Chapter 274: Chapter 274

"Young Master, we were blind earlier and didn't recognize your greatness, but you can't harm us. We have eighty-year-old mothers above and three-year-old sons below, plus several wives, all depending on us for support..." the constable leader said very innocently. At this moment, no matter how stupid they were, they felt Xiaoyao wasn't an ordinary person. Could ordinary people know these things? Could they analyze matters so thoroughly?

Such people weren't ones that small fries like them could provoke. So at this moment, they weren't surrounding Xiaoyao but standing on both sides.

"If you don't do this, you'll still get dragged into it." Xiaoyao said.

"Why?" the constable leader didn't understand.

"Think about it, why did someone give you a secret report? It was to have you handle this matter properly. But now you're not handling it, which goes against their wishes and will make them very unhappy," Xiaoyao continued.

"Ah, no way. This way we're wrong whether we speak or don't speak." the constable leader had a terrible headache and looked to Xiaoyao for help. "Young Master, could you think of a way to help us..."

"Didn't I tell you? Do what you're supposed to do. Although this will drag the Qin family out, the Qin family won't bother with small fries like you. They'll only investigate the matter and find the people behind it. You can try to curry favor when the Qin family people come over, but don't be too deliberate, and don't reveal this matter. You just need to pretend you know nothing, and then there won't be any trouble," Xiaoyao said.

"Oh, thank you for your guidance, Young Master. May I ask your name?" The constable leader nodded, feeling Xiaoyao's words made great sense. They weren't framing the Qin family, they were just following proper procedures, so naturally there would be no problems.

"I'm called Xiaoyao. Call me by my name if you like, no need for 'Young Master.' I'm not any young master," Xiaoyao replied with a smile.

"Not a young master, then you must be a young lord." one constable eagerly said.

"Not that either. I'm just a little servant." Xiaoyao said without concealment, speaking the complete truth. However, this definitely wasn't something anyone would believe.

"Young Master is really joking."

Indeed, the constables all laughed, thinking Xiaoyao was joking.

Xiaoyao smiled. Let others think what they wanted, believing it or not was up to them. Now he could leave without any problems.

"Then I'll take my leave first. I need to rest up ahead at an inn, I'm a bit tired." Xiaoyao said with a smile.

"We respectfully send off Young Master. The county town ahead is our territory. If you need anything, just say the word and we'll definitely help," the constables said with smiles.

"No need. I'll stay one night and leave, I still need to travel." Xiaoyao smiled, waved goodbye, while the constables naturally stayed to handle the scene and carry back the corpses.

Actually, Xiaoyao hadn't said everything he was thinking. He felt there were still suspicious aspects to this matter. Whether it was the Qin family themselves or others framing them, if this merchant caravan didn't have anything of high value, if there wasn't something inside that could draw out other forces, would they do this?

The answer was obvious, definitely not.

Therefore, there must be secrets within this merchant caravan, and these secrets were definitely significant.

However, this seemed to be unrelated to him. Let them worry about such things themselves. He should go find a place to rest, then find a good horse and travel alone across thousands of li.

"Who was that young man just now? He could actually see through our arrangements. Although he didn't guess who we are, he analyzed most of the situation. If we let him continue investigating, we'll be in trouble. Should we kill him?"

After the constables finished and left, two people appeared nearby, looking at the incident site. One person spoke while making a gesture as if to kill and silence witnesses.

"No need. First, he didn't disrupt our plans, on the contrary, he let people continue the development we wanted. Second, such a person is not simple. Whether we could even kill him is questionable. If we can't kill him, it would only bring us trouble. There's no necessity to do this," the other person said calmly.

At this moment, if Xiaoyao were here to hear these two people's conversation, he would definitely be very surprised. How was the Fang family involved? Could there be Fang family people or objects in this matter?

If so, that would be too coincidental, he hadn't even reached the Fang family yet but was already entangled in Fang family affairs.

If he knew this situation, he would definitely investigate this matter clearly to see if there was an opportunity to infiltrate the Fang family. However, he didn't know.

"But if we don't kill him, what if he leaks information? And those constables, let's kill them all too." the person who spoke first said again.

