Chapter 423: The Final Choice

Having arranged his tactics for later, Zhao Chi only then replied.

"I am the lord. You have invaded my territory, so I am within my rights to kill you on sight."

Zhao Ji was taken aback.

In his eyes, those words had been shouted out by Qi Yue in her clear, bright voice.

Even her voice was so perfect.

Not bad.

Zhao Ji said with a faint smile, "So it's you. Kill on sight, you say? Can you even kill a noble? You should know perfectly well what you've done, right? Daring to escape from our encirclement — quite the nerve."

Zhao Ji and the others had already entered javelin-throwing range.

But Zhao Chi did not give the order to attack.

He also had some questions he wanted to ask.

It worked out perfectly — seeing that Zhao Ji wanted to talk, Zhao Chi took the chance to chat with him as well.

He did not respond to Zhao Ji's questions and accusations.

Instead, he asked his own question directly:

"How did you find my territory?"

This question was crucial.

All along, he had assumed that piloting Gu Qing outside would be very safe.

After all, Gu Qing was not a lord, and this territory did not belong to her; by all logic, the other side should not have been able to track it down.

If these nobles had some special method, then from now on he would have to be far more careful.

If there even was a "from now on"…

Zhao Ji snorted.

He seemed displeased that Qi Yue had answered with a question instead of responding to his.

But then he asked another question of his own.

"Setting aside how I found you, I'd like to hear exactly what method you used to hide your territory. We actually couldn't locate your territory at all — every probe came back as nonexistent."

If they had been searching for the territory through Gu Qing's identity, then of course it wouldn't exist — Gu Qing simply had no territory.

But that didn't matter to Zhao Chi.

He frowned and said, "How did you find this place? Answer me first, and then I'll tell you."

Zhao Ji nodded. "Fine."

Li Yan hurriedly advised, "My lord, there's no need to reveal more information. Once we capture them, we can interrogate them just the same."

Zhao Ji raised a hand. "It's fine, it's no secret. If they can drop their guard and surrender — whether it's real or not — that alone counts as a great merit. Besides, they seem to have quite a few more secrets."

Li Yan thought it over and nodded.

Zhao Ji said, "We pried some information out of your gatekeeper, but it all turned out to be useless — we simply couldn't pinpoint you."

Gatekeeper?

Who was that?

Zhao Chi was still trying to recall when Gu Qing whispered, "That blind old man?"

Right!

It had to be him.

Before entering Fragrant Food Street for the first time, one had to register personal information.

He had said at the time that this was a unique form of identity recognition.

But he could only identify Gu Qing, not Zhao Chi, so of course it was useless.

Zhao Ji continued, "When you slipped away from my side back then, I also used a tracking technique, but you cleared it off halfway through."

Zhao Chi recalled that Gu Qing had felt her steps grow heavy back then.

So she had used the Cleansing Body Technique to remove the negative status effect.

At the time it had only been meant to clear the slow, but by a lucky accident it had cleared the tracking technique along with it.

Zhao Ji went on, "But unfortunately, the ground nearby had already been dusted with spirit-energy stone powder by us, and that can't be cleared away with a spiritual technique. It's the most primitive method, but who would have thought it would actually work sometimes."

Spirit-energy stone powder?

Spirit-energy stone is a kind of stone that can store spirit energy.