Chapter 338: Luxury Inn — The Nighttime Assault of Chaos and Bandits

Pusiya the Pastor walked up to the women. Several of the hired thugs had just wanted to raise their hands to block him, but the moment they thought of this person's identity, they immediately pulled their hands back, as if they had been burned by a branding iron.

The Pastor nodded, crouched halfway down, extended his hand, and signaled for the woman who claimed to have suffered a miscarriage to extend her hand as well.

"Ah, oh, is it okay if I just extend my hand?" the woman asked, half-sobbing and half-nervous.

"Yes, it will be over very soon." After slightly soothing the woman, Pusiya the Pastor whispered something, his voice both soft and fast.

Even the woman standing right in front of him could only hear words like "supplication" or "judgment."

Golden light faintly flashed in the eyes of this Pastor of the God of Wealth, and then the golden light extended from his hand, rapidly passing through the point where his and the woman's palms touched and extending onto the woman.

Before the other party could cry out in surprise, that not-so-strong golden light flowed through the woman's entire body and immediately returned to Pusiya the Pastor's hand.

The Pastor closed his eyes while withdrawing his palm.

A moment later, he opened his eyes with a smile; the people around were all watching him, waiting for his answer.

Not letting everyone wait in vain, Pusiya the Pastor gave them the answer: "This woman did indeed become pregnant recently and suffered a miscarriage due to poor health. It is a pity that the unborn child returned to the world before it could even arrive in this one."

The surrounding crowd let out a loud "Oh!" of exclamation, and immediately, someone looked toward the expressionless Longsuosi.

Yet the expressionless Longsuosi stood frozen on the spot, not reacting.

Fortunately, Pusiya the Pastor's words had a second half: "However, thanks to the great power bestowed by the gods, the accusations this woman just made against Lord Longsuosi were all lies she fabricated on the spot. At the very least, before Lord Longsuosi appeared just now, the two did not know each other and had never met in this life."

At this, the onlookers once again shifted their gazes toward the people in the center of the scene.

The troublemaking thugs and the women could no longer hold it together; having lost the momentum they had a moment ago, they immediately shrank back nervously. And the woman who had been crying earlier, slumped on the ground, also turned pale all at once and swayed as she fell backward.

"I'm sorry, I just wanted to attract everyone's attention." Although this self-justification came from her mouth, it was immediately drowned out by the curses and mockery of the people around.

Longsuosi flicked the cloak behind him, thanked Pusiya the Pastor twice, and then turned to the inn's Captain of the Guard and said: "Please drive these people out. I still have important matters to attend to here."

The inn's Captain of the Guard immediately put on a fawning smile, waved his hand to signal his subordinates to handle it, and then leaned in close to Longsuosi, whispering some kind of excuse.

And Longsuosi also said straightforwardly: "No need for that, I understand. If such incidents happen again later, please help handle them." Longsuosi found it difficult to say much to this Captain of the Guard of a luxury inn; the man had a very strong backing, not something a Baron Heir and border noble like him could influence.

The inn's Captain of the Guard was just putting on a show; after all, even if they ignored this matter, such things only concerned the troublemakers and the ones being troubled, so what did it have to do with them? Everyone knew exactly what level the nobles were at; these kinds of incidents involving illegitimate children seeking relatives or fake claims for extortion happened several times every year.

Regarding such matters, everyone just treated them as a joke or fodder for conversation.

But while they were talking, behind them, something happened between the inn guards and the troublemaking women and thugs.

The inn guards had also watched the entire event as bystanders, so when their Captain waved his hand, they immediately rushed forward, intending to drive all these people who had come to cause trouble and extort money out of the inn lobby, and perhaps even beat them up a bit.

Watching the inn guards clenching their fists and pushing their way over, the women and thugs who had taken money to cause trouble immediately fell into chaos; some wanted to declare that they had been hired with money, while others just wanted to run away, thinking that the task they were paid to do was already finished and they should start thinking about how to spend the money.

Others were startled by the rushing inn guards, immediately screaming in fright, and even running left and right, trying to dodge the guards reaching for them.

