Evidently, fewer people did not mean there were none. There were a group of people who were skilled in Kung Fu, who enjoyed living freely with a comfortable life and did not want to serve the royal family. Therefore, they became bounty hunters for a living.
They were also similar to the modern era's mercenaries and hired by paying a certain amount of money.
The price to employ differed according to their Kung Fu abilities.
Bounty hunters with a spiritual power level of four and above were extremely rare; hence, they were more precious and worth more than a panda.
If Gu Xijiu wanted to hire four masters for this mission, she would need to spend a minimum of two million ounces of silver!
Recently, she was unable to earn much but had to spend a lot. Two million ounces of silver was indeed a large sum of money and was not possible to gather in a short period. Therefore, she decided to go alone.