Chapter 252 – With a Flip of the Hand, Clouds Turn to Rain, The Fiendish Li Yuan - Part 3
Back home, as soon as she entered the courtyard, Cui Huayin tugged on Li Yuan’s sleeve, speaking softly but urgently.
“Husband, I was ambushed.”
Li Yuan raised his eyebrows. “Finally calling me husband, eh?”
She ignored his remark. “It was a sixth rank stranger and an undying. Without your ebony kinghounds, I...who knows what might have happened.”
She trailed off, then led him to the carriage, where she unwrapped the three items from her cloak and showed him. “I found these on the bodies. The sixth rank stranger was carrying them and said...”
Li Yuan prompted her, “Said what?”
Cui Huayin hesitated. “He planned to make me his slave—your wife, his slave.”
Li Yuan’s expression darkened. He’d already suspected as much the previous night, which was why he’d stationed two the ebony kinghounds with her that morning. The human-skin manacles were useless in a direct clash between two experts. But in other situations, they could be terrifying, enough to let one person seize control of an entire area at a moment’s notice. That was why they were so valuable, costing a full two mace of ghost money.
After talking more with Yan Yu, Li Yuan understood that a ghost shop grew stronger the more ghost money it earned.
Lately, Yan Yu had indeed become far more powerful, and the production rate of her human-skin manacles had risen from a couple every two months to six. Slipping him half of those supplies was like crippling half of her own cultivation.
After all, those manacles sold at a premium and were a unique item that kept wealthy undying husks coming back to her shop. She also had her own sly tricks—stocking them irregularly, so anyone hoping to buy one had to try their luck in the general store. If they were unlucky, they had to spend at least one mace and four cash before leaving empty-handed. But if word got out that the store carried no more manacles, its reputation would plummet and daily revenue would suffer.
That was why, after conferring with Yan Yu, Li Yuan had abandoned any notion of monopolizing the supply. Compared to the vast network of ghost shops, her little establishment was hardly the only place to acquire such things.