The woman slumped on the ground was even more unlucky; pushed by the sisters behind her, and already physically weak from her recent miscarriage, plus having been crying fake tears earlier, her body was limp and powerless, so she fell directly to the ground.

Her hand was stepped on by a careless guard, and she immediately let out a miserable scream.

The scene became chaotic for a moment.

The women who had taken money and didn't want to be caught squeezed into the crowd of onlookers, and the guards who wanted to catch them charged straight through, bumping into several people at once.

Some merchants were already feeling irritable because they couldn't see the commotion clearly; they had thought they would see a lively, famous scene, but because the Priest had used Divine Art to identify the truth, he had immediately exposed the group's lies and fraud.

With their bellies full of anger, and now being bumped by the inn guards, someone immediately started cursing and gave the bumping guard a kick in the dark.

The guards were not people who would take a loss, so they immediately returned a punch to the person most likely to have hit them.

You hit me, I hit him, he hits you.

In this way, the scene became chaotic, and people's exclamations and curses were constant.

Originally, although this kind of unpleasant thing had happened, everyone would have just used their fists and taken a few muffled losses each, and that would have been the end of it.

The young Bandit hidden in the shadows immediately cast aside his annoyance at his failed scheme, felt the Dagger hidden in his sleeve, and then feigned a look of panic, while in the chaos, patting one person on the head and then giving the person with their back to him a kick that was neither light nor heavy.

Finally, he "broke through the thorns and brambles" and "peacefully and steadily" approached the center of the lobby, and while no one was paying attention, drew his Dagger and gave the woman huddled in the middle on the ground a stab in the neck.

The soft, tender neck could not withstand the rough, cheap, yet still metal-made iron Dagger.

Red blood flowed from the woman's neck, staining her thick clothing red. The woman did not know why this person wanted to hurt her, but those triumphant and excited eyes seemed very similar to the young man who had paid to hire them earlier.

"Why, why." The young woman, whose consciousness was about to fade away with her blood, wanted to open her mouth to question, but her voice was pitifully small. She had no choice but to use the blood flowing from her neck in the last short moment before death to write the only characters she knew how to write on the smooth stone floor of the inn lobby.

Her own name.

This was the only thing she had received from her family before they sold her. It was also the text she had learned and tremblingly written on thick transaction documents after she grew up and was trained in the Red House on how to please people, in a room full of thugs.

Yet even the name written in blood lasted less than a moment before someone stepped on it, and with the friction of a Boot sole, it was messily smeared away.

The young Bandit was incredibly excited, but on his face, he still had to pretend he didn't know what was going on, looking panicked. He saw a Militia member just squeezing over from beside him, wanting to soothe and pull apart the two people fighting.

The young Bandit squeezed past the Militia member, pulled out the Dagger from the Militia member's waist, then in the chaos stuffed his own Dagger inside, not caring if it fit the sheath, and then hid the newly acquired Dagger in his sleeve.

He jumped up and, with the hand that didn't have the Dagger, pointed to the ground in the center of the lobby, at the woman lying motionless on the floor: "Someone's dead! Someone's dead! Stop fighting! Everyone look!"

"What!" The few people who were still wrestling in the middle heard that someone was dead and immediately stopped their hands. And the people around who were either fleeing or pushing together also turned around, and everyone looked toward the center of the venue.

Sure enough, the young woman who had claimed to be pregnant and suffered a miscarriage, and who really had been pregnant and suffered a miscarriage, was now slumped on the ground, her upper body leaning forward, with a deep wound on her neck.

The wound had at least severed a large Blood Vessel on the outside of the neck, and a not-insignificant amount of blood had stained a small patch of the stone floor and the deceased's clothing.

The few women who had come with the deceased woman had originally been hiding, but now, seeing their sister killed, they immediately rushed out and ran to the side of the deceased woman, wanting to throw themselves on her and cry, but not daring to, so they could only crouch halfway and wail.

And the few Red House thugs, who had been beaten until they looked like pig heads, were scared out of their wits.

The onlookers around them tidied their disheveled clothes and hats and gathered around in an even more excited state. They discussed who had killed the woman and scanned the people wrestling in the middle of the lobby with eyes brighter and more alert than hunting dogs.