"Don't do that, it would only be counterproductive. Killing them would be telling everyone there's a problem with this matter, which would have the opposite effect. Before doing anything, it's best to think it through first." the other person said. "Also, what could they reveal? They don't even know who did it. Although that young man has a good head and analyzed almost everything, it's only 'almost', he doesn't know who we are."

"That's true. Should we arrange for someone to follow him?" Fresh chapters posted on Nov3lFɪre.ɴet

"No need. Doing that might let him discover us and expose our hand instead." the other person shook his head, rejecting this method.

"Then what should we do next?"

"Do what we're supposed to do. Don't create complications."

Who this young man was, investigating this was still necessary. Hopefully he was just a passerby, and hopefully he wouldn't enter their plans. Otherwise, they would need to reconsider their strategy toward him.

Xiaoyao didn't know he had walked through a circle of trouble. Fortunately, there were level-headed people among them, otherwise he would definitely have been dragged in again.

In fact, this was beneficial for both sides. If Xiaoyao got involved, this incident might escalate and change in ways they couldn't anticipate. Xiaoyao had proven this many times, whoever dragged him in would regret it and suffer misfortune.

Early the next morning, Xiaoyao came to a place that sold mounts. The reason it was called selling mounts rather than selling horses was because although horses were commonly used mounts on the continent, they weren't the only option.

Xiaoyao saw several others, these were types of monster beasts with certain advantages in endurance and speed. But feeding them was much more troublesome. Horses only needed fodder, while these might need other things, some of which were very troublesome. This wasn't suitable for ordinary people.

Xiaoyao didn't plan to complicate things. An ordinary horse would be enough. At this moment, he remembered he seemed to have a horse, but it had been requisitioned by the Young Miss, who said she needed good horses for military campaigns and that giving that horse to him would be wasteful.

In fact, at the Young Miss's level as a general, she could long ago have possessed powerful mounts, those monster beast mounts. Although ordinary people couldn't afford to raise them, the state could.

Moreover, when the Young Miss went to battle, she didn't use Xiaoyao's horse but rather a type of monster beast mount suitable for battlefields. The Young Miss's explanation for this was: "I'm cherishing this horse, otherwise if it went up there, it would definitely die."

The explanation wasn't wrong. Ordinary horses on battlefields, especially as commanding officers' mounts, would inevitably die, even precious horses.

But since it wasn't needed on battlefields, why give it to you? As an ordinary mount, everyone needed one.

Of course, in the end Xiaoyao had no choice. It was just a horse, could he really argue with the Young Miss? Take it if you want, it saves having to care for it. As the Young Miss said, at that time Xiaoyao never went out, so the horse was completely useless to him.

Afterward, Xiaoyao and Chi Chi always walked and played, sometimes running into cliffs and precipices where having a mount would be inconvenient. Besides, Xiaoyao's own movement technique was faster than ordinary mounts, and his Divine Farmer True Qi was inexhaustible, making mounts even more unnecessary.

Now it was different. Xiaoyao wanted to go to the Fang family. This time he wanted to take main roads and at most play around along the way without wandering everywhere. Having a horse would be more convenient and could carry some things.

Although offering incense to Chen Shiru could be done anytime, it still wasn't good to be too slow. Xiaoyao also wanted to go quickly, so finding a horse for transportation was very necessary.

Why not use lightness skills?

Did this even need asking? Xiaoyao wanted to be lazy. Although lightness skills could substitute, that was really too tiring, especially for long periods. The distance to the Fang family was still very far.

"Customer, feel free to look at whatever you need." When Xiaoyao came to this mount shop, he was led to the animal pens. Although the shop assistant didn't look down on him, he wasn't very enthusiastic either.

Xiaoyao wore very ordinary clothes and definitely wasn't wealthy, so such people could only afford ordinary mounts, naturally not receiving enthusiasm. This was why the assistant directly brought him to this relatively ordinary animal pen where most people could afford the mounts, with only a small portion being more expensive for wealthy commoners.

Xiaoyao didn't mind this, since the mount he wanted to choose was indeed an ordinary horse, as long as it had good endurance. Speed wasn't an issue since he didn't want to ride fast anyway.

So Xiaoyao began selecting among the horses, and seeing Xiaoyao only picking horses, the assistant felt his judgment seemed correct, bringing him here was quite normal.