Three standard Life Crystal units were equivalent to 300 years worth of Life Crystal pieces. The absurd request from the dark and skinny man stunned Fatty. He did not expect the three adventurers to do such a thing. Lin Huang asked calmly, "So are you robbing us now?"
"How is this robbing? You are paying us wages for bringing you to the Fog Canyon where you can find the Life Seed monster you desired. This is a fair trade!" The bald man who blocked their way from the back said.
"Would you let us go if we say we don’t need your help anymore?" Lin Huang knew this was extortion! There was nothing that they could do even if they filed their complaint to Adventurer Paradise.
"If you insist to do that, I will call to complain." Fatty threatened.
"Fatty, there’s a reason why we're blocking your way." The man with goatee laughed at Fatty’s useless threat.
The three adventurers did not stop Fatty from calling. As Fatty opened the communication page, there was no signal at all.
"The both of you have two choices. The first one, both of you give three Life Crystals each and we'll bring you into Fog Canyon to find your Life Seed monster and then, send you guys back to Fog City in one piece. The both of you will have to swear that you won’t tell anyone about this and we shall forget about what happened here. It’s good for all of us." The dark and skinny man was confident that they would be obedient, he raised his price from three Life Crystals in total to three Life Crystals each.
"If we promised you, would you believe us?" Lin Huang knew he would not let them go just like that.
"Of course not, you will have to chant after me." The dark and skinny man then showed his tongue and black inscriptions appeared on his tongue.
"You have humiliated all the wordmasters." Lin Huang could recognize the patterns were the sigils of a wordmaster. A wordmaster was a rare profession. They draw their strength from language and they could use languages to curse or to control people’s action. Some could even change the course of fate or cause death.
A wordmaster usually made good money. This dark and skinny man must be a lousy wordmaster or else he would not need to resort to robbing them. "I’ve multiplied the price to six Life Crystals now."
"What’s the second option?" Lin Huang ignored him and asked with his eyebrow raised.
"The second option would be to kill the both of you and leave your dead bodies in this canyon for the monsters to feast on so we leave no traces behind. We will go back three days later and tell the Adventurer Paradise that the both of you did not meet us at the promised time." He explained coldly.
Fatty was scared, he shrieked, "Okay, we pick the first one!"
"Wait." Lin Huang stopped Fatty looked at the three of them straight into their eyes, "These two options are not good enough, give me a third one."
"Stupid kid, I will just finish you off right now!" The bald man shouted.
"It’s alright, let him talk." The dark and skinny man stopped the bald man.
"The third option would be that all three of you leave right now and we will forget this ever happened. You never saw us, we never knew you." Lin Huang continued, "This is the best option I can and will offer. If you don’t accept it, you will regret it very soon."
"Are you a member of royalty?" The three of them frowned, they figured only someone that came from royalty would dare to speak like that.
"That’s not right. His name is Lin Huang, your family name is Lin!" The dark and skinny man shook his head, "There’s no royal family with the family name of Lin in the entire Division7! Are you trying to trick us?!"
"I’ve never once said that I’m a member of royalty and I am not tricking you. I’m just a person that you can't afford to offend. I’m suggesting that you consider the third option." Lin Huang stood his ground.
"Boss, why are you still hesitating? This kid is tricking us! If he really is powerful, he would have attacked us since the beginning instead of being disrespectful to us after we helped them!" The bald man complained.
Hearing what the bald man said, the dark and skinny man thought he made sense and shouted
"How dare you tried to trick us, let’s kill them!"
The three of them then dashed towards Lin Huang and Fatty with their weapons thrusting forward.
"Sigh…" Lin Huang sighed helplessly. Bai appeared before Lin Huang with silver hair and a black mask on. His four Blood Power wings transformed into three sharp knives and plunged towards the three men. He was so fast that Lin Huang could not catch up.
Three red strokes flashed in the air. The man with the goatee and the bald man’s silver-level weapons broke in half. They were sliced into half from their waists and were dead in one hit. The gold-level weapon that the leader was holding was stuck to Bai’s wing and was tossed into the air. He saw his two brothers cut into halves while he was flying midair, he had goosebumps. He rolled over and ran into the Foggy Canyon.
