Attempted Suicide

A white light suddenly shone from Anrelo's corpse.

His soul emerged and began to be guided to the afterlife by the pre-placed objects of light.

"You really have a lot of tricks up your sleeve," Lang Yefu sneered.

"It's better than... being tortured..." Anrelo said dejectedly.

He had long been prepared for his escape to fail.

Anrelo had placed a negative pressure device on his body. Once his Magic Power was sealed, the deactivated fuse would loosen, detonating the explosives he was carrying.

This was a last resort.

Whether it is a living body or a dead soul falling into the hands of the Plundering Clock, they suffer for no reason.

"Goodbye," Anrelo said to Lang Yefu.

"Goodbye." Lang Yefu waved to him.

Then, Anrelo's soul dissipated in the light of the rites.

The explosion blew down the door and started a fire. Besides Lang Yefu, only two other survivors were inside, struggling and howling in the black smoke.

Lang Yefu looked at the corpses scattered on the ground and the shattered standard armor, and suddenly an idea popped into her head.

****

Abidaqi received the report about this very quickly.

"Anrelo committed suicide, Lang Yefu was killed in the explosion."

Only three members of the mission survived.

"Handle the aftermath properly." He waved his hand.

Eight orcs died, but that's a minor matter.

They have an inexhaustible supply anyway.

And it was a good thing that Anrelo committed suicide out of "fear of punishment".

If Hairspring just a little clever and shifted all the blame onto the dead, this matter would predictably end quickly.

The three Pseudo-Saint Rank members had assembled and, together with Abidaqi, mounted their dragons and flew towards the Fallen Leaf Swamp. They had all changed their clothes, and outwardly, they were no different from an ordinary patrol team.

"My lord, the entire army has been ordered. All observation posts are keeping a close watch on the sky, remaining vigilant for the arrival of the alchemical behemoth ' Kunpeng '!"

Abidaqi nodded.

Anrelo brought an unexpected surprise this time. If they could eliminate the alchemical behemoth and its accompanying reinforcements, it would be a powerful counterattack against the Taya Allied Forces.

This is also a way to vent my anger after feeling so frustrated all this time!

"Use invisibility and illusion spells to move when necessary, and avoid detection at all times!" Abidaqi instructed.

"Yes!" the members of the Quarter Hand responded.

In addition to the top-tier combat force he personally led, an elite cavalry unit was also assembling for this hunting operation.

Its members are all intermediate and advanced combatants; they will disguise themselves as a caravan and pass through the vicinity of the Fallen Leaf Swamp.

Attendants are distributing red cloaks to the knights.

"Where are the lead plates?" the cavalry captain asked.

The logistics personnel searched the entire warehouse but found only a few dozen pieces. Some people put on the lead plates and set off first.

"The rest have already been bought!"

The attendant reported to the leader.

****

Su Ming, on his side, did not see the changes that occurred inside the city gate.

In satellite footage, "Anrelo" is still driving the carriage, taking "Lang Yefu" to the Fallen Leaf Swamp.

Around Cloud Fang City, only regular patrol teams and passing transport caravans are present.

Everything is as usual.

Of course, the explosion at the city gate was somewhat sudden.

Many people began to fight the fire, and the thick smoke was gradually extinguished.

Yuye arrived at the largest blacksmith shop in Cloud Fang City and purchased some daily necessities nearby.

She saw a carriage approaching, several soldiers hurried over, then carried lead ingots up from the blacksmith's shop, and finally the carriage left, leaving heavy ruts. Yuye activated the communication button on her neck ring.

"Uncle, how much is this pumpkin?" she asked the orc woman selling vegetables by the roadside.

Naturally, the two began to haggle over the price.

"Pumpkin" was a pre-arranged code word, indicating that there had indeed been unusual lead procurement.

Su Ming and Katharine exchanged a glance.

There were no new weapons that required lead protection; it was all just a test to see if the conversation had been overheard.

"I shouldn't have had any hope that Anrelo would be able to escape successfully," Katharine sighed.

"Then the explosion at the city gate must have meant that Anrelo and the other side perished together."

This is easy to deduce, because Anrelo were to die now, he could still preserve his "innocence."

Otherwise, the question isn't whether he lives or dies, but how horribly he dies.

"What a pity about that ' Coconut Jelly ' lady," Su Ming remarked.

The carriage that continued to drive away in the satellite image had been replaced with decoy.

Yise rushed over and, by asking around among the onlookers, learned that only three guards had survived; the rest had become corpses.

The woman codenamed "Coconut Jelly" was clearly among them.

