Chapter 167: The Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts

In the underground hall of Luolong County, the leaders of the Three Great Gangs were gathered together. Long Guxing sat in the main seat, sipping tea in a leisurely manner. Of the four beauties who looked exactly alike, two were attending to Long Guxing, while the other two were serving tea and water to Jiang Tian and Liu Sheng respectively.

"Boss Long, Boss Liu, that little brat Meng Yifan has invited us to a banquet tomorrow at noon. What do you think, should we go?" asked Jiang Tian, leader of the Crocodile Gang.

"Go my ass. This is clearly a trap. If the three of us go, Meng Yifan will just wipe us all out in one go. Old Jiang, don't forget, that kid Meng Yifan is no weakling; even Zuo Moyan was taken care of by him," said Liu Sheng, leader of the Axe Gang.

"But we in the underworld live for face. If none of us go, the brothers in the underworld will all think we are afraid of Meng Yifan. Isn't this just boosting others' morale while crushing our own?"

Jiang Tian was indecisive. He wanted to go, but was worried that if the talks fell through, they would start fighting immediately. He had already realized that if it came to a head-on war, the members of the Three Great Gangs really could not beat Meng Yifan's army. Even if the three leaders attacked together, they might not necessarily gain any advantage in Meng Yifan's hands.

"Old Jiang, I think we shouldn't go for now. Many of those stubborn commoners in the city still have food at home. Wait another two or three days, and they will all be out of food. When people are about to starve to death, let's see if they still listen to Meng Yifan."

"By then, we won't even need to make a move. We just need to let our underlings blend into the crowd and shift the commoners' anger onto Meng Yifan and his group of rebels. Haha, by then, these ten or twenty thousand commoners alone will be enough to drive Meng Yifan out of Luolong County."

"Finally, our Three Great Gangs will come out to sell grain. We won't even need to sell it at ten times the price. We'll show some mercy and only raise it by two or three times. These commoners will all have to be grateful to us, and from then on, Luolong County will still be run by our Three Great Gangs."

Liu Sheng voiced his thoughts. Jiang Tian listened and nodded, feeling that Liu Sheng's idea made a lot of sense.

With this operation, their Three Great Gangs would succeed in driving Meng Yifan away with almost no losses, and they could also gain the support of the commoners. This was killing two birds with one stone.

Long Guxing slowly set down his teacup and smiled: "Old Jiang, Old Liu, that Meng Yifan is so anxious to invite us to a banquet because he is most concerned about the grain in our hands. As long as the grain is in our hands, he won't dare to move against me easily."

"Tomorrow at noon, I will attend the banquet. We cannot weaken the prestige of our Three Great Gangs."

"You two, Old Jiang, go sit in the grain warehouse. Place gunpowder, fuel, and other flammable materials among the grain piles. If you wait for my signal, just set the grain on fire immediately."

"Old Liu, you take people to keep an eye on the movements of Meng Yifan's soldiers. As soon as the soldiers move out, you also send a signal in time. When it really comes to a point of mutual destruction, our Three Great Gangs are not soft targets for anyone to knead."

The Three Great Gangs had always been led by Long Guxing. Since Long Guxing had arranged it this way, Jiang Tian and Liu Sheng did not say anything more. The three of them discussed the details of tomorrow's banquet again, then went to check the arrangements inside the grain warehouse before going to sleep separately.

At midnight, dark clouds gathered and the starlight was dim. Except for a few dim lanterns on the main street, everything else was in total darkness.

"Bang! Bang! Bang! The third watch of the midnight hour, all is peaceful!"

The night watchman struck his clapper, following the established route to announce the time.

The entire Luolong County was desolate. Except for the night watchman, everyone else had basically gone to sleep.

However, in the civilian houses around the county office, many people were not asleep. They hid behind the windows, eyes wide open, staring at the movements near the county office.

There were other people in the civilian houses. Each person only needed to keep watch for two hours before someone else could take over.

The Three Great Gangs had given them a strict order: even if a mouse ran out of the county office, they had to keep an eye on it.