Longsuosi and the inn's Captain of the Guard pushed through the crowd and came out; their expressions upon seeing the deceased on the ground were quite different.

Longsuosi was still in the after-effects of having closed his Magic, so his thinking was relatively calm at this moment; even with the chaos and the death that had just occurred, his expression did not change in the slightest.

But the inn's Captain of the Guard had an ugly expression.

He roared at his subordinates: "What is going on? I told you to clear these people out, is this how you do it?"

His subordinates were wrestling with some people and had more or less been splashed with blood, but because the weapons they were agreed to use were Iron-wrapped Clubs, he did not think it was his own men who had killed the woman.

Among the onlookers were officials from Bingxun Pass; after the deceased appeared, they immediately ran out and summoned the pass's Soldier patrol from the street outside.

Once the Soldiers arrived, the people who had still been angry from the wrestling all calmed down, watching to see what would happen next. After all, everyone knew they hadn't killed anyone, and the killer wasn't themselves, so although someone had died, no one came forward to admit to the killing.

Bingxun Pass was not a peaceful place either; thugs, gangs, and hoodlums in the city beat people to death every few days, so everyone was relatively used to it. Even the merchants, those who could come to Bingxun Pass to do business, had seen plenty of death, injury, and slaughter on the Shanglu.

Everyone did not take the death of one person too seriously.

Several people with status at the scene discussed it briefly; since the incident happened right under everyone's noses, they directly had those with blood on them step out to compare one by one.

The bloodstains on those who had been brawling and fighting were different from the bloodstains left by using weapons, so it was easy to distinguish.

Therefore, when those with bloodstains of various sizes on them were pulled out for inspection, that Melee Militia member with blood on the Dagger at his waist was picked out by the sharp-eyed onlookers.

"The Melee Militia killed someone," the onlookers said one after another.

Longsuosi frowned.

Originally, the Daggers equipped by the Melee Militia were all uniformly forged in the workshop according to standard specifications, so they naturally fit perfectly, but could the Daggers of the Melee Militia and the crude Daggers in the hands of the Bandit be the same thing?

Thus, the Bandit's Dagger could not be fully inserted into the Melee Militia's Dagger sheath, leaving a gap a finger-joint wide. And in this gap, there was quite a bit of undried blood.

Seeing that the blood-stained Dagger was at the Melee Militia member's waist, the surrounding people immediately discussed and scolded loudly, claiming that the seemingly calm Longsuosi had directed the killing during the chaos.

But the Captain of the inn guards, who had been standing with Longsuosi since before the chaos began, knew that Longsuosi had not given any instructions to his subordinate Melee Militia just now, nor had he even made any similar gestures.

Facing the onlookers who were excitedly demanding that the official order the Soldier to seize Longsuosi, Longsuosi simply stretched out his hands, opened them, and pressed downward, using gestures to signal everyone present to be quiet.

It was magical to say, but after everyone saw Longsuosi's gesture, they gradually quieted down.

The sky was already at the dusk of a winter day, and the original lighting in the inn lobby was already somewhat insufficient; after Longsuosi made everyone present quiet down, he first had the inn staff light the lamps for illumination.

Everything was ready-made, and the inn lobby soon became bright.

Longsuosi thanked them, then brought out the Melee Militia member who had been identified by the crowd as the murderer, and asked for the blood-stained Dagger from the official's hand.

He then unbuckled the Dagger sheath from his subordinate's waist and held the Dagger sheath and the blood-stained Dagger high above his head: "Everyone, please look clearly."

After speaking, he placed the Dagger into the Dagger sheath, but the last section of the Dagger's blade could not be inserted no matter what.

When the blood on the Melee Militia member's Dagger was first discovered, some smart people present had already seen it, but they did not speak up to point it out. At this moment, in the bright and quiet inn lobby, everyone saw with their own eyes that the so-called Melee Militia killing was not as everyone had seen and thought before.

Seeing that everyone understood, Longsuosi handed the items in his hand to the official nearby. Immediately after, he had another Melee Militia member behind him take off his own Dagger and sheath, and in front of everyone, drew the Dagger.

This Dagger's blade was wider, but shorter, so that murder Dagger had not been fully inserted into the sheath, leaving a section exposed outside.

