The man was wearing a skirted black suit with green edges, eyes covered in black glasses, and hands behind his back as he approached them with a smile. His bald head also glinted under the sunlight, which made his smile appear to be a friendly one.
Guan looked at the newcomer with obvious disdain. After all, by his own words, he followed Bumi all the way here and didn't bother tending to him. Not only was he following a kid as an adult, he was also smiling as he was seeing the state Bumi was in.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Me? I'm Lu, people call me Mr. Lu, and I'm here to talk to you two about something."
Did Bumi get in trouble with this guy's minions or something? Guan's eyes immediately turned cold as his foot lifted a little from the ground, ready to order the earth when he deemed this man had connections with those thugs.
Lu, seemingly sensing his intent, backed down with a nervous smile.
"Woah, woah. Calm down. From the looks of it, you're thinking I have connections with what happened to your brother, but I'm not."
Bumi quickly agreed.
"Yeah, those fools just coincidentally saw me giving money to a beggar and probably thought of me as some rich kid. Well, I kinda look like one! Kahaha!"
Lu smiled.
"See? And I have enough money myself so I don't need to rob people to survive. My clothes are proof of that."
This man obviously has some sort of intention for approaching two kids so suddenly, and he seems to be thinking that he will have an easy time because of his smile. One thing he dislikes more than being treated and seen as a kid is getting that treatment from someone of the same gender.
"Tell me your intention of approaching us quickly. My brother here is about to lose a lot of blood from talking to you."
Pushing his black glasses up, Lu's smile grew wider, and even his bald head couldn't hide his malicious intent anymore.
"Well… I'm going straight to the point. I'm someone that you could call a coach or a teacher. I teach people with potential and then give them a career that could make them 'potentially' rich!"
"What? Get to the point. What career are you talking about?"
"I saw how your brother used his Earthbending to defeat those thugs, and there's potential for that! The career I'm talking about is… underground fighting."
Lu lowered his tone a lot at the end of his sentence to hide the fact that it's obviously illegal. It's already evident because who the hell would hire kids to fight underground?
After he heard that, Guan felt like he had wasted time talking to the man before him. Hell, he even felt angry and might just straight up beat this man black and blue in the daylight.
"Just… leave and don't bother approaching us again. I feel like I've wasted my time here talking to you."
Lu deeply frowned.
"What? Why? Don't you want to be rich? I mean, I can see that you two are doing well, but with this money, you can help your parents and family by just fighting simple matches!"
Guan stopped for a moment and looked at Bumi.
"Bumi, ask Toka to help you tend to your wounds. I will talk to this man first."
"Okay!"
Seeing that Bumi finally left, Guan looked at the man again and pointed at the chairs outside the soup shop.
"Let's talk in a more favorable environment."
Lu grinned.
"I feel like I'm talking to another adult here by your vibe and the way you talk."
–
"Alright, before we start, can you tell me if you can Earthbend like your brother?"
Guan merely nodded at the question before proceeding to ask his own question with a serious tone.
"What about you? Can you use any bending?"
"No, I just teach martial arts, while earthbenders under me have to apply it to their bending themselves."
Studying the man for a moment, Guan nodded. Lu accurately matches the looks of Chinese martial arts practitioners back in the modern world, just not without the long hair tail on the back. And truth be told, if he's not practicing martial arts then his appearance is useless and disappointing overall.
"Well, then are you interested in joining? I have been training another kid about the same age named Hiro as well, and he's already earning 100 copper… per fight. What do you think?"
100 copper might make kids at his age drool, but he's earning two times that on a normal day and three at best, so the offer wasn't tempting. The thing he was interested in were the people under him.
This is basically a good opportunity to find recruits with a bending if this is really what he was thinking.
"Actually, me and my brother are orphans, and as you can see we are doing well ourselves and have enough money, so I'm not really interested in what you're offering. But I want to try fighting, and this seems perfect for me."
Lu clapped his hands with excitement.
"Perfect! Alright, when are you available so I can take you to the underground arena? There are battles every week there, and the tournament will happen very soon so this is the perfect opportunity for you to see the fights for yourself!"
"I'm good to go anytime, even right now."
"Wait, what about your brother, Bumi I think?"
Guan wasn't even planning on actually joining. He's not even interested in watching the fights. The main purpose was still to find recruits like always, so Bumi didn't need to be there at all.
In fact, to ensure the success of the recruitment, he should be the only one who does it.
And the fact that Bumi was already getting injured from a fight with normal thugs already made him a liability. He didn't want to tell him that he's weak, but Bumi wasn't prepared yet.
As for him, he's practically unkillable even though he's still at the early phase lf Earthbending, so there should be no problem getting out of any place if things go awry.
"He won't be joining. I don't want him to be hurt."
"That's fine, though I would need to see the potential that you have. Obviously, being an Earthbender at that age is already a good feat, but the way your brother used his Earthbending... how do I say this, excellent? Talented? Unique? If he wasn't caught off guard by those robbers, then he could easily take them on without a scratch."
–
After telling Bumi to stay and eat at the soup shop while he was away, Lu led Guan to a massive stone warehouse close to the wall. The door was on the other side, and yet they were standing at the back, with a bored-looking man sitting in front of them.
It was obvious that this was a hidden passage that needed an Earthbender to open. That just told Guan more about how big this underground fighting thing was, and this wasn't even where the arena was located, this was just where Lu was training the idiots he managed to convince.
Lu looked at the man and gave him a nonchalant nod.
The passage guard, meanwhile, stood up and quickly split the stone open using his bending.
"Welcome back, Mr. Lu."
Nodding again at the man in reply, Lu led Guan inside. And what he saw was an impressively decent training environment. There were already eight people training there, fighting by punching and kicking rocks at each other with unorthodox moves, and some were just building the muscles on their body.
What Guan was most interested in was not the late teens and adults there but the kid around his age who punched the wall, causing cracks in it which were fixed by the next punch. That probably took a lot of focus to do, and he was doing it very quickly. Impressive, but he and Bumi could do that too.
"Everyone! Stop for a moment and come here."
Everyone except the youngest quickly stopped what they were doing and arrived in front of them like dogs called by their owner. That just made Guan see the boy in a better way.
'He's earning a hundred per fight? Looks like this will be an easy recruitment.'
Soon, the introductions began, and one by one, Lu introduced them to him. As much as he didn't care about their names, his perfect memory was engraving their names on his mind like a tattoo.
"And the youngest one here is named Hiro. You two are probably at the same age, so it's good to have you on the team."
Hiro was a kid with black hair and sharp black eyes, standing a little taller than Guan. His overall appearance gave a determined vibe that one shouldn't have at that age. He was an exception since he wasn't really '12.'
[Image]
"And this newcomer here is Guan. I'm not sure yet if he really has the talent to be here, so I'm going to test him, and the perfect match here would be you, Hiro. Clean up the circle and let's have the match!"