The Fog Thickens

Shrouded in Mist

On the surface, the matter did not seem complicated, but if one carefully considered the details, there was more to be gleaned.

For example, why had all the captured victims been disposed of, while the hostage suspected to be a young lady had been left behind? And she did not seem to have been captured for drug testing either. There were no orange blotches from the Orange Elixir on her body; instead, she had been beaten black and blue.

And when Pei Renli and the others arrived, the organization manufacturing the Orange Elixir had already completely withdrawn. From Anton and Jixiu's conversation, it could be inferred that they had even hired outsiders to handle the cleanup. They had surely fled far away by now, without a trace.

Since they had already withdrawn, why had they not disposed of the hostage suspected to be a young lady?

Clearly, the purpose of capturing her was entirely different from that of the other victims.

So Pei Renli made a bold guess.

There were actually two masterminds behind this whole affair—or two separate groups of people.

One group was the people manufacturing the Orange Elixir, most likely from out of town.

This could be seen from the fact that both Jixiu and Anton had been hired with money to do the work, rather than being members of their organization.

The other group came from Curtain Star City itself. They were high-ranking members of the administration, and the two sides had reached a partnership through an exchange of benefits.

The administrative group provided protection and assigned Chatin, the lower district's peace officer, to carry out the work. That was why people frequently vanished from the lower district without any leads ever being found—because someone in authority was helping them.

But Chatin was most likely just a pawn at the front. If he had known that the people manufacturing the Orange Elixir had already withdrawn, he would never have risked releasing Jixiu, much less gone to inspect the situation himself.

Now that he had worked out that the result had been a collaboration between two groups, and that the organization manufacturing the Orange Elixir had achieved its goal and retreated, the other group's objective...

Was the hostage suspected to be a young lady.

Not long after everyone entered the guard post, she had been picked up by someone dressed like a butler. She was not merely suspected to be a young lady—she truly was one.

Kidnapping the children of the powerful was generally for ransom. But considering they could command someone at the level of a peace officer to serve as a pawn, the real culprits naturally came from Curtain Star City's upper ranks.

So Pei Renli felt that the purpose of kidnapping that young lady was not ransom, but to achieve some political goal through the act of kidnapping. Her family was very likely superior to the mastermind—or, at worst, on equal footing. Otherwise, they would not have used such a method.

Of course, to keep it hidden, the mastermind would not brazenly send threatening letters to the young lady's family. He would likely pretend to rescue her, making them owe him an enormous favor.

In plain terms, it was a thief crying thief. They had simply not expected Pei Renli and the others to cut in halfway and steal their prize.

That being the case, the four of them, having plucked the peach first, would surely face pursuit from this Curtain Star City noble. Even if he did not dare act openly for fear of arousing suspicion, hiring assassins in secret would be no problem.

But there were no walls without cracks in this world. Since he had chosen to play thief crying thief, it meant he could not afford to provoke the family behind that young lady. Before leaving, Pei Renli had explained everything clearly to her. As long as she told her family after returning home, they should be able to narrow down some suspects no matter what.

No one who could rise among the powerful was a fool. If any of the suspected people made even the slightest move, it would confirm what they had done. That was why Pei Renli was not worried about retaliation at all. Even if there was any, it could not happen immediately.

Seeing Pei Renli looking like a dead pig unafraid of boiling water, Koura said softly, "You enjoyed carrying that young lady on your back yesterday, didn't you?"

"...What?"

He could not quite keep up with Koura's train of thought. Had they not just been discussing a very serious subject?

Propping up her chest with her hands, Koura deliberately swayed it as she said, "Carry me back to school after we get off the train. I don't really feel like walking, and crutches are too hard to use."

"Big sis, could you show a little restraint? I was kind of interested before, but after that, you feel like some kind of female hooligan."

"Then it's settled. You have to carry me back."

With that, Koura slipped away...

Pei Renli did not believe Koura had failed to see why they did not need to worry about retaliation. The reason she had come over was probably just to get Pei Renli to carry her back...

Whatever. At least his ears were finally quiet. Pei Renli shifted positions and prepared to take a nap.

And the way things unfolded truly matched an old saying: blessings never come in pairs, but misfortunes never come alone.

"Do you have time? I want to talk to you."

Having just sent Koura away, Kaya found a spot beside Pei Renli and lay down as well.

Great. Catching up on sleep was definitely out of the question now.

Seeing Pei Renli open his eyes, Kaya asked somewhat worriedly, "Will we be retaliated against for what we did yesterday?"

"..."

If Koura had been pretending not to understand despite knowing perfectly well, then Kaya probably truly did not understand.

He had no choice but to pull himself together and explain his entire analysis to Kaya from beginning to end. Only then did she relax.

At the end, Pei Renli added, "What are you afraid of? I remember you're a noble too. Who would dare retaliate against you?"

Of the four of them, only Kaya had a surname, which meant she was a noble.