"Everyone, there is no extra Dagger under anyone's feet, so that Dagger swapped from my subordinate Melee Militia's waist should still be on the killer."

"Next, please show the self-defense weapons you are carrying. Naturally, we will be able to find out who killed the person. Because since the chaos started just now, no one has left the inn lobby. Only curious people have come in to watch." Longsuosi first showed his own weapon; the Curved Saber in the elf-style hanging at his waist would naturally not be the murder weapon, as that kind of thing would be very conspicuous just by drawing the blade.

Longsuosi also had a standard Melee Militia Dagger at his own waist; he himself did not need Dagger-type weapons, but when going out, for convenience, he still took a standard Melee Militia Dagger.

His Dagger was still in its sheath, so he had not killed anyone.

Those who knew his identity also knew it could not be him; after all, in Kendall County, if he wanted someone to die, wouldn't it be over after directly throwing them into the town Jianlao and not giving them food? Why go to such trouble.

Next, starting with the men who had been brawling, everyone displayed the weapons they were carrying.

The process was fast, as not everyone needed to carry weapons. Moreover, some Merchants' Daggers were used more as props to show off their wealth.

The sheaths and blades of the Daggers were mostly fancy, and no matter how one looked at them, they did not seem like weapons that could be used for killing or self-defense.

As the inspection and display continued, among the remaining people, the young Bandit standing in the crowd became increasingly nervous. He wanted to sneakily throw the Dagger in his sleeve onto the ground, but the Soldiers, inn guards, and Melee Militia in front were all staring at every person who had not yet been checked.

He could only shake his legs and feet uneasily.

Soon, he made up his mind and took the risk of using the cover of the person in front to slide the Dagger out of his sleeve; after gripping it in his hand, he quietly inserted it into the belt hanging behind the person in front.

Everyone was very nervous, so that person did not notice a Dagger being hung on their back.

So when this person walked out, they immediately discovered that there was an extra Dagger on their back.

"This isn't mine, my Dagger is right here, look, this is my Dagger. The one on my back must have been hidden on me by someone secretly before." The person kept arguing.

Longsuosi, however, ignored what this person was saying and directly stretched out his hand to circle several people where this person had originally been standing: "These people are all suspects, all come out and stand in front."

The people circled and pointed out by Longsuosi all became nervous and defended themselves.

"It's not me, I didn't kill anyone."

"I don't even know who this woman is, why would I kill anyone?"

"My lords, I am a waiter at the inn; I was just watching the excitement, and then this kind of thing happened, how unlucky."

But just as the young Bandit finished speaking to defend himself, not far from Longsuosi, one of the three thugs who had been controlled shouted: "My lords, it's this person, I still have an impression of this voice; it was he who paid a large sum of money to hire us to come over and find fault and cause trouble. It's this person!"

The young Bandit's face changed drastically.

Everyone heard clearly what the thug said and immediately turned their gaze to this inn waiter. People speculated one after another: since this person is an inn waiter, why would this luxurious inn with a deep background want to frame Longsuosi, a person of unusual status?

Some people who knew Longsuosi's identity looked at the inn's people in surprise; they were also frightened by this statement. If they could frame Lord Longsuosi today, would they also secretly frame them tomorrow?

And several managers of the luxurious inn immediately came out to say that they hadn't done this or that, that this wasn't done by them, and as for the truth of the matter, there must be some inside story.

The young Bandit was trembling uncontrollably, because no matter what others said, that high-status Longsuosi had been staring at him, and his brows were tightly furrowed.

"You." Longsuosi stared closely at the young Bandit opposite, pondered for a long time in his mind, and finally asked the guess he felt was most likely: "Are you one of the Thieves of Luodai Cave?"

But just as he asked this, from the direction of the backyard of the luxurious inn, a burst of loud shouting from a crowd erupted, accompanied by the sound of weapons clashing.

Longsuosi widened his eyes and looked toward the backyard. And the young Bandit opposite lowered his head and laughed in a low voice: "Ahahaha, burn, burn! Let the chaos begin, let the chaos begin! Bingxun Pass will be in chaos tonight!"