Published: March 12, 2025
Chapter 345: Framing
Zhao Hai nodded and said, "This is the Roson Empire, and Duke Ryan is the finance minister of the Roson Empire. He is an official who specifically manages money, and many nobles in the Empire want to curry favor with him. Now that we have made an enemy of him, those nobles who wish to please him will naturally come after us. We underestimated Duke Ryan's influence before."
Xu Wanying asked, "So what does the young master mean? Should we kill them?"
Zhao Hai shook his head and replied, "We can't kill them. I suspect the other side might have backup plans. Think about it, if we kill them, will the city lord send soldiers to catch us? They could say I kill people at will. This is not the Aksu Empire, where we would have an advantage; here, we would be at a disadvantage using official power. Alright, enough of that. Let’s dump this food and then we’ll enter the space. I want to see if they come in looking for us and what they can do."
Xu Wanying and the others understood that in the Roson Empire, they did not have formal status, and everything they did would always be restricted. The Roson Empire was different from the Aksu Empire; there, when a foreigner arrived, they would treat them calmly, but in the Roson Empire, they looked down upon foreigners. To put it bluntly, they had a form of racial discrimination.
Through these days of contact with the people of the Roson Empire, Zhao Hai had already noticed this, so he was very careful. After all, his identity in the Aksu Empire was just a viscount of a principality, and when he arrived at the Roson Empire, he was nothing at all.
Xu Wanying and the others complied, dumping the food on the table, and then followed Zhao Hai into the space. Ryan and the others were naturally brought into the space as well. However, to avoid any issues, Zhao Hai had Cai'er absorb a bit of the poison gas so that they could remain unconscious.
A few of them sat in the space and observed the situation in the room. Sure enough, after more than an hour, there was a knock on the door, followed by the voice of a waiter saying, "Guests, we are here to clear the dishes."
Naturally, there was no response from inside the room. The waiter called out several times without a reply. At this moment, the waiter said, "Alright, let's knock it down." Then several voices came from outside, and the door was opened from the outside.
However, when the waiters opened the door, they were stunned. On the table was a large pile of plates, all neatly arranged, with not even a leaf of vegetable in sight. But most importantly, there was not a single person to be seen in the room.
The few waiters were all taken aback, and they immediately began searching the room, but still found no one. This made the waiters panic, and they quickly ran out to find their boss. Before long, a thin boss with a rat-like mustache rushed into the room. Of course, he couldn’t find anything amiss either. He immediately instructed the waiters to check if Zhao Hai's carriage was still in the back stable.
Zhao Hai's carriage was still there, but their people had disappeared. The waiters had been watching the room from the outside since they delivered the food, and they hadn’t seen anyone leave, yet the people inside had vanished.
For this operation, they had even specially invited a mage from the city to help, but this mage didn’t detect any magical fluctuations in the room; it was as if those people had vanished into thin air.
The hotel staff panicked and reported the situation, but after tossing and turning all night, they failed to achieve any results. It was only in the middle of the night that they realized there was really nothing worth seeing in that room and left.
Little did they know, Zhao Hai and the others were watching their every move, like spectators watching a monkey show, as they flailed around in the room, eventually leaving in despair.
Laura looked at the images on the screen and turned to Zhao Hai, saying, "Brother Hai is right. The city lord really has a part in this; otherwise, the city defense army wouldn't have arrived so quickly. It seems they are keeping an eye on us."