The black market naturally didn't care whether the contents of your Storage Pouch were clean to begin with.
But this place had its own rules.
Once buyers and sellers left Cangqing City,whether they murdered each other for goods or shook hands and parted friends was none of the market's business.
Nobody cared.
But inside Cangqing City,on the black market's own streets,openly stealing from another customer was different.
That was breaking the rules.
Faced with ironclad evidence,caught with the goods on her person,the girl of course denied it to the death.
"What do you mean,stole?!"
The girl's face flushed red.
Like a cat whose tail had been stepped on,she argued back with complete self-righteousness.
"I just took it to have a look!What's wrong with having a look?!"
The big man who'd lost the pouch was so furious his face had gone green,veins bulging on his neck.
"You shoved my Storage Pouch in your shirt and ran three goddamn streets!That's having a look?!"
"I...I was taking it a bit farther away so I could look at it more carefully!Is that not allowed?!"
The girl craned her neck stubbornly,trying to overwhelm him with sheer presence.
"..."
At those words,the surrounding crowd of onlookers fell briefly silent.
Even Mo Fan,hiding at the back of the crowd,felt the corner of his mouth twitch violently a couple of times,barely holding back a laugh.
What a talent.
It was a great loss to the cultivation world that this girl wasn't telling jokes in a teahouse.
The commotion quickly drew the attention of the black market's management.
Before long,several cultivators with steady auras...
The ones responsible for keeping order in this section,parted the crowd and stepped in.
There wasn't any scene of immediate shouting for blood.
After all,this was still Cangqing City territory.
However gray the black market was,it operated under rules the City Lord's Manor tacitly permitted.
Nobody could truly just kill people in the street as they pleased.
The lead black market cultivator swept a cold glance over the two big men,then looked at the girl surrounded in the middle.
"Since both parties insist on their own version and neither will yield..."
The lead cultivator spoke expressionlessly.
"Then this isn't something the black market can settle.Take a trip to the City Lord's Manor guard station and let the lords there rule on the case."
At the words"City Lord's Manor,"the girl's still-bluffing,arrogant expression visibly stiffened.
"The...the City Lord's Manor?"
She swallowed,her voice instantly dropping several notches.
"What?"
The big man who'd been robbed sneered and pressed in closer.
"Feeling guilty now?Weren't you full of clever talk a minute ago?"
"Who's feeling guilty!"
The girl forcibly puffed out her chest,looking exactly like a ruffled little chick.
All bluster and no substance.
"Let's go,then!Who's afraid of who!"
Her shouting shook the heavens,but those big eyes of hers had already started darting wildly across the surrounding streets and crowd.
Now she was genuinely panicking.
Inside,she'd fallen into total disorder.
In truth,she wasn't especially afraid of these black market cultivators.
What actually made her scalp crawl was something else entirely.
Once she was taken into the City Lord's Manor,Great Xia law required her identity to be strictly verified!
And the moment her real identity was exposed...
That would be the true end of the world.
No!I absolutely cannot go to the City Lord's Manor!
The girl's mind spun frantically,hunting for a way out.
Make an excuse?
They wouldn't listen at all.
Fake an illness?
She'd just been arguing at full lung capacity a moment ago.
Far too fake.
Just force her way out and run?
The surroundings were already sealed tight by black market guards and gawking onlookers.
Not even wings would get her out!
It seemed...
There simply wasn't time for any method at all!
Just as the girl sank into despair,certain she was going down today...
She happened to glance out toward the edge of the crowd.
And with that single glance...
She caught sight of an exceedingly familiar figure.
An inconspicuous gray-black robe,hood brim pulled low...
In the middle of turning to slip silently away from this whole mess.
In that instant,the girl's eyes blazed with dazzling light!
"SENIOR BROTHER!!!"
A shrill,aggrieved cry tore through the black market!
Mo Fan,in the middle of quietly making his exit,stopped dead.
He didn't turn around.
Can't hear it.
Don't know her.
Only an idiot gets involved in garbage like this.
Mo Fan recited it three times inwardly and quite naturally picked up his pace a little.
Seeing him about to bolt,the girl got so frantic she actually jumped...
And kept shouting with total abandon:
"SENIOR BROTHER!!!"
"Don't go!Save me!"
Whoosh!
At that,every gaze in the vicinity,including the black market guards and the two big men,followed the direction of her shout...
And landed all at once,like a spotlight,on that gray-black-robed figure at the crowd's edge who was clearly trying to slip away.
Mo Fan's feet nailed themselves to the ground.
"..."
He greeted eighteen generations of this loudmouthed madwoman's ancestors inside his head,then turned around.
Exceedingly stiffly.
