HELP! These Girls Wants To Kill Me

"WHAT?" The middle-aged woman couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise as she looked at the person beside her, who just brought her the news, in disbelief.

"Is it true?" She asked once again, just to make sure she wasn’t hearing things.

The woman beside her just nodded in response, letting the middle-aged woman digest everything that she had just told her.

"Go and secure the place. Make sure no one enters there." The middle-aged woman spoke in a hoarse tone and, after thinking for a moment, added further.

"I will finish the inspection here first."

The moment she finished speaking, two more women from the group retreated and headed out with the person who just brought the news.

"..." The middle-aged woman just stood in silence there for a while, with her eyes occasionally flashing. For a moment, she couldn’t believe her ears. Someone sneaked into the Imperial City... especially the Inner City, and killed a member of the Harvest Hall.

Even though they themselves were going to deal with the members who were leeching off the resources, it still didn’t change the fact that someone killed a member of the Royal family in the inner city.

They not only killed, but also enclosed it with an iron block. How and why? She had no answer for it. At least not until she sees it with her own eyes.

"How many years has it been since someone like this happened in the Inner city?" The woman couldn’t help but mutter to herself. She had been living in the inner city for almost five to six decades, and this was her first time coming across something like it. This was the first time a member of the royal family was killed in their own house, and inside the inner city, nonetheless.

With such a major event, she didn’t even have the mind to pay attention to this so-called annual gathering and the breakthroughs.

So, looking at the ’paper’ that the woman in front of her was holding, she asked in a flat tone.

"Just explain the changes. If it’s satisfactory, you can continue your research, and if it’s not, then you have one week to come up with something satisfactory."

Yang Ze simply gave her a nod and once again raised the ’paper’ in his hand before introducing it once again with great enthusiasm.

"This is the new and improved material that I painstakingly managed to craft after countless sleepless nights. This is when..."

"STOP." The middle-aged woman couldn’t help but raise her hands with a frown on her face.

"I have no interest in knowing how you developed it."

"Just tell me what’s so special about it compared to the previous ones?"

"....." Yang Ze, who has prepared a grand speech, exhaled a mouthful of air before placing it in her hand.

"Compared to the previous ’paper’, it has almost twice the toughness as well as resistance to sharp objects."

"Here, let me display it to you." Picking up the knife, he slashed it towards the woman’s palm holding the piece of ’paper’.

Looking at the incoming knife, the woman didn’t flinch. With her strength at the Early Stage of Foundation Forging, the knife couldn’t harm her even if she just stood still and let someone hack her neck.

She watched intently as the knife slashed across her palm, holding the paper, but the paper was perfectly fine.

"Huh!?" Looking at the unharmed piece of paper, her eyes instantly lit up as she grabbed it between her fingers and kneaded it for a while, measuring its toughness. After a while, she gave a nod to the woman in front of her and put the paper in her pocket.

"I need to take it back and do some more tests on it. But if what you are saying is true, then you have made a great achievement."

With a smile, she raised her hand and was about to pat the shoulder of the woman to show her appreciation.

Looking at her actions, Yang Ze almost jumped in fright. If she truly tried to pat his shoulders, her hands would pass through them and then...

’Damn it.’ Cursing in a low voice, he immediately flicked his finger and with that, his illusory figure instantly knelt on the ground with a pious expression as he spoke in an excited voice.

"Thank you, senior."

The middle-aged woman’s hand paused mid-air as she was taken aback by this sudden action of Yang Ze, but this confusion of hers lasted only momentarily before a wide smile appeared on her face.

"Good... good..." With the constant nod of her head, she took out a small cloth bag from her robe and threw it to the figure kneeling on the ground.

"Even though one only gets rewards after a month, I am going to make an exception for you due to your outstanding contribution to the royal family."

On the other side, Chen Meili’s eyes widened in surprise as she watched such a ridiculous scene playing out in front of her. But other than cursing ’Yang Ze’ for being such a vixen, there wasn’t anything else she could do.

But deep in her mind, she had decided to teach that bitch a lesson once this gathering was over.

"And what about you?" Just when she was in a daze, the woman’s voice brought her back to her senses.

"Did you make any progress?"

Looking at the middle-aged woman’s face that had returned to its previous calm, Chen Meili’s body shivered involuntarily as she hurriedly picked up the few herbs.

"I... I have..." Her voice stammered for a moment before she managed to complete her sentence.

"I have managed to reduce the time by approximately five per cent for the herbs, and the quality has increased a bit."

