Looking For Trouble

Meanwhile, Chen Zhiyu continued walking ahead, following his own pace with a calm and collected approach.

He cautiously used economic stares around the whole place. From time to time, he would be approached by courting sellers.

"Sir, come and buy my jade pearls, they are very beautiful and affordable too, it would be fitting for your lover"

"Young Master, here's fine linen that can win the heart of any maiden. I would give you a nice discount because of your charming looks hehe!"

"See this blade, Young Master, it can hack iron into pieces like tofu. Do you mind trying them out"

He was an attraction all over the market. That was one bittersweet issue in the public stores. There was a lot to buy here and the people were friendly too. The air was much relaxing compared to the Chen clan.

But one sad thing was that there were also poor people here who were desperate and held malicious thoughts. Anybody could be a victim of theirs on a bad day, so it wasn't usually so merry.

Thankfully, it had seasonal arrangements to it, usually during the period of the emperor's ascension or political feuds. So unless one was reckless when they came out on days like these, they were relatively fine at the public stores.

Chen Zhiyu's eyes finally settled in a good store which he was a bit familiar with due to exchange in the past.

The trader in charge was a middle aged man, he had a little child by his side. From Chen Zhiyu's past encounters, he knew that the child was the son of the middle aged trader.

"Mr Su, greetings!" Chen Zhiyu greeted on arrival with clasped hands and a light bow. A good smile was on his face.

Th middle aged man walked in from within the store. The store had a variety of items, among which included calligraphic materials — bamboo slips, wooden tablets, powdered sheets, calligraphic inks, brushes and so on.

There were also tiny energy potions by the side though they were scantier compared to the calligraphic materials that was in the majority.

"Hais! It's Young Master Chen, good, good! It's nice to see you today, how is it going?" Mister Su reciprocated the greeting with a wide smile.

Chen Zhiyu smiled in acknowledgement.

"It's going pretty well today, I actually came to restock on my inks. I'm sure you have the ones I want right" Chen Zhiyu immediately forwarded his request without need for delays or pretences.

"Oh…sure, sure! I have them here reserved for you" Mr Su grinned amicably, his smile was so pure that it could reflect righteousness from his heart.

Next, he returned inside his store to retrieve the set of inks that Chen Zhiyu had ordered. About two minutes later, he returned back with a spherical set of ceramic bottles, ten in number.

There was an inscribed text or rather character on each of them which represented the color of the ink. Altogether, the ten ink cases were — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, cyan, purple, white, black and gray.

"It's really the set I love" Chen Zhiyu's face glistened with a short-lived smile as he observed the ink cases carefully for some time and then nodded, "How much for it this time?"

Mister Su smiled for a moment, he then retrieved a scroll like piece from his chest pocket. He handed the scroll to Chen Zhiyu with appropriate courtesy.

Chen Zhiyu received the scroll, his brows arched for a moment, before it folded to normalcy.

"Phew! Thankfully, I still have enough to sort for them after all. This…it's quite costly" Chen Zhiyu snickered to himself while sighing in relief.

He passively returned the scroll piece to Mister Su. Next, he reached for his chest pocket to retrieve the gold coin pieces that he had carefully stashed into a small pouch earlier on.

"That's thirty gold coin pieces, it's worth the bargain isn't it" Chen Zhiyu said with a hearty smile.

"Thirty? Young Master Chen, isn't that too much, you're giving away ten gold coin pieces. Aren't you afraid you'll lose so much money" Mister Su queried with worry but Chen Zhiyu laughed with relaxation.

"It's fine, you can use it to get Little Brother some candies" Chen Zhiyu said and his gaze trailed to Mister Su's son whose cheeks he played with cutely for quite some time, eliciting the latter's smile.

"Hais…ten gold coin pieces for candies? You always spoil Little Ying all the time. It's still too much" Mister Su smiled and put the coin stash away.

Next, he handed over the ink containers in a spherical casing, which served as a packaging medium, to Chen Zhiyu. The latter received the box with a beaming smile and turned to leave, excited about his recently conducted transaction that turned out to be successful.

Chen Zhiyu was about leaving the vicinity when he noticed something strange had happened. A strange movement was going on subtly in the public stores that though Chen Zhiyu couldn't tell the cause, he could predict for sure that it was certain trouble brewing.

There were terrible glances and hushed whispers and they all seemed to be hinting towards a direction ahead of him. The cause of the disturbance was a chariot.

A mere chariot? Or wait!

"Huhn! The Chen clan's chariot, what's going on here" Chen Zhiyu asked inwardly with a sense of worry.

The Chen clan's chariot would not come out to the public stores anyhow and if it did, it would be for a calculated purpose and usually carrying a figure of repute.

But which figure of 'repute' asides from him would grace the public stores when they needed to do trade.

He didn't need to ask so much questions as he could already tell who it was when the chariot drew closer.

It was his adversary, Chen Xizi.

But Chen Zhiyu had no reason why the latter cast away his pride and arrogance and lurked behind him to the public stores. On seeing Chen Xizi, all trace of joy on seeing Chen Xizi appear at the public stores.

"All hail the Young Lord!" One of Chen Xizi's guards announced with a loud voice shortly after.