Chapter 4343 — The Truth Behind the Escort Robbery

Risky as it was, no better plan came to mind just then—he had to silence the man at once!

Smack! Such a petty scheme was plain at a glance, and how could Wei Zhao let it succeed? Without the least martial technique, he simply raised his hand and slapped Li Yanji flying before everyone's eyes, sending him crashing through a courtyard wall and tumbling into the dust, where he lay unable to rise for a long while.

Guan Zhiyuan, standing nearby, meant to make his move as well, but a single look from Wei Zhao froze him in place—like a lamb pinned by a starving wolf, his scalp prickled in an instant and he dared not cross the line again.

They were both at the middle Golden Core stage, yet the gap in strength was a hundredfold, a thousandfold. Had Wei Zhao truly meant to kill, one finger would have been enough to crush him. Years of roaming the jianghu had not granted him extraordinary insight, perhaps, but at least his instinct for danger remained sharp.

As for the rest, they watched Wei Zhao with wary faces, one and all. None had expected him to strike so suddenly, and none had expected that this fellow, who had plainly been only at the early Golden Core stage before, could now send Li Yanji flying with a single unhurried slap!

Qi Wenmo, however, showed no great surprise. Back at the docks, Wei Zhao had been a fighter strong enough to wound the likes of Old Kong; that Li Yanji, peak of the middle Golden Core stage, should be slapped away by him was hardly strange. At this moment he was merely curious—just what was the background of this black-clad man lying on the ground?

"Heh, so the two of you do know him after all. What say you? Still want to throw him out? Want to silence him for good, do you? Didn't the two of you just swear up and down that I had defected to this thing? Now that he's here to testify before everyone in person, isn't that all the more convincing?" Wei Zhao sneered as he kicked the black-clad man twice, kicking him awake.

"Spare me, senior! Spare me, senior..." The moment the black-clad man came to, he paid no mind to the crowd around him and dared not flee on his own; the first thing he did was kowtow to Wei Zhao and beg for mercy.

The crowd exchanged bewildered glances. The black-clad man had made no effort to restrain his aura, and they could all tell he was plainly a peak late Golden Core expert—so why was he kowtowing to Wei Zhao?

But Qi Wenmo cared nothing for that. He looked at the black-clad man, then turned to Wei Zhao and said, "You mean to say this is the pirate who robbed the escort in the first place?"

"The very same." Wei Zhao nodded faintly, too lazy to explain anything on purpose—and in truth, no explanation was needed. Qi Wenmo was a clever man, and Li Yanji's eagerness to silence the fellow just now had already proven how credible this man's identity was. It proved, too, that everything the two of them had said before was utter nonsense!

"Talk. What exactly is going on!" Qi Wenmo suddenly seized Guan Zhiyuan by the collar and growled low, his face dark with menace. However great his magnanimity, however deep his cultivation, there was no chance he would keep suppressing himself once he realized his own subordinates had been playing him for a fool.

Li Yanji lay sprawled among the rocks, unable to get up—and so, by luck, escaped the storm. That left Guan Zhiyuan alone to face Qi Wenmo's wrath, and he could not utter a single word.

Before everyone's eyes, the wretch actually wet himself in fright, and the reek of urine made them all wrinkle their noses. Qi Wenmo's mouth twitched a few times; fearing the man might stain him, he flung him aside with a look of utter disgust.

"You do the talking, then. Why rob the escort, and how did you know our route?" Wei Zhao nudged the black-clad man with his foot and said coolly, "Hurry up. I'm giving you one chance. If you can't make it clear, then you needn't say anything more. You have the example of your three brothers before you—you should know well enough what kind of man I am. How ruthless I can be, you can imagine for yourself!"

The black-clad man shuddered at once. He had not seen how the second brother died, but the fates of the third and fourth he had witnessed clear as day. If this creature before him wanted him dead, it would truly be as easy as turning his hand.

"Yes, yes, rest assured, senior—I wouldn't dare hide the slightest thing." The black-clad man nodded again and again, then addressed Qi Wenmo and the crowd: "I received word and a map of the escort route in advance, so I waited there ahead of time. Once we seized the cargo, we were to hand it over to the other party as agreed beforehand, and we would receive a great sum in payment."

"And who is the other party?" Qi Wenmo's expression turned cold at once. The losses from this affair were truly too great; he had to root out the mastermind, or the Qingtian Escort Agency would never again hold its head up before its peers.

The black-clad man glanced at Wei Zhao, then said slowly to the crowd: "The Hong Merchant Guild. Wei Zhaotong."

At these words, everyone present—Qi Wenmo included, and Li Yanji and Guan Zhiyuan sprawled to one side—drew a sharp breath in unison. The answer was shocking beyond belief, yet on reflection it seemed only reasonable.

This was a deal worth three hundred thousand spirit jade. Ordinary men had neither the inside information nor the appetite to swallow such a prize, and the crowd had already concluded that someone must have leaked word of this affair. It was just that until now they had all been suspecting Wei Zhao, and it had never once occurred to them to look toward Wei Zhaotong.

"You're saying he swallowed his own cargo and then turned around to extort three hundred thousand spirit jade from my Qingtian Escort Agency?" Qi Wenmo's face turned exceedingly ugly.

As for this unexpected answer, the others present might still harbor doubts, but he believed it at once upon hearing it—and for good reason. Looking back now, Wei Zhaotong's conduct when the contract details were being settled had indeed been rather odd and out of place.

At the time, Wei Zhaotong had demanded that in the event of any mishap, the escort agency must compensate the full amount, and to that end he had even gone out of his way to spell out the cargo's value at three hundred thousand spirit jade—something that had never once happened in all their past dealings.

After all, the two houses had worked together for many a year, not one or two, and nothing had ever gone wrong. The risk was negligible, and there had never been a single failure; there was no need for him to emphasize such things on purpose.

Beyond that, another highly unusual point was that Wei Zhaotong had insisted on personally taking part in drawing up the escort route. By the rules of the trade, the route was known only to the head of the agency and the escorts responsible for the run; no one else was to be told, not even Wei Zhaotong himself, employer though he was.