Chapter 140

Bian Bu spoke half-jokingly, half-seriously.

“I swear to heaven, if I ever try to kill you, I will definitely declare that I’m going to kill you before doing so. So please don’t just leave such things lying around carelessly near me. I don’t want to die pointlessly from accidentally touching something out of bad luck.”

“I understand.”

Whether he truly understood or not, Jin Ja-gang answered halfheartedly and prepared to leave.

Bian Bu hurriedly stood up.

“W-wait, I’ll come with you too…”

“I’ll signal you when it’s safe to leave.”

“Even though my body is inconvenient, I don’t want to just sit here and die.”

At his words, a smile appeared on Jin Ja-gang’s face for the first time.

“You’re quite particular about how you die.”

“A real man should choose where he dies.”

Bian Bu anxiously nudged his luggage with his toes, checking it over, and once he thought it was safe, he shouldered it on his back.

Just as he was about to follow Jin Ja-gang out, leaning on his staff.

Jin Ja-gang was pulling something else out from the floor near the doorway. It was a long needle of a length that was chilling just to look at.

“…”

“What’s wrong?”

“…That’s not what I think it is, is it?”

“It probably is.”

Bian Bu finally exploded after holding back.

“You really go too far!”

Jin Ja-gang smiled slightly.

Seeing Jin Ja-gang’s smile, Bian Bu was certain. There were probably more things he hadn’t shown besides what he’d just seen.

The reason for conspicuously showing the retrieval of the poison needle was clear. It was a warning not to act rashly.

Bian Bu raised both hands in surrender. Only then did Jin Ja-gang turn his back to Bian Bu for the first time and take the lead.

* * *

Creak, creak.

A hunched old woman passed in front of the alley, pulling a small handcart.

She was a typical country woman with a red nose and cheeks, her face covered with age spots, showing signs of long work under the scorching sun.

The woman wore a shabby headscarf pulled low over her head and stopped her cart at her usual selling spot. She took out wooden blocks to prop under the cart so it wouldn’t move, then spread a wide board on top of the cart to make a stall.

On top of it, she placed crispy dumplings called broken-crisp buns.

Perhaps from working in the fields before doing business, she moved with the tired motions of someone exhausted from a day’s labor. Anyone seeing the woman would think of a vicious husband who worked his wife all day and sent her out to do business even in the evening.

However, amid those slow movements, the woman’s eyes were constantly surveying left and right from inside her headscarf.

Then at one moment, the woman discovered bloodstains in the direction leading into the alley. They were faint bloodstains barely visible to the eye. It looked like someone had tried to rub them out with their foot!

The woman confirmed there were no people passing by nearby, then immediately entered the alley.

No more bloodstains were visible, but there was a faint smell of blood.

The woman entered the alley as if business meant nothing to her.

After turning two corners, she discovered four corpses dumped in a secluded corner.

The woman’s face contorted. All four corpses were people the woman knew.

However, she noticed that one of the dead bodies was holding something in its hand.

The woman was about to approach the corpse when she stopped in surprise. Suddenly there was a sour smell.

Poison!

What they had been chasing was Snake Scorpion Poison King, who had devastated Yunnan’s poison sects with poison.

The woman hastily covered her mouth with her sleeve. However, she couldn’t ignore the precious evidence that her comrade had left behind even while dying.

The woman held her breath and approached the corpses.

A bamboo tube clutched in the hand of a corpse that had died spewing blood foam from its mouth.

The woman pulled out the bamboo tube tightly gripped in the corpse’s hand, put it in her bosom, and quickly retreated.

Then she ran back quickly to her original stall location.

The stall where she had laid out the broken-crisp buns was in disarray. In the meantime, people had apparently taken some at will, as some were missing, and what remained was crushed or broken into powder.

However, the woman didn’t care at all. She roughly swept up the remaining broken-crisp buns and cleaned up the stall. Powder rose in clouds.

“Cough!”

The woman was startled by a sudden fit of coughing.

Blood droplets splattered on the stall.

‘Poisoned!’

The woman’s face turned ashen. Had she been poisoned when she smelled that sour smell earlier!

The woman pushed everything remaining into the handcart and hurriedly left.

Shortly after the woman left.

Jin Ja-gang emerged from the adjacent alley.

Bian Bu also came out, dragging his injured foot. The woman was so flustered in her departure that she didn’t know Jin Ja-gang and Bian Bu were watching her from behind.

Bian Bu looked at Jin Ja-gang with admiration.

“Your poison techniques have a way of striking at people’s weak points.”

Jin Ja-gang had actually used poison not near the corpses but on the woman’s cart. Broken-crisp buns have a crispy texture and break into small pieces easily. He had made it look like people had stolen the broken-crisp buns from the stall by scattering them about and crushing a few to mix poison powder into the crumbs.

So when she hurriedly cleaned up, she would inevitably inhale the poison powder.

He hadn’t used poison where the corpses were. Anyone would naturally be careful in such a place. Therefore, even if poison had been placed there, it would have been difficult to poison someone easily.

“But why did you specifically sprinkle sour-smelling vinegar near the corpses?”

What he had sprinkled near the corpses was ordinary vinegar. It had nothing to do with poison.

“To make her believe she was also poisoned by the poison remaining on the corpses. That way her comrades would think it wasn’t that the colleagues committed suicide on their own, but that I did it.”

