The inn’s door was pushed open, and the guests arrived right on schedule.
Seeing that it was time to start work, the employee gentlemen scattered like birds and beasts, each going to attend to the guests.
Xie Jianxun’s shifts had all been adjusted to mornings, so he could rest well in the evenings, but One still had the night shift.
It set down the small fork it had used to eat the cake and prepared to cover it with the preservation lid.
Seeing this, Xie Jianxun suggested, “Why not just finish it? It’s only the size of your palm—a few bites and it’s gone.”
One replied docilely, “This is the gift you gave me. I don’t want to waste its wonderful flavor.”
Xie Jianxun couldn’t keep the news to himself any longer. He said happily, “Don’t worry, I’ve been accepted as Mr. Desmond’s apprentice. There will be wages for repairing parts next, so this cake is nothing.”
Alex casually reminded him, “Old Man Desmond’s temper isn’t exactly good.”
Xie Jianxun smiled and said, “Thanks for the reminder. I guarantee I won’t make him lose his temper.”
The kitchen called out to One, asking it to deliver dinner upstairs.
Alex took a long breadstick from a paper bag, tore off a piece, and chewed it forcefully. He seemed to be recalling something from before. “Old Man Desmond… He never went to school, they say. Doesn’t even know how to read.”
Xie Jianxun said in surprise, “He never went to school? Then how did he learn to repair so many parts?” And he had opened a mechanical repair shop with a great reputation among adventure groups and merchant caravans—not something just anyone could do.
Alex shook his head, the breadstick still in his mouth.
He mumbled, “I don’t know. He’s three times my age. They say he used to be in an adventure group too. Then his family died, and he luckily met a mechanic who taught him all sorts of knowledge. After that, Old Man Desmond left the adventure group and decided to stick with this line of work.”
The door was pushed open again.
For an inn, this was the most common occurrence, but the newcomers seemed a bit special—
This group carried the hot wind of the desert with them as they charged in aggressively from outside. They didn’t choose a table to sit at but went straight to the front desk, looking like trouble.
Xie Jianxun froze. He saw Alex’s eyes narrow and his posture rise from leaning on the counter, realizing someone was picking a fight.
“Alex!”
Alex glanced at him coolly and lowered his head to fiddle with his light brain. “Allen, long time no see.”
Xie Jianxun secretly sized up the group that had entered. There were about five or six of them, with sturdy muscles, fierce eyes, and deep brown coarse cloth shirts draped slantwise over their bodies, sleeves mostly worn and torn.
Up close, he could smell the obvious scent of sand and soil on them, mixed with the stench of not having bathed for days.
The one called Allen slammed the counter heavily and growled in a low voice, “The intel you sold us turned out to be fake!”
Xie Jianxun: “…” Huh?
He took a prudent step back and became a bystander.
The person involved looked even more baffled than him.
Alex frowned, looking at him like a stranger. “Allen, you should know I’m an innkeeper, not an intel broker—what intel could I sell you?”
He flipped his hand and put away the light brain.
“I know you have leads on that thing, so I sent someone to buy the info, but you gave me fake news and made me lose so many brothers!”
Alex: “Make yourself clear. What intel?”
Allen roared, “You’re still playing dumb with me! I paid a full ten gold coins! Gold!”
His roar echoed through the entire inn, even making the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the lobby vibrate.
Some guests looked over in fear, even sneaking toward the door, afraid of getting caught up in it.
Alex’s face darkened too, his voice landing heavily. “Allen, I’ll say it again! I’m not an intel broker. I’ve run this inn in Golden City for so many years—you can’t claim you didn’t know that.”
“Him!”
Allen suddenly pointed at someone behind him, and the others dragged that person out into everyone’s view.
The man shuddered, his face terrified, clearly wanting to sneak away.
“I sent him to buy the intel!”
“…Golden Fruit,” Allen squeezed the words out through gritted teeth. “Ring any bells now?”
As expected, Alex showed a look of realization.
Allen seized on it. “So you do know!”
“No, I didn’t sell him any intel.” The young boss coldly watched the man who wanted to flee in panic until he was pinned to the ground. “On the contrary, when I was discussing something with Basero, someone snuck up behind us trying to eavesdrop…”
The man pinned firmly to the ground finally shouted, “You clearly said the Golden Fruit was right there!”
“…So my gold coins ended up in your pocket, huh.”
The truth came out, and Allen’s tone turned icy.
“So many of my brothers died. In the end, I had to rob a passing merchant caravan’s camels and water just to make it back to Golden City alive… You, and you, both deserve to die!”
In an instant, chaos erupted at the front desk. The haggard but robust thugs kicked the wooden counter, shaking the entire desk. The glass cups hanging in the corner rattled.
Alex realized something and shouted, “You’ve joined the sand bandits?!”
“You figured it out.”
Allen: “My brothers and I just want to survive. What’s wrong with that?”
The group surged forward, surrounding the front desk completely.
The employees in the lobby realized the boss was in danger and rushed over to help, but they couldn’t withstand even one punch from these guys.
These former adventure group members who had now joined the sand bandits vented their rage. They pinned the guy who bought the fake intel to the ground and beat him until he was half-dead, then turned and flipped over the front desk’s wooden counter.
With a crash, a rack of glass cups toppled to the floor, the sound of shattering glass filling the entire first-floor lobby.
Alex dodged with effort, crawling out from behind the front desk, and shouted to one of the employees, “Alaje! Get the guests out!”
The troublemakers, heads full of fury, grabbed a wall-mounted wooden rack and yanked it hard!
