Chapter 70 — Taking Risks Translated by Rook of Exiled Rebels Scanlations Locktini pursed his lips and coldly snorted, “There are many villages outside of Crystal City that especially provide Crystal City’s shops with goods. I smuggled my way in with the businessmen entering the city to trade.”

Feisha cautiously asked, “How many can be smuggled in at a time?”

Locktini replied, “Two. They only allow two attendants for every businessman. But we can enter in three batches.”

Shamal’s eyes turned and he said, “Brother, let me go with you.”

“No.” Locktini didn’t even think before he rejected Shamal.

Shamal bitterly said, “Isn’t it right and proper for an older brother to take care of his younger brother?”

Locktini icily said, “Since when I have done right and proper things?”

Wow, he really had self-awareness. Feisha deeply approved.

Antonio impatiently said, “The stone monster is catching up, let’s move and talk.”

Remembering that the stone monster resisted weapons, was undefeated by water or fire and was still alive, no one wanted to delay and everyone quickly set off.

Since there was only one road, there was no need for Locktini to walk in front and lead the way. He cheerfully and unhurriedly fell to the back. Feisha saw that the distance between him and Locktini became shorter and shorter so he silently began to lean to the other side.

Although Feisha’s movements were fast, Locktini’s movements were faster. One quick movement and he was on Feisha’s other side.

Feisha stiffly stopped his footsteps, coughed and nonchalantly walked to the front.

Locktini gazed at the front, not in the least perturbed, and said, “Later, you and I will form a group.”

Feisha looked left and right. Everyone else was a distance away. “Eh, are you talking to me?”

Locktini said, annoyed, “Then who?”

“Actually,” Feisha scratched the nape of his neck and tried to persuade Locktini, “I’m a burden. Having me around will only slow you down.”

Locktini said, “Then, other than me, who do you think will accept you?”

Feisha’s gaze slid to the side and swept over the others.

Although there was a bit of distance between the others and them, the road was very quiet, so everyone could clearly hear what the two of them were talking about.

Layton was the first to avoid his gaze. As one of the weaker ones in the group, he wanted a stronger partner.

Asa, on the other hand, totally didn’t understand Feisha’s hints. He met Feisha’s gaze and then turned back to look in front.

Antonio couldn’t be bothered to be involved in these messy problems. To him, saving Gin and Hughes was the top priority. As for these small issues, they could do whatever they wanted.

So the only one who could save Feisha was —

Shamal ignored the warning Locktini cast over, smiling, and said, “We’re brothers, after all. We can discuss this.”

Feisha immediately thought of the discussion the two of them had been having earlier, eagerly inserting himself, saying, “Of course, of course, we’re good brothers and loyalty is important. Your business is my business, my business is your business. We are all on the same boat heading for a beautiful future.”

Locktini was glaring so hard that it looked like his eyes were on fire.

Shamal purposely slowed down, pulling away from the others: “Although helping you means I’m antagonizing Locktini, I don’t want to antagonize him too much. Forget about the future, let’s solve the problem before us first.”

Feisha patted his shoulder and said, “Whatever secret troubles you have, just share them. I’ll definitely help you.”

Shamal lowered his voice and said, “The ‘him’ I’m talking about is leader of the Witch Clan.”

Feisha heard himself gulp. “Witch… A witch?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The kind that can cast curses?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And he’s the clan leader, too?”

“Uh-huh.” Shamal thought for a moment and lifted up his sleeve, showing a red mark on his left shoulder.

Feisha peered at it carefully.

In the center of a red hexagonal star, there was a pattern similar to a skull with arrows on both sides, pointing to the northeast and northwest.

“A curse?” Although he had heard of them before, this was the first time he had seen one. Feisha found it difficult to stop his curiosity.

Shamal said: “You can call it that.”

“What side effects does it have?”

“So long as I am within ten thousand meters of him, he’ll sense me.”

“Like a satellite positioning system?” Feisha thought for a while. “It doesn’t sound like a big deal.”

