Chapter 88

"Xie Lei is Xie Daohan's own nephew!?"

Duan Rong was momentarily completely bewildered. For Xie Lei to hijack Xu Ruhu from the prison like this, wasn't he sabotaging his own uncle?

Moreover, this case seemed to have even drawn in Outer Sect Disciples from the Taiyi Sect; the implications were definitely not small.

"There must be more to this than meets the eye..."

The effects of the hangover had not yet passed, and as Duan Rong pondered slightly, he felt a splitting headache!

He struggled to get out of the main room, felt his way to the water vat in the kitchen, scooped up half a ladle of cold water, and gulped it down.

With the cold water in his stomach, Duan Rong felt his parched throat moisten a little, and his head was also jolted into feeling a bit clearer.

He stepped out of the pitch-black kitchen and stood in the courtyard, seeing only the night wind rising and falling, the full moon like a basin hanging high overhead, and from time to time, he could hear noisy, clamorous sounds coming faintly from afar.

"It seems the search in the city is still ongoing..."

Duan Rong sighed, walked back to the main room, and sat half-reclined in a grand master chair.

The hour was still early, and since his drunkenness had not yet fully dissipated, he prepared to doze off for a while longer...

Sitting there, Duan Rong reached out and picked up the crumpled search poster on the tea table that had a few oil stains on it!

That fat owner of the deli shop was also quite interesting; seeing Yang Zhen in his official uniform, he still dared to use this search poster to wrap three packages of cooked food for Yang Zhen to carry...

Duan Rong lay half-reclined there, squinting his eyes, and by the flickering lamplight, looked at the search poster in his hand. This time he looked much more seriously, and he examined the portrait of Xu Ruhu on the poster carefully.

"To think there is even a bounty of twenty thousand taels of silver..." Duan Rong looked at the few lines of text below the portrait and couldn't help but laugh dumbly. "Is this twenty thousand taels of silver so easy to take? Who knows how deep the water in this is?"

"Moreover, the County Magistrate Shen Yanliu isn't even in the county. This search poster doesn't even have the seal of the Ya Men on it; it might just be Xie Daohan writing a bad check..."

Duan Rong thought for a while longer, feeling that this matter could not be figured out for the moment, and after sitting for a while, sleepiness surged up again.

Duan Rong flipped the poster over and covered his face with it, blocking out the dim and weak light of the oil lamp, and fell into a deep sleep...

The next morning, the two of them woke up amidst the faint clamor of the dawn.

Yang Zhen had slept for the night, but clearly, the effects of the alcohol had not yet dissipated, and he had a look of misery on his face.

His leg was injured, making walking somewhat inconvenient, so Duan Rong let him tidy up the leftovers from last night in the room, while he himself carried a paint-chipped food box and went out to the street to buy breakfast.

Duan Rong bought two bowls of beef soup, four sesame flatbreads, and six steamed buns, stuffing the two-tiered food box until it was full.

Yang Zhen looked at the table full of food, picked up a bun, took a bite, and muttered: "You kid have money now, huh! You were always stingy before, when have you ever been this generous?"

Hearing the sourness in Yang Zhen's words, Duan Rong rolled his eyes at him and said: "Eating a bun still can't plug that sour mouth of yours."

Yang Zhen also knew his mindset was a bit off, so he grinned and didn't say anything more.

Both of them ate very slowly, chewing carefully, completely different from the way they had been eating like wild dogs fighting for food the night before.

This was also a characteristic of people recovering from a hangover; their whole bodies lacked strength, and they couldn't even muster the spirit to eat.

"You haven't finished telling me about what happened last night, have you?" Duan Rong sipped the beef soup floating with chili oil and said seemingly casually.

"What matter?" Yang Zhen had been drunk all night, and he remembered almost nothing of what he had said last night.

"The prison break!" After Duan Rong devoured and digested the Spirit Tool of the throwing dart and learned that the person who broke into the prison was Xie Lei, he became even more curious about the details of this matter!

Yang Zhen slapped his thigh and said: "Where did I leave off last night?"

"You were saying that the one who broke into the prison stuck a throwing dart into your leg..."

"Is that so?" Yang Zhen had completely forgotten everything he said yesterday and had no idea how to continue, so he said: "Forget it, let me tell you from the beginning." Anyway, he was injured and idle at home, so having someone to chat with would just serve as a pastime.

