Chapter 188: Night Raid

“Something feels off,” Ram said.

Their room was right next door, so after carefully ensuring no one was around, she and Ling slipped into Wu Qingsong’s room. After a while, Bernard, Daryl, and Beck also sneaked in.

“You’re just being paranoid,” Wu Qingsong said.

Of course, no one else understood this phrase, but fortunately, aside from Liuli, no one asked what it meant.

“A wanted notice for the soldiers was issued, so why is there no movement over the death of a steward?” Ram said.

Her words made everyone alert.

Indeed, in this world, especially in the core regions of the Elven Empire, the death of a half-elf steward in their own jurisdiction was a very serious matter. In comparison, the deaths of forty or fifty mastiff soldiers in the mountains were nothing significant. There was no reason for a wanted notice to be issued for the mastiff soldiers while the more severe incident remained unaddressed.

“Maybe they haven’t found any clues?” Daryl suggested.

To be honest, he was a bit confused now. When he thought they should act, others told him not to, saying he was too impulsive. But when he hesitated, Wu Qingsong decisively killed that guy. Although this made him feel quite satisfied, it also left him completely uncertain about when to act and when not to.

He couldn’t bring himself to ask Wu Qingsong for advice, nor did he want to ask Ram, and Bernar couldn’t offer any clear explanation either. The old badgerman wasn’t particularly eloquent. If he had been, he might not have survived this long and would likely have died alongside Nina and his father in battle.

“That’s impossible,” Ram said. “We’ve been traveling back and forth within Sentalus for four days, with so few travelers on the road and so many people along the way. Someone must have seen us.”

Killing the managers of two inns and burning the records were merely measures to conceal their identities. There were too many slaves and soldiers by the roadside, and some people would inevitably remember their appearance. However, in this era, accurately describing someone’s appearance through word of mouth was not easy. As long as they didn’t take the same route back and avoided this area for the next ten years, the chances of being caught were actually quite low.

In Greenfield Town, it was plausible that the authorities hadn’t had time to connect the two incidents, but now two more days had passed. If the people of the Grand Duchy of Sentalus weren’t complete idiots, they couldn’t have missed such obvious clues.

“Even if they have leads, they haven’t found us yet. Otherwise, the city guards would have come knocking by now,” Wu Qingsong said.

None of them knew the relationship between the two Grand Duchies. Although Ram had managed to obtain an endorsement document from the Grand Duke Sentalus years ago to open a shop in Umber, she had actually found a broker at Polopolore Port and had never been to Sentalus herself, so she was unaware of the intricacies involved.

“When we reach the capital, we should quickly get the knighthood sorted out, and that should resolve these issues,” Wu Qingsong said. “In the meantime, everyone stay alert, and we’ll get through these next few days.”

“Actually, we shouldn’t have all stayed at the same inn,” Ram said.

“Should we change inns now?” Bernar suggested.

Ram considered it for a moment and then nodded.

***

“My lord, those houndmen and wolfmen have left the inn and moved to another one,” reported one of Klaus’s subordinates.

Klaus frowned slightly.

Simultaneously attacking two inns hundreds of meters apart outside Yagata City without exposing themselves would require considerable resources.

He believed they hadn’t discovered they were being tracked, otherwise, they would have taken more drastic measures or fled outright, rather than simply splitting up.

This seemed to be a risk-avoidance measure.

According to the information from Elyar, the main forces were the half-elf, the catwoman, and the mixed-breed dog girl, which meant their primary targets were still together.

“Keep an eye on them and proceed as planned,” Klaus ordered.

By the time Wu Qingsong and his group settled down, it was already dusk, and night soon fell.

Klaus’s subordinates quickly drugged the other guests in the inn into unconsciousness and quietly gathered outside the doors of the two rooms where Wu Qingsong and Ram were staying.

Klaus nodded to his subordinates, who carefully lit the sleeping smoke and used bamboo tubes to blow the smoke through the cracks in the doors into the rooms.

After about ten minutes, they stopped and stepped aside, placing antidotes under their noses. They then used knives to pick the locks and cautiously entered the rooms.

This was just their standard practice, but it inadvertently prevented them from waking Wu Qingsong—who was immune to the sleeping smoke.

Due to several days of heightened vigilance and a month of continuous travel, Wu Qingsong was indeed very tired. But when one of Klaus’s men gently tried to bind his hands with a rope, he instantly awoke.

“Who?” he asked instinctively.

The intruder hesitated for a moment, then swiftly struck the back of Wu Qingsong’s neck with the hilt of his knife. They refrained from stabbing him because they wanted to interrogate Wu Qingsong for specific details. Normally, this blow would have been enough to knock out a strong man.

Unfortunately for them, Wu Qingsong was far from normal. In fact, it was debatable whether he could even still be considered human. He immediately activated the soul fragments he always kept ready by his side, causing the intruders in his room to scream in agony. As he woke from his slumber, he quickly realized what was happening.

If someone had broken into his room, what about Ram and the others?

“Damn it!” 

He leaped out of bed, grabbed the dagger from one of the intruders, and swiftly killed the two trying to bind him.

The screams of these men immediately alerted Klaus and the others. Though they didn’t know how their plan had failed, they quickly initiated Plan B. Several skilled warriors rushed into the room, intending to subdue Wu Qingsong with force.

But they too fell with screams, each dispatched with a single strike from Wu Qingsong. He then burst out of the room and came face-to-face with Klaus.

“Who exactly are you?” Klaus asked in despair.

As a mid-level official of the Grand Duchy of Sentalus, Klaus could tell that this was some sort of magic. The problem was that, even among half-elves, those with magical talent and the opportunity to learn were extremely rare. These individuals were always the beloved illegitimate children of powerful nobles and certainly not nobodies.

Was this a conspiracy against Sentalus? Or had they accidentally provoked an unknown powerhouse?

“Kill them!” Klaus issued his final, desperate command. 

But what greeted him was excruciating pain in his head and the sudden, cool sting of a blade in his throat.