However, Bian Bu looked worried.

“They’ll now think their identity has been exposed. If they thought you killed them, they might think everything was revealed.”

“That’s what I wanted.”

Bian Bu’s face contorted.

“That’s what you wanted? Once their identity is exposed, they’ll start attacking this village immediately!”

This village had been under their control for a long time.

Since even Bian Bu had been under surveillance from the moment he entered, there was no way to sneak out secretly when leaving.

To escape, they would have to be prepared for at least some fighting.

But to actually provoke an attack?

“Ah, you’re planning to follow that woman and launch a surprise attack on the hideout where the spies have gathered?”

“That’s right.”

However, even though Bian Bu was waiting, Jin Ja-gang showed no intention of moving.

He was just quietly watching the direction the woman had disappeared.

“Since my leg is like this, I won’t follow this time. Go quickly.”

“We don’t need to follow now. She’ll probably take a roundabout route.”

“…Huh?”

“I know where she’s going.”

Bian Bu looked at Jin Ja-gang silently.

“Even if you’ve been holding out for a month… you found out their hideout while avoiding their eyes?”

Bian Bu looked Jin Ja-gang up and down with suspicious eyes. Jin Ja-gang answered calmly.

“They’re the ones who had to avoid being seen, not me.”

“Huh?”

Bian Bu twisted his beard while tilting his head left and right.

Hearing it, it made sense. Those doing surveillance generally don’t want to be caught surveilling. If Jin Ja-gang came toward them, they would have avoided Jin Ja-gang instead.

“That seems right too…”

Since Jin Ja-gang wandered around so much, the spies must have avoided him for fear their faces would become familiar. In the meantime, gaps appeared that allowed Jin Ja-gang to see everything he wanted to see.

Of course, it was easy to say, but was that something that could actually be done?

Being in the position of being watched, yet not being intimidated?

“You’re really an incomprehensible person. But I think I understand a little.”

Though they had only been together briefly, Bian Bu felt as if he had glimpsed a part of what Jin Ja-gang’s life had been like.

“Hmm.”

Bian Bu’s expression toward Jin Ja-gang softened somewhat.

“Ah, but what was that bamboo tube you put in the corpse’s hand?”

Jin Ja-gang had been carrying a bundle since leaving the inn. He took out a bamboo tube from it and placed it in the corpses’ hands.

“Manure pressed down and sealed with glue and beeswax.”

“How old is it?”

“About six days.”

Bian Bu grimaced. He could imagine what would happen when that was opened.

“What a strange fellow. You’re dirtier than I thought.”

“In matters of life and death, isn’t cleanliness not the important issue?”

“I understand, so stop forcing strange philosophies on me. I might get infected too.”

Jin Ja-gang said.

“Let’s go together.”

“Huh? Where?”

“Didn’t I say I would confirm it? How they plan to handle this village. If my prediction is correct, their hideout isn’t far from here.”

* * *

The woman hurriedly walked past the row of shops to the fabric store at the very end. It looked like an ordinary fabric store from the outside.

The woman looked around as if conscious of people’s gazes, then left her cart and entered the fabric store.

Inside the fabric store, goods were scattered about, making it very cluttered and narrow. The fabric store owner, who had been sitting, made eye contact with the woman and pointed toward the back.

There was a door leading to a warehouse inside the fabric store. When the woman opened the door and entered, several spies were already gathered in the warehouse.

“What’s the matter?”

“Cough!”

When the woman coughed and showed blood at the corner of her mouth, the spies were startled and stepped back.

The woman wiped the blood and spoke while covering her mouth.

“Wang Hu’s gang of four are all dead. It appears they were killed by Snake Scorpion Poison King’s poison.”

“What?”

The spies looked at their leader in surprise.

“The guy who’s been quiet all this time?”

“It seems he’s planning to take some action.”

The leader asked the woman.

“Any signs of torture?”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t check thoroughly because of the poison gas. This is all I managed to bring.”

The woman carefully placed a blood-stained bamboo tube on the central table while covering her mouth. One spy grabbed the palm-sized bamboo tube and examined it carefully.

“There don’t seem to be any particular mechanisms, and the lid is tightly sealed. It looks like a bamboo tube used for holding ink…”

“Wang Hu was holding it in his hand until he died. I don’t know what it is either.”

It seemed suspicious somehow, making it difficult to handle carelessly.

Then a scream came from outside the warehouse, from the fabric store.

“Aaaaah!”

It was the fabric store owner’s scream.

The spies’ hair stood on end.

“It seems he’s attacking!”

The spies looked at the woman, but she was just as flustered.

“I came back taking a long detour…”

“The reason he came here is obvious. He plans to completely eliminate us and disappear!”

The leader gritted his teeth. The leader’s gaze fixed on the bamboo tube.

“Is it because of this?”

To send a carrier pigeon, they had to confirm the tube’s identity.

The leader immediately cut open the bamboo tube’s lid with a knife.

At that moment.

Bang!

The bamboo tube exploded, sending black chunks and small poison needles flying in all directions.

“Aaaaah!”

The leader who had opened the tube had his face turned into a porcupine. Those nearby couldn’t avoid the shower of poison needles either. Moreover, filthy debris was splattered everywhere, making even the smell nauseating.

The rotted manure inside the tube had expanded beyond its limits and exploded the moment the lid was opened.