Am I Beautiful?

Curtain Star City, the large city closest to Naspar.

Because of the Great Tree Sea, it was impossible to travel directly across it by land to reach the western side of the continent, making sea transport an absolute necessity.

Curtain Star City happened to sit beside the Great Tree Sea. It was the last port city along the eastern edge of the Great Tree Sea, and goods coming from the east and heading west inevitably passed through here.

The profits brought by trade had made Curtain Star City exceedingly prosperous. Though it still fell somewhat short of a truly colossal metropolis, neither its infrastructure nor its people's standard of living could be compared to those of villages and towns.

The entirety of Curtain Star City lay against the mountains and beside the sea, and could roughly be divided into four districts: the port district, the upper district, the middle district, and the lower district.

The upper district was home to nobles of the ruling class, while the middle district housed merchants and people of a certain social standing, such as officials.

Besides its crucial trade operations, the port district was also where ordinary civilians lived, so it covered the largest area.

As for the lower district...

Strictly speaking, the lower district was not part of Curtain Star City at all, since it had been built beyond the city walls. Although guards occasionally patrolled there, its environment was as different from the city proper as heaven from earth.

To put it more plainly, it was a slum.

Crime ran rampant in a place like this. You could toss down a brick and hit several gang members. Yet perhaps precisely because of their poverty, the people living here were quite united, and truly vicious crimes were comparatively rare.

Recently, however, things had become abnormal. People had been disappearing one after another, and the trend was spreading. Missing-person reports had even emerged from the port district and the middle district.

This drew the authorities' attention, forcing the guards to work overtime to get the matter settled.

The sun slowly dipped lower, seeming to sink into the cover of the Great Tree Sea. Amid the disorderly streets of the lower district, an ordinary woman made her way slowly down a narrow path with a basket of vegetables in hand. She had probably just returned from grocery shopping.

Such a sight was common. Even people in the lower district had to eat.

Yet beneath the concealment of the dim light, she seemed not to notice the eyes watching her from a corner.

The man hiding in the shadows was named Jixiu. He worked the streets. The job made it easy to get caught, but the pay was indeed high.

After following her for a while, he noticed that she turned into an alley that few people passed through at this hour.

This should be a good chance to make a score.

There was no high-quality merchandise in the lower district, but there was plenty of it. And though she dressed plainly, even shabbily, and was not much to look at, her skin looked young. Youth itself was a bargaining chip that raised a product's value.

Things had been tense lately, and Jixiu had gone a long time without making a sale. His own funds were running low as well. If he did not find a way to make a score, then when the debt collectors came knocking, it would not be as simple as demanding money.

With that in mind, Jixiu pulled up his hood, hiding his face, and carefully followed after her without making a sound.

There were many narrow alleys in the lower district. Planning here might as well not have existed; every house had been built privately without any approval, so naturally there was no order to them. Alleys and twisting lanes sprawled everywhere.

That made things convenient for those up to no good.

Making use of the terrain for cover, along with the stealth skills he had honed back when he worked as a pickpocket and thief, Jixiu easily closed in on his target without being noticed in the slightest.

When she reached an intersection, Jixiu knew he had to act. If he followed any farther, they would reach a main road where people might pass by.

His legs suddenly exploded with force as he rushed forward. At the same time, a dagger seemed to appear from nowhere between his fingers, pressing against the hostage's back.

"Missy, you're out of luck today. For your own safety, you'd better not move."

His hand pressed down on her shoulder, and he could clearly feel her trembling. He was already used to that.

Of course, it was still too early to say he had her under control. Maintaining the threat, Jixiu intended to take out some drug powder and knock her unconscious so he could carry her away more easily.

But just as he was about to succeed, he heard a voice.

"I thought he'd be harder to catch. Didn't he take the bait just like that? The local guards really are just going through the motions."

Jixiu's heart lurched. He immediately saw a young woman in leather armor approaching from behind him, a pair of rabbit ears rising from her head.

An adventurer!

The thought had barely surfaced when he noticed that female adventurers of roughly the same age had emerged from hidden corners to the left and right of the intersection.

He was surrounded.

Things had indeed been tense lately, but ordinary guards would not investigate too seriously in the lower district. After all, the residents here were fairly hostile toward guards, and conducting an investigation was troublesome.

But Jixiu had not expected that something this minor would actually be entrusted to adventurers.

Getting away would not be easy now.

He immediately wrapped an arm around the hostage, pressed the dagger to her throat, and shouted harshly:

"Don't come any closer! Or her little life is forfeit!"

Having a hostage in hand did indeed slow their approach slightly.

Yet on second thought, since this was a trap to lure the snake from its hole, how could the one serving as bait possibly be a mere weakling?

"Move aside, now! As long as I'm safe, I'll let—"

Before he could finish, the hostage in his grasp spoke.

