"If the news is true—" A middle-aged nobleman with gray hair trembled slightly in his right hand, and he pressed his left chest and bowed deeply. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

"- Let me go and do it for you. ”

"It's not conclusive yet, but the light in the Sunset Temple is indeed lit, and it looks like it's very close. ”

Beside the roaring fire, a sturdy figure lowered his right hand resting on his chin and said in a deep voice.

"I've sent yodel, and he's better suited to stealth operations than Edda. ”

"You know how important this news is, Li Xiya even sealed the inner altar in the name of the oracle in the first place, so you can't risk unnecessary exposure, and I will only send you secretly when it is finally confirmed. ”

"Of course, of course," the gray-haired middle-aged nobleman could not hide his excitement, "if I come to that time, I will serve you wholeheartedly." ”

"Well," the sturdy figure sighed, "for some reason, I should have been more excited than you were when I heard the news. ”

"But now, I'm so calm. ”

―――――――――――――――――――

Rick didn't know how he got back to the Brotherhood headquarters.

The chill behind the neck was always there.

When he saw the black street headquarters of the Brotherhood, the two elites playing a game of finger piercing at the door, the shadowy Minggang and the dark sentry outside the house, walked into the big house, saw the boss Morris behind the iron table, carefully examined the accounts, and saw the disdainful gaze of Belicia with his back against the pillars (Bellicia's proposal to increase the cost of the brothel was rejected tonight), he was really relieved, and even the killer Leyoke, who had always been at odds with him, looked amiable in the candlelight of the dining table.

Before he knew it, the chill on the back of his neck was gone, as if it had never been.

Even Rick himself wondered if he was too nervous.

When he spoke to Boss Maurice, who was in charge of the population business, and suspected that someone was following him, Lejock laughed and spewed out a sip of ale, which directly extinguished the candlestick on the table, and Belicia yawned, tightened his huge and friendless chest, and looked at him with even more disdain.

And Boss Morris, when he saw him covered in cold sweat, also looked strange, patted Rick's shoulder, and told him not to be too tired in the near future, watch less dramas in the Temple of the Night, and wait for the strange doctor Ramon to come back from a business trip and let him prescribe a soothing medicine.

Damn it!

Rick knew that it was hard for others to believe even the existence of his ability, let alone an assassin who followed him from the abandoned house to the dark street for a whole kilometer, without a shadow, with an unknown purpose but no action - but Rick subconsciously thought that the existence of that guy was real!

But when he returned to his room, lay down, and thought carefully about the various details of the tracking he encountered tonight, even he, who had always been suspicious, couldn't help but be a little suspicious, was he really too nervous?

Rick calmed down again and tried again, and everything was fine, and his neck was comfortable on the pillow.

Well, maybe I'm overthinking.

But the next moment, that thrilling coolness hit again!

I grass!

I can't sleep this night!

Rick jerked up from the bed.

He pulled out a box under the bed, and pulled out a six-type Siegel magic gun that weighed so much that it took two hands to drag in the box, and pressed it nervously against the solid wall, and slowly crept out of the hallway, listening carefully.

The hallway was filled with unextinguishable lamps burning with eternal oil, illuminating the hall incomparably, but there was still no one. In the distance, a guard brother returned from the bathroom, seemingly scratching, pulling the black and red leather armor on his crotch, and walked past Rick.

In the room at the end of the corridor, the usual debauchery, frantic roars of Leyok and Belicia could be heard.

"Damn, this shameless dog man and woman, it's better to break it off with too much force. Rick cursed loudly.

The sentry brother who had just walked by turned around with the same feeling and nodded at Rick, and the two looked at each other, feeling like a confidant.

Then, Rick saw that the other man was scratching the leather armor on his crotch in pain, while the other party looked at him struggling to hold the magic gun against the wall.

Both of them turned their heads in embarrassment, returning to their posts, and returning to their rooms.

Rick touched the back of his neck.

Shit, this goddamn ability must be out of order.

Besides, if the other party touches the headquarters of the Brotherhood with a cloud of masters, and no one has discovered it, then it will definitely not be useful for him to hold the magic energy gun, even if the ability of Boss Morris is useless.

