual sea completely demolished. Even a master with a soul searching technique was not able to obtain a single coherent thought from him…..” Bai Yuanpei repeated the words that he had heard from the sound transmitting talisman. Although he was not a martial artist, he still had a very explicit understanding of the strength difference between martial artist’s levels. Ouyang Dihua was a middle Pulse Condensation martial artist, with numerous lifesaving treasures on his body. Even if he met a peak Pulse Condensation martial artist, he would still be able to evenly match up.
But that strong Ouyang Dihua was actually killed within the Headquarters of the Allied Trade Association, where there were countless masters around. What sort of concept was that? Was this act of murder perpetrated by a Xiantian master?
“What about Ouyang Dihua’s bodyguards? Didn’t he have four bodyguards who were always nearby?” Bai Jingyun asked with disbelief.
Bai Yuanpei ruefully smiled and said, “His four bodyguards were only a mere 200 feet away; they hadn’t even noticed when Ouyang Dihua had died. Not only that, but there was also a Houtian master sitting guard at the Allied Trade Association. Yet this murderer was able to enter without arousing anyone’s notice and left without leaving a shred of evidence; not even the Houtian master had noticed anything odd.”
Bai Jingyun was stunned; this was no trivial matter. She was completely frozen still.
There was actually someone who was able to creep under the notice of four master bodyguards and silently kill Ouyang Dihua while also evading the notice of a Houtian master’s perception. What sort of cultivation would it take to do this? What sort of existence had that Ouyang Dihua managed to offend?
Bai Yuanpei said, “This murderer is simply too powerful. The chances are high that it was a Xiantian master; maybe a personal enemy of Ouyang Boyan, who came to take their revenge out on Ouyang Dihua….a conflict of this level has no relation with people like us.”
No relation? How can there be no relation?
The relation was huge!
Bai Jingyun had been surprised, but now she suddenly sneered, “What a great death! He deserved to die early.”
Bai Yuanpei was frightened out of his wits. He quickly made a silencing gesture. “Jingyun, don’t say words like that so rashly. Today, the entire Sky Fortune City will fall into total martial law in order to find the murderer. Ouyang Dihua’s uncle Ouyang Boyan will also arrive from the Seven Profound Valleys within a few days. For this period of time, do not leave home, otherwise you might stir up some trouble.”
“I know that,” Bai Jingyun said.
After seeing Bai Yuanpei out, Bai Jingyun slumped onto the bed. She was in a hazy daze, as if entering a waking dream.
She was free! With the wedding date approaching, Ouyang Dihua had actually died!
She had long cursed Ouyang Dihua, hoping for someone to kill him in revenge, and that he would brutally suffer to death in the street corners. She didn’t ever think that such a day would actually come.
But who was the one that killed him?
A surge of emotions flooded into Bai Jingyun. She wanted to find this person and personally thank them. This mysterious martial artist probably had no intention of saving her, but to Bai Jingyun, his actions today had forever changed her fate.
In fact, at this moment in Sky Fortune City, it wasn’t only Bai Jingyun who was secretly celebrating the news of Ouyang Dihua’s death. For instance, the Crown Prince, Yang Lin.
In these two months, the Tenth Prince’s influence had leapt by leaps and bounds because of Ouyang Dihua’s support. On the other hand, because Lin Ming had suddenly disappeared, Yang Lin’s power had precipitously crashed. If this continued, then his status as Crown Prince would become extremely precarious.
Life had its twists and turns. Now, in a dramatic turn of events, such a life-changing accident had occurred.
It could also be said that Ouyang Dihua died just in time!
Yang Lin also wanted to extend his gratitude towards this mysterious person.
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Because of Ouyang Dihua’s death, all the major forces were in a frenzy as they tried to navigate through this turbulent event. Meanwhile, Lin Ming was hiding away in a cave several hundred miles away from Sky Fortune City.
He had two spatial rings in his hands, and also the high-grade human-step treasure weapon and high-grade human-step flexible armor he had taken from Ouyang Dihua’s corpse.
Whether it was Ouyang Dihua or Zhang Fengxian, both of them were rich people that simply oozed wealth and gold. Their treasure troves, naturally, were similar.
Lin Ming first took up Zhang Fengxian’s spatial ring. He sank his soul force in, and was immediately secretly flabbergasted by what he found within. ‘The Allied Trade Association is really impressive. This is the first time that I’ve seen a high-grade human-step spatial ring. Just the material to make a spatial ring like this takes several hundred thousand gold teals, and it can only be made by at least a Xiantian realm master. Including the cost of labor and the cost of failed attempts, this spatial ring must be at least worth one million gold taels! Not only that, but it’s not something that can simply be bought with money; one can’t simply hire a Xiantian realm master whenever they want to.’
Lin Ming took the items out of the spatial ring. There were three large chests, a bunch of antiques and paintings, and also some clothes.
After casually glancing at the clothes, Lin Ming determined that they weren’t valuable and burnt them to ash. After that, he sifted through the three chests. The lumber used to make these chests was high-grade soul wood. This wood was sturdy like iron, and exuded a faint fragrance. Pound for pound, it was worth even more than gold.
After he opened up the first chest, with a twinkling sound, the air was filled with a bright radiance. This chest was packed to the brim with priceless jewelry.
Even though Lin Ming was used to seeing grand scenes, he still exclaimed in marvel at seeing such a large chest of jewelry that glittered under the sun.
These treasures were valuable even amongst precious jewelry. There were gorgeously thick blood jade, shining emerald stones that drew eyes, exquisite sapphires, and all sorts of other rare and precious jewels. The smallest gems were the size of an egg, and the pearls were top-quality black pearls only found tens of thousands of feet under the sea!
