As we kept interrogating the two guards, we learned a lot about the Zhao family.
For starters, they were also a commoner family two generations ago, the sa as the i family. However, contrary to Ling and her parents, these guys fully embraced their role as slave owners.
The Zhao residence in Xiulan wasn’t even their main house, as they lived in the capital. Still, the oldest daughter regularly spent her ti in Xiulan since she liked being able to "play" with her slaves alone.
Zhao Lan’s parents and younger brother were staying in the capital, which was great news for us as it would make our job much easier.
"Do you know how many slaves they have in the capital?" I asked.
"I-I haven’t been there. But I’ve heard it’s over thirty..." the guard replied.
One of the guards stated that the Zhao family wasn’t the only one doing this, as many other noble families had dozens of enslaved commoners under their control.
Still, the Zhao family was the one that landed on our target, so they would be the ones falling first.
After we were done interrogating the guards, we teleported them to the Yuandu settlent to hide themselves. If anyone found out about all of the information they had given us, they were pretty much done.
When we returned to Xiulan, our plan of infiltrating Zhao Lan’s ho began.
Now that the two guards at the gate were gone, it was as easy as flying for three seconds to cross into the front yard.
Using our "search" spell, we could feel a few more presences walking inside the mansion and two others in the backyard.
"Those must be the other guards. What do you think?" I asked lina in a low volu.
"Let’s get everyone out of here..." she replied.
We started with the two in the backyard, knocking them out before they could even see us and teleporting them to Yuandu.
Then, we made our way to the front entrance and used gravity magic to unlock it, giving us easy access inside the mansion.
Thanks to our "search" spell, we could feel how far the guards patrolling the halls were from us.
Since we drank an invisibility potion during the day to infiltrate the city and save those slaves from the rchant, we couldn’t drink it again as it could only be used one ti every 24 hours.
Still, there weren’t that many guards around, so it wouldn’t be a big deal. Even if soone yelled, I could just mute the sound from leaving the mansion.
After knocking down two more guards in the halls and teleporting them to Yuandu, we decided to grab the last one and ask a few more questions.
The mansion was pretty big, and the rooms seed to be upstairs, but our "search" spell didn’t show anyone up there, so we were wondering where Zhao Lan was.
When we grabbed the last guard and placed the dagger against his neck, he instantly replied.
"Lady Zhao is in the dungeon. I-I don’t know exactly how to get in there..." the man said.
He explained that all new slaves of Zhao Lan were always sent to the library, but they never ca back out. The few tis they did, they were chained by the necks and walking behind the noble.
The workers in the mansion understood that the entrance to the dungeon was obviously in there, but nobody knew how to get the secret door open.
After teleporting that last guard to Yuandu, we went to the mansion’s library.
It was absolutely imnse. All of the bookcases were filled, and they were at least ten feet tall.
There were different corridors, but if we were looking for a secret door, it was easy to deduce that it would be close to the walls and not on a random corridor between bookcases.
I tried using my "search" spell to see if I could detect magic around us, but there was nothing, leading to believe that the door was an actual contraption and not a spell.
"Well, there is one thing to try out..." I said as I started to pull out the books from their places.
Usually, in movies and stuff, soone would pull a random book, and the secret door would open. However, after I had gone through dozens of them, I started to think that might not be the case here.
At the back of the library, there was a portrait of a man and a plaque at the bottom with his na.
"Zhao Jin, The Malevolent Trader"
It was a painting of the Zhao mber that brought them out of poverty and turned their family into nobles.
"That’s a weird title..." I said.
However, lina had actually heard his na in one of her history classes at the academy.
Zhao Jin was called the malevolent trader since he started selling weapons. But there was a catch, and it was the fact that he would sell them to anyone—from knights and soldiers to bandits and murderers.
Eventually, after amassing a large wealth, their family was given noble status, and he stopped trading with other parties, becoming the sole weapon trader of Guanghua. Nonetheless, his title remained the sa.
It was sort of a grey area for . The man was selling weapons to bad people, sure. But he was doing it to give his family a better life, so I couldn’t really bla him.
His descendants, though, didn’t seem to hold those sa values.
"Hmmmm..." lina pondered aloud as she grabbed the fra of the painting and lifted it up.
"What the-? How did you know that was there?" I said, noticing that there seed to be a hidden button behind the painting.
"Uhh, intuition?" she replied, unsure of the reason herself.
When I pressed the button, we heard a noise coming from the opposite side of the library.
Contrary to my thoughts of the bookcases opening to the side into a secret room, it was actually the floor tile under the heavy marble table that opened up like a lid, showing a staircase that led underground.
"Alright, let’s focus," I said to lina.
"Right..." she replied, clenching her fists with confidence.
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