Price of snatching my food

On the seventh day since Thomas disappeared, his absence stopped being gossip.

It became suspicion.

Disciples were pulled aside and questioned.

"When did you last see him?" -"Who did he argue with?" -"What route did he take on after dinner?" -"How much money did he had?" -"Who wanted him gone?" - etc etc and etc.

But obviously the investigation wasn't going very well. Because with Thomas's shitty personality he had no real friends, but all enemies.

People he stole spirit stones of, people he beat and bullied, people whose girlfriends he teased and harassed - it was all kinds of mess. And everyone was a suspect.

The two lackeys Thomas used to walk around with? They kept glancing at Sunny's way from time to time. Their thoughts unknown, while eyes full of anger.

But maybe out of cautiousness, or a lack of courage without the backing, which caused them to cower _ anyway the duo didn't act.

Not yet.

But Sunny had already prepared for every scenario.

So when the elders called him in for inspection, he didn't run or hide, but instead walked calmly into their halls.

But the moment those superior elders used to enjoying fine wine and fairy dances, saw his bare chested broken body, and the shrunken stomach like that of an old man crawling from their crypts. – they immediately shooed him away.

"Get out and give your answers to the guard outside."

"Bastard dirtied my eyes."

"Ughh, is he the one who pissed himself?"

"I feel like I can still smell it, urglh."

Sunny ignored their insults and simply bowed before turning around and leaving the same way.

In the evening, the elders sent a couple of disciples to search everyone's rooms. Trying to look for any proof or weapons _ while using this chance to confiscate spirit stones and other hidden treasures they felt a fancy to.

The students all could just grit their teeth and curse in their hearts, while maintaining a smile on their faces.

Especially some girls who were inappropriately groped and harassed with the lame excuse that their front and back were looking too stuffy. And they need to check deeply if they hid anything inside.

Sunny saw this scene from a corner and could just shake his head. It seems no matter which world you go to, horny scums are a commonality.

After the disciples had their fun with looting and lusting, they finally remembered their job and walked towards the locker room.

Apparently every outer disciple had been given a personal storage box, as they lack the resources to equip storage pouches or space rings.

These boxes are where they can keep their valuables, and can be only opened by Qi marked keys assigned to the owners.

While everyone was having a 'peaceful' dinner in the cafeteria building, Sunny looked up after hearing a commotion break out.

"Your name is Remi?" One of the elder's pet disciples asked, while 3 others surrounded a young boy with a pale complexion.

"Uhh, yeah…what happened?" Remi asked with a stutter.

"So you're the criminal." The pet disciples sneered hearing his response, and grabbed his collar. "Tell me, where Thomas is , and what you did with him?"

Remi immediately trembled hearing the accusations and even forgot to struggle. "Me?_ what are you talking about? I didn't do anything. I don't know where Tommy is."

"Heh, still lying?" The leading disciple sneered and slapped Remi with a backhand, knocking his teeth to the floor.

"If you don't know where Tommy is then explain why we found his key in your locker? And where'd you get so many spirit stones from?"

"What? What spirit stones? I don't know anything?" Remi begged in confusion.

But his poor acting only caused the leading disciple to get even more angry. And soon he started beating and kicking Remi in front of everyone.

As if trying to force him to confess.

One of the leading disciples even went further, and directly stuffed Remi's face into the hot pot of soup.

"Stop lying. We know everything." He shouted, "You lost to Thomas in the last trial match in front of everyone. So to improve your chances of entering the inner court selection competition, you decided to take a shortcut by using a meridian cleansing pill, but failed to digest it."

"And knowing you have no chance of surpassing Thomas openly, you decided to kill him secretly, and steal all his hidden spirit stones to buy a healing medicine for yourself. That's the truth, right, you bastard."

"How dare you kill fellow sect brothers. Tell us where you hid his body?"

Sunny watched as the group of leading disciples threw accusations and their answers like a barrage, while torturing the poor fellow, who even lost his ability to speak under all that pain.

Sunny watched Remi mumble like a mad idiot with swollen lips and a half burnt tongue hanging loosely, and just raised a corner of his lips.

"That's what you get for stealing chicken from my plate." He muttered, remembering how the fool dared to snatch food from his table two days ago.

Sunny didn't join the crowd in cheering or questioning the criminal, he ate his dinner and then left the mess with steady steps.

As if what happened behind him had nothing to do with him. — contrast to the reality.

While throwing Thomas's corpse down the valley, Sunny had found a key hanging around the boy's neck. Feeling curious he decided to keep it at that time.

It was only a couple of days later did he learn that this key didn't belong to any almira or a suitcase in Thomas's room - but to the sect assigned personal secret storage box.

So when he learned that the elders were about to conduct an investigation into Thomas's disappearance, he knew he had to do something.

Because according to gangster 101 , which goes like "open cases are never a good news." and Murphy's law which said , "anything bad that can happen, will happen." — Sunny chose to become a little proactive.

Sneaking into the locker room wasn't tough, as after days of observation he had already learned that anybody with a little bit of power in the outer court is either greedy, horny, lazy - or all of them at once.

So when the man in charge of that building was plowing the field behind the tables, Sunny entered inside and swapped a few things here and there.

He also tried to take a look at his own storage box to see if he can find something valuable, but found he had no key on himself.

The original owner either lost it in the beast pit, or someone stole it from him.

This excuse was also what he used to visit locker rooms daily and get familiar with the surroundings before moving on with his plan.

—-

Originally he wanted to target one of Thomas's minions, but when Remi came looking for trouble, and he learned his and Tommy's riveting story – Rio changed his plan.

Because Remi had the strength, the motive, and the personality to do such a crazy thing.

After all, this was a ruthless man who dared to eat unauthorised pills and tried to cheat the sect & the elders.

Anyway even if his plan didn't work, he didn't care, he just wanted to muddy the waters first.

But what he didn't expect however was that these leading disciples would take things so far so soon. But then again, they were probably just following a formality and didn't really care who was the real culprit.

Maybe they just wanted to pick an idiot and frame him to soothe Thomas's father.

…

By the next dawn's rise, the outer sect had a new rule: no disciple was allowed beyond the allowed boundaries past sunset.

Sunny smirked as he worked in the dirt. Digging land and planting seeds.

The mini lockdown probably meant they hadn't found Thomas's body yet. Or what was left of it.

The Beast Valley took care of its meals quickly.

So the only real threat now was the loose ends: the lackeys.

And that one strange girl who kept showing up near him.

Sunny didn't know her. And from what he gathered via the whispers - she didn't know the original Sunny either.

But she was always watching his every move like she knew something.

Like she suspected something… anyway when their eyes met. She didn't look away.

(She's gonna be a trouble.) Sunny thought, as he looked away first.