Chapter 273: Selling for a Good Price 1 |
Red Cauldron Tower, in the stairwell, a large crowd had gathered.
They almost filled the corridor to bursting.
Yang Long stood at the front, diagonally opposite a short-haired woman wearing black silk and a leather skirt with a red vest on top.
Behind them was a half-open door, and at this moment the passage inside had not been opened.
Because there were so many people, the hallway was jammed.
Some people grew increasingly impatient.
“Brother Long, how long do we have to wait?” someone shouted from the back.
“What’s the rush!” the short-haired woman snapped, impatient. “It doesn’t take that long to go over there.”
Someone in the crowd, identity unknown, muttered, “We’ve been waiting for almost three hours…”
“Mm.” Yang Long made a brief sound through his nose.
Mei Yuqing rose and took the stairs up to the building rooftop. As she moved, a tall figure in white with long hair and twin blades slung at his waist fell in behind her.
The rooftop had originally held some water tanks and billboards.
But now those had long since been dismantled, leaving only bare concrete.
Mei Yuqing reached the rooftop and asked directly, “Any news? Has Liu Ze returned?”
On the rooftop, a young man hurriedly stretched out his hands, accepted a pigeon, and took a slip of paper tied to its leg.
“Sister Mei, a message came from the mountaintop.”
Mei Yuqing saw it too, stepped forward and took the paper. “Let me see.”
She read with rapid comprehension, finishing the message in one glance, and her expression immediately darkened.
“Mei—Sister Mei, what’s wrong?”
Mei Yuqing put the paper down, her face smoothing back to calm. “It’s nothing. Keep watching here.”
The youth didn’t know what had happened.
But constrained by Mei Yuqing’s usual authority, he could only reply, “All right.”
Descending from the rooftop, a fierce glint flashed in Mei Yuqing’s eyes. “Trash.”
“Master, did something go wrong?” the tall man with twin blades asked.
“The message from the mountaintop says the ship from the opposite residential complex is sailing toward us. That lunatic Liu Ze is probably dead,” Mei Yuqing said, her chest heaving violently.
The stout man fell silent. “Everyone follow the Master’s orders.”
“Su Xiao, do you think we can beat them?” Mei Yuqing asked.
Su Xiao shook his head. “Your subordinate does not know, but we have superior numbers, so it’s not impossible.”
“But Yang Long probably won’t listen to me,” Mei Yuqing frowned.
Yang Long was arrogant; when Liu Ze was around he could be kept in check, but if Liu Ze had met with an accident, she might not be able to control the men under him.
And it wasn’t only Yang Long—those Floor Heads in the Blood Script were all capable people.
Anyone who survived in this environment and rose to be a Floor Head was hardly a saint.
Su Xiao said, “I can kill him.”
Mei Yuqing rolled her eyes. “Kill, kill, kill, always talking about killing. Would killing solve the problem? How many can you kill by yourself?”
Su Xiao went silent, then said, “I only know how to kill.”
Mei Yuqing suddenly said, “What if I go and negotiate with the other side? Even if we give up some profits, as long as my position is guaranteed.”
Su Xiao answered, “But we can’t contact the enemy.”
“No matter. They’ll come over, and they’ll definitely be willing to negotiate,” Mei Yuqing said confidently, because Blood Script were no pushovers either.
The other side wouldn’t take them easily.
If they suffered a setback, there would always be a chance to negotiate.
Returning down the stairs to the doorway, Mei Yuqing waved to Yang Long and summoned the other Floor Heads into the room.
Although Mei Yuqing had negotiation on her mind, she was not about to reveal her hand outright. She knew that even if she planned to negotiate, she first had to show her value, and what if they won?
When selling something, some people get a high price, others sell cheap.
Even if Mei Yuqing had to sell, she would sell for a good price!
Without value, even your enemies won’t give you a second look.
“Their ship is coming,” Mei Yuqing read the message aloud, “Prepare yourselves. They are not coming in peace.”
“How is that possible!” the Floor Head from the eighth floor scowled. “No word from Ze at all?”
“Wasn’t he supposed to open an anchor point on the other side?” Yang Long frowned.
“Obviously he failed to open the anchor point. Probably dead,” the Floor Head of the twenty-fourth floor sneered.
“You Li, what are you saying.”
“I told you, what of it! Damn it, I’ve never seen a leader like him. Goddamn, taking a few people and daring to run into the other base—does he have a screw loose!” Li Zecheng kicked the table leg hard.
Mei Yuqing’s expression was also unpleasant. She had tried to dissuade him before, but no one could deter Liu Ze.
The main reason was Liu Ze had indeed succeeded before.
Back during the first map round, there was a force of more than seventy people that occupied two full floors. At that time Liu Ze only had six people with him in total.
But this guy was reckless—he and Pu Jia climbed in through the windows from outside, climbed two floors, snuck into the enemy’s main base at midnight, killed the enemy leader, and while they slept, set fires and locked doors, burning more than twenty people alive.
He became famous in one battle.
Later Liu Ze repeatedly took risky gambits and kept succeeding.
Those earlier successes had given Liu Ze his confidence.
Mei Yuqing said, “Stop quarrelling. They’re coming now; figure out how to deal with it.”
The Floor Head of the fourteenth floor said, “What’s there to fear? If they want to fight they’ll have to land. We have the terrain advantage; what do we have to fear?”
“I think we should prepare first,” the Floor Head of the second floor said.
Because, damn it, his floor was at the bottom. If a battle broke out, his territory would likely become the battlefield.
He glanced at the others, inwardly cursing them—if it weren’t their territory, they wouldn’t care so little.
After a brief discussion, the Floor Heads began to disperse in turn.
No one greeted Mei Yuqing as they left.
When they walked off, those Floor Heads grouped up in twos or threes according to their usual closeness.
Seeing this scene, a shadow crossed Mei Yuqing’s eyes.
In the room, a hint of confusion flickered in Yang Long’s gaze.
Their Jianghu Society leader was gone, and now Blood Script’s leader was gone too.
The Floor Heads in Blood Script each harbored their own schemes; getting them to pull together was almost impossible.
Not dragging the group down was already blessing enough.
Where did their way out lie, what should they do?
On the sea, the Lost Homeland had already rounded to the leeward side of the island.
Red Cauldron Tower stood to the northwest of this island, adjacent to the north-side beach.
From the building to the edge of the sand, the straight-line distance was no more than two hundred meters.
If you counted the cramped, dilapidated urban village shacks that stretched all the way to the edge of the woods, that distance compressed to less than a hundred meters.
A massive shadow silently cut across the surface of the sea, slowly closing in.
The ship’s massive hull exuded a strong sense of pressure. On the towering mast, sails transparent as smoke rolled like storm clouds. A sharp ram, gleaming with metallic sheen, and the ship’s fabric, glinting with metal, looked like a building lying across the water.
Figures swarmed on the deck.
Inside the tower, those Floor Heads who had just finished their meeting and whose minds were elsewhere peered through windows, their faces heavy as they appraised the giant ship that had quietly arrived.
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