The middle-aged woman picked up the herbs, observed them in silence as if wanting to see through them and then just shrugged in response. "Good."

With that, she collected the small bottle of liquid and headed towards another person.

It didn’t take too long for her to go through every single person in the room. Everyone who participated in this small annual gathering had some kind of breakthrough.

"Well... while it will take time to verify your claims, for now, you all have made contributions to the royal family."

"You all will receive your rewards a month later when your claims are verified."

Without wasting another moment, the woman turned around and walked out of the building, leaving behind the handful of people who could finally breathe in relief.

"Lucky bitch." The moment the woman walked out of the building, Yang Ze felt someone standing behind him before he heard that familiar voice.

"But your luck won’t last forever."

With a cold snort, she walked out of the building before leaving behind another sentence.

"Watch your back, you whore. Don’t let me see you."

Looking at the back of Chen Meili showing such open hostility, Yang Ze was left speechless. He didn’t know what kind of enmity there was between the two of them, and he didn’t even want to find out.

As long as she didn’t take any actions and only used her words, he would simply ignore her.

Shaking his head, he cleared his head of those distracting thoughts and glanced around the room, his gaze occasionally stopping at the women who were now making their way out of the building as well.

This was the first time his little trip to this annual gathering gave him a better understanding of the Harvest Hall and the duties they needed to perform. It also made him realise that the competition in this place was cut-throat and made him aware of the cruelty of this inner city.

Just because the members of the Harvest Hall weren’t present at the Annual gathering, they were executed. He didn’t know if things like this happened every year, and had no interest in knowing.

For now, he was glad that he had come. Had he stayed back and skipped this gathering, someone would have definitely knocked on his door to execute him. Even though they wouldn’t have been able to hurt him, it would have made things a bit difficult for him.

"Well, guess I don’t need to join the new recruits for now."

Initially, Yang Ze thought about leaving this identity and joining the royal family as a new recruit, but after some thought, he gave up on it.

Even though being in new recruits would have given him the basic understanding of how everything around here worked, he would had to give up on the identity of the already established member of the Harvest Hall who perhaps had more authority than the newcomers.

Besides, the newcomers wouldn’t be able to come into contact with the secrets and the core members of the royal family. To earn that, they might have to work here for years or even decades. And it was something that the current Yang Ze didn’t want to do.

In the end, he could only resume his identity as Sun Qiao.

Walking out of the building, Yang Ze didn’t head back to the house but chose to explore the market around him.

The cooldown on Cauldron of Creation has long since disappeared, but because of how busy he had been in the past few days, as well as the fact that he didn’t have enough materials, he held back.

But now that he was in the market with infinite money at his disposal... Yang Ze wanted to see just where the limits of the Cauldron lay.

Without any hesitation, he rushed out of the building, headed to the nearest shop and began to browse through. He didn’t buy everything in sight; instead, he chose to buy only herbs first. He wanted to see what the final outcome would be if he threw every single herb in it.

Walking to the nearest store, he didn’t even bother to haggle and just grabbed one of each herb. From herbs for healing to herbs for cultivation... as long as one had money, everything was available.

Yang Ze didn’t have the knowledge of the economy and the correct value of the herbs, but he didn’t care. It only takes a fraction of his mental energy to generate thousands of gold coins that he could sustain in the real world indefinitely.

It took Yang Ze almost five hours to buy one of every herb. Just to make sure he would get the best thing, he even added poisonous herbs.

He would slightly alter his physique using the illusion to buy herbs, throw them all into the cauldron of creation, walk out, change his appearance and then repeat the process.

By the time he came out of the last shop, Yang Ze had spent over five thousand gold coins... a staggering amount of money that some people would never see in their lives.

"Now then..." Patting his hand in satisfaction, Yang Ze walked out of the last shop and made his way back to the house he had been staying in.

By now, it was starting to rain once again.

Holding the umbrella in one hand, Yang Ze looked at the locked door in satisfaction.

"Good. None of them came here." Initially, he was thinking that someone might have made their way towards this place, but from the looks of it, he was overthinking.

Even if someone actually came, under the influence of Yang Ze’s illusion, this place looked deserted, with nothing special.

Taking a look around, Yang Ze saw a bunch of people in the distance, at the house where the rotting corpse of the woman was found. He just glanced once before walking inside the house and locking the door.

After manifesting a large, thick wooden pillar to block the door, he headed into the basement, took a sharp breath and finally glanced at the illusory Cauldron in front of him that was filled to the brim with herbs.

Then... without wasting another second, Yang Ze muttered in a soft voice.

"Merge."