Huang Quan became intrigued when she heard this. “How will you compensate me?”
The steward quickly responded, “Miss Huang, we will fully refund the money you spent on the Dragon Spirit Fruit.”
“If you’re returning the money, doesn’t that mean I should return the item to you?” Huang Quan replied. “I’m afraid that won’t work. I’ve already dealt with the item, and besides…”
“Even if I were to return it, it shouldn’t go back to you,” Huang Quan said with a smile as she looked at him. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
Jing Chen’s cold gaze turned to the steward as he said, “As for the matter of the Snow Plains, my father will settle accounts with you.”
“We don’t need it back.” Now that Jing Chen had spoken, how could the steward dare to ask for the item?
The Dragon Spirit Fruit grew on the Snow Plains, and originally, whoever found it would keep it. But they had crossed Mirror Snow Palace and taken the fruit from a place that had a stone tablet marked with the words “Mirror Snow Palace.” This showed that the area was connected to the palace, meaning they had essentially stolen from Mirror Snow Palace. Asking for it back in front of the Young Lord of Mirror Snow Palace? Impossible.
“The money, I’ll accept,” Huang Quan said, looking at the steward. “But I also have two other conditions.”
Conditions were better than no conditions at all. The steward quickly said, “Miss Huang, whatever your conditions are, please feel free to state them. I will do my best to fulfill them.”
Huang Quan calmly looked at him and said, “You will return all the remaining Dragon Spirit Fruits you still possess.”
The smile on the steward’s face instantly vanished.
Huang Quan continued, “A deadly item, stolen from someone else—it’s hard to return that?”
The steward took a deep breath and said, “I can’t make that decision.”
“Oh, really?” Huang Quan raised an eyebrow and smiled.
The steward stiffened and replied, “This matter can only be decided by the Young Master.”
“So, it was also the Young Master’s decision to go into Mirror Snow Palace’s territory to harvest the Dragon Spirit Fruit?” Huang Quan asked slowly, her gaze steady. “Jing Chen mentioned that after entering the Snow Plains, your people poisoned several snow villages near Mirror Snow Palace?”
The steward remained silent, unsure of what to say.
“You poisoned the villagers, forcing them to seek help from Mirror Snow Palace. At first, the people sent by the palace couldn’t cure the poison you used, so the master of Mirror Snow Palace personally went with a few elders.”
“A diversion,” Huang Quan remarked. “After luring the master out, your people immediately ventured deeper into the Snow Plains and eventually entered the area where the Dragon Spirit Fruit was located.”
At this point, Huang Quan paused before continuing, “Jing Chen told me that your entry may have been due to luck, as the entrance to that place changes over time.”
“Since the location is constantly shifting, how did your people manage to head straight for the depths of the Snow Plains in just a few days, and so ‘luckily’ enter that place, even picking the Dragon Spirit Fruit?” Huang Quan asked, her tone calm but piercing.
“And you did it without alerting anyone from Mirror Snow Palace.”
Originally, Huang Quan hadn’t intended to involve herself in this matter, trusting that Jing Chen’s father would handle it. But…
Someone was hunting dragons.
If Mirror Snow Palace knew from the beginning that their true target was the Dragon Spirit Fruit, they would never have been so passive. But they didn’t know.
The poisoning of the snow villagers required a cure, and uncovering the truth behind it took time. By the time they realized what had happened, the people from Cloud Auction House were long gone.
Perhaps Mirror Snow Palace had considered why Cloud Auction House poisoned the villagers, but they would never have guessed that the real motive was to enter the Forbidden Grounds.
Because, as Jing Chen mentioned, that place was protected by a forbidden magic.
When Jing Chen found out about the Dragon Spirit Fruit incident, his father had already teamed up with forces from the Xuanling Empire to create trouble for Cloud Auction House. Jing Chen assumed his father was aware that those people had entered the Forbidden Grounds.
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His father knew about it but didn’t tell him, hoping to keep him out of the situation.
So, when Jing Chen initially told Huang Quan about it, he had no idea that his father was actually unaware of the intrusion into the Forbidden Grounds.
It was only after contacting his father later that he found out his father had no clue!
The Forbidden Grounds were protected by an array, and yet the people from Cloud Auction House entered without triggering it. Could that be a coincidence?
Definitely not!
They had specifically targeted the Forbidden Grounds. Who in their right mind would go searching for the Forbidden Grounds in the middle of the Snow Plains?
For a Dragon Spirit Fruit?
Even common sense would tell you that’s impossible!
Both father and son immediately realized their true goal: the burial ground of the dragon. What they were searching for was clearly a dragon!
As for why they were hunting dragons… they didn’t know yet. But the fact that someone was looking for a dragon was already bad news for Mirror Snow Palace.
Given Jing Chen’s unique situation, his father, Jing Lin, initially considered calling him back. But on second thought, if the enemy had used a diversion tactic once, they might use it again. Keeping Jing Chen at Mirror Snow Palace might not be the safest option.
He would actually be safer at the Imperial Academy!
There were more people there, including the young master of Nine Abyss City, and that girl, Huang Quan. They were always together, which made it less likely for something bad to happen.
Jing Chen later told all of this to Huang Quan, who didn’t say much at the time. However, he hadn’t expected Cloud Auction House’s people to show up today, and Huang Quan, it seemed, was now helping him question them.
A warm feeling spread through Jing Chen’s heart as he quietly glanced at Huang Quan, thinking to himself how wonderful it would be if she were his sister.
Huang Quan looked at the steward. “You were targeting that place from the start. Your diversion was deliberate and your goal clear. Also, there’s someone quite special among your people.”
“That person was able to accurately locate the entrance to the Forbidden Grounds, allowing your team to enter undetected. Quite impressive,” Huang Quan continued. “But you didn’t find what you were looking for, did you?”
“If you had found it, you wouldn’t have so blatantly auctioned off the Dragon Spirit Fruit,” Huang Quan said, fixing her gaze on the steward. “You used the fruit as bait, partly to figure out how to use it and partly to lure in curious individuals, hoping to gather more information.”
“From this, we can deduce that the person who led you to the Forbidden Grounds had some skill but did not truly understand the Dragon Spirit Fruit. In other words, he wasn’t fully aware of the object you were truly after,” Huang Quan said.
“After all, if he had understood, he wouldn’t have let you use the Dragon Spirit Fruit for experiments, and he definitely wouldn’t have used it as bait.”
“This tells me that he is someone who is extremely curious about what you were looking for,” Huang Quan continued. “However, since what you’re searching for belongs to the realm of legends, even if he were curious, he probably only knew about the Dragon Spirit Fruit and its connection to dragons from hearsay and folklore. He wouldn’t have known that the Dragon Spirit Fruit could be fatal.”
“A person with some skill, curiosity, and a particular objective, combined with your young master, led you to risk the wrath of Mirror Snow Palace and venture into the Forbidden Grounds,” she said.
“You found the Dragon Spirit Fruit and, knowing the rumors about its connection to dragons, believed that what you were searching for truly existed—though you hadn’t found it yet. That’s why you came up with the idea to use the Dragon Spirit Fruit for experimentation and bait.”
“When you performed the experiment, the person who consumed the Dragon Spirit Fruit had already reached the cultivation level of an Immortal Spirit Master, correct?”
Until now, the steward had not dared to say a word in response to what Huang Quan had been saying. But hearing this question, he finally nodded. “Yes.”
“The person reached the level of Immortal Spirit Master and then exploded, dying from it.”
“And that’s why you publicly claimed that consuming the Dragon Spirit Fruit could elevate someone from Spirit Master to Immortal Spirit Master?”
