Chapter 38

Ye Chuqi was curious how they had managed it.

"So that's why you revealed so much?" Red Beard asked, his eyes crinkling with amusement as he watched Ye Chuqi.

Ye Chuqi tilted her head innocently. "Hm?"

"You kept nothing from us so we'd feel bad about keeping things from you?"

Honestly, I didn't think that far ahead.

She had simply thought hiding certain things would be too much trouble. Unless she parted ways with the Red Wind Mercenary Group, there was no way to keep them secret, so she had let matters take their course. She hadn't expected Red Beard to read so much into it, but judging by his expression, he was probably joking.

"Jun Ruofeng's Alchemy is very different from the mainstream. He can do everything an ordinary alchemist can, but he can't be bothered—things like working on your badge or reforging your Spatial Ring. I imagine he only did it for those materials, and as a favor to me."

At that, Ye Chuqi couldn't help looking up at the sky.

Red Beard sounded amused himself. "What he's good at—or what he likes—is making all sorts of strange things. He investigated the places where the girls disappeared, especially where Duke Fulton's daughter went missing. He confirmed that three groups were involved. One included the thief who abducted you, and he found leads on the other two as well. As for exactly how he did it, Jun Ruofeng hasn't agreed to tell anyone, so I really can't say."

After all that, Ye Chuqi had learned next to nothing. The one useful point was that Jun Ruofeng had uncanny methods and some special way of tracing clues at a crime scene long after they had vanished.

"What happens next?"

"You focus on recovering." Red Beard took Ye Chuqi by the shoulders, turned her around, and gave her a push toward the little building. "Children who worry too much won't grow tall."

Ye Chuqi: "..." Was her being short eating his family's rice?!

Ye Chuqi really wasn't very tall, but she was still young! Give her a couple of years, and she would shoot right up.

In her last life, back in the modern world, she hadn't shot up at thirteen or fourteen like most girls either. She had waited until sixteen before growing like mad, her legs and feet cramping painfully every night.

She wasn't worried now. This body was so healthy, and she had trained since childhood. She would definitely grow taller than she had in her last life!

The investigation into the disappearances had not gone smoothly. Even with three people in custody, all they had proved was that those three had abducted the girls and taken them into the Lost Forest, where others had picked them up. They had gleaned a little more from Gree: the girls were meant to be delivered to an important figure in the Imperial Capital. But they didn't know who that was.

The trail ended there. No one knew whether the girls were alive or dead. Jun Ruofeng's secret art still worked within the town, but even he was helpless in a place as dangerous as the Lost Forest, where the magnetic field was in chaos.

Duke Fulton already had a fiery temper, and with someone fanning the flames in his ear, he could no longer tolerate what he called the Red Wind Mercenary Group's "laziness and halfhearted work." He used his noble title to pressure the group and took all three prisoners, including Gree, off their hands.

Red Beard handed them over without a word. There was no point dragging the matter out any longer. Let Duke Fulton have the headache!

"Doesn't that mean the mission failed?" Ye Chuqi was worried. Would it affect the Mercenary Corps' score and rank?

"Don't worry." Red Beard casually ruffled Ye Chuqi's hair. "It was only an intermediate mission. Even if we failed, it wouldn't affect the group's score. Besides, the mission wasn't a failure."

Ye Chuqi covered her head and took a step back. Red Beard was always saying she was too strong, but he wasn't exactly gentle himself. How could he use so much force on a girl's head? Wasn't he afraid he'd rub her bald?

"Only an intermediate mission?" Ye Chuqi had looked into how the Adventurers' Guild rated missions. Their rank was generally determined by difficulty and reward. A mission involving so many missing people could hardly be easy, and with Duke Fulton offering the reward, it couldn't be small. How was it only intermediate?

"Only intermediate." Red Beard nodded firmly.

The mission Duke Fulton had posted with the Adventurers' Guild was, of course, high-level, with a generous reward. But its requirement was to rescue his daughter. Red Beard hadn't accepted that one. He had taken an official assistance mission issued by the town mayor instead. It was intermediate-level, and his group had not only caught people involved but also supplied plenty of leads. There was no need to worry about whether they had fulfilled it.

Red Beard might always smile like a sweet, guileless fool, but he was no less capable of scheming than Jun Ruofeng. He was simply used to leaving the thinking to Jun Ruofeng; if he could slack off, he would do it a little longer.

"Are you leaving Kru Town?" Ye Chuqi hadn't forgotten that Red Beard and the others' main task was still to deliver the Red Sun Fruit to the Imperial Capital.

"We are." Red Beard gave Ye Chuqi's head a light pat.

"What about the missing people?" They had leads, but they still hadn't found the missing girls, had they?

Red Beard said nothing, and Ye Chuqi suddenly understood. Whoever had taken those girls into the Lost Forest had never intended for them to survive. Red Beard and the others had learned of it too late; rescuing girls who had already been missing for so long was nearly impossible. All they could do was expose the hands pulling strings in the dark so no one else would suffer the same fate.

And with the Imperial Capital involved, the matter was even more complicated.

Red Beard could imagine that Kru Town might be only one of their bases. The same thing could be happening elsewhere. This was no small matter, and there was only so much one Mercenary Corps could do.

Before long, the companions who had ventured deep into the Lost Forest returned with terrible news.

They had found the missing girls, including the Fulton Family's young lady, in a remote part of the Lost Forest. The Red Wind Mercenary Group brought back their bodies.

Lives that had once been so vibrant had become cold corpses. Looking at the pale, fragile girls, some already beginning to decay, Ye Chuqi pressed her lips together. There was something very strange about the state of these bodies.