The group had just passed through an intersection when the wild grass on both sides of the road gave way to vast, fertile fields.
Lawrence was riding on horseback, but he frequently turned his head and looked toward the fields on both sides of the road and behind him.
Davor noticed his unusual behavior and thought that the deputy leader of the investigation team had discovered something suspicious.
“Lawrence, is something wrong?”
When he heard the question, Lawrence pulled on the reins, slowed his horse, and said cautiously:
“Davor, do you have the feeling that someone has been following us ever since we left the Blackwood estate?”
Throughout the entire journey, Lawrence had felt that someone was following them, and especially after they left the Blackwood estate, that feeling became much stronger.
However, every time he turned around and tried to clearly inspect the surroundings, he found nothing.
This happened several times, so he no longer knew whether his own senses were deceiving him.
“Someone is following us?”
Davor looked around.
There was no one on the flat road behind them, and when he examined both sides of the road, he also found nothing.
“There’s no one. Do you want me to leave several men behind in ambush so we can see whether anyone appears behind us?”
Lawrence shook his head.
If even his five extraordinarily sharpened werewolf senses, including a sense of smell a hundred times stronger than a human’s, had failed to discover the opponent, several ordinary men lying in ambush would accomplish nothing.
“There’s no need. Let’s continue. Maybe I’ve simply become overly nervous because of the pressure the royal family and cabinet have been putting on me ever since Governor General Edmund was murdered.”
He waved his hand, and the group once again urged their horses forward and accelerated, wanting to return to their lodgings before dark.
After Lawrence and the others left, several strong men rose from the tall grass in the distance.
The man leading them spat out the stalk of grass he had been holding in his mouth and looked maliciously at the figures disappearing into the distance.
“Pah! We were more than two kilometers away, and he almost discovered us. That man definitely isn’t an ordinary person!”
“William, go back and inform the butler. Tell him to send James. I have a new plan.”
One strong man immediately jumped out of the grass.
His legs alternated at incredible speed as he forcefully stepped on the ground, while the movements of his arms perfectly coordinated with the strength of his waist and legs.
With every step, he crossed more than three meters.
He moved almost like the wind, as though cutting through the space beneath his feet.
“This guy is progressing incredibly quickly. The Blackwood Vanguard will soon be established, and maybe he’ll even earn a place among them!”
“Samuel, if William can enter the Blackwood Vanguard, then so can I!”
“All right, enough of that damn chatter. Those bastards have already gotten far ahead of us. Hurry up, don’t lose them!”
The men joked and talked as they continued following the group under Samuel Carter’s leadership.
This time they were more cautious and kept much farther away.
In the distance, they could barely see several black dots.
As they ran, their spines undulated like dragons, the center of gravity of their bodies freely rose and fell, the hair all over their bodies stood upright, while their lower abdomens were filled with a powerful flow of blood and internal energy.
Because of the strenuous effort of running after horses, an enormous amount of blood and energy boiled within their bodies, but they tightly closed their pores and continuously kept the distant targets in sight so they would not disappear from view.
However, running after horses at full gallop was still an extremely difficult task.
After about ten kilometers of continuous running, their blood and energy boiled even more violently, and their entire bodies began swelling from the internal pressure.
Fortunately, their control was extremely precise.
They still had enough strength to lower the surging blood and energy toward their lower abdomens, then slowly guide it through the circulation path of the Golden Bell Body of the Thirteen Guardians, distributing the boiling energy throughout their entire bodies.
In this way, they nourished their flesh, muscles, and bones and transformed the excess energy into the strength of their own bodies.
Not long afterward, the black figures ahead of them began slowing down.
When Lawrence and the others entered the busy part of Edmonton, the number of pedestrians gradually increased, so they could no longer gallop wildly through the streets.
Samuel and the others immediately reacted, slowed their pace, and gradually calmed their breathing.
The feeling of pressure in their lower abdomens disappeared, and the closed pores all over their bodies opened again, but not a single drop of sweat appeared on any of them.
Lawrence and Davor stopped with their guards in front of a four-story hotel.
They watched in surprise as hotel workers carried out their luggage one piece after another and threw it beside the road.
“Stop! What are you doing? Why are you throwing out our belongings?”
Davor jumped down from his horse, grabbed one worker by the collar, and shouted angrily.
Lawrence’s face became gloomy and terrifying.
