"Teacher, don't you think that's a bit much?"
Bai Jingfei didn't have much of a conscience but she had some. She didn't feel particularly guilty but she did feel extremely bad for heavenly doctor Ling who was making a pretty big loss with the shady deal heavenly doctor Ming had scammed him into.
"Feifei, don't you worry! I will sell him some more seeds to compensate after I steal the roses…"
Bai Jingfei shook her head helplessly and followed heavenly doctor Ming back to the carriage and back up the mountain.
Jade mountain wasn't exactly the safest part of the kingdom but it had never really had too many problems. It was much like an ordinary mountain, a few wild animals here and there, not too many of them though.
But in front of the carriage stood a bunch of wild animals that weren't exactly animals.
They were probably bandits.
Led by a muscular thug who had more hair than a bear, the group were a uniquely ugly gang. They would definitely fit right into an oddball parade.
Some with wonky teeth, some with uncombed hair, some with beards that could hide rats, the only thing the group had in common was being ugly mean with weaponry.
The ugly offenders had weapons slung over their shoulders, a few bows, a couple of rusty looking swords and what looked like poorly designed spears.
Bai Jingfei's main point of study was weaponry. While she had studied quite a bit of physics it was mostly to deal with nuclear weapons. Thus Bai Jingfei stared at the weapons in disdain, criticising their structure.
The rusty swords and spears wouldn't give a clean cut and would probably give the person cut by it tetanus. Well maybe that would be useful.
The arrows looked like they wouldn't pierce and Bai Jingfei criticized their not too aerodynamic structure.
'Tch- If only the tips were a little longer, they would definitely fly much faster…' thought Bai Jingfei as an arrow came flying straight at her.
The arrow flew right past her cheek, leaving a small cut.
'Okay at least the arrow is sharp.' she thought before finally feeling the pain of the cut.
"Ouch! What the heck!" she said out loud, "Teacher we need closed roofed carriages, this is no good. They cut my face!"
Heavenly doctor Ming turned to Bai Jingfei casually and pulled out an ointment from his medical box. It was in a little ceramic urn that was quite cute, at least to Bai Jingfei. It also looked expensive.
"That'll be three gold when we get back, FeiFei." stated heavenly doctor Ming matter-of-factly.
Bai Jingfei looked at her shameless teacher and started applying the green paste onto her face.
"Teacher, who are you trying to fool? That ointment costs 3 coppers to make." she said glaring at heavenly doctor Ming who grinned back.
"Fine. You can have it for one gold."
Bai Jingfei nodded happily but in front of the carriage stood the grumpy looking bear-man hybrid. He definitely wasn't happy at their reaction.
He had made his subordinate shoot at the girl so that she would hopefully burst into tears. It would then be hard for heavenly doctor Ming to think straight, and he would have to give into and of his demands.
But to his surprise instead of creating a ruckus, the two began squabbling over the cost of a medicine, completely ignoring his gang that was just forced to stand around and stare.
He pulled up his rotting leather sword holder in a move surprisingly similar to cowboys in a wild west movie. He was quite desperately trying to assert his dominance to no avail.
Bai Jingfei was applying the medicine and heavenly doctor Ming was used to this.
The occasional bandit or two would show up but most of the time heavenly doctor Ming would just get Ladder to shoot at them with a crossbow.
Ladder had good arm strength and reach. More often than not, he would take down a robber or two in a single strike.
Unfortunately this time around, Ladder had already left.
Bai Jingfei and heavenly doctor Ming never thought they would encounter bandits on their way up a mountain that heavenly doctor Ming owned on a day when Ladder wasn't present. But that was exactly what had happened here.
They looked at the coachman who was steering the carriage but he had to deal with horses. Bai Jingfei didn't want to walk back home so she didn't want to bother the coachman.
They still weren't the slightest bit worried.
Bai Jingfei was more worried about getting her beauty sleep than anything these men could do.
The bandits began whispering among themselves as the leader pointed to a huge scratch on his chest in a desperate attempt to draw the attention back to himself. He wasn't wearing a shirt and Bai Jingfei felt embarrassed on his behalf.
"Do you know how I got this scar?" he roared.
Bai Jingfei shook her head casually as if to say 'how the heck would I know', while heavenly doctor Ming took a completely different approach.
"If it was Ladder, we're not giving any compensation." he said shaking his head, "You should have known better when you came onto my mountain."
Now to make it clear, the bandit had no clue of who Ladder was. He had no interest in finding out either. He had to think carefully as to how to proceed from there.
"Boss, should we just take all their goods?" whispered wonky teeth sidekick bandit.
Bear-man hybrid bandit boss stared at the group before deciding on pressuring heavenly doctor Ming into handing over all their gold.
"Hand over your gold, all of it, or else we'll kill you all and take it either way." he roared again, making Bai Jingfei feel pity on his vocal chords.
Unfortunately for the bear-man hybrid bandit boss, the one thing he would not be able to get from the stingy teacher-student pair was gold.