Chapter 59 : Chapter 59

Chapter 59: When He Treated Her Like a Walking God of Wealth, He Felt Full of Drive

“Brother Chen, I absolutely did not lie to you!” Luo Li’s voice was exceptionally firm. “I truly am a princess!”

As she spoke, she produced a purple-bronze token. Upon it was engraved the character for Imperial Command, a symbol of sovereign authority.

Chen Guan knew a thing or two about such tokens.

However, the identity tokens used by Great Yun’s imperial descendants bore the character for Yun.

A command token bearing the Imperial character, though—that was the highest class of token personally bestowed by the imperial house. It was no simple proof of status. By virtue of it alone, one could even mobilize the Demon Suppression Bureau of an entire region for one’s own use.

With a dark face, Chen Guan said, “So should I be calling you Zhou Li instead?”

Something in Luo Li’s heart seemed to be struck by those words, and she immediately replied coldly, “I... only follow my mother’s surname... Luo.”

Chen Guan looked the troublesome girl up and down once more.

With his eyesight, he could indeed sense a noble aura upon her.

That sort of air truly was not something ordinary people could possess, nor was it even comparable to the officials he had seen before. Only an imperial descendant could fit the bill.

Still, there was a heavy grudge written all over her face.

Thinking it over, he could understand that much. Her mother had died in the deep palace, she herself had been abandoned as a child, and she hated that old emperor of Great Zhou. Not wishing to acknowledge her ancestry or take back the surname Zhou—he could understand that too.

And yet no matter how he thought about it, something still felt wrong.

“Forget it, forget it.”

Chen Guan shook his head, forcing all those messy thoughts back down.

“So long as this troublesome girl didn’t lie to me, that’s enough.”

He could simply treat it as her position within Great Zhou’s imperial house being somewhat awkward.

He also understood that the old codger had never wanted this foolish girl to march straight into that ice-cold palace and die.

After all, there was no family in the world more heartless than an imperial one.

This escort job, though a scalding hot potato...

well, when Chen Guan thought of it from another angle, his mood brightened again.

The greater the risk, the greater the girl’s worth, wasn’t that so?

Ordinarily, a task only yielded a handful of Escort Points, and clients willing to pay more came along maybe once every half-month.

“But if several more assassination attempts came their way along the road, and if they happened to run into a few more unlucky demons and monsters...”

wouldn’t that mean he could keep raising the price all the way through and add until his hands went numb?

If he truly managed to deliver this troublesome girl safely to Shangjing City, then the final Escort Point settlement...

might well be enough to let him lie flat and eat comfortably for ten years.

After all, the higher the risk, the greater the reward! That was the ironclad logic of the escort road!

As for all the rest—imperial power struggles, demon conspiracies, and the like—he neither wished to care about them nor was capable of doing so.

In the end, he was only an Escort Master. He delivered the goods and did not concern himself with their future.

Once he delivered the person, the money and goods would be settled, debts and favors cleared. When that happened, even if the sky itself collapsed, it would still have absolutely nothing to do with Chen Guan.

With that in mind, when Chen Guan looked at the troublesome girl ahead of him again, it was as though he were looking at a walking God of Wealth.

At once, he felt himself full of drive!

When Luo Li saw that Chen Guan did not continue pressing her and even wore a relaxed, pleased expression, she quietly let out a sigh of relief.

Still, a few lingering traces of complexity remained in her beautiful eyes, and even that lively, mischievous air on her face had quieted somewhat.

She lowered her head and remained silent for a long time before abruptly asking,

“Brother Chen... On the road of life, with fate rising and falling, is it better to follow one’s heart, or to settle oneself in accordance with circumstance?”

Chen Guan glanced at her and found the whole thing rather amusing.

So even this troublesome girl could become sentimental sometimes?

Still, he could more or less guess that the old dead grandfather of hers had left her so tangled up that her heart had grown restless.

After thinking for a moment, he answered calmly, “Fulfill your own will and keep your conscience clear.”

“Fulfill your own will and keep your conscience clear?”

Luo Li rolled those eight words over and over in her mouth, and suddenly the somewhat dim light in her eyes brightened.

“Brother Chen, did you study books too?”

“No.”

Chen Guan answered with crisp finality.

Luo Li frowned and looked at him with open surprise, the lively spark in her returning again.

She had only spoken on impulse.

Yet she had never expected that Chen Guan would not only understand what she meant, but even give her an answer straight away.

Forget the meaning of those eight words—even being able to understand the question itself was not something an ordinary person could do.

“You’re lying!” she said at once. “I’ve read ten thousand volumes, and even in the books of the sages I never found that answer!”

The corner of Chen Guan’s mouth twitched.

Wonderful. Now that Xiao Cong and Xiao Lü were gone, on this endless road he was probably going to be annoyed to death by this chatterbox.

“All right, all right, I read books. Happy now?”

He changed his answer irritably.

“If you’ve read books, then you’ve read books!”

Luo Li rolled her eyes.

She knew that, having been born in a place like Sanhua Town, Chen Guan was not likely to have read much.