Exceedingly slowly.
Expressionless,he raised one finger and pointed at his own nose.
"You...calling me?"
The girl nodded frantically,like someone who'd just spotted a long-lost relative,tears practically shooting from her eyes.
"Yes!"
"Senior Brother!We're both from the Azure Cloud Sect!Why are you pretending not to know me?!"
The corner of Mo Fan's eye started twitching violently,beyond his control.
The veins on his forehead looked faintly ready to burst.
"When the hell was I in the same sect as you?!"
Mo Fan growled through gritted teeth.
The girl panicked,and without a moment's thought blurted out an absolutely ruinous line:
"You're still denying it?!We even stayed at the same inn last night!"
"..."
Dead silence.
The entire clamorous black market went eerily quiet for a beat after hearing that.
Mo Fan's face had already gone as black as the bottom of a pot.
This damned woman...
And yet...
Yesterday,while settling up at the inn counter...
The girl had in fact glimpsed the Azure Cloud Sect token hanging at Mo Fan's waist.
So now,with"Senior Brother"out of one side of her mouth and"Azure Cloud Sect"out of the other...
And even throwing in a convincing detail like"we stayed at the same inn last night,"she sounded utterly natural and utterly certain.
The rogue cultivators and guards around them,who'd only been here for the show,took another look at Mo Fan's livid expression.
And at that point,they genuinely believed seventy or eighty percent of it.
"Well,well.An accomplice,then."
The lead black market cultivator sneered,eyes unfriendly as they fixed on Mo Fan,and waved a hand.
"If he's her Senior Brother,this is simple.You'll both be taking that trip to the City Lord's Manor!"
As the words fell...
Several cultivators had already spread out in a loose semicircle,sealing off every route of retreat Mo Fan had.
Mo Fan was silent for a moment.
He looked at the girl with her face full of innocence and her eyes full of cunning.
He took a deep breath and attempted one final,exceedingly earnest explanation.
"Everyone.If I told you I really don't know her,would you believe me?"
Hearing that,the girl instantly produced an expression of disbelief and profound grievance.
"Senior Brother!"
She wept as she spoke.
"How can you say that?!Have you forgotten how we..."
Then,while nobody was paying attention,she shot Mo Fan an exceedingly obvious look.
Her lips moved faintly,and a thread of voice transmission entered Mo Fan's ear.
Help me out this once!
Just get me out of here,and this young miss will pay you back double later!
Mo Fan looked at her coldly and fired back without mercy:
Right now I'd like to hand you in personally.
The girl:"..."
However...
Reality was no longer giving Mo Fan room to argue.
Those few cultivators had already advanced with ugly expressions.
One of them reached out a rough,thick hand carrying irresistible pressure,about to clamp down on Mo Fan's shoulder by force.
"Haaah..."
Mo Fan let out an exceedingly resigned sigh from the bottom of his heart.
He'd come to this black market to sell some materials.
Who exactly had he offended?
Why was he getting dragged into this kind of trouble for absolutely no reason?
But sigh or not,in that instant Mo Fan's eyes turned exceedingly dangerous and sharp.
The next moment!
Before anyone could react...
Mo Fan surged forward a step,right hand shooting out like lightning!
The girl only felt her wrist suddenly seized,clamped tight in a hand like an iron vise!
She didn't even have time to figure out what was happening.
"Wait...what are you doing?!"
The girl yelped.
BOOM!
A muffled burst of air exploded outward,sending hairline cracks spidering through the bluestone slabs around them!
The ground beneath Mo Fan's feet trembled faintly.
He had already yanked the girl along,his whole body like an arrow abruptly loosed from the string.
Relying purely on the monstrous explosive force of his physical body,he blasted violently through the gap in the encirclement that hadn't fully closed.
Running away?I'm a professional at this.
"The hell?!"
"The brat's running!Stop them!"
Behind them,the previously quiet black market street instantly boiled into chaos...
Furious shouts and the sound of weapons tangling together.
As for the girl...
Her entire body was like a kite...
Dragged by Mo Fan's terrifying freakish strength until her feet nearly left the ground and she was flying sideways through the air!
The wind scraped at her face like knives,whipping her loosely tied hair into a frenzied dance behind her head.
"AAAAAAH!"
"Wait wait wait wait!"
The girl flailed in midair,pale with terror,shrieking:
"Didn't you say you had no cultivation?!"
"How are you this fast?!"
Mo Fan didn't look back,hauling her through the tangled maze of black market alleys at a mad pace.
His voice was shredded to pieces by the wind,but still seethed with teeth-grinding irritation.
"Who decided..."
"That body cultivators can't RUN?!"