“So, it wasn’t just the Du Clan; several other figures had simultaneously ordered for the assassination, and the mission was heralded by the commission of an unnamed ‘Young Master’?”
An Fei mused as she read the letter atop the clay tiled roof of a residential building, immersing herself into the quiet yet buzzing nightlife atmosphere of Dong Lin City.
The young girl swung her legs to the rhythm of the gentle breeze, her head swaying to the faint voices emerging from the various alleyways and streets.
The words were obscure and diminished to the extent that she couldn’t discern a single coherent phrase, but An Fei could sufficiently guess that the night markets had begun to establish their shops.
Twisting her body atop the clay tiled roof to adjust into a more comfortable position, she utilized the cold rays of the moon to illuminate the parchment grasped in her hand.
The letter she had found was a simple and damning commission brief for an organization of assassins. Although An Fei could not determine a distinct name of any organization on the letter, she was aware that it held a great connection to the six eagle emblems captured in the Sanctum.
The contents demanded for a series of actions.
First, the young girl associated with the Shen Family who was staying at the Yang Clan’s Plum Blossom Inn was to be assassinated as shortly as possible. If capable, the assassins were to eliminate her corpse to establish the ruse that she had fled from the establishment due to an unknown reason.
Second, upon assassinating the target, they were to obtain a vial of freshly spilt blood. As for the intended purpose and significance, the letter was unsurprisingly vague and incoherent.
And finally, the blame was to be placed onto the head of Tang Shiqi, with sufficient complementary evidence.
Evidence in the form of an unusual-shaped pendant with a phoenix’s feather engraved onto its surface found in her room, as well as numerous witnesses testifying regarding a severe argument between the two, as well as a harsh fight.
The letter even explicitly stated that three hundred and twenty citizens had been enticed and successfully bribed into accomplishing their role as witnesses, and the location for the imaginary conflict had been thoroughly ‘prepared’.
“That’s… a little hardcore, though I don’t remember enraging any of these people save for that Du Clan…”
An Fei sighed as she folded the letter and stowed it away into a pocket of her clothes.
The young girl exchanged an impassionate and forlorn glance with the cold moon, and swung herself off the clay tiles to silently leap onto the ground.
She was going hunting; the letter that had requested for her death with the price of a hundred gold coins embossed with the insignia of ‘Yong’ eventually revealed an interesting clue.
“Every night, there will be a scholar lingering around the Fragrant Peony Street, dressed in a plain grey robe save for the characters for an eagle embroidered onto his right collar.”
An Fei recited from memory as she silently crept along the Fragrant Peony Street. As her feet nimbly tread with light steps, the young girl continued to observe her surroundings with great vigilance.
Compared to the other streets of Dong Lin City whose rambunctiousness and rowdiness never abated even in the dead of midnight, Fragrant Peony Street was a different matter.
The street was devoid of many people, and those who tread on its paved streets were few – but dressed in an astonishingly diverse assortment of fashion and quality.
Such an anomaly was due to the fact that the Fragrant Peony Street was one of the numerous, publicly known red-light district streets of Dong Lin City.
The appearance and structure of the street as well as the numerous buildings standing on either side of the road was nearly identical to that of its neighboring streets. When she had first stepped into the street in the evening, An Fei had thought nothing much except for the unusual trait of a thieving silence present in the atmosphere.
Lo and behold, for no sooner than five minutes since she had stepped onto the street of paved limestone, the young girl witnessed a pretty courtesan dressed in bright-colored robes entice a blushing scholar in his mid-teenage years into a storehouse labeled as a bookstore.
As for what happened afterwards, it was particularly easy to guess…
“Grey-robed scholar with an eagle embroidered into the right collar…”
An Fei murmured as she passed an ordinary building constructed from oak. The young girl’s eyes narrowed as she stealthily made her way against the wall of a restaurant trembling with the buzzing of its inhabitants, her scarlet irises peering onto the constricted angle of the street.
On the other side of her view, she was able to glimpse upon a group of young scholars. Moreover, they were all dressed in a plain grey robe – and each possessed an embroidered eagle on their right collar.
“What’s… going on?”
An Fei frowned as she narrowed her eyes, a flash of doubt racing through her heart. Stewing on the uncertainty, the young girl resigned herself to the dull fate of observing the group of five men from her angle.
Was the information false?
…she had no method of verifying the information as not only was she restricted from employing the second ability of the <Steps of Underlying Shadow> to approach them without any possibility of detection due to her injury, the young girl was not confident of silencing all five at the same instant.
The organization that had managed and arranged her assassination – surely, they were bound to possess significantly sophisticated methods to deter any suspicious people snooping around.
An Fei was confident that regardless of the number she killed, she was bound to alert the organization after her head of her presence.
“This isn’t too different from that of the Amazons…”
The young girl quietly swore as she minimized her presence, streamlining her field of vision to carefully lock onto the group of five scholars who fit the criteria matched by the letter in her pocket.
An Fei couldn’t hear the exact words departing from the scholars’ lips, but from the obvious clues of numerous courtesans and commissioned bed-warmers prowling the streets, they were bound to possess some relation to a nearby brothel or fragrance house.
“What should I do…”
The young girl paused in her tracks as she rubbed her chin in thought, occasionally blending herself into the shadows imposed by the restaurant’s large frame to mask her presence from any nearby passerby. Eventually, after observing the scholars stand in place in meaningless gossip, she came to a decision.
An Fei retraced her steps as she departed from the Fragrant Peony Street, heading towards the inn owned by the Yang Clan.
Similarly, the instant her presence vanished from the street, the five scholars disbanded their convene at the center of the paved road and headed towards their respective destinations.
Each entered a different building adorned in a distinct and comparative style, their arms hooked around a beautiful woman.
The young girl vaulted over a low fence to breach through a garden of roseberry shrubs and filter into a dark and restricted alleyway just a few dozen meters away from the Yang Clan’s Plum Blossom Inn. An Fei twirled the stalk of a tulip she had broken off in her trip back, the flower’s scent barely washing away the grim aftertaste of smelling decaying corpses from her senses.
The young girl leaned against the wall as she aimlessly played with the severed stem of the flower, taking deep breaths to filter out the vestiges of the foul odor that had inundated the room.
Whilst she brought the delicate petals of the tulip towards her nose, her left hand’s fingers were reaching for the cold hilt of the qama sheathed at her waist.
“To think that I would encounter all of these incidents in less than a week… my luck must be horrendous, ah.”
The young girl sighed as she gazed upon the stone walls on either side of the alleyway, the cold and gleaming visage of the moon barred from her vision. Her scarlet irises relinquishing their brief brilliance to return to their dull luster, An Fei fell into a period of silence almost as though she were asleep.
The midnight dwellers of the city began to enthusiastically rampage throughout the streets, and Dong Lin City embraced the buzzing nightlife.
The street markets and stores that had remained closed for the day swung their doors open with powerful and giddy smiles as the midnight bell tolled over their heads, awaiting the extravagant sleuth that were their nightly customers.
“You’re oddly patient, to remain sitting in place for such a long time. Mind introducing yourself?”
Amidst the clattering footsteps and cheerful yet dimmed voices of the civilians prowling through the streets to exhaust their cravings, a young girl’s sharp voice cut through the midnight sky.
The voice was sweet and heartwarming, but the words dripped of a hellish malice and cruelty.