Incidentally, Pei Renli's name was not understood locally as Pei being his surname and Renli his given name. It was regarded as a single whole, without a surname.

"I'm only a minor noble from the borderlands. In the eyes of the powerful in a city like Curtain Star City, I'm no different from some mud-legged bumpkin from the countryside."

When it came to her family, Koura did not seem willing to say much. She merely mocked herself before falling silent. After hesitating for nearly ten seconds, she finally said faintly, "Pei Renli, do you think I was right to stop Koura yesterday?"

"What's wrong with that?"

"But..."

Kaya frowned, looking deeply troubled:

"I don't have many friends. You all are very important to me, and I don't want these conflicts to put cracks in our relationship."

After all that, this was what she had been agonizing over.

Because of the rumors that she carried a curse, Kaya had very few friends—or rather, very few people willing to approach her. That made her cherish the friends she could talk to all the more.

Strictly speaking, no one had been wrong about what happened yesterday.

Koura believed that someone like Sheriff Chatin, who aided and abetted evil, deserved to die, and leaving him alive meant giving him a chance to retaliate against them. Naturally, they had to pull out the weeds by the roots.

Kaya, on the other hand, was more inclined to follow the rules. A sheriff was still an official, after all. If they killed him casually, it was hard to say how Curtain Star City would react. So Kaya was more willing to trust the law and let a formal trial convict Chatin.

Neither of their views could really be called wrong. They simply stood in complete opposition on this matter, which was why there seemed to be a conflict.

Seeing Kaya so torn up over it, Pei Renli could only try to console her.

"Blindly accommodating others can't guarantee a friendship that lasts forever."

He said:

"People are different, in both their thoughts and habits. Say you see someone neatly dressed and well-spoken—who knows, maybe he's a complete asshole in private. And look at me: such a handsome guy, yet I'm somehow unpopular. It's an outrage against heaven itself."

"Your analogies are always so..."

"Fitting?"

"I suppose."

"Anyway, since people's thoughts and habits are different, you choose to accommodate them because they're your friends. But you can accommodate them once or twice—can you keep doing it for a lifetime?"

Seeing Kaya fall into thought, Pei Renli continued:

"Friendships aren't maintained simply by accommodating each other. They're maintained when both sides keep their own beliefs while seeking harmony amid their differences. Blind accommodation only makes a relationship fragile. For example, once something touches your bottom line, can you still keep accommodating them?"

Even without laying it out so plainly, most normal people gradually came to understand this as they grew up. Kaya simply had very little contact with other people, and her social experience was practically zero. That was why she feared that differing opinions last night would make her lose her friends.

Especially when she saw that Pei Renli also seemed to agree with Koura's approach, Kaya immediately began to wonder whether she had done something wrong.

"Don't worry. From what I know of Koura, she hasn't taken it to heart at all. You agonizing over it like this will only make her uncomfortable."

"You've only known her for two weeks yourself, yet you talk as if you know her."

Even so, Kaya's expression had improved considerably. She had probably worked it out.

Pei Renli wasn't very good at giving people psychological counseling. Fortunately, Kaya was the type who was easy to talk around—or, to put it another way, easy to fool. But that kind of person was also prone to burrowing into a dead end, so when Kaya stood up, Pei Renli deliberately added, "If anything else is bothering you, come find me."

That said, while they could roughly guess what had happened this time, the details and truth behind it were completely impossible to estimate from the clues they currently had.

What was more, from the very beginning, Pei Renli had felt as though someone had been guiding and manipulating him. It was as if the whole thing had been deliberately arranged to draw them in.

Who was that person?

Pei Renli felt that Koura was the most suspicious.

They had already been preparing to rest at the inn, but Koura had insisted on dragging Pei Renli out to watch the fire. And when they arrived near the burning prison, Koura was also the one who said she had seen Jixiu climb over the wall and escape. No one else had seen anything at all.

Once he noticed these details, it wasn't hard to guess the role Koura had played in steering them.

But...

Why?

Pei Renli quietly lifted his eyes and looked at Koura, who was sitting beside the carriage chatting and laughing with Kaya. He simply couldn't understand why she had done it.

Perhaps Pei Renli was overthinking it. Perhaps this feeling of being led along was only an illusion, and the whole affair had merely been a coincidence.

But this girl, Koura, seemed to be shrouded in an impenetrable mist. Or perhaps she was like an onion, layer upon layer, making it impossible to tell what she was really thinking.

There were too few samples—only one incident, and no further clues. Pei Renli couldn't accurately judge whether his suspicions were correct. But one thing was certain: the situation at the Adventurer School did not seem as innocent as he had initially thought.

Or perhaps this girl truly was hiding some unknown secret. He would have to keep watching her in the future...

With that thought, Pei Renli closed his eyes, finally seeming able to snatch a short nap.

"Adventurers, we've arrived at Naspar!"

The coachman's shout told Pei Renli that catching up on sleep was out of the question.