The Orphan Girl of House Town

Three days later...

House Fishing Port, southwest coast of Vitalia Island.

The Black Knife avoided several reefs and sailed smoothly into the fishing port, but the once-bustling harbor was now completely deserted.

"Jabus came here?"

Hawkins stood on the deck, catching the faint, intermittent stench of corpses, and asked Jennie beside him.

Although she had spent several days with Hawkins, Jennie was still afraid of him. She shrank back slightly and answered, "He came."

"Disembark!" Hawkins said after a moment of silence.

Several sailors threw the anchor into the sea and swiftly lowered the gangplank. After Hawkins disembarked, he headed directly toward House Town.

Some people might think that if someone had lived for so long, they would surely become broad-minded and let nothing linger in their heart.

But that was not the case. Precisely because he had lost things and experienced boundless solitude, Hawkins cherished life even more. He understood better than anyone how hard it was for life to come by.

In the vast universe, the odds of encountering life were countless times lower than winning the lottery.

Therefore, in his heart, every life was an invaluable treasure.

Though there were occasionally some rotten seeds that forced him to take action and clear them out.

Mark disembarked and watched Hawkins's retreating back. He quietly said to Qiao Si, who had just come ashore beside him, "The captain's in a bad mood."

"Because the captain is a good man," Qiao Si said calmly. Then he called to Jennie aboard the ship, "Miss Jennie, come down quickly. We have to follow the captain."

Only Hawkins had the ability to protect Jennie, so Qiao Si did not want them to stray too far from Hawkins, lest other forces find an opening to exploit.

House Town, once a prosperous little town thanks to fishing, had now become a crumbling wreck. Broken corpses lay everywhere in the streets.

The corpses gave off a foul stench and crawled with maggots, making their original faces almost impossible to distinguish.

As Mark walked down the street, his expression gradually changed from flippant to solemn. He saw several indistinct corpses of women who had used their bodies to shield the infants beneath them, but in the end, neither mother nor child had escaped their fate.

"..."

These footprints did not look human. Not only were the heels thick and broad, but the toes were exceptionally long, likely with extremely sharp claws.

"Captain, these weren't left by Jabus, were they?" He crouched before the footprints, staring at marks at least half a meter long as he could not help asking.

If these footprints had truly been left by Jabus, just how enormous was Jabus now?

Hawkins shook his head. "Not Jabus. Probably some other creature, though it should be connected to Jabus."

He could distinguish every scent in House Town. Jabus's scent was highly distinctive, mixed with the smell of many people's blood, while the scent around these footprints was very singular.

"Follow me!"

Suddenly, Hawkins's ears twitched, and he immediately looked toward the forest outside House Town.

The forest outside House Town looked as though a typhoon had swept through it. Beneath countless fallen trees lay a buried cave entrance.

This was the secret base of several homeless youths from House Town, and now it had become the hiding place of House Town's survivors.

Their bodies were smeared with a thick layer of mud as they carefully climbed out of the cave one by one.

"That monster has left?"

A young boy asked fearfully.

Beside him stood a girl who looked somewhat malnourished. Mud covered her entire body, but her eyes, bright as stars, still shone brilliantly.

Her name was Ai Miye, the leader of House Town's homeless youths.

"That feeling is gone. Let's go into town." After a moment of silence, she spoke.

The moment she stepped forward, her expression suddenly changed. Her whole body began trembling uncontrollably.

"Ai Miye, what's wrong?" Seeing her stop again, the boy asked in confusion.

Cold sweat gradually covered Ai Miye's forehead. She swallowed and said in a trembling voice, "There's an even more terrifying monster in town. It seems to have found us."

"Then what do we do? I told you we shouldn't have come out!" Behind Ai Miye, a boy around twelve or thirteen cried out in terror.

Ai Miye gritted her teeth. "It should have noticed me. I'll lure it away. Hurry back to the base and hide!"

The moment she finished speaking, she immediately ran in the direction opposite House Town. The youths looked anxiously at the oldest boy. He wanted to chase after her, but he could not bear to leave the others behind. Finally, he glanced at the youngest child and roared, "What are you standing around for? Go back! Hide, quickly!!!"

Elsewhere, Hawkins had just stepped outside town when he noticed that the presence he had caught was moving away.

"Keep up!"

He smiled faintly. In the next instant, he pushed his speed to the limit. A distance of several hundred meters took him only seconds, and in a flash, he arrived at the youths' secret base.

The boy at the front reacted the fastest. The moment Hawkins stopped, he immediately gripped his wooden stick and swung it down at Hawkins.

Though the boy was only fourteen or fifteen, years of hanging around House Town's fishing port and hauling seafood had given him considerable strength. If that blow landed on an ordinary person, it would have been enough to knock them unconscious on the spot.

