CHAPTER 510: CHAPTER 357 GREEN SMOKE HALL

Li Banfeng opened the large box, releasing the children. He then hired a nearby coal-hauling horse cart and loaded them onto it.

He lowered the brim of his hat and drove the cart forward, while Luo Zhengnan also pushed down the brim of his advance cap and followed behind.

He was in high spirits, for he had exacted his revenge.

Although the mastermind, Xiao Zhenggong, was still alive, killing him wasn’t something that could be done overnight. However, killing Pei Yikou had at least allowed him to vent some immediate frustration.

Working with Li Qi was deeply satisfying.

Had it been anyone else, exacting revenge might have dragged on for a year or two, perhaps even eight or ten years; it would have been considered normal if the whole thing had simply fizzled out over time.

But isn’t it a bit too conspicuous, parading a cart full of children through the streets like this?

Luo Zhengnan lowered his voice and asked Li Banfeng, "Seventh Master, shouldn’t we be leaving now?"

"No rush. Go call over the old man at the street corner."

Standing at the corner was an old man, anxiously looking their way.

His granddaughter had gone missing; how could he not be anxious? He had been searching all night.

He suspected his granddaughter was on the cart, but he didn’t dare approach.

In Green Smoke City, the Jiang Xiang Gang often snatched people right off the streets. If the old man dared to rush forward, it would be a death sentence.

Luo Zhengnan invited the old man over. Li Banfeng pointed to the children on the cart, "Which one is yours?"

The old man trembled for a few moments, then stepped forward, lifted his granddaughter from the cart, uttered his thanks, and turned to leave. Li Banfeng frowned. "Leaving just like that?"

The old man, frightened, took out money from his pocket—all he had, just over eighty yuan—and offered it to Li Banfeng.

Li Banfeng pushed the money back. "Who wants your money? Can you drive a cart?"

"Yes."

"Is your voice loud?"

The old man was taken aback for a moment, then nodded. "Fairly loud."

"Yell for me. Drive the cart and yell, tell anyone who’s lost a child to come here and find them!"

The old man didn’t understand.

Li Banfeng handed him two hundred-yuan banknotes. "Yell! Yell as loud as you can!"

Not understanding the situation, the old man could only drive the cart forward, yelling as he went, "Anyone who’s lost a child, come here and find them!"

Luo Zhengnan looked at Li Banfeng and whispered, "Seventh Master, what are we doing..."

"Don’t worry, just follow."

The two trailed far behind the horse cart. Soon, people began to arrive to claim their children.

At first, they were afraid. But seeing their own flesh and blood on the cart, they cast aside their caution, rushing forward, hugging their children, and hurrying home, weeping as they ran.

More and more people came to claim children. Luo Zhengnan pointed to one man, "That one looks like he’s from the Jiang Xiang Gang."

Luo Zhengnan couldn’t recognize every disciple of the Jiang Xiang Gang, but the man wore an advance cap, and his attire resembled that of a Jiang Xiang Gang member.

He picked up two children and started to leave, but Li Banfeng blocked his path. "Who are you?"

The man said, "I’m their father."

The two children were crying loudly, struggling incessantly. Luo Zhengnan looked at the man. "Which helm are you from? Announce yourself."

The man glanced around and whispered, "Green Smoke Hall, Third Helm. Something happened tonight..."

SWISH!

Li Banfeng slashed his neck.

Still daring to come here looking for business?

Good. Saves me the trouble of hunting you down one by one.

Before long, all the children had been reclaimed by their families. Li Banfeng asked Luo Zhengnan, "Where is the Hall Entrance?"

"The Hall Entrance is just on the next street."

"You’re familiar with all the helms, right?"

Luo Zhengnan was stunned for a moment. "Leave no one alive?"

Li Banfeng nodded. "Leave no one alive."

Luo Zhengnan led Li Banfeng to the nearest helm, a small two-story building where several Jiang Xiang Gang disciples were packing two newly abducted children into a box.

These two children had just been kidnapped; they didn’t want to keep them on hand and were anxious to deliver them to the Hall Master.