A green glow shone in his eyes, the nails on his hands became sharp and thick, and a violent desire to kill rose in his heart.
At the gate of the Blackwood family, he had been forced to retreat, and the moment he returned to the hotel, his luggage had been thrown into the street.
One problem after another kept appearing before his eyes.
He wanted nothing more than to transform into his true form and slaughter all the people in front of him in order to release all the anger that had accumulated in his chest.
However, he remembered that there were still a large number of monster hunters in the United States of America and Canada who hunted vampires and werewolves.
Lawrence therefore had to temporarily suppress his killing intent.
Before avenging Edmund, he could not reveal his true form and thereby attract the monster hunters.
“Tonight I’m going to the Blackwood estate. If I discover that they really are the killers, I’ll tear them apart with my own hands.”
“And after I finish taking revenge, I’ll come back to this hotel and kill that disgusting worker!”
Not long afterward, the argument became even more heated.
Davor angrily slapped the hotel worker, then pulled the official identification of the Chief of Public Security from his inner pocket.
“Open your damn eyes and look carefully! I am the Chief of Public Security of Canada! Now, immediately, take our luggage back inside, then call the hotel owner to personally apologize to me!”
The worker covered the bloody corner of his mouth with his hand and sneered.
“So what if you’re the Chief of Public Security? Our Lidona Hotel doesn’t want to accommodate you. Is that illegal?”
“The owner personally ordered us to throw out your luggage.”
After saying that, he completely ignored the furious Davor, returned to the hotel, picked up another bag, and once again threw it beside the road in front of them.
Davor was so angry that smoke almost seemed to come from his ears.
As the Chief of Public Security of Canada, he had just been humiliated on his own territory by an ordinary hotel worker.
He could not swallow such an insult.
“We’re going to the city police department! I’ll kill him! I swear I’ll kill him!”
The title of Chief of Public Security sounded very powerful because he led Canada’s police organization, but if he wanted to arrest someone, he had to cooperate with the local police department.
Otherwise, it would constitute an abuse of authority, and if a complaint were filed against him because of it, major problems would arise.
Lawrence shook his head.
He did not want tonight’s operation delayed because of such an insignificant matter.
There were many hotels in Edmonton.
If this one did not want to accommodate them, they would simply find another.
In his eyes, that hotel worker was already a dead man, so there was no need to lose his temper over someone who would soon die.
“Come on, Davor. We’ll find another hotel.”
Davor actually knew himself that going to the city police department would change nothing.
The police departments of each city answered directly to the local government and had only professional cooperation with the Security Council, without any direct hierarchical subordination.
If someone dared openly treat him this way, then an extremely powerful person with enormous influence had to be standing behind it.
The Edmonton city administration and council certainly would not turn against a local power just to protect his prestige as Chief of Security.
And if the person behind all this dared do something like this, then they certainly were not afraid of him as Chief of Security.
Lawrence’s words gave him a convenient way to back down without further humiliation, so Davor immediately seized the opportunity.
A young police officer helplessly got down from his horse, called several of his colleagues to gather and arrange the luggage, and then they loaded everything onto the horses.
After they moved away, Samuel Carter and the others approached the hotel entrance and looked at the sign above the door.
“Lidona Hotel belongs to old Wells. When we return, make sure to tell the master.”
“That old fox will make a good profit this time. If the master is satisfied, perhaps he’ll even take his daughter as his wife. What is one ordinary hotel compared with that?”
…
What Lawrence and Davor did not expect was that they would be refused by several hotels in a row.
As soon as the receptionists heard who they were, not a single hotel wanted to accommodate them.
Each time, they politely refused them on the grounds that all the rooms were occupied.
Even when people who arrived immediately after them had no trouble getting rooms, the receptionists still stubbornly insisted that the hotel did not have a single vacancy.
“What kind of powerful person did we offend?”
“Eight hotels in the city refused to accommodate us. That person is terrifyingly influential. In Edmonton, he can obviously close every door to us with a single word!”
“I’m starting to wonder whether this city even belongs to the British Empire. It seems that here even the pound doesn’t carry as much power as someone’s word. Since when did those greedy merchants start refusing money that is literally being offered right under their noses?”
While Davor still could not understand what was happening, Lawrence had already guessed the truth.
In the end, the exhausted and hungry investigation team had to pay ten times the normal price to obtain rooms in a shabby little hotel.