On the road to Red Maple City, Lin Hao parted ways with Daphne's order of knights again.
They were about to reach the largest of the Thirteen Great Thieves' treasure caches.
They had already left Aidan Plain and entered the Red Maple Hills.
The Red Maple Hills also made up the main territory of the Red Maple Kingdom, their hills dividing the kingdom into separate stretches.
A castle stood on most of the heights, while city-states occupied most of the few plains among the hills.
The Thirteen Great Thieves' hideout lay in a small grove on one of those hills.
A pack of feral wolves raised by the Thirteen Great Thieves roamed the grove, threatening hunters who entered the hills.
An Adventurers' Guild had once posted a mission to eliminate the wolves.
But several groups of adventurers had met their end there, and the place eventually became an ungoverned area that people rarely visited.
Through the thieves' shadows, Lin Hao could also confirm that, aside from those killed by wolves, the deaths here were all the work of the Thirteen Great Thieves.
Whoever approached, they chose to kill them.
That created the impression that this was a dangerous place.
Under the Longnight Moon, the dead trees in this withered grove twisted into strange shapes, lending it an eerie atmosphere.
Led by one of the thieves' shadows, Lin Hao and the others escorted their wagons to a pile of scattered rocks.
"We're here."
Night Walker Mason looked at the rocks ahead and began shifting them.
He soon cleared a pile away, revealing a narrow entrance in a crack in the stone. A dank, cold wind blew from within.
The crack was just wide enough for one person. After lighting an oil lamp, Mason led them along the winding passage until they