Upon hearing Seele's words, the waiter, who had originally been wearing a professional smile, suddenly had a change of expression, his Face turning cold.
His warm and attentive attitude from a second ago vanished without a trace, replaced by an undisguised contempt and arrogance.
"What? Don't tell me you can't afford it?"
The waiter sneered, crossing his arms and looking down at the four girls sitting at the table, his tone filled with mockery.
"I didn't force you to order this dish at first; I merely recommended it to you. In the end, you were the ones who nodded and agreed to order this signature dish!"
The waiter's voice rose several notches, intentionally letting the other diners in the hall hear.
"If you paupers can't afford it, don't come to a high-end restaurant like this to put on airs! You ordered it, and now you want to skip out on the bill? I'm telling you, you must pay every single cent of these five hundred thousand gold coins today. Otherwise, don't even think about leaving through those doors!"
Faced with the waiter's blatant attempt to fleece them, Seele immediately became furious.
"Stop using such twisted logic!"
Seele stood up abruptly, arguing her point without backing down.
"We did agree to order this dish, but you didn't inform us of the price beforehand! Furthermore, this is just an ordinary hundred-year Spirit Beast. Even if you took a whole, live hundred-year Spirit Beast to an auction house, its value could never reach an absurdly high price like five hundred thousand gold coins!"
Seele pointed at the pot of meat soup in the center of the table and said coldly.
"This is clearly a dishonest shop fleecing customers!"
The argument here was very loud, and by now, the surrounding diners in the restaurant hall were turning their attention toward them.
Seeing these four young girls being harassed by the restaurant, someone in the crowd sighed and couldn't help but speak up in a low voice to advise them.
"Little girl, forget it. Just spend the money to avoid trouble."
A middle-aged diner shook his head, kindly reminding them.
"This shop has a very deep background. You girls from out of town can't afford to provoke them. Just treat it as a bitter lesson, pool your money together to settle the bill, and leave. Otherwise, in a moment, it won't be something money can solve."
Hearing this diner's advice, Seele did not compromise; instead, she became even more confused.
"A bitter lesson?"
Seele looked around and asked loudly with a frown.
"Is there no one in Shrek City who manages this kind of blatant robbery in broad daylight?!"
Hearing Seele's question, the waiter didn't feel the slightest bit guilty; instead, the expression on his Face became quite arrogant.
"Manage? Who dares to manage it?"
The waiter sneered, as if he had heard some huge joke, and pointed fearlessly at the ground beneath his feet.
"Little girl, why don't you open your eyes and see where this is? This is Shrek City!"
"In Shrek City, the ultimate rule is Shrek Academy! The boss of Shrek City is Shrek Academy!"
The waiter raised his chin triumphantly and said arrogantly.
"To tell you the truth, within our Shrek City, the prices for Spirit Beast meat in all high-end restaurants are basically guided prices set secretly by people within Shrek Academy! We are doing business legally and compliantly. You want to complain? Go ahead, see if Shrek Academy's enforcement team arrests you or me!"
After hearing the waiter's extremely arrogant words.
Wang Dong'er, Xiao Xiao, and Xu Xiaoyan, who were sitting at the table, along with Seele who was standing, glanced at each other and understood everything in their hearts.
No wonder this restaurant dared to sell an ordinary hundred-year Spirit Beast dish for the astronomical price of five hundred thousand gold coins in broad daylight. It turned out that behind this restaurant, that Counterfeit Shrek Academy was secretly backing them up!
No wonder this waiter dared to be so fearless; it turned out this was their so-called 'rule'!
In the hearts of Wang Dong'er and the others, their evaluation of this Counterfeit Shrek Academy on the ground had plummeted to freezing point.
This Counterfeit Shrek Academy was truly rotten to the core!
Wang Dong'er's gaze coldly swept over that'signature dish' on the table.
If this pot were stewing the blood and flesh essence of some ten-thousand-year or hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast, or the meat of some extremely rare Spirit Beast that lived in extreme cold or heat and was difficult to capture, then selling it for five hundred thousand gold coins would be somewhat justifiable. After all, rare things are expensive.
But!
This was just a plain, ordinary hundred-year Spirit Beast!
For a low-level Spirit Beast of this grade, as long as a Spirit Master with even a little cultivation went to the outskirts of the Star Dou Great Forest, capturing it would definitely not be difficult.
The cost of obtaining it was outrageously low!
Yet this shop dared to demand five hundred thousand gold coins!
Moreover, Wang Dong'er, Xiao Xiao, and the others ate all kinds of top-tier ingredients every day at the aerial Shrek Academy; how sharp were their eyes?
Looking at the color of this meat soup and the cooking technique, there were no special methods at all. It was just the most ordinary simple cooking after cutting it into pieces!
Due to the poor cooking technique, the meager energy originally contained within the Spirit Beast meat had long since leaked out completely during the stewing process. They hadn't successfully contained and locked the Spirit Beast's energy within the meat.