Suddenly, a sharp-mouthed, monkey-cheeked gang member discovered that a mass of black mist seemed to rise from near the county office. He froze for a moment, hurriedly rubbed his sleepy eyes, and looked again, only to find everything normal. There was no black mist at all. Could it be that he had seen wrong just now?

Meng Yifan held the Array Disk and activated a patch of black mist to shroud himself and Meng Dayong. The two left the county office silently and headed outside. The people responsible for keeping watch for the Three Great Gangs did not notice. Some of them seemed to see a wisp of black mist drift by, but in this hazy, late-night darkness, it was normal for fog to suddenly rise, so no one made a fuss or reported it to their superiors.

Meng Yifan hid in the black mist. With a flick of the Ghost Head Blade in his hand, Zhang Butou and the other ghost soldiers and generals appeared before his eyes. They first bowed respectfully to Meng Yifan and Meng Dayong, then drifted toward the areas assigned to them in advance.

The ghost soldiers and generals were condensed from the Ghost Head Blade. Under normal circumstances, they could not leave the Ghost Head Blade for more than five hundred meters. However, Meng Yifan used the Array Disk to empower the Ghost Head Blade and the ghost soldiers and generals, allowing them to operate within one thousand meters of the Ghost Head Blade.

With Meng Yifan as the center, up, down, left, and right—including the sky and the underground—were all within the range of the ghost soldiers and generals, while Meng Dayong acted as a protector for Meng Yifan.

The ghost soldiers and generals were all Yin Soul bodies, formless in gathering and dispersing, coming and going like the wind. They could pass straight through ordinary walls.

They could fly in the sky or burrow into the ground, but the higher they flew, the fiercer the gale winds in the sky became. Even though Zhang Butou was a Third Grade Ghost General, he did not dare to fly to an altitude of one hundred meters.

The ghost soldiers and generals were extremely fast. After searching a one-thousand-meter area, Meng Yifan would lead them to search the next area.

Luolong County was not large. At the speed of Meng Yifan and the ghost soldiers and generals, three or four hours were enough to search the entire Luolong County.

As long as the Three Great Gangs' grain was still hidden within Luolong County, Meng Yifan would be able to find it.

Fang Cheng had been a head constable of the Luolong County office during his lifetime. His job had been to lead the constables on street patrols, so he was very familiar with the streets and alleys of Luolong County.

Fang Cheng had not expected that after he died and became a ghost soldier, he would actually walk the streets and alleys of Luolong County again. This made him feel quite strange, as if he hadn't died yet and was still a constable performing a night patrol mission.

"Hey! This is Liu Ermazi's house. This little brat still owes me five taels of silver that he hasn't paid back? No way, paying debts is only right and proper. Just because his old man is dead doesn't mean he can welsh on his debts."

Thinking of this, Fang Cheng's soul body turned into a gust of Yin wind and drilled through the crack in the door.

Liu Ermazi's house also had three rooms. In the master bedroom sat a large bed. It was already midnight, yet the large bed was still creaking and shaking, and from inside came waves of sounds that still made one's heart race and mouth go dry.

"Damn! Liu Ermazi is doing well for himself. In the middle of the night, he's actually playing with two at once." Fang Cheng's soul body gathered and stood by the bed, admiring the intense battle on the bed.

"Oh ho, this position is not bad, very high difficulty. Heh, Liu Ermazi's thing is too small, and those two beauties are moaning too fake; they must be doing it for the silver, fooling Liu Ermazi."

Fang Cheng watched with great interest from the side. If Meng Yifan hadn't been urging him so urgently, he really would have wanted to finish watching this battle before bringing up the money.

"Forget it, let's scare Liu Ermazi first and make him obediently pay back the silver he owes me."

Fang Cheng's soul body swayed, and in an instant, his eyes bulged, his tongue stretched out a foot long, and blood flowed from his seven orifices. In a flickering, uncertain voice, he said: "Liu Ermazi... return my silver..."