Her lively manner, tinged with innocent adoration, instantly brought them closer. Even the ever-wary Rokuya couldn't help raising an eyebrow, thinking, This little girl certainly knows how to flatter people.
"All right, Reiko, give us your report on Akagi Village first." Smiling, Kanae pushed a cup of hot tea toward Guan Tinglingzi and steered the conversation back on track.
At the mention of business, Guan Tinglingzi immediately dropped her lovestruck expression and grew exceptionally serious. She took a simple hand-drawn map from inside her clothes and spread it across the table.
"Please take a look, both of you. Akagi Village is deep in the mountains ahead. It originally had a little over two hundred villagers. But half a month ago, people began disappearing one after another. At first, it was only hunters who went out at night. Later, even people who stayed inside their own homes would vanish without a trace by the following morning."
Reiko tapped several red circles on the map, her voice clear and orderly. "After receiving the assignment, I slipped into the outskirts of the village to investigate. It was frighteningly quiet. There wasn't even a single dog barking. In the village chief's backyard, I found a large patch of dried blood, along with some extremely strange claw marks."
"Claw marks?" Rokuya asked casually, tapping his chopsticks against the table to hurry the owner along with their food.
"Yes, enormous claw marks." Reiko gestured to show their size. "About half a meter long, and the cuts were exceptionally smooth. Even the blue stone paving beside them had been sliced apart like tofu. It was most likely a wide-area earth-type Blood Demon Art."
"A wide-area earth-type Blood Demon Art..." Kanae thoughtfully tapped her chin, a habitual gesture when she was thinking. "It certainly could be at the