Even if Loopy Toad wasn"t at school, it had also heard the rumors about Dopey Guo"s many uncles.
So the question now was: How many... uncles... did Dopey Guo have?
It was a very mystical question.
But now that it had met Wei Zhi, Loopy Toad finally understood why Dopey Guo had eyes and ears everywhere and knew so much gossip – forget the rest of his uncles, the gossip Dopey Guo got from Wei Zhi alone was more than enough.
As a self-employed pet trainer who traveled all over and who used to have a military background, the information Wei Zhi could gather in this circle given his profession and unique background was naturally a lot more than ordinary people. Before a lot of major events were officially made public, these sort of people would probably have already heard about them in their WeChat Moments. Although Dopey Guo wasn"t in this circle, his uncle was!
"Not hungry?"
Wei Zhi was a bit embarra.s.sed and scratched his head when he saw Loopy Toad stare blankly at the bag of dog food he had taken out. "Does Brother Dog not eat dog food usually?"
"..."
Loopy Toad didn"t know how to reply.
Cultivating the "Demon King Heart Sutra" consumed a lot of physical strength, so the energy supply in dog food was in fact very important for Loopy Toad. It ate dog food... but the problem was that the dog food it ate wasn"t any ordinary kind.
After it had started eating the fly-flavored dog food which Dopey Guo had given it, Loopy Toad found it couldn"t eat any other dog food.
"Mm... I"m not hungry right now."
Loopy Toad broke out in a sweat, but right after that its expression changed, indicating that something was wrong.
"What"s the matter?" Wei Zhi looked at it.
"That bunch is here..." Loopy Toad narrowed its eyes and shook out its tail as it looked in one direction.
It could smell the aura of that bone dragon man, and was certain that the men in black who had been chasing it earlier had already found them and were downstairs.
Cultivators could disrupt their spiritual awareness and even create fake spiritual awareness as cover, but the one thing they couldn"t conceal was their auras. Unless they sealed all the pores on their bodies, Loopy Toad would be able to sniff out even the slightest trace of an aura.
...
The bone dragon man and the group of men in black arrived downstairs at the family apartment building. They had stopped their cars in the mouth of the alley where Wei Zhi had abandoned his earlier.
"It"s here, that dog"s inside." The bone dragon man who was the leader sneered. He had had his bone dragon pick up the scent in the car, which had led them to this apartment building. Although the bone dragon"s sense of smell wasn"t as good as a dog"s, a third-cla.s.s bone dragon could still differentiate between auras.
"This place doesn"t look simple. Is it really alright for us to chase them down here?"
"I"m the leader of this operation. If anything happens, I"ll take responsibility." The bone dragon man looked at the building in front of him with his hands clasped behind his back. "This dog is definitely not simple! At the a.s.sessment center earlier, it deliberately released its aura to warn me off. My bone dragon also told me that there was an abnormal wave coming off it that doesn"t belong to a spirit beast... If we can catch it and hand it over to the Society of Saints, we can definitely get a good price for it."
"....Will the Society of Saints really take it?"
"Of course we can"t abduct people, but we can still abduct spirit beasts. There are still some vacant spots in the society"s spirit beast cla.s.ses, and they are in urgent need of special spirit beasts... When we have this guy, we"ll feed it spirit water so that it"ll lose its memories. Then we"ll wash it clean and sell it." The bone dragon man laughed. "I believe the Society of Saints will reward us very handsomely."
Without waiting for his subordinates to respond, the bone dragon man had already stepped into the apartment building.
Roughly two minutes later, he arrived at the door.
"They"re here..."
Behind the door, Wei Zhi and Loopy Toad held their breaths.
In the next moment, there was a deafening sound of pounding on the door. "Since you have the ability to hide, you should also have the ability to open the door!"
Loopy Toad: "..."
Wei Zhi: "..."
After a while, Wei Zhi still took the initiative to open the door. He had spent a lot of money on it back then in order to cater for the indoor green environment; air circulation technology had been incorporated into it, and it served partly as an air freshener. But despite how costly it had been, it had one weakness: it was fragile.
It was unable to withstand a Golden Core cultivator"s repeated hammering.
Wei Zhi opened the door and saw the men in black, led by the bone dragon man, still carrying the cage, the rope, and the electric prod.
Wei Zhi was astonished. "How did you get in?" Logically speaking, this family apartment building had always been off-limits to outsiders!
Crossing his arms, the bone dragon man smiled and fished out a pack of cigarettes from his bosom. "I have this!"
Wei Zhi was utterly surprised – that heavy smoker at the doors had let these people in for a pack of cigarettes. He really had no moral integrity!
"Boy, I don"t know what your relations.h.i.+p with this dog is, but I advise you to mind your own business." The bone dragon man"s deep gaze was fixed on Wei Zhi.
Wei Zhi couldn"t help laughing. "I"m sorry, but I really love Brother Dog!"
Loopy Toad: "..."
The men behind the bone dragon man couldn"t help going "Ehh" at Wei Zhi"s words.
Wei Zhi took a deep breath, his face very serene. He clasped his hands unhurriedly behind his back and stared at the bone dragon man in front of him. "Since you"re already here and you insist on following this course, does that mean you"re prepared to pay the price?"
The bone dragon man couldn"t help laughing. "I won"t be frightened! What is the worst that can happen in what we"re doing? What"s the crime in catching stray cats and dogs and selling them for money? But with the recent trend caused by the Society of Saints, we want to make easy money."
"I see! You"re pet hunters!" Wei Zhi now finally understood. These people were the pet hunters whom the pet trainers circle strongly boycotted.
The kind of work pet hunters did wasn"t fit for the light, and they usually chose to operate at night. Even for Wei Zhi, this was the first time that he had seen them act so arrogantly in broad daylight.
"Now that you know who we are, explanations are no longer necessary." The bone dragon man adjusted his stance; pet trainers and pet hunters had hostile relations to begin with.
Wei Zhi protected Loopy Toad behind him; since this matter involved pet hunters, Wei Zhi had to take action even if he didn"t want to. "Brother Dog, stand there and don"t move!"
Loopy Toad: "..."
Wei Zhi adjusted his stance. "Let me deal with this guy first!"
Just then, the bone dragon man actually attacked first with a preemptive strike. He was very fast, and with its line of sight blocked by Wei Zhi, Loopy Toad couldn"t see the man"s exact movements.
When it s.h.i.+fted its viewpoint, it saw that the bone dragon man had already directly hit Wei Zhi with the electric prod in his hand.
Pa! There was an explosion of electric light!
There was the sound of an electric current...
Contrary to the bone dragon man"s expectations, Wei Zhi was actually unharmed!
The bone dragon man: "That"s impossible! My electroshock magic treasure has an electric current of one thousand volts!"
Wei Zhi grabbed the electric prod and smiled coldly. "I once raised a yellow mouse that also emitted one hundred thousand volts; I grew up being electroshocked!"