Chapter 300 - 273: Sell for a Good Price
In Hongding Mansion, a large crowd had gathered in the corridor.
They packed the hallway almost completely full.
Yang Long stood at the front. Diagonally across from him was a short-haired woman wearing a red vest over a leather skirt and black stockings.
Behind them was a room, its door slightly ajar. The passage inside had not yet opened.
The hallway was crammed with people due to the sheer number.
Some were growing restless.
"Brother Long, how much longer do we have to wait?" someone shouted from the back.
"What’s the rush!" the short-haired woman said impatiently. "It takes time to cross."
Someone in the crowd muttered, "We’ve been waiting for almost three hours..."
"I’ll go check again." Mei Yuqing stood up and looked back at Yang Long. "Yang Long, you watch things here."
"Mmph," Yang Long grunted in agreement.
Mei Yuqing went up the stairs to the mansion’s Celestial Tower. As she did, a tall, slender figure in white with long hair and two sabers at his waist followed close behind.
The mansion’s rooftop originally had some water tanks and billboards.
But all that had long since been removed, leaving only a bare concrete rooftop.
Mei Yuqing arrived on the rooftop and asked directly, "What’s the situation? Has Liu Ze returned?"
On the rooftop, a young man quickly held out his hands to receive a pigeon, then removed a small note tied to its leg.
"Sister Mei, a message has arrived from the mountaintop."
Mei Yuqing saw it too and stepped forward to take the note. "Let me see."
She scanned the message, her eyes flying across the lines. As she finished, her expression instantly darkened.
"S-Sister Mei, what is it?"
Mei Yuqing lowered the note, her expression returning to a calm facade. "It’s nothing. You continue to stand guard here."
The young man had no idea what had happened.
But given Mei Yuqing’s usual intimidating presence, he could only agree.
As she walked down from the rooftop, a harsh glint flashed in Mei Yuqing’s eyes. ’Useless.’
"My Lady, was there an unexpected problem?" the man with the twin sabers asked.
"The message from the mountaintop says the ship from the Gated Community across the water is heading our way. That madman Liu Ze is most likely dead," Mei Yuqing said, her chest heaving.
The man fell silent. "I will follow your orders."
"Su Xiao, do you think we can beat them?" Mei Yuqing asked.
Su Xiao shook his head. "I do not know. But we have the advantage in numbers, so it’s not impossible."
"But I doubt Yang Long will listen to me," Mei Yuqing frowned.
Yang Long was arrogant. Liu Ze could keep him in line, but if he finds out something happened to Liu Ze, she wasn’t sure she could control him and the rest of them.
And it wasn’t just Yang Long. The Floor Lords in the Blood Words Gang were all real pieces of work.
Anyone who could survive in this environment and climb to the position of a Floor Lord was hardly a good person.
Su Xiao said, "I can kill him."
Mei Yuqing rolled her eyes. "Kill, kill, kill. Is that all you know? Does killing him solve the problem? How many can you kill by yourself?"
Su Xiao fell silent, then said, "I only know how to kill."
Mei Yuqing said suddenly, "What do you think about me negotiating with the other side? I wouldn’t mind giving up some benefits, as long as my own position is guaranteed."
Su Xiao replied, "But we have no way to contact the enemy."
"Don’t worry, they’ll come to us. And they will definitely negotiate," Mei Yuqing said confidently. "The Blood Words aren’t pushovers."
It wouldn’t be so easy for the other side to take them down.
As long as they face a setback, there will be an opportunity to negotiate.
Returning down the stairs to the area outside the door, Mei Yuqing waved Yang Long over and summoned the other Floor Lords into the room.
Although Mei Yuqing was considering negotiation, she wasn’t foolish enough to reveal her hand immediately. She knew that even if she wanted to negotiate, she first had to demonstrate her value. Besides, what if they actually won?
When it comes to selling out, some people can command a high price, while others go cheap.
If she, Mei Yuqing, was going to sell out, she was going to sell out for a good price!
If you have no value, even your enemies won’t give you a second glance.
"The ship from the other side is on its way," Mei Yuqing relayed the contents of the message truthfully. "Get ready. They’re not coming in peace."
"How is that possible!" The eighth-floor Floor Lord’s face turned grim. "No word from Brother Ze at all?"
"Didn’t he say he was going to establish an anchor point on their side?" Yang Long frowned.
"Obviously, he failed to establish the anchor point. He’s probably dead," the twenty-fourth-floor Floor Lord sneered.
"Li, what the hell are you saying?"
"I said what I said, so what! Fuck, I’ve never seen a leader like him. Goddamnit, running over to the enemy’s base with just a few people. Does he have a hole in his brain or something!" Li Zecheng furiously kicked the leg of a table.
Mei Yuqing’s expression wasn’t great either. She had also tried to talk him out of it, but no one could change Liu Ze’s mind.
The main reason was that Liu Ze did have a history of success.
During the first map, a faction with over seventy people had occupied two entire floors. At the time, Liu Ze only had six people with him in total.
But that audacious bastard took Pu Jia, climbed two stories up the outside of the building through the windows, snuck into the enemy’s headquarters in the middle of the night, and killed their leader. Then, while the others were sleeping, he started a fire, locked the doors, and burned more than twenty people to death.
He became famous overnight from that one battle.
After that, Liu Ze made several more high-risk gambles, and every single one succeeded.
Perhaps those earlier successes had made Liu Ze overconfident.
Mei Yuqing said, "Enough arguing. They’re on their way. We should be figuring out how to deal with them."
The fourteenth-floor Floor Lord said, "What’s there to be afraid of? If they want to fight, they have to come ashore first. We have the terrain advantage. Why should we fear them?"
"I think we should go prepare now," said the second-floor Floor Lord.
Because his fucking floor was at the very bottom. If a real fight broke out, his territory would most likely become the battlefield.
He glanced at the others and cursed them inwardly. ’Sons of bitches. It’s easy for you to talk since it’s not your territory on the line, huh?’
After a brief discussion, the Floor Lords began to disperse.
No one said goodbye to Mei Yuqing.
As they left, the Floor Lords broke off into small groups of two and three, clustering together based on their existing cliques.
Seeing this, a shadow of gloom passed over Mei Yuqing’s eyes.
In the room, a flicker of confusion crossed Yang Long’s eyes.
The leader of their Jianghu Association was gone, and now the leader of the Blood Words was gone too.
The Floor Lords of the Blood Words all had their own agendas; getting them to unite as one was practically impossible.
He’d be lucky if they didn’t just sabotage the effort.
’What’s our way out? What should we do?’
Out on the sea, the Lost Home had already circled around to the back of the island.
Hongding Mansion was located on the northwest side of the island, right next to the northern beach.
The straight-line distance from the mansion to the edge of the beach was no more than two hundred meters.
If one included the crowded, dilapidated shacks of the Urban Village that spread all the way to the edge of the forest, that distance shrank to less than a hundred meters.
A colossal shadow was silently cutting through the sea’s surface, slowly drawing near.
Its imposing hull radiated an intense pressure. On its towering masts, sails as transparent as smoke billowed like dark clouds. The sharp ram, the metallic sheen of its hull—it was like a skyscraper laid sideways upon the sea.
On the deck, figures bustled about.
Inside the mansion, the Floor Lords, fresh from their meeting and each with their own ulterior motives, stared through the windows with grave expressions, watching the behemoth ship that had appeared without a sound.
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