"Hurry up!" the Helm Master shouted from the staircase. "The Hall Master is leaving soon; we’ll miss the train if we’re late!"

Li Banfeng said, "If you miss this one, you can just catch the next."

"What do you know? This is the last one tonight..." The Helm Master stared in shock at Li Banfeng, not realizing when an extra person had appeared beside him.

"Not just tonight; it’s the last one of your life. And you’ll definitely catch it." Li Banfeng grabbed the Helm Master’s head and smashed it to pieces against the staircase railing.

If not for the worry of harming the two children, Li Banfeng would have used his Trample Over Thousands of Rivers ability to stomp once and eliminate everyone in the building.

All the members in the helm were stunned. Luo Zhengnan entered the helm, picked up the two children, and walked out the door; he knew what needed to be done at that moment.

All the Jiang Xiang Gang members stared at Luo Zhengnan.

Luo Zhengnan even greeted them, "You all carry on, don’t mind me."

He closed the door, and not long after he had walked away with the children, the helm’s small building collapsed.

Li Banfeng brushed off the dust and joined Luo Zhengnan. "Take these two children back, then we’ll go to the next helm."

There were indeed quite a few helms in Green Smoke City.

Luo Zhengnan said, "Pei Yuzeng did a lot for Xiao Zhenggong and was highly valued by him. Plus, with backing from Cheap Person Ridge, his Hall Entrance has grown significantly over the years. He now controls a total of ten helms."

Li Banfeng said, "Such a large Hall Entrance still relies on the business of human traffickers to get by?"

Luo Zhengnan shook his head. "Human traffickers alone can’t support so many people. Pei Yuzeng also has significant dealings at the mines. He doesn’t abduct children solely for money."

Li Banfeng understood. "It must be to curry favor with Cheap Person Ridge, wouldn’t you say?"

Luo Zhengnan was about to reply when he saw Li Banfeng patting the face of the Fourth Helm’s Helm Master. "I’m asking you. Was what I just said reasonable?"

The Helm Master nodded repeatedly.

Li Banfeng gave him a swift end, slitting his throat.

Just before dawn, Li Banfeng and Luo Zhengnan arrived at the Hall Entrance. The members of the Green Smoke Hall knew their Hall Master was in trouble. They had heard about the pile of mutilated corpses in the warehouse and had seen the abducted children being returned.

But they still didn’t know the actual cause of these events.

They tried to contact the various helms, only to find nothing but ruins and corpses.

They wanted to contact Xiao Zhenggong, but everyone in the Gang who knew how to use the hooks was gone.

When they saw Luo Zhengnan, they seemed to understand something.

A few people inside the Hall Entrance who knew the real story looked at Luo Zhengnan and said, "Hall Master Luo, this has nothing to do with us! It’s between our Hall Master and the Gang Leader. Every grievance has its perpetrator, every debt its debtor. You can’t make things difficult for us!"

Luo Zhengnan smiled. "Brothers, what kind of talk is that? Pei Yuzeng is already dead. Why would I make things difficult for you?

I didn’t come for you. I just came over to help you close the main door."

With that, Luo Zhengnan closed the front door.

A group of people scrambled towards the back door.

Luo Zhengnan called out a reminder, "Don’t go to the back door."

The people running to the back door made it outside, but their heads remained in the backyard.

The few remaining people rushed for the stairs. Luo Zhengnan called out another reminder, "Don’t go upstairs either."

The few disciples who rushed up the stairs left their bodies on the upper floor, their heads on the ground floor.

The Jiang Xiang Gang was a second-rate Gang. Its Hall Master only possessed a Fifth Layer Cultivation. How much better could his subordinates be?

They couldn’t even catch a glimpse of Li Banfeng; in the blink of an eye, they were all dispatched.

Blood seeped out from under the door. Luo Zhengnan sat in the courtyard of the Hall Entrance, covering the child’s eyes.

This child had been found inside the Hall Entrance, apparently freshly captured and not yet taken to the warehouse.

Li Banfeng walked out of the building, wiping his hands with a handkerchief. Looking at the child, he asked Luo Zhengnan, "Ask him where he lives."

