Chapter 73: Cooking Up Trouble Again

At night.

After the commotion, everyone returned to their respective places and went to sleep.

Du En tidied up the mess in the small courtyard, his figure moved, he easily vaulted over the courtyard wall and slipped into the darkness.

As a seasoned Spirit-Gathering Thief, his movements were exceptionally practiced; he soon stealthily left the shanty area and arrived at a spirit field in the woods.

The field was heavy with grain, a scene of a harvest waiting to be reaped.

However, in the yield records Du En had intentionally found beforehand, some messy, non-existent minor diseases and pests were recorded.

Simply put, it was a twenty percent shortfall—no problem!

What the overseer here was planning was already clear at a glance.

But today, things were finally a little different from usual.

The usual work.

And Du En, who was taking such a large haul, naturally had his clay pot firing on all cylinders, starting to cook and stew extensively; by piling on ingredients, he managed to force out a barely second-grade low-tier spirit meal.

This was the recent feeling of the corpse-buriers, because it was all just too calm and uneventful.

Hearing this, the other three nodded secretly.

"Du En, you've finally come; I've been waiting for you for a while."

The proficiency of the culinary arts once again slowly accumulated and climbed.

Next, without giving others any reason to feel panic, unease, tension, or any other excessive thoughts or fears, he was the first to walk out the door.

"Which heaven-slaying bastard is it!"

And so, they waited for Du En to speak.

Du En's calm sentence shattered the foundation of their viewpoint.

The key lay in keeping this from the stewards!

So, Mr. Overseer, you wouldn't want the stewards above you to know about your embezzlement, would you?

The overseers in these places were all dishonest fellows who liked to secretly pocket a portion of the harvest themselves and then use their own channels to exchange it for cultivation resources.

Thus, in the time that followed, Du En began targeted thefts.

During his previous roaming-style spirit-stealing, he had specifically set aside time to conduct deeper observations and reconnaissance on the conditions of various production sites.

"Damn it! I don't believe it; I can't catch him?"

He pulled out a large sack directly and began filling it calmly and quickly.

"Something's not right. Why haven't any fish taken the bait lately?"

The overseers naturally discovered quickly that the goods they had intended to embezzle and sell in the city for profit were gone—stolen by someone.

"My lord, why don't we set up a new stove!"

After all, a clever housewife cannot cook without rice; there were only so many overseers who dared to sell produce privately, and by acting at specific times, he couldn't let them break the pot and give up entirely, so he could only go this far.

Since you don't want that, then, surely it's no problem for me to take half!

Du En walked on the path between the fields, his pace light as he arrived in front of the warehouse by the spirit field, skillfully unlatched the window, and avoided the few protective alarm measures.

On this morning, not knowing which nerve had been struck, Wei Ming suddenly said this to Du En.

Through sifting and searching, and after quiet verification, he successfully locked onto some locations.

"They aren't afraid of me; they are afraid of the evil cultivators."

It couldn't be that the evil cultivator was truly so rampant that they could bloodbath them all, could it?

If that were really the case, no matter how much the stewards didn't want to get involved, they would have to work together to catch the rat.

This was actually Du En's thought.

Wei Ming also came back to his senses, realizing he seemed to have said the wrong thing, his expression immediately stiffened, and he stammered: "Just, I see, we here, being able to be so quiet now, must be because you are here, my lord, but those guys who used to roll their eyes at us don't know how to be grateful, it's really a bit inappropriate."

But the key was, the matter couldn't be blown out of proportion!

If it were blown up and the stewards above found out that he had dared to deceive them and secretly sell the produce, then being skinned alive would be considered getting off easy; the greater possibility was being executed on the spot!

What's more, spirit grain alone wasn't enough; he also needed spirit vegetables, spirit fruits, spirit fish...

"Where are my several large baskets of spirit fruit?!"

These naturally couldn't be hidden from Du En; not to mention that his cultivation technique was already perfect and his senses were increasingly sharp, even before, he could have easily discovered these clumsy tricks.

He went back and forth a few more times, stealing a total of over a thousand catties, which he stored in several secret warehouses he had long since selected in the mountain forest.

Because the ingredients Ren Li brought out tonight were truly excellent, Du En cooked a first-grade perfect spirit meal, and the few of them all exclaimed how satisfying it was; the meal energy was still slowly dispersing, so there was no need to eat anything extra tonight.

The evil cultivators were dormant, the demonic beasts had returned south, and although the Digging Stone Gang eventually collapsed, those bully gangs didn't dare to stir up trouble, and the situation transitioned and ended peacefully.

"It's a pity that it consumes too many ingredients; I can't cook it every day."

Then he went back.

Now, the original territory of the Green Clothes Gang was being slowly encroached upon by several bully gangs.

Thus, it became Du En's target.

There was really no helping it.

The others immediately paused; three remained silent, but Ning Caize frowned directly: "Little Wei, saying this, isn't it distracting our foreman? Nonsense!"

Just like that, after a bout of tossing and turning, these overseers broke their teeth and swallowed them with blood, silently enduring it.

Embezzlement!

That's what I'm saying; those guys received care for nothing, yet they had no self-awareness at all—it really doesn't make sense!

Ning Caize wanted to say something but stopped, not saying anything more.

"If it weren't for the fact that this matter seems hard to control, I would have wanted to continue the bloodbath to fan the flames."

Is this stealing?

"Fuck! Guarded for several days and didn't see a shadow; this guy is actually leaving half as a hush-money fee, right?"

These words carried a hint of circuitous remonstrance.

The days that followed remained calm and uneventful.

The newly harvested spirit rice was piled up right here.

This is robbery!

Because they were all afraid of being implicated in a massacre, yet unwilling to let go of this piece of meat, and also due to orders from the managers behind the scenes, they chose to cooperate and act in such a lukewarm and safe manner.

Especially in the area where Du En and the others lived, it was as if they had been forgotten; to this day, no new gang of bullies had moved in to collect protection fees from them, leaving the people living here feeling somewhat unaccustomed to it.

What could they do?

There was nothing they could do!

Such an experience was like being forced against one's will; as time passed, they simply resigned themselves to their fate and accepted it calmly.

Along the way, he even changed his position, because the overseer here had secretly set up a few small traps during this harvest time.

Not right!

It was so calm that it made one forget where they were.

No longer petty theft like before, but specifically picking the best, starting by taking ten or a hundred catties at a time.

Finally, he carried a full sack of several hundred catties of spirit grain on his back and quickly left the area.

"Damn it! My crops!"

"Son of a bitch! Using my own things to seal my lips, this isn't over! I still know who else is doing this; he hasn't been robbed yet, so I'll keep watch with him and definitely catch the culprit!"

"Fellow Daoist, let it go. Someone who can beat the two of us half to death and then brazenly move our things is clearly not someone we can deal with; just treat it as hush money for him!"

Just as he arrived at the entrance of the corpse-transporting path, he ran into Xu Ran, who was waiting there, craning his neck in anticipation.

Please keep reading!

(End of this chapter)