The rack, loaded with wine bottles and glass sculptures, swayed precariously, and items from the top shelf had already slid off, crashing to the ground one after another.
The young boss looked somewhat dazed.
A group of people were causing destruction in his shop, and he had no power to stop them.
After a moment, he snapped back, immediately dialing the emergency line while shouting, “The City Lord’s Mansion is coming, Allen. I advise you to leave now!”
Allen sneered, “That bunch of trash at the City Lord’s Mansion? Ha, who doesn’t know it takes them at least two hours to respond?”
That was exactly why they dared to cause trouble!
Because the City Lord’s Mansion basically ignored these kinds of disputes!
Basero, who had just rushed in through the inn’s door: “Holy shit!”
He charged forward and grappled with Allen, while Alex quickly ran toward the hallway and grabbed a long wooden stick.
Until someone pulled a weapon from their waist, and the scene suddenly went silent.
Allen twisted Basero’s arm and licked his lips, finally revealing his true colors.
“Ma Jia,” he called his subordinate’s name, unable to hide his smugness, “Watch closely. If any of them moves, waste them.”
The only one with a gun to his head, Alex, remained unusually calm.
“What do you want?”
“Give me the cash in your shop,” Allen said. “Using money to buy my brothers’ lives—isn’t that a good deal? I won’t take your light brain account either. I’ll leave our great boss Alex some capital. I’m pretty merciful like that.”
Alex: “So that’s why you came into the city. There’s today’s cash under that cabinet.”
The sand bandits heaved the overturned wooden counter up and searched above and below, pulling out a small handful of money. Allen’s face darkened, and he fired a shot at Alex’s arm. “What about the rest?”
The young boss’s arm immediately oozed blood with a sizzle.
He dropped to one knee, clutching his arm and enduring the pain. “You bastard… Who keeps all their money in one cabinet?!”
Xie Jianxun couldn’t hold back anymore. He rushed over to help him up and whispered, “Are you okay?”
The young boss didn’t speak, just shook his head slightly.
Allen’s eyes lit up. Xie Jianxun’s ash-gray hair stood out like a pretty little nightlight in the dimly lit inn interior.
“Hey, you’ve made it big, huh, boss Alex? Hiring such a pretty waiter now?”
He took a step forward and stepped on something soft, his shoe sole making a sticky squelch.
He lifted his foot in disgust and rubbed it on a nearby person’s pants. “Gross, what is this? Jam?”
Alex froze. “Your cake!”
Xie Jianxun: “Who cares about the cake right now— is the City Lord’s Mansion really just eating rice for a living?!”
Alex: “No choice. They stuffed the mailbox with complaints until they stopped accepting letters altogether. Can only call.”
At that moment, someone who had delivered dinner to an upstairs guest came down the stairs slowly with a tray.
The footsteps were crisp, the only sound source in the first-floor lobby at the moment.
Thud, thud, thud.
Allen immediately whipped his head around, and the new sand bandit holding the weapon swung his sights toward the stairs.
Xie Jianxun’s heart skipped a beat.
Soon, the newcomer came fully into view. It held a tray, as if sensing the commotion downstairs and coming to check.
One looked around in confusion. “Perhaps I just delivered a dinner upstairs.”
Allen grinned ferociously and waved his hand. A bullet pierced the floor by One’s foot. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”
The mechanical puppet ignored him and turned to Xie Jianxun, asking, “What happened here?”
Xie Jianxun’s head throbbed. “Some, uh, grudges and feuds.”
He tried to word it mildly to avoid provoking the thugs into a barrage.
However, as Allen lifted his foot, the mechanical puppet’s gaze froze.
“My… gift?”
The small, palm-sized sea buckthorn jam cake had only been tasted with two tiny bites before being set on the counter.
Not wanting to wolf it down and ruin the pleasure of savoring, it had given up on eating it quickly.
Now, this poor little dessert had been smashed to the ground and stepped on amid the chaos, jam splattered on the shoe sole and smeared into an ugly stain on the floor.
It saw Allen lower his head and scrape his sole on the edge of the counter.
“What the hell is this stuff? So sticky?”
An eerie blue flame flickered for a moment.
The mechanical puppet smiled. It placed a hand on its waist, facing a weapon aimed right at it, and walked politely up to Allen. “Excuse me, was it you who stepped on my cake?”
Allen looked up. “What kind of attitude is that to talk to me li— Ahh!”
A flaming long knife was drawn, the ignited flames illuminating the terrified faces of everyone in the first-floor lobby. Splashing along with it was the blood of the sand bandit leader.
An entire leg flew off; Allen didn’t even have time to scream in pain.
His heavy body crashed to the ground like a rolling stone, shaking the floor.
Panicked bullets rained down on it, but the mechanical puppet spun its long knife casually, deflecting the bullets which scattered everywhere.
Seeing no more threat, it sheathed the long knife at its waist and lifted Allen’s head with one hand.
One furrowed its brows lightly and said softly, “6.6% off, but you’ll compensate me at full price.”
“Thirty-five point six.”
Allen’s body was like foam in its hand, to be crushed and molded at will.
The weight of Alex in Xie Jianxun’s arms suddenly felt as heavy as a lead sack; he could barely hold on.
It was oppressively heavy.
Xie Jianxun couldn’t help but recall that day on the street, when One and Huo Jing wielded their respective weapons and charged at each other.
There was no doubt Huo Jing was a dangerous man with blood on his hands.
…Then, could One, who wielded an equally lethal weapon, really be some friendly ambassador?