"When Xu Ruhu was first caught, Head Xie was injured because of capturing him. So he let me and Brother Lei take turns guarding Xu Ruhu, who was locked in Death Row."

"Brother Lei had already achieved the Inner Breath Realm Second Layer; even among the older batch of Constables, he was not weak."

"As for me, Head Xie saw that I had only been a Constable for over half a year and had already achieved the Inner Breath Realm First Layer. Since I was also clever and flexible, he thought of grooming me to be a Deputy for Brother Lei in the future!"

When Yang Zhen said this, he paused for a long time, only focusing on drinking soup and eating flatbread.

This was already the second time Yang Zhen had specifically mentioned this in front of Duan Rong.

Achieving the Inner Breath Realm First Layer in over half a year—if Yang Zhen knew that Duan Rong had achieved the Inner Breath Realm Second Layer in less than two months, he wondered what he would think?

Of course, if this speed were compared to that Intern Escort Zhao Mu from the Yuanshun Escort Agency, it was much faster!

Duan Rong knew what Yang Zhen was waiting for, so he sighed in his heart and said: "Yang Zhen, you've been good at fighting since you were a kid! You really have talent for martial arts!"

Yang Zhen indeed raised his head, smiled with bright eyes, swallowed the flatbread in his mouth, and said smugly that it was only natural, before continuing: "I originally thought that locking this person in Death Row would only be a matter of ten days or so, who would have thought he would be locked up for over a month. Brother Lei and I were divided into two teams. One team guarded at night, and one team guarded during the day."

"After more than a month, it made the brothers miserable!"

"It was just the night before last, during the shift change, that Brother Lei told us that the letter from the Sect Emissary had already arrived at the County Government Office in the morning, saying that they would arrive at Xiangu County around noon the next day."

"The brothers were all overjoyed when they heard this; that night was the last night shift we had to endure."

"Once Brother Lei left, everyone was so happy they couldn't stop. Someone said right then that they wanted to go out and buy wine to celebrate, but I suppressed it, saying we would take everyone to eat at the morning market after the shift ended, and then everyone gave up on the idea!"

"Are you sure that Xie Lei really left?" Duan Rong suddenly looked fixedly at Yang Zhen and interrupted to ask.

Yang Zhen looked at Duan Rong suspiciously, not knowing what he meant by asking this suddenly, and said in a daze: "I'm sure! I watched him walk out of the gate of the Dungeon Arrow Tower! Why?"

"Nothing! You continue!"

Yang Zhen was startled and said indignantly: "Don't keep interrupting me! I've forgotten where I was talking to!"

"You were talking about saying you'd eat at the morning market after the shift..." Duan Rong rolled his eyes at Yang Zhen in annoyance.

"Oh, right. Then everyone went to their normal patrol duties, and it was a quiet night!"

"At dawn, the darkest hour of the day... seeing that it was almost time for the shift change. Having stayed up all night, everyone was exhausted. Even I, standing there, couldn't help but keep nodding off!"

"But, right at this moment!" As Yang Zhen said this, his expression suddenly changed, and his eyes shot out a look of astonishment, as if he had suddenly seen something unbelievable. "A person dressed in black ran out of Death Row with Xu Ruhu on his back!"

"He just... ran out like that..."

"Everyone was stunned, and I was the first to react and rushed over..."

"He wounded me and fled!"

"Speaking of it, it's also pathetic! The brothers dozing off on the Arrow Tower didn't react at all, and not a single Arrow was fired before letting that scoundrel run out!"

"The brothers chased out into the deep night, but that scoundrel's figure had already disappeared into a maze of alleys!"

"It was dawn at the time, and the city gates hadn't opened yet! The brothers went to notify the city guards to strengthen precautions while also informing Head Xie, and then a city-wide search was launched immediately!"

Duan Rong was silent for a moment, then said, "I remember you saying that Xu Ruhu was wearing heavy locks on his body?"

Yang Zhen's eyes suddenly looked as if he had seen a ghost, and he said, "The most damn weird part is this: when we went back to inspect the cell, the heavy locks on Xu Ruhu's body had actually been sawed through with a Steel Wire Saw!"

"Two lute-shaped heavy locks pierced through his collarbones! He even struggles to eat! Even if you gave him a Steel Wire Saw, he wouldn't have the strength to saw through a lock as thick as a child's arm!"

"Moreover, even for a normal person, if they had a wire saw, it would probably take several days to saw through those heavy lock shackles!"

"You tell me, is this matter strange or not?"

(End of this chapter)