Eating this kind of thing, besides tasting the meat, had absolutely no damn nutritional benefit for a Spirit Master's Cultivation! It was a pot of completely worthless scrap meat!
Who could accept this behavior of passing off scrap meat as something better and daring to charge an astronomical price? Who could swallow this insult?
Seeing Wang Dong'er and the others sitting there with Faces full of defiance, the waiter's arrogance flared even more.
"What? Looking at your expressions, are you ladies dissatisfied?"
The waiter snorted and directly clapped his hands.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Accompanied by heavy footsteps, several burly Spirit Masters with fleshy Faces immediately walked out from the back hall of the restaurant and stood directly behind the waiter.
As soon as these thugs appeared, they didn't waste any words and directly activated the Spirit Power in their bodies, releasing their respective Spirits and Spirit Rings.
Buzz—!
Yellow, Yellow, Purple, Purple!
Neat Spirit Ring configurations lit up within the restaurant hall. These thugs who had suddenly appeared were all actually Four-Ring Soul Ancestor level experts! And all of them had the standard configuration of two yellow and two purple!
Seeing these aggressive Four-Ring Soul Ancestors, the diners watching in the hall all changed their expressions and involuntarily backed away.
In everyone's eyes, with four standard Four-Ring Soul Ancestors working together, such a powerful lineup used to deal with and intimidate these seemingly defenseless young girls was more than enough—it was like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
With these Soul Ancestor thugs backing him up, the waiter felt even more confident.
He walked to the dining table, leaned his hands on the surface, and let his eyes roam wantonly over the four of them, Wang Dong'er included, before speaking to them.
"Actually, I could tell a long time ago. Just by looking at you little girls, you definitely can't produce such a large sum as five hundred thousand gold coins."
The waiter pointed at the clothes the four were wearing and sneered as he revealed his true goal.
"Since you can't afford it, it's simple. Just stay here obediently and send a communication to the academy behind you. Have your academy's teachers bring the money over to pay this bill for you!"
So that was it.
Hearing this, Wang Dong'er and the others couldn't help but find it a bit funny.
What Wang Dong'er and the four were wearing at this moment was the uniform custom-made school attire issued by the aerial Shrek Academy.
The material of that school uniform was exquisite, and the workmanship was fine.
Of course, the style and logo of this school uniform were completely different from the green school uniforms of the Counterfeit Shrek Academy on the ground.
Therefore, in the eyes of this waiter, he didn't recognize these clothes at all. He only thought these four young girls came from some other unknown but relatively wealthy high-level Spirit Master academy.
In the waiter's view, students who could afford school uniforms of this material must have a wealthy academy behind them.
As long as he detained these students as hostages, their academy would surely be willing to pay the ransom for the sake of Face and the students' safety. He could definitely make a killing.
From the moment Wang Dong'er and the others had first stepped through the door of this restaurant, this waiter had already decided on this plan for extortion.
This was a carefully planned trap!
After hearing the waiter's smug words, Wang Dong'er, Xiao Xiao, Seele, and Xu Xiaoyan looked at each other and couldn't help but laugh out of pure anger.
Have the academy behind them pay?
If the teachers of the aerial Shrek Academy really found out about this, Teacher Shen Yi and Teacher Wu Changkong would probably drive their high-altitude soul tool cars down and blast this dishonest shop along with the entire street into the ground!
In reality, it was just a mere five hundred thousand gold coins.
With the ten thousand gold coins Wang Dong'er had just exchanged for one hundred Contribution Points, if they really wanted to settle the matter peacefully, they would only need to exchange a few thousand more Contribution Points. Producing five hundred thousand gold coins would be easy, without even needing to bat an eye.
But!
Just based on this waiter's attitude, and based on these disgusting, black-hearted rules set by the Counterfeit Shrek Academy, swallowing their pride and paying to avoid trouble was definitely not the way this group of people did things!
"You want us to pay? You must still be dreaming, right?"
Seele sneered, having no intention of wasting another word with this waiter.
She took a step forward, shielding Wang Dong'er and the others, and suddenly made a grasping motion in the Void Realm!
A pitch-black scythe emitting a faint, dark glow appeared in Seele's palm!
A bone-chillingly cold and powerful wave of Spirit Power instantly centered on Seele, sweeping through the entire restaurant hall like a storm.
That sharp edge caused even the Soul Ancestor thugs standing opposite to catch their breath.
However, what they found even more unbelievable were the Spirit Rings slowly rising from beneath Seele's feet!
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
One ring, two rings, three rings, four rings!
Also four Spirit Rings, also the Realm of a Soul Ancestor.
But!
The colors of these four Spirit Rings circling Seele's feet were two purple and two black! And those two purple Spirit Rings were even so dark they were almost black!
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A/N:
I hope all of you are enjoying this story so far. I would appreciate some Power Stones if you can spare any. Leave a review if you like the story. Thank you.