Unfortunately, he was facing Hawkins.

Before the wooden stick could strike him, Hawkins reached out and flicked the boy on the forehead. Then he swiftly chased after Ai Miye in the direction she had fled.

The boy's swing missed. His stick struck a broken tree and snapped at once. Only then did he cry, "Ow!" and clutch his forehead in agony.

Meanwhile, several dozen meters away, Ai Miye was running for her life, terrified.

But she had no choice.

The other party had noticed her. She could not drag the others into it, so she could only leave alone and hope to draw that powerful monster away.

Suddenly, a vine snagged her ankle. She fell hard to the ground and rolled several times. Her eyes reddened as she hurriedly climbed back up, gritted her teeth, and kept running.

This was too close to the base. Even if she died, she had to die farther away so she would not implicate the others.

"You're running so fast. Aren't you tired?"

Hawkins's voice sounded behind her. Her heart immediately felt as if someone had clenched it in their hand. Distracted by panic, she caught her foot on a small stone and fell toward the ground again.

But this time, before her face hit the dirt, Hawkins caught her.

"Little girl, am I really that scary?" Hawkins asked with an amused smile.

Ai Miye struggled. "Let me go!"

"All right, all right. But stand steady. Don't fall again," Hawkins said leisurely as he released her with a smile.

Naturally, he understood why the girl had fled. She had not been trying to escape on her own. She had wanted to lure the enemy away.

It was a very noble sacrifice, though it seemed a little foolish to him.

A few days ago, when Jabus approached, she had also been the first to react and had insisted that everyone hide. But her voice carried little weight, and not many had truly been willing to believe her.

It was precisely because of this heaven-given talent that she could sense Hawkins's terror. Compared to Jabus, the feeling was countless times more frightening.

If Jabus were a grain of sand, then Hawkins was the sun. The two could not be mentioned in the same breath.

Hawkins took out a handkerchief and wiped the mud from his hands. Looking at Ai Miye, who was covered in mud from head to toe, he offered it to her and asked, "Need it?"

"No." Ai Miye shook her head.

Hawkins smiled. "Don't worry. I'm not a bad person."

"..."

Ai Miye said nothing. She did not know how many people Hawkins had killed, but it was definitely many, many people. That was her instinct.

"All right. Believe it or not, you can't run away now anyway. Let's head back first. Your friends should be quite worried about you," Hawkins said helplessly when he saw that Ai Miye did not believe him.

He put away the handkerchief, turned, and walked toward the cave. Seeing this, Ai Miye could only follow.

"Where are your parents?" Hawkins asked as they walked.

Ai Miye followed with her head lowered and answered coldly, "I don't know."

"An orphan?"

Hawkins thought to himself, unable to stop an image from long ago from surfacing in his mind: a thin yet stubborn silhouette.

"What exactly do you want?" Ai Miye finally could not hold back any longer. She glared at Hawkins and asked.

From beginning to end, she had never believed what Hawkins said.

In the past, many human traffickers had also pretended to be good people like Hawkins. But she knew very well that once they lured someone aboard their ships, they would lock them in cages. If they were lucky, they would be sold. If they were unlucky, they would die in those cages, their corpses casually thrown into the sea.

"If I were a bad person, what do you think I would want to do? Could you and those children resist me? I don't need to put on an act, child. You may be clever, but you have seen too little. That will keep you from seeing the situation clearly and lead you to make the wrong judgment." Hawkins crouched down, unconcerned by the dirt, and reached out to rub Ai Miye's head as he explained gently.

The longer one lived, the more regrets one had.

He knew full well that Ai Miye was not the stubborn, proud child from his memories, but he likewise could not turn a blind eye to such a kind child.

It was the tender concern an elder felt for a young life.

Ai Miye looked at Hawkins suspiciously, still unconvinced, because she knew very well just how wicked bad people could be.

Many people took pleasure in deceiving others. Who knew whether, after she believed Hawkins's words, he would suddenly change his face and cruelly laugh at her for being naive and foolish?

"All right, let's head back first!" Hawkins said, his heart aching.

How much hardship must a child barely in her teens have suffered to become so suspicious?

Hawkins continued walking, smiling as he said, "I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Hawkins. As for my profession... you could say I'm a pirate."

"You're lying." Ai Miye did not believe him.

She had never seen a pirate as clean as Hawkins.

Pirates often visited House Town, though they did not come to plunder treasure. They came to fence stolen goods and seek pleasure.

She had seen not a thousand pirates, then at least eight hundred. Every one of them had been filthy, and they always carried an indescribable stench.

Hawkins was not only clean, but he did not act like a pirate either. He seemed more like the noble who had once passed through House Town.