Ellie?
Ailiruila?
The name Hunter Old Sang used for the Banshee was like a crucial clue, connecting all the countless fragments of inspiration and discoveries Xia Nan had accumulated into a complete picture.
The name "Ailiruila" engraved on the gravestone, Sarah's delicate features that set her apart from the other villagers and the ears she always hid beneath a felt hat, the Banshee before him who seemed close to Old Sang and had once been an Elf—
So Sarah's dead mother, Hunter Old Sang's Elf wife, was this Banshee?
Thoughts raced through Xia Nan's mind as everything suddenly fell into place. The strange things he had vaguely noticed since arriving in Ice Tree Village, and all the questions they had raised, now had answers.
Suddenly, his Perception Attribute of 14 made him instinctively notice something else.
His gaze drifted upward, leaving Old Sang and the Banshee in the clearing ahead to settle among the branches of a towering fir tree diagonally across from him, not far behind the pair.
There, concealed beneath dense foliage and branching limbs, a deep shadow with an almost imperceptible presence revealed a vague outline only in the moon-
light, slowly writhing.
It looked familiar at first glance. After focusing on it for a closer look, he recognized who it was.
Shuxi?
The person hiding in the shadows and watching the two of them, just as he was, was the Half-Elf Wanderer from Sulfur Dragon Breath.
She had said she was going to check the traps around the village. Apparently, she had happened upon the Hunter and the Banshee while doing so.
Xia Nan's concealment skills were merely ordinary, and he possessed no special abilities related to them. From a professional's perspective, his efforts might even have looked clumsy.
But perhaps because Shuxi's attention was entirely