But along the way, the steady composure he had displayed, his utterly meticulous strategies, and the flashes of knowledge far beyond normal men that occasionally slipped from his mouth

all told her one thing: this was absolutely not something an ordinary mountain villager could possess.

“Could it be that he is the same as me?”

For some reason, the moment that thought surfaced in her mind, she found herself filled with an even deeper confusion regarding this man who looked somewhat rough and unkempt.

Bang!

Chen Guan ignored her. He simply turned around and kicked the ox head lying there pretending to be dead.

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox jolted and immediately lifted its head, its eyes swiveling about before suddenly brightening with surprise.

“G-gone? That Flower... Flower Immortal woman is gone?”

“Could you be any more spineless? She’s just a woman. What Flower Immortal?”

Chen Guan tapped its skull with the flat of the Horse-Cleaving Saber. “She’s gone. Take us to the Luofeng Mountains!”

“Ah???”

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox was instantly dumbfounded.

“The Luofeng Mountains? From here to the Luofeng Mountains, the road is a full three thousand li! This old ox’s four legs might not be able to take it!”

“Cut the nonsense!”

Chen Guan’s eyes widened.

“You can either become my wine snack right now, or stay here and wait for that madwoman to drag you off and turn you into fertilizer.”

“I... I choose to become your wine snack! No, wait! I want to be fertilizer! Ah... no, that’s wrong too!”

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox was so terrified that it became completely incoherent. It no longer dared haggle with Chen Guan and hurriedly rolled to its feet.

Then it spread its four hooves and turned tail, racing madly in the direction of the Luofeng Mountains.

Seeing that Chen Guan no longer used the flat of his saber to rap its skull, the ox finally understood that this time it had guessed the right answer again.

...

In the blink of an eye, five days passed.

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox had visibly slimmed down by a full ring. The flesh on its thighs had tightened, and one could even faintly see muscle lines like fish scales beneath its hide.

In order to shake off any possible pursuers, Chen Guan directed it in circles all across that vast marshland, turning a three-thousand-li road into one of four thousand.

After ten days and ten nights without pause, let alone the ox, even Luo Li riding on its back looked completely worn out, with dark rings beneath her eyes.

Yet strangely enough,

Chen Guan’s mood had improved somewhat during that stretch. That face of his, black as the bottom of a pot for so long, finally showed signs of other expressions.

From time to time, he even chatted with Luo Li a little and made a few jokes.

It was not that Chen Guan’s temperament had changed.

It was simply because, in his heart now, this little princess had become a fine-looking God of Wealth.

How could anyone possibly blacken their face at the sight of a God of Wealth?

“Old ox, faster!”

Standing atop the ox’s head with the heavy Horse-Cleaving Saber over his shoulder, Chen Guan looked at the marshes rushing past before him and felt in excellent spirits.

This stupid ox had, in a sense, turned misfortune into blessing. Its legs had been thoroughly trained out.

“Originally, three hundred li a day would have been its limit. Now, if it gritted its teeth, it could cover nearly a thousand li a day without even panting.”

With speed like that, Chen Guan was starting to feel a little reluctant to let it go.

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox, which had been running along with its head down, happened to cast a glance back from the corner of its eye and caught sight of the look of reluctant attachment on Chen Guan’s face.

Its giant bovine heart instantly skipped a beat.

What had it been killing itself running like this for all these days?

Wasn’t it just so that it could make this master happy and be let off alive sooner?

But that look in his eyes—why did it seem as though he had grown attached from riding it too much?

“Chirp—chirp—”

The ox raised its head and looked toward the sky, then quickly used that as an excuse to change the subject. “Master, there’s a stupid bird up there following us. It’s been tailing us for three days and three nights now.”

“Hm?”

Chen Guan froze.

These past days, he had either been lying on the ox’s back with his eyes shut, or bickering with Luo Li. He truly had not paid attention to anything in the sky.

He looked up toward the great bird above, yet sensed no trace of demon qi from it.

Then he lowered his head and looked at the cowardly ox beneath him.

“Could it be... this idiot thought the bird was trying to steal its territory?”

Forget it. In any case, they were about to leave demon territory behind.

...

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox’s four hooves flew over the marshland, foul wind whipping around their ears as the waters all around dissolved into streaking reflections.

Before long, the outlines of a continuous mountain range gradually emerged before the eyes of Chen Guan and Luo Li.

And the sticky, foul stench they had endured for the last ten days slowly gave way to a dry scent of grass and trees.

“Hah... finally, we don’t have to smell that disgusting odor anymore!”

Luo Li stretched lazily and straightened her chest. Then she secretly glanced at Chen Guan again, only to see that the man was staring blankly at the sky, utterly lacking in aesthetic appreciation.

The Scarlet Flame Scale Ox’s speed gradually slowed.

It was not trying to slack off. Rather, the ground beneath its feet had already changed from muddy marshland into a mountain road full of broken stones and thorny brush, making speed impossible.

“All right. We stop here.”