Sleep, sleep.

―――――――――――――――――――

Tails' back injury looked terrible, but it didn't seem to be too serious, as it was only the third day that he was able to stand up and walk.

Naruto's attributes, talented, Tails lined up, sighed, looked at the ruined houses and broken walls around him, took the black bread and wild vegetables handed by the thug Pilsen, and took a bite into his mouth.

It's a pity that I was born in such a place.

"There is a sharp branch next to you, you must have secretly cut my hand!"

"It's not me, my hand was cut last night!"

"Our hands are cut all over the house! It must be the people of the Eighth House! They are jealous of our harvest yesterday!"

"It turned out to be them! Our people in the fourteenth house were also cut in the night! They didn't want us to go out into the street to 'touch the sheep'!"

Tails yawned and lazily listened to several beggars in the other room, from quarrel to fight, and the beggars next to him even coaxed until the thugs came to stop it. He sighed, swallowed the last bite of his unpalatable breakfast, and clapped his hands to call the beggars in the sixth room.

Work started.

It was a Tuesday, and the begging in the sixth house was relatively smooth, and they went directly to the west gate near the checkpoint for more business. The last week seems to have been a celebration of the god of the setting sun, but hearing that the oracle had descended and the temple of the setting sun had sealed off the inner altar, many believers had entered the city through the west gate during the week, climbed the city walls, and prayed to the setting sun to make up for the regret of not being able to pray to the goddess of the setting sun in person.

Before the guards could turn their angry eyes into stops, Tails, with the help of Ryan and Coria, managed to get from a fat fruit and vegetable vendor to a statue of the moon carved out of black wood. The vendor was too attentive to the purse in his arms, so as Ryan and Corlia haggled with him over a piece of sativa, Tails reached for the package behind him.

This statue of the god of the bright moon should be worth at least fifty copper at its market price. Of course, this kind of stolen goods cannot see the light of day, and can only be sold in the channels of the Brotherhood, and the veterans of the Brotherhood know that they are just beggars and thieves, and they will even kill themselves to lower the price (and even rob them when they encounter valuable ones), and it would be good to be able to exchange them for five coppers.

But no matter how small a mosquito is, it's still meat.

When Tails and the others returned to the abandoned house, they saw that Rick, who had come to inspect as usual, did not have his usual kindness and indifference, but hurriedly admonished the thugs with a few words, and disappeared from sight.

"Is Mr. Rick in trouble?" asked a hungry Coria, biting her finger. They traveled far and came back late, but Tails had a good relationship with Pearson, the thug in charge of delivering food, and often bribed them with small gifts before the latter agreed to keep them for food.

"Probably Quaid, that guy is going to get into trouble the most. Kellytt said, his stomach growling, too.

Hearing the name, Ned shuddered with Ryan.

"Boys, there's no food tonight. The six children entered the deserted courtyard, and when they saw them from a distance, Pearson, who was in charge of the meal, waved his hand.

"Don't look at me, I can't do anything," Pearson just shook his head absently in the face of the angry but somewhat unconfident questioning of the six children, "Rick gave the order to rest early tonight, and the schedule was advanced. ”

In the end, Tails talked badly, and at the price of the moon statue, he got four and a half black breads and half a bowl of black pine cabbage from Pearson, which he had intended to cut off and leave for his two hounds.

"Rick and Quaid have been a bit nervous lately," Pearson revealed a message to Tails before leaving, as the other five children had eaten up, "Quaid has been getting worse and worse lately, and he's been scolding "dead bald" all day long - but that's what he was like - but Rick has become very strange, especially since the past two days, listening to the people in the department,"

With that, Pearson looked around and whispered in Tails' ear, "He's haunted by a ghost." ”

Tails looked at Pearson in the distance, took a bite of the black bread that was usually unpalatable, but became extraordinarily delicious when he was hungry, and thought silently.

I don't know what happened to Rick to hit the ghost.

But what made Quaid's temper worse and worse, Tails swallowed a mouthful of bread, and it seemed that he had been keeping a low profile lately.

