"Banned from trading here?"The youth then smiled, as he waved a hand at the bronze tag in the a.s.sistant Hall Manager"s grasp. "I am not particularly worried about that. Feel free to take that back, if you are that concerned about the rules. I am certain that neither me nor my manservant would mind if I switched to another buyer," he said almost nonchalantly.
"I hear that the Red Fish Medicine Hall is rather popular at the moment, over at the West side of Changqing City. Perhaps they would be interested in what I have to offer."
The woman"s eyes bulged, as her face began to turn a bright crimson at his unadorned threat. And her voice was clearly much louder than it had been before:
"You dare ...!"
Qin Feng snorted as he shrugged at her. "I dare? What do you mean by that? You are the one tossing me out, aren"t you? I am not the one who is making things difficult, am I? It seems Fu Lai Medicine Hall has forgotten all about the lesson my manservant taught you, just last year! To think that your former a.s.sistant Hall Manager Luo would have let you take over without telling you all about that!"
He laughed then, as the new a.s.sistant Hall Manager sputtered. It was clear that she had heard about what happened to a.s.sistant Hall Manager Luo, just last Spring, when Qin Feng sent his puppet in for the first time.
Well, if he did that once, he could do it again. Besides, since the conflict with the Barbarians was inevitable, the City would be in need of a great deal of curatives. So he was not too concerned that he would find no buyer for his Yellow Spotted Lotus Roots. It was the primary ingredient in more than three types of blood-staunching medicine, after all.
He had only come to Fu Lai Medicine Hall because he thought it would be easier to deal with that group, with their shared history and all. Since that wasn"t the case, he didn"t mind smacking this idiot woman in the face, and heading off to Red Fish Medicine Hall instead.
"Ahem."
The cough was as fake as it could possibly get, but Qin Feng turned towards the source of that noise all the same. It would be interesting to see who was intruding on this unusual conversation. After all, this woman in front of him was supposed to be the new a.s.sistant Hall Manager of Fu Lai Medicine Hall, and there were only two that he knew of, who outranked her in that place.
Then his smile grew a little wider, as he recognized the man with the thin moustaches stepping into the private alcove. "You are being a little noisy here, a.s.sistant Hall Manager Ling. What is the problem here, that has you so fl.u.s.tered?" he asked, closing the door behind him as soon as he had entered.
The woman certainly did not miss her chance to point her finger at Qin Feng. "This young man came here using another"s identification tag, sir. I was questioning him about it and he threatened to leave Fu Lai Medicine Hall hereonafter, and do his trading with Red Fish Medicine Hall instead. Hence, my ... outburst earlier," she explained quickly.
"Oh?"
Former a.s.sistant Hall Manager Luo Junyuan turned to him then, and he could see that there was a thread of caution in the older man"s eyes. It seems he had not forgotten another episode, and what had happened to him, after he confronted another over-proud and cantankerous customer.
But what caught his attention most was how his words had made the younger woman half-step to his rear twitch the corners of her lips as she eyed the new Deputy Hall Manager. Was that a mocking smile? Did she think that he was throwing away his face?
That was how it looked, to Qin Fang"s eyes.
"I must apologize, sir, if a.s.sistant Hall Manager Ling had failed to make our Fu Lai Medicine Hall"s stand clear. We cannot allow to let our tags be ... handed from person to person without some checks being done. After all, it would be ... irresponsible to the person that we had issued the tag to, if the one using it had obtained it ... through dubious methods."
The man reached out and plucked the said tag from the woman"s hand as he spoke, and he casually glanced at it, even as he continued:
"I shall have to ask you where you ..."
Then his voice choked off, as his eyes grew wider than teacups, as he devoted his entire attention on the bronze tag before him. Nor did he recover, until a.s.sistant Hall Manager Ling nudged him with her elbow.
Only then did the new Deputy Hall Manager look up at Qin Feng, and swallowed twice before he continued his line of questioning:
"Apologies for that. I suddenly felt a ... discomfort in my throat. As I was saying, I shall have to ask you where you had obtained this particular tag?"
His voice, however, now held more than the trace of politeness that he had been using before. And his manner too, suddenly had become a lot more obsequious.
Which was enough to make Qin Feng break out into a wide grin.
"Why, that belonged to my manservant, of course. Who did you think was growing those herbs that he had been selling, all this time?"
Standing behind Luo Junyuan, a.s.sistant Hall Manager Ling Jing"er was finding it harder to keep the smile on her face any longer. Why hadn"t he told her that earlier?
Of course, given the state of her temper at the moment, how was she able to remember that she had not given him a chance to do so? Didn"t she tear into him at once, the moment that she saw him? He barely had the opportunity to admit that he wasn"t the one who was issued with the shop tag!
"I believe that you should know the rules of the Heavenly Sword School, regarding the management of their medicine gardens? So long as one can satisfy the basic requirements - offering up the stated, base-line herbs harvested from the same, the rest would become his property? Including those that he harvests from the Forest?
"This is said to be the School"s method to ... encourage their more outstanding Outer Circle disciples to pay more attention to their tasks. According to the Elders that I have questioned, at least," Qin Feng chuckled softly, as he shook his head.
Deputy Hall Manager Luo Junyuan, on the other hand, seemed lost in his own thoughts, as was the woman at his back, the moment that he mentioned his relationship with the man in green who had visited the Medicine Hall previously.
Both of them, however, held a different view towards the now-absent subject of his conversation. After all, just who was his manservant?
So it was rather unlikely that they had heard anything else after that.
* * *