Working Hands Secured

"I really liked the perfume you wore when we first met." The girl leaned closer and sniffed Beianqi's hair. "You don't seem to be wearing it today?"

If their genders were reversed, that would be straight-up sexual harassment, Su Ming thought.

[Zijin, you scared her.]

[She has a mysterious scent about her.] Zijin's eyes gleamed. [It's that guy Howard's handiwork.]

"My luggage was destroyed in the battle." For some reason, the hairs on Beianqi's body stood on end. She turned sideways, putting some distance between them as unobtrusively as she could. "That perfume comes from the Cold Mountain Kingdom. If you like it, Scholar Chestnut Crow, I can have someone buy it and send it over, but it will take time."

"Never mind, then," Zijin said. "You said we could make a request, right? We'd like to borrow you for about a month or two."

Beianqi looked at the scholar in surprise, then at Su Ming.

"Do you need me to accompany you somewhere?" Beianqi asked uncertainly.

"Mm, out at sea," Zijin answered. "Su Ming and I plan to deal with those pirates next, while investigating the source of the sea monsters. But Xiwo is injured, so we need someone to bolster our fighting strength."

"We won't let the matter of the orc Yexiya rest, either!" Beianqi said firmly. She thought Scholar Chestnut Crow intended to keep tracking Yexiya because her corpse hadn't been found, to make sure she was eliminated for good.

Zijin shook her head. "The Federation will deal with Yexiya, whether she's dead or alive. Our objective is something else."

The mystery of why Yexiya had used Arabic numerals on the sea monsters remained unsolved, and it was very likely connected to planar transfer. The sea monster incident had also involved enormous resources, so Zijin suspected that