CMWKSD -Chapter 8 I Kill People—Lightning Fast

As an assassin who cultivated both medicine and poison, how could Jiu Yue possibly not recognize these things?

“Is tu fuling expensive?” Jiu Yue pointed at the tu fuling on the ground. Ji Yiqing froze for a moment. “This is tu fuling?”

Jiu Yue clicked her tongue. “Just tell me whether tu fuling is expensive or not.”

Ji Yiqing paused, thinking about some of the medicinal herbs he’d sold at the medical hall before. Many farmers gathered herbs themselves, but they were usually cheap, basic ones.

Things like wolf-tail root or fushu grass—washed, sun-dried, and processed—sold for about five wen per jin (a jin in ancient times was sixteen liang).

If you went up the mountain once, gathering, washing, drying, and processing these herbs might earn ten or twenty wen, and that was after spending the whole day. Sometimes, if the season was bad, you wouldn’t even get that one or two dozen wen.

He didn’t know the exact price of tu fuling, but seeing that it could be found before even entering deep into the mountains, it probably wasn’t very expensive. After some thought, Ji Yiqing said, “I don’t know the exact price. Processed, maybe fifty or sixty wen? Unprocessed, ten to twenty wen?”

Jiu Yue took a huge hit and staggered back a step. One jin of tu fuling, after drying, yielding three to five liang, was already considered pretty good.

“Then how much is rice—refined rice? How much is white flour? Pork? Chickens and ducks?”

Ji Yiqing fell silent for a rare moment, then strangely connected the dots in Jiu Yue’s train of thought. “Refined rice is twelve to fifteen wen, white flour should be eight wen right now. Fat-and-lean pork is twenty-two wen, pure lean meat is cheaper—eighteen or nineteen wen. Chickens and ducks are mostly around fifty wen each…”

Jiu Yue took another step back as if struck by lightning. That meant if she spent a whole day picking tu fuling, she could barely afford one jin of refined rice—and still couldn’t eat meat or vegetables.

They’d already been walking for over three hours. Looking at the distant cliff now, she had the urge to jump off and see if she could go back to the twenty-second century.

Standing at the edge of the cliff, Ji Yiqing looked at Jiu Yue nervously. “What’s wrong with you?”

Jiu Yue stared at the cliff in a daze, wavering back and forth between jumping and not jumping. Then she fell silent.

Forget it. Living badly was still better than dying well. If she jumped and didn’t return to the twenty-second century, she’d definitely be smashed to pieces.

Better forget it.

“Let’s go back.”

She’d completely disgraced the transmigrator community. Only now did Jiu Yue admit that she was utterly useless—someone who never lifted a finger and couldn’t tell grain from crops.

Ji Yiqing watched her. She’d been so lively all along—how did she suddenly wilt after just eating a meal?

She’d only eaten a little pastry at noon. Was she hungry?

As he walked, Ji Yiqing thought about finding some wild fruit for Jiu Yue to fill her stomach. His face was already ruined like this, yet Jiu Yue hadn’t disliked him for being ugly or frightening.

So he wouldn’t dislike Jiu Yue either, even if she couldn’t do anything and didn’t recognize anything.

They were already husband and wife.

He casually wiped the fruit on his clothes. “Hungry? This is sour and sweet—you can eat it.”

Jiu Yue listlessly took it. When she saw the bright red fruit, the same color as fresh blood, her eyes instantly lit up.

Ji Yiqing felt his scalp prickle under her gaze. He inexplicably had the feeling—here it comes again, here it comes again—she was about to make things difficult for him.

Jiu Yue suddenly remembered: even if she didn’t lift a finger and couldn’t tell crops apart, she was still an assassin. She could kill people!

Actually, she could open a medical clinic and work as a doctor. But since she’d already transmigrated, who wanted to work 996? Besides, who knew how much capital it took to open a clinic?

She didn’t even have a single wen—no capital at all. Open a clinic my ass.

She moved closer to Ji Yiqing, standing very near him. Ji Yiqing had just taken a bite of the fruit when Jiu Yue leaned in. He hurriedly glanced around guiltily—thankfully, there was no one around.

So he didn’t retreat and let her lean against him.

Jiu Yue lowered her voice. “Do you know anyone who wants someone killed?”

“What?” Ji Yiqing almost choked on his own saliva.

Jiu Yue grinned happily. “I mean, do you have that kind of connection? Like someone who really wants their enemy dead?”

Ji Yiqing swallowed hard. “And then?”

Jiu Yue’s eyes curved as she smiled. “Then they come to me. I kill people—lightning fast!”

As she spoke, Jiu Yue casually tried to sling an arm over Ji Yiqing’s shoulder like a buddy. Sensing her intention, Ji Yiqing immediately glanced around furtively again and deliberately lowered his shoulder.

But the height difference between them was a bit much, and Ji Yiqing’s shoulders were broad. Even after lowering them, Jiu Yue still had to tiptoe, making it awkward to reach.

She clicked her tongue and instead patted his shoulder. “When we make money, we split it one-nine. I get nine, you get one. You’ll be my manager.”

The shock Ji Yiqing had experienced all day didn’t compare to this moment. The wife he’d just married yesterday wanted to go into the business of killing people with him—and even give him a ten percent cut.

And what exactly was a “manager”?

Seeing Ji Yiqing not speaking, Jiu Yue pursed her lips. This guy was really a snake swallowing an elephant—never satisfied.

“Fine, two-eight. You get two, I get eight. I’m not giving any more.”

Ji Yiqing felt his scalp about to explode. He hurriedly said, “Jiu Yue, under the laws of Great Qi, killing means paying a life with a life. It’s illegal.”

Jiu Yue blinked. She knew that. Not just under Great Qi law—killing was illegal in Huaguo too, okay?

She was already an assassin—a complete outlaw who lived by killing. How could she not know that once she was caught, it’d be certain death?

But she really couldn’t swallow that throat-scratching food!

This was killing her.

After thinking for a moment, she still refused to give up. “You really don’t have any connections?”

Ji Yiqing’s brain spun faster than it ever had, desperately thinking of a way to make Jiu Yue abandon the idea of being an assassin.

After some thought, he finally found a reason.

“Ordinary people don’t pay much to have someone killed—at most three to five liang of silver. The risk is too high. Wealthy people can afford it, but in Great Qi, there aren’t as many rich people as you imagine. If you become an assassin, you won’t earn much silver, and once you’re discovered, you might even be wanted nationwide. You’d have to live on the run. By then, you might not even get yellow rice—just chaff and coarse food every meal.”

Jiu Yue let out a shocked “Ah.”

Had she really become this cheap?

Back in Huaguo, even before she reached rank one, she charged at least three to five hundred thousand per kill. After becoming number one, she wouldn’t even move for less than five million.

Great Qi really wouldn’t do.

Jiu Yue followed behind Ji Yiqing in a gloomy mood, casually killing two rabbits and a wild chicken along the way—so casually that Ji Yiqing was left in awe.

He almost blurted out that hunting could earn silver.

But thinking of Jiu Yue’s personality, she probably looked down on such meager gains from rabbits and chickens. If she hunted, it’d probably be tigers or bears—prey where it was either you die or I die.

Jiu Yue was, after all, a delicate young girl. He couldn’t possibly accompany her every time she went hunting. If something happened, the loss would outweigh the gain.

So Ji Yiqing said nothing, silently carrying the wild chicken and rabbits down the mountain.

By the time they got down, it still wasn’t dark. It seemed they only ate two meals here. Breakfast and lunch were around ten in the morning, and it wasn’t even four in the afternoon yet.