Chapter Ninety: Absolute Power

The place where Yi Shen now lived was not far from the central district, and his mobility was remarkably swift.

After receiving the message, he arrived in less than ten minutes.

The sign above the entrance of the Little Town Stories shop had already been smashed to pieces, which made Yi Shen frown slightly.

He had specially had it made with the characters he wrote himself, and yet after only a few days, it had already been reduced to this state.

The moment Zhu Qing stepped inside, she stood up at once, her gaze bright with hope.

In the storeroom behind the shop, a few heads also poked out.

Zhu You knew Yi Shen, and the look in her eyes was complicated.

Zhu Ke knew Yi Shen as well, and her expression was even more complicated.

Because after Zhu Qing had confirmed Yi Shen’s identity, through the sisters’ conversation, she had already determined that the Yi Shen who had been in contact with her sister was the very same Yi Shen she knew.

She simply had not dared to tell her sisters that the one she had confessed to at school was the same man.

More than a month had passed since her confession to Yi Shen after the preliminary entrance exam for the martial academy. This was the first time she had seen him since then, and Zhu Ke now also knew that Yi Shen had not gone to any martial academy at all, but had been wandering from place to place the whole time.

With so many emotions tangled together, the complexity in Zhu Ke’s eyes was perhaps twice that of Zhu You.

The other trainee waitresses were mostly curious about the owner. Yi Shen had not come to the shop many times, and they had only heard Zhu You mention him occasionally. Seeing how young he was, and seeing the fierce-looking explorers outside, they began to worry whether Yi Shen would be able to handle today’s matter.

“You’re the boss?” The fat man, Xia Zhuang, looked at Zhu Qing as she came forward, and he had not expected the owner of the shop to be so young. His first thought was that perhaps this was some wealthy family’s young heir.

If it had been a middle-aged man, he would not have worried so much. But if someone this young had already established his own shop on this commercial street, then that level of strength was indeed something worth weighing carefully.

“Yes.”

Yi Shen’s brow remained tightly furrowed. The shop had already been wrecked beyond recognition. Although Zhu Qing had explained over the communicator that the damage had been caused in the afternoon by other explorers, Yi Shen still instinctively regarded the dozen or so people before him as troublemakers.

“I’m the owner.” Yi Shen nodded, looked them over, and immediately cast an appraisal skill on each of them.

Their levels ranged high and low, the lowest in the teens, the highest being the man with glasses, who was a full forty-three levels, nearly the same as him.

After Yi Shen’s level had risen, the effect of his appraisal skill had also improved considerably. As for the others, they had naturally tried to appraise Yi Shen in return, but none of them could make any sense of him.

Fat Xia Zhuang stated their demands, and the others also chimed in one after another to explain why they were here. After all, some of them had directly sold their guild’s materials here, and now that prices outside had risen by three or four times, the unanimous view within their guilds was that they should recover some of the difference.

Most shops nowadays would symbolically offer some discount or compensation, sacrificing a bit of profit to smooth things over. That was precisely why these dozen or so people had gathered here.

“So what you’re saying is that you want a refund for a completed transaction?”

“And although your payment hasn’t been settled yet, the contract says the settlement period is within a week, doesn’t it? Isn’t what you’re doing a little inappropriate?”

Yi Shen did not know how other shops handled such matters, but his materials had all been taken away for research. It was absolutely impossible for them to wring money out of him by using this method.

He had never held much goodwill toward these guild people to begin with. The people at the front lines were fighting and dying, while this crowd was standing behind them, thinking only about how to get rich. Just by looking at their bearing, Yi Shen knew they had absolutely not taken part in last night’s battle on the front lines.

“Brother, you can’t put it like that. Which side are you from?”

“Everyone’s making money now. You can’t say you want to keep it all to yourself. Your shop has collected quite a lot of materials these past few days. Or are you saying you already knew the materials would rise in price, and started hoarding them in advance?”

At first the fat man’s tone was still somewhat polite, but by the end it had taken on a hint of mockery.

“I’m with no side. Once a transaction is complete, it’s complete.”

Having understood the cause of the matter, Yi Shen no longer felt like wasting words on this group. If he had not come today, Zhu Qing and the others would probably have faced consequences too terrible to imagine.

Yi Shen said directly, “If you’re here to do business, then do business properly. If you’re here to steal, I can give you a chance to make your move.”

“But if you do, I’ll kill you.” His tone was flat, and utterly direct.

The room fell silent at once.

No one had expected that after only a couple of sentences, Yi Shen would already be talking about sending them away, even to the point of life and death.

The man with glasses adjusted his spectacles, a smile appearing at the corners of his mouth.

The people around him all took a step back. They knew this man was a smiling tiger and not someone to provoke; whenever he smiled like this, it might mean he was about to lose his temper.

The next moment, his figure gradually turned into an afterimage.

Crack.

Just one second later, the man with glasses reappeared and collapsed hard onto the floor.

???

Everyone’s faces froze.

Zhu Qing’s pupils contracted violently. She had still been worrying over whether Yi Shen had any way to deal with so many people, and yet in the very next instant the man with glasses had simply fallen. She had not even had time to understand what had happened.

The others all drew in a sharp breath, their faces full of astonishment.

None of them had seen how Yi Shen had done it.

“I said it already. If you make a move, I’ll kill you.”

Yi Shen continued in the same light tone. He was not joking. The man with glasses had just tried to approach him by stealth, the prelude to an attack, and with Yi Shen’s current attributes, it had been easy to see through.

“Now you have thirty seconds. Take his body and get out. Otherwise, no one leaves here.”

Absolute strength gave Yi Shen absolute confidence.

He had always restrained his own killing state, and with an opening like this, there was no way he would hold back.

The people who had come to cause trouble were all stunned. Although Yi Shen’s tone had not changed in the slightest, they could now feel a chill in the air.

“You can’t do this. We’re from North Song Industries, and he’s the younger brother of one of North Song Industries’ department heads.” Fat Xia Zhuang panicked. The man with glasses had been brought here by him, and he had only intended to shake down some money from the shop. He had never imagined things would turn out like this.

If the man with glasses had killed Yi Shen, there would still have been room to maneuver. But now that the man with glasses had died here, all of them were absolutely going to be dragged down with him.

“Even if he were the younger brother of the Battle Fish, it still wouldn’t matter.” Yi Shen said directly, “You have fifteen seconds left.”

As soon as Yi Shen finished speaking, someone had already started to retreat in disarray. The situation was too bizarre; at a time like this, one’s own life was what mattered most.

But just as they were preparing to leave the shop, a young girl walked in, her eyes covered with black cloth, her features strikingly delicate.

Behind her, another man entered the shop as well, dressed in white, his hair cropped in a tousled style, with a sword strapped to his back.