Even though Lin Ming wasn’t very familiar with jewels and treasures, he was still able to approximate the value of this chest of jewelry. In this chest, any random jewel was at least several tens of thousands of gold taels. This entire chest was probably worth tens of millions of gold!
‘In these treasures there are also antiques and paintings. It seems that they were part of Zhang Fengxian’s collection. To someone like Zhang Fengxian, he would never place anything ordinary in his eye.’
Once people reached a certain status, the more money they had, the more they would collect priceless objects. Zhang Fengxian was not an exception. Many of the treasures here were passed down from the previous generations of the Zhang Family Head. There was not a single article here that was trivial. All the treasures of so many generations had been accumulated in this chest, and now, all of them belonged to Lin Ming.
After he put this chest in the spatial ring, Lin Ming turned to the second chest.
Inside this chest, there was a folded dark-golden article of clothing; it looked somewhat like a robe. On top of the clothes was a large box. Lin Ming opened the box, and found a large pile of gold banknotes inside. A rough count of the banknotes amounted to about 7 or 8 hundred thousand gold taels worth.
There weren’t that many gold banknotes. This was most likely because most of Zhang Fengxian’s assets were deposited in the Allied Trade Association’s banks. The money in this box was only used for emergencies.
Lin Ming put away the gold banknotes and lifted up the dark gold clothing. The piece of clothing was as thin as the wing of a cicada. There didn’t seem to be anything special about it; only that it was a bit cold to the touch.
‘Is this woven from the silk of a Golden Wood Spiritual Silkworm?’
When Lin Ming had drawn up his very first inscription symbol, he had needed to look for Sky Worm Silk. He had specifically entered the Seven Profound Martial House’s Zither Department in order to look up information on this material. Because of this, he had a very good understand of all Sky Worms, and clearly knew what a Golden Wood Spiritual Silkworm was.
Sky Worms were already incredibly scarce creatures. In order to obtain just a small bit of Sky Worm Silk, he had to spend a tremendous amount of effort. From this alone, it was evident how valuable they were. However a Golden Wood Spiritual Silkworm was different. Only in a thousand Sky Worms would there be a single Golden Wood Spiritual Silkworm. The silk it released was Golden Wood Spiritual Silkworm Silk; an inch of this silk was worth an inch of gold.
Who knew how much Golden Wood Spiritual Silkworm Silk was used to make this article of clothing. If this were converted into gold, it’s value was inestimable.
‘This rare clothing may be thin like a cicada’s wing, but it is nearly invulnerable and can also weaken true essence attacks to a certain degree! Why would he not wear clothes made of Golden Wood Spiritual Silkworm Silk if he had it, and instead place it in a chest. Was he also wearing one at the time?’
Thinking this, Lin Ming gloomily sighed. It really was a pity. At the time when he had turned Zhang Fengxian into an idiot, he had only taken his spatial ring; he hadn’t checked what was inside of the clothes he was wearing.
‘This treasured clothing is good, but it’s simply too noticeable. I can’t wear it, otherwise it will be troublesome once they find out. I’ll have to put it away for now.’ Lin Ming turned and the clothes were placed into the spatial ring.
Then, he turned to the last chest.
Inside this chest, were a massive amount of true essence stones that were neatly stacked on top of each other. Roughly guessing, there were probably over several thousand.
‘There are several thousand true essence stones, and not only that, but they are all pure, high-quality true essence stones. Maybe these true essence stones were a gift that Zhang Fengxian had prepared for a Seven Profound Valley Elder. A pure true essence stone is worth 1000 gold taels. This chest is probably worth several million gold taels. This is just right. I’ve already used up all the true essence stones that I had from before. These true essence stones should last me another year or two.’
As for the antiques and paintings that remained, Lin Ming didn’t fully understand their worth of artistic significance. He placed them back in the spatial ring. Of these three chests, just a conservative estimate of their total value was 20 million gold taels!
He could keep the true essence stones for his own use. As for the rest, he would look for the right opportunity to sell them in exchange for true essence stones or materials and treasure. This was enough for Lin Ming to spend for a while.
After he had ransacked Zhang Fengxian’s spatial ring, Lin Ming took up Ouyang Dihua’s spatial ring and took out the objects inside one at time. Although Ouyang Dihua wasn’t as wealthy as Zhang Fengxian, what he did have was much more useful for a martial artist.
There were around 20 different bottles of pills, great healing medicines, Bloodstone Milk which could rapidly recover true essence, top-quality Soul Gathering Pellets for cultivation purposes, and so forth.
These pills couldn’t be bought with money. Many of them were only found within large sects; they simply wouldn’t spread to the markets of common men.
In addition to that, there were also three jade slips with cultivation methods recorded within. One of them was even an exceedingly rare high-grade human-step cultivation method.
Finally, there were also true essence stones and several treasures. Compared to the pills and cultivation method jade slips, these weren’t considered much.
The most valuable thing that Ouyang Dihua had left behind was the high-grade human-step flexible armor and the high-grade human-step treasure sword. However, these two items were simply gaudy and easily identified. Lin Ming couldn’t use them, nor could he sell them.
After Lin Ming put everything away, he couldn’t help but sigh. The quickest way to get rich really was to be a bandit and kill others to take their property. Like this, his total worth had increased tremendously. Of course, this didn’t factor in the Dreamland Pearl that was given to him by Mu Qianyu.
He didn’t know what the value of the Dreamland Pearl was, but just observing its effect that went against the will of the heavens, Lin Ming knew that it was not an item that could ever be purchased by gold or silver.
“There’s still half a month left. I’ll cultivate here, and then go back to see Martial House Master Qin. When that time comes, no one will ever suspect that I had anything to do with Ouyang Dihua’s death.”