“Doesn’t sound like a big deal?” Shamal gritted his teeth angrily and said, “This is something the Witch Clan specifically uses to control slaves.”

“Slaves?” Feisha was deeply shocked by this word. Who would have thought that Shamal, a prince, would have worked so many types of jobs?

Shamal sucked in a deep breath and began to tell everything. “About a thousand years ago, Second Brother (1) sneaked away to Genesis. I was afraid he was plotting something, so I followed him.”

Feisha sighed regretfully, “…you brothers sure are close. You’re so big but still like to play cops-and-robbers.”

Shamal stared at him unpleasantly. “Do you want to listen or not?”

Feisha mimed zipping his lips.

“It took First Brother quite a lot of time to help me get a pa.s.s, so I entered Genesis a few days later than him. But although the king of Genesis himself actively helped me look for Second Brother, there were still no results. I waited around, but the more I waited, the more impatient I became so I decided to look for him myself.” At this, Shamal’s expression became gloomy. “I’m not familiar with Genesis. Most of the time, I just figured out where to go based on my intuition. Who knew that as I walked, I would come across a huge python thicker than my arm curled in two coils?”

Don’t tell him he did what Guo Jing (2) did, taking the snake that someone had nicely raised and eating it? Feisha 囧.

That’s why sticking your tongue out is not something you can do as you wish. Don’t think just because you’re an animal, you’re privileged. Otherwise, you’re going to end up in a miserable state, Feisha concluded.

“That snake was so ugly, half black, half green. No normal person would pick this kind of creature as a pet…” Shamal said furiously. “Who knew he is that abnormal person!”

Feisha understood. So it turns out that Shamal and the Witch Clan leader’s ill-fated relationship started when Shamal slaughtered his pet. The snake had a face only a mother could love. Maybe it was ugly, maybe it was weird but after all, it was still the Witch Clan leader’s pet. Having it killed was bound to make him resentful. If anyone was to be blamed, it was Genesis’ owner, who didn’t think things through, never giving out pet owner tags which would’ve made it clear whether an animal was wild or a pet.

“What happened after that?”

“After that, who knows what magic he used. Once he knew what had happened, he came looking for me.” Shamal dispiritedly said, “I fought him and I was totally defeated. He created this mark on my arm and made me his slave.”

Feisha sympathetically patted his shoulder. “You must have been through a lot.”

At his words, Shamal’s expression was a bit odd. “At the start, I suffered a lot. I weeded the soil and watered the plants, but after that…”

Feisha’s ears p.r.i.c.ked up. “What happened after that?”

“After that he realized my magic power was not weak, so he started letting me do some paperwork.” As Shamal said this, his expression was still very odd. Evidently, the events he was talking about were not as simple as it sounded.

But Feisha was already engrossed in the story, so he naturally didn’t try to dig to the heart of the matter. “Then how did you escape?”

“Once, we attended a banquet together and coincidentally met Second Brother, who helped me escape.” Although at that time, his relations with Locktini were tense, Locktini still pulled through and helped without saying a single word once he knew the whole sequence of events.

Feisha thought about it. “So, so long as you don’t go within ten thousand meters of him, it’ll be fine?”

Shamal nodded hesitantly, “But witchcraft has a lot of weird tricks. I don’t know if he has other tricks up his sleeve.”

Isefel’s voice suddenly interjected to say, “The Witch Clan has always strictly prohibited leaking knowledge of their magic to outsiders. Unless he really trusted you and you two were very close, he would never have let you look at their papers and doc.u.ments.”

Isefel’s words splashed like cold water (3).

Isefel finished speaking and Shamal fell silent.

Feisha shook his head, sighing: “If you don’t tell the story clearly and something really happened, I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to.”

Shamal shot him a dirty look. “If he really came, how can you help me?”

“Con him, duh (4),” Feisha spoke in a relaxed manner. “So long as he has ears and a brain, I’m confident I can talk in circles till his head spins. Hehe.”

“If he has ears and a brain you are able to talk him around until his head spins?” Isefel’s voice sounded a bit weird.

