After parting ways with the fleeing boy in black, the three of us did not linger on the spot and turned to leave the inner city.
The distant bells continued to ring, but their frequency and volume had decreased considerably compared to before.
It's unclear whether they gave up the search or felt that the intruders had been driven away and there was no need to waste their energy. They just needed to put on a show and wait until the time was too long before dispersing.
However, the larger, more ornately decorated mansions nearby were illuminated one by one by lights after the warning bells rang. As the bells continued to ring, the lights gradually spread outwards until they illuminated almost the entire inner city as if it were daytime.
From time to time, one could hear disordered footsteps and hushed conversations, sometimes near, sometimes far, before the gates were locked again and the people returned to the courtyard. These were likely intelligence agents specifically dispatched to confirm the situation.
Thanks to this, our escape operation was slightly affected. Fortunately, Miyuki and Alice were also quite capable, and their presence remained undetected throughout the journey.
"Alright~ We're safe here now."
Standing in the shadow of the inner city wall, Alice stretched lazily, squinting her eyes in a gesture of enjoyment.
She then leaned closer to me curiously: "Speaking of which, Master, did you do anything to that child just now? I'm not entirely sure, but it feels like something like that~"
I turned my face away: "I just used a little magic to mark him. To make it easier to confirm his location."
"Hehe~ Now we even know where he lives~" The sly rabbit covered its mouth and laughed, "I never thought my master would be so cunning~ I really didn't know that."
Tsk, it was just an unconscious, unintentional act; I didn't intentionally want to know this kind of information.
Miyuki turned her head in confusion, her unwavering eyes revealing a mixture of confusion and indifference, as if she didn't understand what we were saying.
"so what?"
Alice placed me on her head and deliberately conjured rabbit ears to tickle me: "That child lives nearby, doesn't he?"
Just as he said, under my covert tracking using my senses, even though the child was a little cautious and deliberately wandered around the nearby flower beds and trees several times, he still returned to his residence without noticing the faint magic I had left on him.
That was a large mansion located just a few hundred meters from the church.
If I remember correctly, that was also one of the places where, after hearing the warning bell, the first batch of people lit up their lights and sent out intelligence scouts.
"You already know, why are you asking me?" I said, stepping on her long ears with annoyance, and looked down at her grinning expression. "Any other questions? Or are you up to something again?"
Of course not!
Alice crossed her arms behind her head, landing right under my bottom. Startled, I jumped up after feeling the touch from her tail. Turning around, I saw her with a mischievous smile: "I was just thinking, even though that child is just a small microcosm, why is it that even the earliest inhabitants of the city are dissatisfied with those guys' actions?"
What else could it be for? Didn't that child say it was because the girl being sacrificed was someone he knew?
Even with this explanation, it still seems strange, doesn't it?
She followed behind Shen Xue, walking quietly in the darkness unlit by the light.
The soft voice, like a whisper in my ear, still reached my ears very clearly: "Logically speaking, although there may be some differences between the people of the inner city and the people of the church, there is no doubt that they are of the same mind in terms of their attitude and interests regarding external affairs, that is, in dealing with the residents outside the inner city walls. They would certainly not choose to attack their own people in order to offend their natural allies."
"But in this situation, the boy who clearly bore some extraordinary marks suddenly claimed that the person taken away this time was someone he knew... I remember his name was Ti, Ti something?"
“Till,” I replied.
“Oh right, Til,” Alice said suddenly, “taking away someone with this relationship without any notice is obviously not a normal situation.”
"...You mean, there are other issues behind this?"
"These are all just irresponsible guesses."
Alice smacked her lips twice: "One possibility is that only the little guy was kept in the dark, and his family and the church people conspired to stage this whole thing to forcibly separate him from the girl. In this case, considering that the little guy asked us to meet him in the lower city tomorrow, he must have had the means to get out of the inner city. So there's a very high chance that the girl is a child from the lower city who was discovered and then handed over to the church, which happened to need someone, and orchestrated this whole thing."
"The second possibility is that his parents know about it but don't care. However, they might use this opportunity to get the church to behave more and thus gain more power over the city. This seems to me to be the most likely explanation. However, this would lead to multiple interpretations of the girl's identity, and it's uncertain whether more people will be implicated later."
"The third possibility is that his family members don't know, and it's all just the little guy's stubbornness... To be honest, if that's the case, I'm not very optimistic about the success rate. Maybe the information he has now is the same as before, deliberately leaked by the church."
After she finished speaking, she gradually fell silent, lowering her head slightly as if she were thinking.
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