"Katharine, have the Y-20 give us a fake attack later."

"Drag Abidaqi around in the Fallen Leaf Swamp for hours."

"Clear!"

****

There was another person who also wanted to commit suicide: Ximina.

She prepared lunch, but no one ate it today.

The Death Knell is gone, and neither is Abidaqi.

Ximina arranged the dishes, but no one came, so she picked up her rice bowl and started showing off.

The rice was fragrant; it was high-quality rice from the Elven race, a privilege unavailable to the rest of Water Chestnut Island. Unfortunately, the other dishes were terribly unpalatable.

Ximina, a princess, would never know how to cook.

She simply boiled the vegetables in water, sprinkled them with salt, and occasionally, when she was in a good mood, she would drizzle some soy sauce.

Sometimes, adding a little minced garlic and a splash of rapeseed oil is the ultimate way to cook Ximina.

The problem is, Death Knell and Abidaqi really like it.

On the one hand, elves have relatively mild tastes; on the other hand, orcs are utterly inhuman in terms of cooking skills.

Even when they boil sweet potatoes, they turn it into a disgusting soup filled with bubbles and unknown seasonings, making it unappetizing to look at.

After all, it was Elf Rice, Ximina ate her first full meal in a long time.

None of the servants around her dared to stop her; they pretended not to see anything.

Ximina finished eating and got up to clear the table, but suddenly realized it wasn't necessary.

Not only did Death Knell and Abidaqi leave, but a large number of High Rank combatants were also taken away from the palace.

Now is the perfect time to break free! Ximina looked around; the entire palace had been completely destroyed, and there were no buildings tall enough left.

The outer palace walls were high enough, but she wouldn't be allowed to climb them.

Ximina rejected this option because she knew that being half-dead from the fall would be unbearable.

As for poison, there was naturally none.

After a quick check, Ximina found only one option left.

She didn't go to her room, where the roof beams weren't high enough.

Ximina found a strip of cloth, twisted it into a rope, and then chose a room that was currently empty.

This room was probably once the office of an official in the royal palace. Many traces of its history can be seen on the walls. There are small characters carved with a knife, decorations representing the owner's past honors, and remnants of alterations.

"I'm so sorry, I was planning to write a sequel to the story of the Cloud Fang Dynasty," Ximina murmured.

She touched the wall; it was the last remnant of this royal palace.

Let's sleep peacefully together!

Ximina threaded the strip of cloth through the roof beam, propped up a stool, and kicked it off. Her entire weight was pressed down on her throat, and an extremely uncomfortable feeling washed over her.

Outside, the footsteps of servants and the distant, indistinct noise of orc laborers working seemed to be separated by a layer of water.

The world seems to be drifting away.

Ximina glanced down and saw a mouse on the ground.

It looked up at Ximina, its upper body upright, its two paws tucked into its chest.

For some reason, she actually looks rather cute.

Feeling suffocated, Ximina didn't want to struggle. She decided to distract herself and look closely at the mouse.

Upon closer inspection, a problem was actually discovered.

The mouse in front of me gives off a clean feeling, especially its eyes, which have a pure and clear quality.

Ximina suddenly realized something was wrong.

The eyes of living beings are moist, with alternating shades of color.

A thought suddenly popped into her head: Could this thing in front of her be an alchemical creation?

What Ximina saw was indeed a mechanical mouse.

Su Ming dispatched three rats to infiltrate the Cloud Fang Royal Palace.

After numerous withdrawals and reassignments, only two key members of the Plundering Clock remain.

There are risks, but this is the best opportunity available, and it's fleeting.

Fortunately, the remaining two were diligently working at their posts, even though they weren't close to their residential areas.

Su Ming controlled the rat and approached the area to search carefully.

The rat scurrying about in broad daylight was naturally spotted by many orcs, but Su Ming didn't care.

It's normal for mice to be around, but they usually aren't this bold.

After searching around, Su Ming finally found Ximina had turned into a "teru teru bozu" (a Japanese doll-shaped doll), in a room.

He was immediately stunned.

Su Ming quickly switched the mechanical mouse's view to infrared thermal imaging, clearly seeing that the blood vessels under Ximina resembled tiny, glowing rivers, exhibiting periodic pulsations that alternated between light and dark. This indicated that her heart was still beating strongly.

Ximina is still alive!

"Thank God!"

Everyone, including Su Ming, breathed a sigh of relief.

Among the support personnel in the rear are medical experts on standby.

With the rescue plan back on track, Su Ming decided to go along with it.

In a sense, Ximina's suicide actually saved her a lot of trouble.

