Clash (Continued)

"Troublesome."

After dealing with the target and waiting there for a while, Alice discovered that the corpse had not vanished like the previous Black-Robed Men. Her face twitched.

"How am I supposed to deal with this thing?"

After thinking it over, since she had not touched it directly and would not leave behind any direct evidence, she used threads to carry the corpse into an abandoned building in the distance.

After finishing all that, Ye Xin shifted her gaze and began searching for other figures lurking nearby.

Meanwhile, Alice quickly approached the yellow dog.

She saw that dangerous group of humans gathered together again.

"Boss, one of us is dead." A short man from the group looked uneasily at the middle-aged man leading them.

"We were targeted the moment we arrived? We haven't provoked them. Why are they so determined to hound us?" The man narrowed his eyes, his voice devoid of emotion. "If we want to establish ourselves here, any force that threatens us must be eliminated. No... this is the perfect opportunity for me to prove myself to the Chief. If I want to earn his attention, I need to handle this properly."

As he spoke, he took out several objects resembling talismans.

"So I really have to use these? Whatever. There's no point keeping them hidden forever."

With that, the man drew out two and handed them to the short man before him.

"Dust, do your job properly. Don't waste them."

"Understood, Boss."

The short man excitedly gripped the items in his hands.

"What are those?" Alice, relying on the yellow dog lying prone dozens of meters away to spy on them, could not help wondering.

But she soon shook her head. "Forget it. They can't be anything good."

This time, she had to strike first.

Those guys clearly had no intention of letting her go, and they seemed to have taken out something powerful.

Could those talismans be some kind of combat equipment?

With that thought in mind, Alice swiftly approached the targets from the other side of a wall, holding a large fruit knife about thirty centimeters long.

At the same time, Ye Xin was also rushing toward the scene.

Whoosh!

More than ten seconds later, she lightly vaulted over the wall and landed in a narrow alleyway.

"I didn't expect this little girl's body to be so nimble... Uh, though this little girl is me."

After landing, she held the knife and openly watched the end of the passage over twenty meters away.

Sure enough, less than two seconds later, several people turned out from around the corner.

The leader in particular—the captain—froze for a moment when he saw the little girl standing across from him.

"Who are you?"

Before he could react, Alice kicked off with both legs and instantly closed in on the target.

An outright attack.

On the surface, Alice was the one fighting, but in reality, Ye Xin was more than twenty meters away, releasing threads to assist her.

On one hand, she wanted to test how strong Alice's Sword Intuition was. On the other, she wanted to draw the enemy's attention through a frontal assault, creating an opening for a surprise attack with the threads.

At this moment, the tactic was clearly working.

When the sharp fruit knife whistled toward the captain's forehead, their attention was completely drawn to the beautiful girl.

Before leaving, Alice had changed into very light clothing: a blue top, a blue skirt, and black stockings. From Ye Qian's perspective, white stockings would have suited a little girl better, but this was clearly not the time for self-appreciation.

The heavy long blade slammed into a short sword over half a meter long.

With a clang, pain shot through the captain's arm, and his expression changed slightly. Just as he tried to pull his blade back, he found that the girl had already circled to his side and swung a second time.

He hastily drew back his sword to block, retreating several steps.

"Damn, she really has some skill."

Alice narrowed her eyes. All her attributes had reached one and a half times that of an average adult, and Sword Intuition was indeed taking effect at this moment, allowing her petite body to unleash astonishing knife techniques in a flurry like wind and rain.

The people around her immediately attacked Alice. One of them even suddenly released a tiny stone from his palm, shooting it at her eye like a bullet.

She made a crucial dodge, but her face was still grazed, tearing a bit of skin. Alice's nerves instantly tensed. She knew she still could not handle these people, especially since the second person on her left had released some unknown power that abruptly slowed her movements.

Sluggishness? Or something else?

Even so, she was not nervous, because the killing move had already been unleashed.

More than twenty meters away, Ye Xin's Spirit Threads pierced through the wall and silently wrapped around two men's necks.

With a gentle tug, two heads spun through the air and fell to the ground.

"Little Black, circle around to his right!"

After being forced back by Alice's fruit knife, the captain hurriedly shouted to the side.

However...

The moment he turned his head, he saw Little Black's head rolling onto the ground like a ball.

"Little Black?" The captain's expression turned horrified.