――――――――――――――――――

Rick was getting nervous again.

For the previous two days, he had thought that his ability had gone wrong.

It wasn't until this morning, when he opened the roster that he was sure that his abilities were not wrong.

Rick is a very ambitious man. And he believes that in order to realize his ambitions, he must start with small things, such as some careful habits in his daily life, such as never writing down his itinerary and plans on paper, such as in drawers, cages and important documents, he will clip a few hairs in inconspicuous places to prevent theft and peeping, such as never hiding money in one place, etc., he has always been proud of his caution, and he also thinks that one day he will receive a due return for such caution.

For example, now.

Rick flipped through the roster of beggars.

On the roster, the hair sandwiched on each page is in the same place.

This should have been a good thing, but it meant that no one had turned over the roster.

But Rick was the son of a scribe.

His father had taught him that, if he had the heart, every good thief and ranger could easily circumvent this kind of "hair-clipping" secrecy and unknowingly open the desired documents.

So Rick got a more cautious approach from his father.

The secret to flipping through a document without realizing it is to make sure that your hair is still in its place after flipping through it.

The quickest way to do this is to hold your hair in place, and when you turn the page, hold the upper and lower pages with your hands, and continue to hold your hair in place.

How do you hack this method?

Like the aristocracy, sealing directly with fire paint is of course the fastest and safest.

But Rick has a kind of light dry gel made of herring fish oil for his father, which is a special gel for poor people who live by the river, and the characteristic (disadvantage?) of this dry gel is that the adhesion is not strong, as long as it is not too heavy, after the pages are painted, even if the book is closed, the glued place will not be glued, and the pages will be glued together after the pages are smeared.

When Rick opened the roster, he found that his hair was still in place, except for a little.

The hairs were clinging to the pages.

Someone looked at his roster of beggars and turned the pages with his hands in his hands with his hair.

Rick's heart shuddered.

Moreover, it is definitely a master to be able to leave the four hairs in place without a trace on the different but inconspicuous positions on the pages.

Fortunately, I had the secret taught by my father, so I was able to discover it.

Four days ago, because I saw the begging scene played by Tails, I only looked through the roster in order to find the house where the boy Tails was, and everything was normal at that time.

But as of today, in the intervening four days, someone has come to his room and looked through the beggar's roster?

Rick's scalp froze, and he suddenly realized that this was not the most important thing.

So he crawled through the drawer and pulled out the most important account book of human transactions, his secret deposit book in the royal bank.

The ledger and deposit books were safe, there were no signs of being flipped, and the hair in the pages fell naturally.

Rick breathed a sigh of relief.

Luckily, the stuff in these dark compartments hasn't been - wait.

If you are a master, how can you miss the dark grid?

Rick shuddered and pulled out the entire compartment, took it apart, and reached for the place where his hair should have been in the compartment.

He then collapsed in his chair.

Hair, being glued firmly to the seams of the dark lattice by his Rick's unique light-drying gel.

When Rick walked into the restaurant in despair, ignoring Lejok and Belicia, who were flirting, it was Lejok, who had always been at odds, and shouted at him gloatingly.

"Accountant, I heard you've been bumping into a ghost lately?"

Rick ignored him, just continued to sit down expressionlessly, pulled over a bottle of ink on the table, used it as a sauce, and poured it on his steak.

"Ignore him," Belicia sat in Leyoke's arms with a smile on her lips, glancing at the killer with a smile and pouring a glass of red wine into his mouth, "Come to my room tonight?"

"When—of course, of course," replied Lejork hurriedly, without waiting to swallow his wine, "I only learned today that the Boss had taken all the checkpoints out of the house a week ago, so we might as well to-hehe-hey—go crazy to-night." ”

"Oh, you're so bad—"

"Whew!" Rick's ink bottle slammed to the table, and the ink spilled over the table and flowed in front of the man and woman on the other side.

He looked up palely and looked at Leyoke and Belicia with displeased expressions.

"A week ago, a week ago - weren't there any guards in the big house in the headquarters?"

