How old is this damn person?

The bell tower of the town center church struck eleven times, and scarlet moonlight spilled into a courtyard.

The courtyard looked as if it had been abandoned for many years; the iron-fenced walls were covered in various vines, and the yard itself was overgrown with weeds. In the center stood a building resembling a small chapel, surrounded by several unremarkable red-brick houses.

The rusted doorplate of the courtyard read: [Blaney Orphanage, established in 1675].

The young girl did not take the main gate, which had been corroded and ruined by rust; instead, she grabbed the top of the wall with both hands and vaulted over. She then followed a nearly invisible pebble path through the grass, walking all the way into the chapel, which had a collapsed corner.

She followed the dim corridor to the very last door, pushed it open just enough to slip inside, and only then let out a long sigh of relief.

This room was only about ten square meters in size. Behind a window patched with newspaper stood a wooden table missing one leg, and beside it sat a small coal stove made of tin. On the other side of the room was a rough wooden bed, with a thick layer of dried grass cushioned beneath a linen sheet.

Sally turned to close the peeling, cracked wooden door and hung a brass padlock on it—a gesture that offered little more than peace of mind.

She then picked up an enamel cup from the table, scooped a cup of water from a bucket nearby, and gulped it down. The first cup was to quench her thirst, the second was to fill her stomach and suppress her hunger, and the third was to wipe the dust from the soles of her feet.

The girl then used her small, bare feet to pull the coal stove out, leaving a trail of wet footprints across the room.

The heat of the flames rose slowly from the stove, drying the sweat that had seeped from the girl's body during her frantic run. This hard-won warmth could not be wasted, so Sally had already filled a kettle and placed it on the stove along with two pieces of black bread.

Only then did Sally have the time to examine her haul for the day: a silver dinner knife that carried a faint chill.

Her luck had been truly good today. She had only intended to try her luck in town, but who would have thought she would encounter a genuine treasure? She toyed with the knife in her hand; even before the stove, it still radiated a bone-chilling cold.

That fat woman, the [Collector], would surely be interested in this.

She slid two slender fingers into the chest of her dress and fished out a lens that still held the warmth of her body from beneath her chest wrap. When she held the lens up to the silver dinner knife under the moonlight, she could see a layer of pale white mist swirling around it.

It had been a long time since she had seen a collectible of such quality. She hoped that person wouldn't come looking for it.

Sally stood up from the stove, intending to go to the pantry to get some pickled cabbage to make soup, which she would eat with the black bread for dinner. Just as she stretched her limbs, which had grown stiff from sitting for so long, she cast a casual glance around the room—

—Her pupils suddenly contracted to pinpricks.

Sally's heart stopped for a fleeting moment in her chest before it began to hammer like a drum, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. A massive figure, like a dark cloud blotting out the sky, had appeared at the table by the window without her noticing!

The moonlight spilled silently into the room, and the stove fire flickered, casting shadows against the walls.

There were no footsteps, no creaking of rusted hinges, and not even the sound of breathing could be detected. The man sat there quietly, his pitch-black coat seemingly merging with the shadows of the kerosene lamp, holding a book that Sally knew quite well.

Seeming to sense Sally's gaze, the man gently closed the book in his hands, his voice low and magnetic:

"Krone Newspaper Essay Selection. Judging by the annotations, you are trying to teach yourself to read and write? Very ambitious, but this book is a bit too difficult as a literacy primer. By comparison, Denning's Short Story Collection would be more suitable for you; its vocabulary and grammar are much simpler."

In that instant, Sally made a decision without hesitation—run!

Sally's figure leaped into the air like a cunning rabbit, crashing through the newspaper on the window before landing in the courtyard. The deep black soil stained the girl's soles, and the cold night wind brushed against her skin, making her shiver uncontrollably.

She swiped her hand and pulled a length of piano wire from her wristband, yet this sharp metal thread could not give her any sense of security.

I have to run—but where? Where is safe?

Run to town—no, as long as he says he's catching a thief, no one will help me.

Find Silverback and Crow—no, that would only cause them to lose their lives in vain.

Find the Collector—yes, lure him to the Collector, let them kill each other, better yet, let them both die!

Thinking of this, Sally kicked off the wet, cold mud and shot toward the depths of the courtyard like an arrow from a bow. But the moment she leaped, she felt a sudden pain in the back of her neck, and a large hand with fingers as hard as steel bars gripped the nape of her neck.

