The two men walked to the edge of the camp. Hu Xiang pulled out an iron tin and pinched out a slender cigarette wrapped in brownish-grey paper.
Seeing Su Chen shake his head to decline, he placed it in his own mouth. With a flick of his thumb, a small flame sparked to life. He took a deep drag, the cherry burning a bright orange.
After exhaling a ring of smoke, he spoke in a leisurely tone, "Zhou Zong's father is Zhou Xian, the Director of Internal Affairs. We're going to be in a lot of trouble."
"He should go take it up with the Azure-Scaled Lions," Su Chen frowned.
Hu Xiang sighed helplessly. "He can't exactly track down the Azure-Scaled Lions, so he's only going to come after us."
"He'll blame us for not acting sooner. He'll blame us for failing to protect his son."
"At the time, I was fighting the Alpha, which barely counts as an excuse for myself. But you had a prior conflict with Zhou Zong, so he won't let you off the hook easily. Even if you didn't secretly cause his death, people like him don't care about evidence."
Su Chen's eyes flickered, but he didn't dwell on that topic. "Who put you up to this?"
Hu Xiang froze slightly. The cigarette dangling from his lips continued to burn slowly. He clearly hadn't expected Su Chen to be so direct.
Su Chen tilted his head to look at him. "Silence? Is that your explanation?"
"Qi Chuan..." Hu Xiang's lips parted slightly, spitting out a name.
"Ah... so it's the aggrieved husband." Su Chen wasn't entirely surprised. After pondering for a moment, he asked another question. "What price did he pay for my life?"
"A clue about a Mist Nightmare Bead..."
"Just a single clue?" Su Chen asked, astonished.
"That clue is incredibly important to me. It might be the key to waking my wife up." Hu Xiang snuffed out the cigarette in his hand, a look of reminiscence flashing through his eyes.
"You're that devoted?" Su Chen cast him a rather surprised look before asking again, "Then why did you deliberately go out of your way to treat me well earlier?"
Hu Xiang's expression grew somewhat unnatural as he replied, "Perhaps... guilt."
"Guilt?" Su Chen grinned broadly. This answer was truly unexpected. "I thought you'd say something about wanting to lower my guard."
"I didn't use to do things like this..." Hu Xiang defended himself. Perhaps because he was certain that Qi Chuan's scheme had failed, he actually felt a burden lift from his shoulders.
"I don't care..." Su Chen interrupted. "I have no interest in hearing about your emotional journey, and you have no obligation to tell me."
Hu Xiang gave a bitter smile. "True. Regardless of the circumstances, I took part in it. It's perfectly normal for you to hate me."
"Hate you?" Su Chen shot him a strange look. "Who said I hate you?"
"Taking someone's money to eliminate a problem... I can understand that logic perfectly," Su Chen explained patiently. "If someone offered me a price I couldn't refuse, I wouldn't hesitate for a second to kill you either."
Hu Xiang was dumbfounded. Was the mindset of refugees really this sharp and pragmatic?
"However, you failed, so now you owe a debt," Su Chen said with a smile.
Hu Xiang's thoughts were a chaotic mess. He tentatively asked, "And... what if I refuse to acknowledge this debt?"
Su Chen looked at him with a beaming smile. "Then for the rest of my life, as long as I draw breath, I'll be keeping a very close eye on your wife."
A chill crept up Hu Xiang's spine, and he shuddered involuntarily.
Su Chen continued to smile. "Don't go exposing your weaknesses to someone whose allegiance is uncertain, even if you just wanted to appear a bit more honest."
"Of course, you still have a chance. You can silence me right now."
Hu Xiang instinctively glanced back at the main group not too far away. Even now, people were constantly throwing glances in their direction, and Bai Fengxi had her eyes glued to them without blinking.
Hu Xiang shook his head with a bitter smile. "Little brother, stop messing with me."
He had thoroughly admitted defeat. Furthermore, participating in this frame-up had left him riddled with anxiety from the start.