"Nonsense," Lejok dusted off the ink and threw a loaf of bread in Rick's face, "The latest big operation against the Blood Vials, the boss said to keep it a secret, the fewer people the better, so the checkpoints have been taken out of the house, and you can't even go to the toilet - but don't worry, you don't have an inseparable ghost protecting you." ”

"Well, in that hallway," Rick didn't realize, his voice trembling at the moment, "in the hallway, there won't be a checkpoint in the hallway?"

Leyoke and Belicia had already left him behind and kissed each other as if no one was around.

Rick took a deep breath.

The day before yesterday, I was inexplicably followed in the abandoned house, the sentry brothers who shouldn't have existed in the corridor of the headquarters that night, and the beggar roster that was carefully looked through in the room.

It's good, everything is connected.

Now, Nar Rick, he said to himself trembling with nervousness:

You're being targeted.

The opponent can be so powerful, so powerful that he can come and go freely in the heavily guarded Black Street Headquarters, so powerful that even a terrifying killer like Leyoke doesn't even know it, and an experienced ability warrior like Maurice Boss doesn't know anything.

Only I was lucky enough to discover this thanks to my deceased father.

He could be right behind me.

I must save myself, save myself!

I'm going to find his purpose!

Rick's brain was running like crazy.

In the past two days, the other party should have turned his room upside down, but he only looked at the beggar's roster carefully.

The more important ledgers are abandoned.

What the other party is looking for is in the list of beggars! By the way, he was targeted near the abandoned house, which happens to be where the beggars live!

He's looking for some beggar!

However, Rick thought with a headache that he had more than a hundred beggars in his hands, and next month, Beth would send another batch, these are children of unknown origin or no future troubles (important and valuable children, such as the descendants of some powerful people, the children of some wealthy merchants, who have been redeemed and killed a long time ago), which beggar does he want?

With such a brilliant skill and such a terrifying strength, why doesn't he make a claim to the Brotherhood in a bold and open manner?

I would rather cooperate with him one by one, even if I pull out all the more than 100 beggars one by one, strip them naked, and even kill them all for autopsy, it is better than being hung by a "ghost" from afar every day!

Wait, I seem to have thought of the key.

Why didn't he make a claim to the Brotherhood in the open?

Of course, this matter cannot be known to anyone, not even the Brotherhood of the Black Street!

Is it a competitor of the Brotherhood? No, if the Blood Vials had this kind of strength, the Brotherhood of the Black Street would have been wiped out dozens of times.

That is, he has no formal channels and no bothers to deal with the Black Street Brotherhood in Downtown!

Such a terrifying character, of course, would not be low enough to deal with gangsters from the slums.

And why should he be interested in these orphans who have been dead for many years?

Isn't it okay to search for missing children and report the case directly to the Alert Department? Moreover, with the characters and forces of this level, the Alert Department does not dare to slack off, and even the Brotherhood can only bow its head.

Wait! Rick's mind lit up, and he seemed to get to the point.

Powerful, comes and goes without a shadow, acts secretly, and is interested in the origin of a certain child, the level is far higher than that of the Brotherhood of the Black Street.

Strength is piled up with money and resources, and the secret is because the disclosure of this matter will be detrimental to him, and the reason why he doesn't deal with the Brotherhood is because his own level is too high, and he is interested in the children collected by the Brotherhood from various channels and different origins...

I may be above the extreme realm, and behind it is a high-ranking person who holds power and wealth, but I avoid any eyes and ears from the Brotherhood to the Alert Hall, secretly searching for an important child-child?

Rick slapped his thigh hard, and a string in his head seemed to break through instantly!

He is involved in the bloodline inheritance struggle of some big family!

I grass!

Rick stared fiercely at the opposite side, Leyok and Belicia, who had already begun to move their hands up and down.

It's just that his thoughts have long since left the man and woman in front of him.

Perhaps the fifteen million people in the entire Star Kingdom didn't know that one day, a secret truth that was enough to shake the kingdom and shake the situation in the East and West continents was once so close to an inconspicuous gangster leader.