"I want her to have obvious ligature marks on her body and be unconscious," Su Ming said. "When should I start treatment?"

Of course, unexpected events also increase the degree of uncontrollability.

"About three minutes!" the expert said. "After five minutes, it will enter an irreversible phase."

The problem is that by the time the mechanical mouse entered, Ximina had already started.

The expert panel debated for a moment. "This person isn't scratching or provoking us; it's hard to assess the situation."

"Yes, she was quite determined to die."

However, when Ximina experienced her first convulsion, it signified the onset of the "seizure phase."

The mechanical mouse quickly jumped up and cut the strip of cloth.

With a dull thud, Ximina crashed to the ground.

The mechanical mouse stepped forward, extended a needle from its tail, and began to administer an intravenous injection.

Ximina's convulsions quickly subsided, but she remained completely still, showing no signs of waking up.

Even more surprisingly, her face lost its color and began to turn deathly pale.

The drugs that Su Ming had the mechanical rats bring in were meant to make things worse for Ximina.

Finally, on the surface, Ximina appeared to have completely lost her life, indistinguishable from a corpse.

A mechanical mouse crawled into Ximina's arms, and only through its keen sensors could it detect an extremely faint heartbeat and breathing.

Su Ming breathed a sigh of relief and let the mechanical mouse rest in Ximina's arms. "This reminds me of a Lighthouse story where the police arrived and shot someone dead to stop them from committing suicide," he quipped.

"It's alright," Katharine said. "I suspect that the large-scale departure of the palace staff created an opportunity for her."

Su Ming was taken aback.

"If I hadn't made it in time, Ximina would have died a truly unjust death!"

"Really."

****

Ximina's suicide was discovered quickly.

The guards stuffed her body into a sack and dumped it in a corner of the mine's morgue.

Nearby was a half-collapsed stone wall, the ground was covered with tattered straw mats, the air was filled with the smell of decay, and swarms of flies gathered there.

The Cloud Fang Royal Palace currently employs 20,000 laborers, with an average of 20 to 30 deaths per day, and even more in exceptional circumstances.

By evening, there were people responsible for collecting the bodies. Those with owners were sent home, and those without were taken outside the city to be buried.

Then, before the appointed time, the body collectors arrived with their carts. "Why are they so diligent today?"

The guard asked curiously.

"I have something to do later, so let's finish early and call it a day," the body collector explained.

Because they arrived too early, there were only seven or eight corpses in the storage yard.

The body collector quickly found the target the "client" wanted.

That's right, the reason he came was because a half-cat witch doctor requested a complete human corpse for medical experiments.

Furthermore, the other party claimed that someone had just died in the palace.

While the body collector remembered the witch doctor as a trustworthy "regular customer," upon seeing the deceased—a beautiful young woman—he suddenly began to doubt the witch doctor's true purpose.

However, corpse collectors have no reason to turn down money.

He piled the bodies onto the truck and then hauled them away. The bodies in the sacks were lifeless, and everything about them seemed unremarkable.

The corpse collectors walked quickly, and in just over half an hour, they arrived at a point some distance outside the Cloud Fang Royal Palace.

He looked around and went into a quiet corner. The alley was very narrow, with broken wooden boxes and discarded bamboo baskets piled on both sides. A skinny dog looked up at him, then lazily lay back down.

Su Ming stepped forward and tossed two silver coins into the hands of the corpse collector.

"Thank you, sir!"

The corpse collector exclaimed in delight.

Su Ming opened the sack and saw a Pale- faced girl and a mechanical mouse in her arms.

"Vital signs are still present, administer first aid immediately!"

The voices of the expert team came through the earpiece.

Su Ming breathed a sigh of relief and quickly picked up the girl.

Ximina's body was very light and motionless, like a broken, withered branch.

The body collector suddenly froze, frozen in place.

Soon, Jinxiu's report arrived.

[Resolved, the memory has been erased.] [How do you explain the origin of this silver coin?] Su Ming asked.

"[What silver coin?]" Jinxiu asked.

Things that don't exist naturally don't need explanation, and that's the least suspicious thing about them.

Helpless, Su Ming took the silver coins back from the corpse collector and left.

They also rearranged the sacks on the cart to fill the gap left by the missing body.

Half a minute later, the body collector woke up.

He remembered that he went to work early today and then went into the alley to relieve himself.

The body collector scratched his head. It was just for convenience. He didn't know why he had brought the cart used for transporting corpses in as well.

But there's nothing much to think about.

The body collectors pulled the cart with all their might and continued working.

If he doesn't finish the job, he'll be the one who ends up as a corpse.