"I just asked. The kid’s too young, he can’t say clearly."

Li Banfeng suggested going to the Border Defense Envoy. Luo Zhengnan shook his head. "Seventh Master, the Border Defense Envoy won’t care about this."

"Why shouldn’t he care? They take so much money every year for nothing. Let’s take the child over and try."

Luo Zhengnan, slightly disguised, took the child to the Defense Agency. He waited in the lobby for an hour, asking dozens of people, but no one paid him any attention.

Finally, with great difficulty, someone asked him a few questions. Those few words, however, stabbed Luo Zhengnan to the core.

"Is this child yours?"

Luo Zhengnan shook his head. "No."

"If he’s not your child, what are you doing holding him? Are you a human trafficker?"

"I saw the child was lost and brought him here."

"How do you know the child was lost? How do you know he wasn’t just out playing? You look like a human trafficker to me!"

"Sir, have you ever seen a child this young out playing in the middle of the night?"

"What haven’t I seen? Maybe the kid just likes it! What evidence do you have that he was lost? If you can’t produce any, I’ll say you’re a human trafficker!"

This guy’s a fucking Gang Xiu.

Luo Zhengnan left the Defense Agency with the child and said to Li Banfeng, "Seventh Master, I just..."

Li Banfeng waved his hand. "No need to explain. I heard everything."

Luo Zhengnan wasn’t angry; he had seen this kind of thing many times.

Li Banfeng’s hat brim was pulled down low, making it impossible to tell if he was angry.

He took the child, found a Rickshaw Puller, and stuffed two hundred Huan Country Banknotes into his hand. "My surname is En. Call me Benefactor. I found a lost child on the roadside. Can you try to help me get him home?"

Listening to the child’s mumbled words, the Rickshaw Puller guessed a general area and, in less than an hour, found the child’s parents.

The parents thanked the puller profusely. He waved his hand. "Don’t thank me. If you want to thank someone, thank those two gentlemen."

Which two gentlemen?

Li Banfeng and Luo Zhengnan were long gone.

The Rickshaw Puller told the couple, "That gentleman said his name was Benefactor. I don’t know if that’s his real name or not."

"Benefactor?" Xiao Zhenggong’s cheek twitched. "Benefactor wiped out Green Smoke Hall?"

"Upon investigation, the man claimed to be Benefactor." The one reporting was Song Yuwei, Hall Master of the Hai Chi Ridge Hall Entrance. He had gone to visit Pei Yuzeng, only to find a scene of corpses and ruins.

Xiao Zhenggong gritted his teeth. "Benefactor... isn’t that just He Jiaqing?"

Previously, at Cheap Person Ridge, Li Banfeng had called himself Benefactor. The Saint had already determined that Benefactor was He Jiaqing.

After dismissing Song Yuwei, the white clothes hanging on the coat rack said to Xiao Zhenggong, "Brother Xiao, this incident has landed on your head. Are you going to handle it or not?"

With a cigarette between his teeth, Xiao Zhenggong pondered for a moment before asking, "Is He Jiaqing really in the Outside Provinces, or is he in Puluo State?"

The white clothes were also puzzled. "Perhaps he didn’t do this Green Smoke Hall affair himself. Maybe he ordered his subordinates to do it."

Xiao Zhenggong took the white clothes off the rack, tossed them onto the back seat of his car, and drove to the Yuezhou Sanatorium.

He Jiaqing, dressed in a suit to resemble He Haisheng, was in the hospital ward, holding a cigarette to He Haisheng’s lips. "Third Uncle, this is the last one. The doctor will be doing rounds soon; we can’t let him see you smoking."

He Haisheng exhaled a puff of smoke. The smoke curled and drifted rapidly from the hospital ward toward the elevator entrance.

He Jiaqing paused, rubbing his scalp.

My Perception has decreased recently. I need to exercise some restraint with borrowing human energy.

"Third Uncle, lie still, don’t move." He Jiaqing felt around He Haisheng for a moment, then took the remaining half of the cigarette and stuck it in his own mouth.