"I hate to say I told you so." Lin Huang shook his head. He did not even bother to look at the dead bodies. Since the both of them were so poor, they would not have anything valuable on them. Fatty was stunned, he did not move as he watched. It took him awhile to snap out of it. He looked at Bai, "Is this a vampire?"
"I think so." Lin Huang did not plan to explain to him that Bai had evolved into a blood demon. The less he knew the better.
"A four-winged vampire, isn’t this a gold-level monster? How did you manage to master such a monster?" Fatty saw the four Blood Power wings on Bai’s back so he asked.
"It's not gold-level, it’s mutated." Lin Huang shook his head.
"He managed to kill silver-level within seconds, how is he not gold-level?" Fatty was starting to doubt Lin Huang’s combat strength.
"Stop asking, let’s go in." Lin Huang interrupted him.
"Will that other guy be waiting to attack us at the canyon mouth?" Fatty was worried. It was foggy everywhere, they could not see anything ahead.
"Don’t worry, I’m sure he is afraid of us now and will keep a distance from us." Lin Huang shook his head.
"I'm not sure if they have anything useful on them. They are silver-level after all." Fatty asked.
"You can go and take a look first. Take whatever you want." Lin Huang was not interested.
"Remember! You're the one who said that!" Fatty was over the moon and ran towards the dead bodies. However, he did not find anything valuable on them. Awhile later, he stood up and looked at Lin Huang, "It seems like you knew there was nothing useful on them all this time."
"They were collecting each and every iron-level monster carcass, why would you think they would have anything valuable on them?"
"That makes sense." Fatty just recalled them collecting the monster bodies earlier.
"It’s almost dawn now, let’s look for a place to rest our feet." Lin Huang did not recall Bai but got him to lead the way while he and Fatty followed behind.
Fog surrounded the canyon and anything 10 meters away was not visible. People would usually be terrified in situations like these but with Bai, Lin Huang was not worried if something attacked from the fog. In a level-4 wild zone like this, only monsters that were gold-level would threaten Bai. As long as they did not go deep into the canyon, they would most probably not encounter gold-level monsters.
"Fatty, why did you follow them at such a last minute and in a rush? Did they threaten you?" Lin Huang needed to know what happened earlier.
"Yea, I went to the reception at Adventurer Paradise and told the receptionist that I was looking for a team. They approached me, saying that they needed someone to follow them to their mission, it was urgent and they needed to leave immediately. Of course, I rejected them because we had just arrived in Fog City awhile ago, I needed time to rest and spend some time to find a team who owned flying mounts."
"They then told me that as long as they were around, other teams would not dare take us along. It could take months! So I went back to the receptionist and she assured that the three are old timers. They told me that their abilities were only mediocre but whenever they were in charge, even adventurers that were gold-level would not dare offend them. I can wait for another one month but I didn’t want to waste your time, so I agreed to join their team."
"I thought of tolerating them until we arrived at the destination because we would be free... I didn’t expect them to lie about their abilities or attempt to rob and even trying to kill us!"
"If I knew you had such a powerful summoning monster, I wouldn’t have looked for a team in the first place." Fatty said and peeked at Bai, he was envious of Lin Huang.
"I wouldn't want anyone to know about my abilities unless if it were life or death." Lin Huang explained.
"Don’t worry, I’m just talkative but I can keep secrets." Fatty zipped his lips.
"I would be crazy to believe you…" Lin Huang thought to himself.
Suddenly, Bai stopped walking and pointed at a wall. Lin Huang nodded, "Alright, we will get some rest here. Please dig us a hole."
Soon, Bai dug a cave. Bai had purposely dug the cave to be narrow at the entrance and spacious on the inside. They bent down as they entered the cave. They were satisfied with the cave. Fatty took out his portable tent and set it up. Lin Huang then recalled Bai and summoned the Demonic Dandelion Vine. He got it to seal the cave with its vines. Both of them entered their tents to rest after a long day.