"Let what?"

That voice... didn't sound like a woman's...

The hostage under his control raised a hand and hooked their fingers around the dagger.

The next instant, flashing lightning tore through the dim light of the setting sun. The violent shock made it impossible for Jixiu to hold onto his weapon; not only his fingers, but his entire arm went numb from the electricity.

Almost at the same time, the hostage—who should have been utterly incapable of resistance—did not hesitate to drive an elbow backward. It landed squarely below Jixiu's chest with such force that it nearly knocked his lunch out of him, bending his body into the shape of a giant shrimp.

"You, you little..."

Out of habit, he barely managed to spit out a few threats. But the moment he looked up, all he saw was an ever-expanding shoe sole...

That kick was immensely satisfying, sending him sprawling face-first onto the ground.

But as a scumbag who had spent years knocking around the streets, Jixiu naturally had a trick or two for saving his own skin.

With a bang, a huge cloud of smoke exploded outward, swiftly swallowing Jixiu from view.

Using the smoke as cover, he clutched his stomach, scrambled to his feet, and tried to flee.

The Lower District was a maze of tangled terrain and countless alleyways. Having prowled this place for years, he was confident that as long as he opened up even a little distance, he could get away.

But then, an extremely unnatural gale blew the smoke away. Jixiu had not even run ten meters before it dispersed completely.

A flash of magical radiance flickered through the hand of one of the three female adventurers—the expressionless one.

Not only had he run into tough-as-nails adventurers, there was even a mage among them!

Mages were exceedingly rare, and even if they did not work as adventurers, finding a respectable job was still easy for them. There were not many mages among adventurers to begin with, and provoking one could only mean that Jixiu's luck had run dry today.

Eve, who had used a Wind-Making Spell to blow away the smoke, looked toward Koura. The latter drew out a shortbow and, without much aiming, casually raised it and loosed an arrow.

Even though Jixiu realized he could not run in a straight line and began weaving left and right in a serpentine pattern, the arrow still struck his left arm as if it had eyes.

For a moment, he thought she had missed. But Koura had done it deliberately. Even if he darted left and right, he could never escape the range of magic. That arrow had merely been to make Jixiu suffer a little more.

"Magic Missile!"

Two force spheres blazing with arcane energy flew toward Jixiu from different directions. A tracking spell was not something one could evade through fancy footwork. Terrified, Jixiu turned his head and saw the Magic Missiles already rushing straight at his face!

With two muffled bangs, Jixiu, who had been fleeing with all his might, toppled to the ground as though struck by a hammer. The heavy blow to his back and the impact of his chin smashing into the ground left stars swimming before his eyes. Even if he wanted to keep running, his limbs had gone limp for the moment.

"Ah!"

Just as he tried to get up, his back suffered another powerful impact. And this time, it definitely was not Magic Missile—because he could feel it as though someone had slammed bodily into his back.

His feeling was correct. Kaya, who had caught up to him, had delivered a Flying Knee Strike straight into his back.

That blow smashed him back down onto the ground. Then Kaya seized both of Jixiu's arms and twisted them hard! The sharp crack-crack could be heard from over ten meters away.

—Those were definitely dislocated.

"I can't believe someone fell for it so stupidly so quickly. I thought we'd have to wander the streets for another two days."

Koura said smugly from the side, "Maybe it has something to do with how enticing your bait is."

This plan had been her idea.

As she spoke, she even tugged at the skirt.

"Pei Renli, how does crossdressing feel?"

Even Eve, unusually enough, chimed in from the side.

"I think your legs have a very nice shape."

"You're asking me how it feels..."

Pei Renli looked down at the dress he was wearing, then touched the wig on his head. He struck a seductive pose and flung his hair.

"Am I beautiful?"

"..."

This time, even Eve seemed unable to take it...

The facts proved that as long as one gave up meaningless shame, one became invincible beneath the heavens.

It was only wearing women's clothes to serve as bait. Pei Renli did not have a crossdressing fetish, and besides, he did not think wearing women's clothes was particularly shameful.

Perhaps because he had taken more after his mother in appearance when he was young, he had often been dressed up as a little girl. All he could say was that having a mother who liked treating her child as a toy had left him with little resistance to this sort of thing from an early age.

Instead, it was Koura—who had intended to tease him—who was having a hard time dealing with it.

The plan was simple: set up bait to wander around the places in the Lower District where people had gone missing, while Koura and the others followed behind. The moment they spotted anything suspicious, they would move in and catch the culprit.

However, none of the three girls particularly wanted to be the bait. It was not so much that it was dangerous as that they found it somewhat difficult to accept on a physiological level.

So the three of them discussed it and decided to find someone of moderate build and decent strength, someone who could be dressed up without giving himself away as long as no one looked at his face.

That someone was Pei Renli.