Feisha immediately put away his glee and started sucking up to Isefel, “Of course, there’s one type of person whom I would never try to dupe.”

Isefel said indifferently, “Oh?”

Feisha said, worked up, “If someone respects me an inch, I’ll respect them a foot (5). So long as someone is nice to me, I’ll never dupe them.” G.o.d, please forgive me for my white lie.

Shamal ridiculed Feisha. “I think you mean a sweetheart.”

The air became a little strange.

Feisha coughed and dragged the conversation back to the topic. “You still haven’t said, how did you win his trust?”

Shamal seemed to have remembered something. His face slowly turned red. He said hopelessly in a low growl, “Who wants to earn his trust? It’s his own mistake, having the wrong idea. I — I just beat him at his own game.”

Feisha stared blankly at him. This guilty expression, could it be…

“Don’t tell me you played with his feelings?” (6)

Shamal didn’t think Feisha would say it so baldly. He opened and closed his mouth and took quite a while before he said, “I said, he had the wrong idea.”

“…..” Of all the deceptions, this was the worst. Whatever you cheat someone of, you could still return it. It’s only when it comes to deceiving someone’s feelings… Feisha sighed.

Feisha’s expression made Shamal extremely uneasy. “Actually, so many years have pa.s.sed. Maybe he has long forgotten me.”

“Uh-huh.”

The more Shamal thought, the more uneasy he was, so he questioned closely, “You said before you’ll help me, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No take backs?”

“…..”

“Why are you staying silent?” It couldn’t be that after saying that, Feisha would abandon him right? Shamal narrowed his eyes.

Feisha’s face was suddenly sombre and grave as he stared at Shamal. “What’s that ‘him’ of yours like?”

Shamal frowned. “What do you mean, what’s he like?”

“I’m talking about his looks,” Feisha replied. “Does he wear a black gown?”

“Yeah, why?”

“And his hair is white?”

“As white as cotton.” He paused, looking at Feisha in shock. “How did you know?”

Feisha 囧囧 and stared at Shamal before pointing to the mountaintop behind him. “Look, does that guy look like that ‘him’?”

Shamal rapidly turned his head.

Only to see a black silhouette standing arrogantly on that mountain top. A gust of wind blew past and white hair flew.

T/n:

(1) Here, Shamal calls Locktini 二王兄 Èr wáng xiōng, which is a bit literally like ‘second royal brother’. This is because he refers to the king as 大王兄 Dàwáng xiōng, which is literally ‘big royal brother’. I translated this as ‘First Brother’. He usually just calls Locktini 王兄 wáng xiōng, ‘royal brother’, which I translate to as just ‘Brother’. (2) In The Legend of the Condor Heroes, the hero Guo Jing kills a snake that another character, Liang Zi Wei, had raised as a pet. You can find out more here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Legend_of_the_Condor_Heroes_characters (3) This sentence is a bit hard to translate. The original Chinese is actually: 所谓一语惊醒梦中人 Suǒwèi yī yǔ jīngxǐng mèng zhōng rén. The literal translation is: as they say, a word can rouse a person in dreams. It means something like a ‘wake-up call’. I went with ‘Isefel’s words splashed like cold water’ to capture the feeling of being shocked. If anyone has a better translation, feel free to correct me! (4) The sound Feisha makes is 呗 Bei, which is a very casual sound. It makes Feisha sound like conning someone is a very ‘no big deal’ type of thing, so I went with ‘duh’ to capture his nonchalance. (5) Original: 人敬我一尺，我敬人一丈 Rén jìng wǒ yī chǐ, wǒ jìng rén yī zhàng. It literally translates to ‘someone respects me an inch, I’ll respect them a foot’. It basically means Feisha will return another’s respect/kindness a hundredfold. (6) Original: 欺骗了他的感情 Qīpiànle tā de gǎnqíng. This means literally ‘cheating him of his feelings’. This is the Chinese way of saying ‘playing with someone’s feelings’. This is why a few paragraphs down, Feisha makes a pun and says that whatever you cheat someone of, deceiving their feelings (cheating them of their feelings) is the worst.