"Who's asking?" the old man's hand and voice were both trembling, but he still stood firm between Josephine Wong and those behind him. Jianmen took a look at Josephine Wong and stood back to observe the changes in the environment as well as every other prisoner in this dungeon.
"Someone who's here to bust you out, and take you to Natalie Brown." Josephine Wong extended her hand to them and spoke with a soft and low voice: "Come with me if you wanna live."
"Where's Natalie, what's going on?" the old woman came forward and asked.
"You're her mother, I assume?" Josephine Wong looked at the old woman: "She's in a safe place with us. She agreed to cooperate with us in exchange for breaking you out and taking you to her. Come with us."
"They're coming back from the motel." Jianmen reminded Josephine Wong from behind: "I'll go find some others to take back."
"Come with us." seeing that Natalie's family were still very hesitant, Josephine Wong insisted: "Look, if we want to hurt you, we'd done that already, okay? She's safe with us - but she's worried about you. And she won't be truly safe if she knew that you're still out here as hostages."
"What's her pass code?" just this moment, the young boy asked: "She has a pass code for us. If she really sent you, she would have told you this."
"Red Bean Cake." Jianmen answered: "She told me if you have questions, just say Red Bean Cake."
"It's true." the young boy's eyes sparkled as he turned to the old man and the old woman.
"Come on." Josephine Wong gave each one of them a purple paper flower: "Activate this when you feel that you might get attacked. You shouldn't need them, but just in case. And before we go, we'll need a tiny bit of your blood."
"Come on! You wanna fucking die or what? Come with me if you want to have a chance of survival… no! I don't fucking care if you bring your cupcake!" outside of this one cell, Jianmen was randomly selecting people from this dungeon to take with him.
Even though they managed to break down the locks and barriers to at least fifty cells in this dungeon, only less than one third of them were in a state where they could or even wanted to leave - most of them just started randomly wandering around as if they were still under the influence of some kind of disorientation spell or drug. And for the few of them who could respond to Jianmen's invitation, many of whom declined, either out of fear for Lady Vyn, or for fear of facing the unknown out there having been locked in this place for too long.
"Okay, but how are we gonna get outta here?" the old man asked: "The exit will be guarded, and this place has a locking array to prevent portals from being constructed..."
"No worries, we will find our way out." Josephine Wong sensed the energy fields briefly and said: "If not, we can forcefully create one, but it's gonna take some preparation."
"I think they're on their way here." Jianmen brought three sickly looking men in broken clothes of different colors and one woman in cartoonishly thick clothes with him and told Josephine Wong: "Let's go, maybe we will have time to bring more out later."
Both Josephine Wong and Jianmen led the people they took from the underground dungeon to the entrance through which they came in. But by the time they got there, they saw three individuals on their way in and with different kinds of magical weapons in their hands. One of them was Jimbo, the man who owned and ran the Pawn Shop, and the other two were an old man and an old woman, who they saw when they passed by a small grocery store on their way into this town.
"What the - " "How - " "Fuck!"
Before any of the three individuals could react, Josephine Wong charged at all three of them with a string of afterimages behind her. Jimbo was only able to raise his hand holding a curved short sword before he was kicked in the stomach, then chest, and finally face and his body was sent into the air with the curved short sword flying off his hand. The old woman yelled out a spell and tried to point her dark red crooked twig of a wand at Josephine Wong but her wrist and forearm was grabbed by Josephine Wong and had her aim misdirected - a bolt of pale white energy shot out from the tip of her wand and hit the old man beside her instead, which threw him onto the wall on his side, leaving marks of splattered blood on the wall and knocking him completely unconscious.
"You fucking bit - " the old woman was about to scream and curse but was cut off by a karate chop to the side of her neck and knocked her out as well.
Jimbo crawled up and tried to launch another attack, but Josephine Wong just launched a fist strike from a distance and a giant bolt of light blue energy crashed into Jimbo's body like a small car and almost embedded him into the brick wall behind him.
"Okay, let's go." Josephine Wong adjusted her hair and said to Jianmen and all those following them.
"Boom!" the trap door under Jimbo's Pawn Shop was blown open by a powerful energy blast from below, and a total of ten people emerged from the hole where it once was.
"Okay, when you get out of the portal, go into the inn, someone will be there to bring you to your rooms." Josephine Wong swung her right arm from high to low and opened up a portal giving off purple and blue light on her right side: "Go, now!"
Natalie's family did not hesitate and went into the portal as fast as they could, the people Jianmen found, on the other hand, needed some convincing and even shoving.