The next instant, Sally felt as if she were riding the clouds, and her entire body flew upward.

In mid-air, Sally realized that the man had appeared behind her without her knowing, using a deft flick of strength to throw her away. The girl's body traced a graceful arc in the air before crashing into a cluster of bushes beside the bed.

It's over. Watching Lude slowly approach in the moonlight, the girl desperately gripped the rough branches of the bushes beneath her.

Blackwater Town was not isolated from the outside world; in fact, due to its location on the border, the crime rate here was even higher than elsewhere. Growing up in such an environment, Sally naturally knew what kind of terrible fate awaited those who quietly disappeared.

Now, she only prayed for one thing: that the place she appeared tomorrow would not be the town butcher shop.

But as Lude slowly approached, Sally saw his face clearly in the moonlight, and she felt as if she had suddenly been transported from hell to heaven—so it was only because of my theft, thank goodness, it's only because of that!

Thinking of this, she spoke without hesitation: "Sir, your knife is on the table in the room, I... no!"

"Scoundrel!"

At that very instant, a thunderous roar erupted, followed by a fierce gust of wind whistling toward Lude!

Yet, facing this fierce strike, Lude did not even turn his head; he simply reached out and grabbed the source of the whistling wind in his palm—it was a black-painted iron pipe, clearly torn from the rusted iron fence.

"Run!" In that moment, Sally's face was paler than ever: "You two idiots, run!"

At that same moment, Lude had already bent the iron pipe into a U-shape; the metal object was like modeling clay in his hands. He then aimed the open end of the U at Sally's slender throat and thrust it down with a sudden, violent force.

"Ah—!!!"

The girl's scream nearly shattered eardrums at that moment. Several seconds later, she slowly opened her eyes, trembling with tears in the corners of her eyes. She first raised her hands to check herself, and upon confirming she was still alive, she went limp. Only then did she notice the cold sensation on either side of her throat.

The two ends of the steel pipe had been driven into the wall, like shackles for livestock, pinning her firmly against the wall.

After confirming that Sally could not move, Lude turned around.

In the courtyard where the weeds reached waist-high, standing opposite Lude were two figures of vastly different heights.

The person walking on the left was exceptionally tall and burly, with silver-white hair standing on end, spreading from his neck all the way down his back. His bare upper body was covered in bronze-colored, knotted muscles, while his lower body was clad in a pair of black canvas trousers, and he wore a pair of worn-out old military boots.

If Lude's muscles were streamlined, then this guy's were explosive!

Clinging to his right side and slightly behind him was a small figure almost entirely shrouded in shadow, wrapped from head to toe in dull, dark linen; his frame seemed to hide within the shadow of the man to his left with every breath, nearly invisible unless one looked very closely.

"You two..." Lude stood with his hands behind his back, smiling as he sized up the two fellows before him. "What should I call you?"

"I'm Silbeck!" The large man pointed a thumb at himself, then shifted his aim to poke the small figure beside him. "This guy is called Clown. So, what should we call you, and why did you come running to where we live and lay a hand on Sally?"

Lude nearly laughed out loud upon hearing this; these names were truly artistic!

He looked left and then right, ultimately unable to hold it in, and chuckled as he spoke: "Silverback and Clown—heh, you two certainly have fitting names. Though, how did the person who named you know exactly what you'd grow up to look like?"

As soon as these words left his mouth, Silverback and Clown were momentarily choked for words, and even Sally, standing behind them, lost control of her expression for a split second.

However, this made Sally realize that Lude was treating them with nothing but playful amusement; otherwise, he wouldn't be standing there with his hands behind his back cracking cold jokes. Thinking back on how Lude hadn't harmed her from the very beginning, she stopped struggling and began to explain:

"Sir, the names Silverback and Clown were both given to us by that old bastard Blaney back when we were six years old."

"You all were?" Lude frowned, feeling that something was off. He remembered the bartender saying the orphanage had shut down eight years ago; eight plus six equaled fourteen. By that logic, Sally should be fourteen this year, and if the three of them were the same age...

"Hiss—" Lude looked at Silverback, who stood a full two point four meters tall, and couldn't help but blurt out: "This motherfucker is fourteen?!"

What kind of children grow to two point four meters tall just as they hit puberty?