A strange smile touched Alice's lips. In the instant he was distracted, the weapon in her hand suddenly changed into a thrust and slashed across the target's waist. By the time he reacted, the blonde little girl had already retreated swiftly with her nimble body.

Another teammate beside him slashed down with his knife, but the girl casually raised her hand and effortlessly blocked it.

"Damn it, when was Little Black killed? What did she do?"

He could not understand it at all. Where had this blonde girl come from, attacking their group without a word?

The most terrifying part was that two people had gone down in an instant.

The captain's resolve wavered. In that instant, the blonde girl swung the knife in her hand, and from several meters away, a chill brushed across his neck.

He had already raised his sword to block in advance. It rang with a ding, and several cracks appeared on the blade.

He was fine, but another invisible teammate who had circled around from the side suddenly let out a scream as blood gushed from the left side of his chest.

"We're done for. Retreat!"

The captain understood that they were no match for the enemy and immediately gave the order.

Under these circumstances, the remaining two teammates had no time to do anything else and turned to run.

The three moved quickly, but Ye Xin's Spirit Threads had already caught up.

After wounding one of them with a puff, he flung out a talisman, which suddenly exploded into dozens of ice pellets that pelted Alice with a crackling barrage.

Though she hurriedly raised her knife to protect her face, by the time she recovered, her body was already covered in bloody holes.

Alice: "..."

Those people never looked back and had already vanished from sight.

Only after they disappeared did Ye Xin retract her threads and glance at her fingertips.

"They actually blocked my Spirit Threads twice?"

A few minutes later, the three people who had been running wildly for some distance stopped.

Two of them were already injured.

"Cough, cough... Who exactly was that girl?"

After rushing into a residence, the captain wiped the blood from his body, his expression gloomy.

"What happened?"

Inside the room, a man who appeared to have been sitting on the sofa all along asked expressionlessly.

"Chief, we failed. We were suddenly attacked, and more than half our people were killed."

"Oh? Who did you encounter?" The man's expression grew serious.

"A... blonde little girl, around twelve or thirteen. She used a knife and was very strong in close combat. While we were fighting her, my men's heads were inexplicably cut off."

"Blonde, twelve or thirteen? Are you messing with me?" The man grabbed the captain by the collar.

"I wouldn't dare, Chief. Every word is true."

The Chief's face darkened. After several seconds, he released his grip.

"Interesting. Could she be a helper those bastards found?"

Trade and Assistance

The Chief's words made the captain's heart skip a beat.

"Chief, whether it was them or not, this has gotten out of hand. I'm afraid it might attract the Shadow Bureau."

"Indeed."

The Chief stood up and began pacing back and forth through the room.

Several minutes later, he stopped and turned to the captain. "The enemy's strength is unknown. I need to attend tonight's trade gathering and find a way to exchange for something useful."

"Do we have enough money? Or should we trade supernatural items?"

"Buy it with money."

They did not know that a yellow dog was lying on a platform dozens of meters away, quietly watching the scene through the window.

The dog looked bored, but what its eyes saw was reflected in Alice's mind.

Around the same time, at Ye Qian's home.

"Hiss, that hurts."

Only after drinking two large cups of Water of Purification did the blonde girl's injuries begin to improve at a visible rate. But perhaps because her wounds were too severe, the recovery was slow.

Ye Qian thought for a moment, then placed two fingers into Alice's mouth.

Purification in progress...

"Just as I thought!"

Saliva was also a liquid, so naturally it could be purified as well.

"So that means my main body's saliva can also..."

Little Alice secretly glanced at her main body's face.

Cough, cough.

It might be useful, but doing that would make her seem like a complete pervert.

After licking her fingers for a while, Alice's injuries finally healed.

"She's practically a healer. No wonder the main body's combat power is so low."

She suddenly hugged her main body's leg and rubbed against it. Feeling her mother's warmth, Alice let go.

"What the hell is with this strange dependency and maternal instinct? Don't overthink it. Time to handle business."

The previous battle had yielded a total of 26 points of Life Energy.

That was less than expected, which meant the enemies were not very strong. But the talisman they threw at the end had displayed astonishing power.

"There was no time to dodge at all."

It still hurt to think back on it.

"Fortunately, I've already confirmed their location."

The yellow dog was still watching the other side.

From the conversation she had overheard, these people feared an organization called the Shadow Bureau.

"Judging by the name, it sounds like some kind of supernatural agency. I need to be careful."