"Let's go. The cleanup should be just about finished..."
The City Patrol guards possessed incredible efficiency. The corpses had all been dragged into piles on the side, and the chaotic camp had been restored to order.
Seeing Su Chen and Hu Xiang return, the crowd's gazes were still a complicated mix. The mountain of corpses nearby served as a constant reminder that the events of the past hour had been very real.
"Big Brother Su Chen, this is your tent, right...?" Shen Ying'er sidled up to him, hugging a sandy-yellow tent tightly against her chest to emphasize her curves. It was unclear exactly where she had hidden during the attack.
Her clothes were somewhat tattered, and her eyes were slightly red as she looked up at Su Chen with a pitiful gaze.
"If you want it, keep it," Su Chen replied nonchalantly.
"No, I..." Shen Ying'er stared after Su Chen as he walked right past her, profoundly regretting that she hadn't invested more effort into building a relationship with him earlier.
"What do you plan to do with those corpses?" Hu Xiang asked from the side. "They are your spoils of war. Under normal circumstances, you're entitled to fifty percent of their market value."
He immediately clarified, "Because sorting, packing, and transporting them requires the labor of the City Patrol guards, a portion must be distributed to them."
This was an unspoken rule, so Su Chen didn't object. He nodded, "I'll let you handle it."
"How about this..." Hu Xiang pondered for a moment before suggesting, "Given the massive number of corpses this time around, we simply don't have the manpower to haul them all back. We'll use some of the meat to supplement our rations for the rest of the trip, and I'll calculate the final value when we return and pay you the difference."
"Agreed." The two quickly reached a consensus, drawing envious stares from the students bandaging their injuries nearby.
Hu Xiang was usually quick to reprimand them, his words harsh and unforgiving. This was the first time they had seen him use such an amicable, negotiating tone.
Hu Xiang then addressed the group. This time, he didn't berate the students for their disorganized and panicked performance during the battle. Instead, he offered words of comfort and encouragement, which made many of them feel significantly better.
"The students will not have any watch duties tonight. Everyone, go get some rest. The patrol radius will be halved, and I will conduct the perimeter checks myself," Hu Xiang issued his final command for the night.
He was undeniably a man of great capability. Barely thirty minutes after the battle concluded, the camp had mostly recovered its semblance of normalcy. The students retreated to their tents to rest, though low, muffled sobs could still be heard from many of them.
The recent battle had left Su Chen feeling somewhat fatigued as well. After acquiring a new tent from the logistics team and setting it up, he found himself entirely unable to fall asleep.
He still couldn't completely relax his guard around Hu Xiang.
...
Deep into the night, the camp was dead silent. A silhouette quietly slipped out of a tent and made its way toward a corner of the camp, where a corpse lay tightly zipped in a body bag.
Ziiip...
He carefully unzipped the body bag, revealing Zhou Zong's pulverized head, his single remaining eye still staring wide open.
The figure frantically patted down the corpse, his movements anxious and hurried. "Where is it? Where the hell could it be..."
"Tang Chen, what are you doing?" a voice suddenly rang out from behind him.
The figure crouching over the body froze stiffly before carefully turning around. "C-Captain... I thought you were out patrolling the perimeter?"
"I asked, what are you doing?" Hu Xiang's tone was icy and hard.
"I-I heard a noise coming from over here, so I came to check it out..." Tang Chen swallowed hard, offering a quiet, flimsy excuse.
"What kind of noise could a rotting corpse make?" Hu Xiang's face was completely devoid of emotion as he tossed a pair of iron manacles onto the ground. "Cuff yourself."
Tang Chen's face paled abruptly, and he frantically pleaded, "Captain, I swear, I really just came over to check things out."
"Don't make me do it for you." Hu Xiang took a step forward, and the surrounding air practically began to sizzle with rising heat.
Left with no other choice, Tang Chen picked up the manacles from the ground and clamped them onto his wrists. The surface of the metal flared with electromagnetic light, and with a sharp clack, they forcefully fused together magnetically.