"You were too reckless this time. You should know there were quite a few tough characters there today."
"I have my own sense of proportion. Look, didn't I return safe and sound?"
Night fell, and some rats who didn't like to move under sunlight came to the surface to discuss some matters.
A somewhat short black figure leaned against a dilapidated wall, saying to the taller person in front of her, "Besides, wasn't it to provide cover for you?"
"I don't need your cover." The taller figure said coldly. "Without your 'help,' my operations would have gone more smoothly."
"Listen to what you're saying—that really makes me feel a bit disappointed." The short figure moved close to the tall figure, her tone unfriendly. "You should know I threw away several months' worth of my masterpieces."
Yes, masterpieces—masterpieces that hurt no one except a certain poor girl.
And that poison was resolved in less than an hour by a real elven physician.
It couldn't be said to be completely useless, but it could be called a complete failure.
"So are you certain? That Half-Elf is the one we're looking for?"
"The elf's judgment is that the Half-Elf isn't the one they're looking for." The tall figure said. "But I don't think so."
"You mean that elf is the one we're looking for?"
"Yes, I think it's her." The tall figure nodded. She trusted her intuition.
Although it had been authoritatively certified by the elven race that the Half-Elf wasn't the one they were looking for—the Half-Elf who had stolen important items from the elven race.
But the tall figure didn't believe it.
She believed that Lin Qingyu was the Half-Elf who had stolen important treasures from the elven race.
"Qin's judgment is correct." A new voice joined their conversation. "I investigated and found that among the Half-Elves who recently appeared in Central City, there's only that one."
"This matter actually alarmed you, Divine Envoy?" The short figure said in surprise.
"It concerns divine artifacts." The Divine Envoy answered succinctly. She glanced at the two people before her and said flatly, "The task given to me from above is to try to recruit her into our organization."
"That's somewhat difficult." The tall figure immediately said. "Now that Half-Elf is protected by that Miss Bai. That lady's strength is not to be underestimated."
"Indeed, the defensive strength of that place almost rivals the United Parliament's conference hall. With just us, there's no way to snatch someone away." The short figure rarely agreed with the tall figure's assessment.
She had personally experienced the defensive strength of that place. To put it bluntly, she was only a tiny bit away from failure every time she acted. If she made even one mistake, the entire plan would fail completely.
And this was just peripheral harassment. For a frontal assault, the short figure felt it would take at least several S-level heroes working together to barely break through the outer defenses.
As for the internal defenses, she didn't know.
"The internal defenses are also very formidable. A frontal assault is absolutely impossible." The tall figure supplemented.
Not to mention the almost omnipresent hidden sentries within the manor, just that Miss Bai alone was an insurmountable wall.
Although she hadn't seen that lady take action, judging from the terrifying aura emanating from her alone, the tall figure believed she wouldn't last even one exchange against that lady.
Even if the Divine Envoy personally took action, she could probably only last a few moves.
Moreover, there was another character that couldn't be ignored—the girl named Su Qianqian.
Although that girl looked harmless and actually felt harmless too, the tall figure didn't believe a girl with such a strange relationship with Miss Bai could be an ordinary person.
Just based on her ability to appear there today to accompany Lin Qingyu in meeting the elven people, the tall figure dared assert that Su Qianqian was definitely not ordinary.
"Does Miss Bai have any weaknesses?" The Divine Envoy asked.
"She seems to be a siscon, and she has feelings for a girl named Su Qianqian." The tall figure told everything she knew.
The Divine Envoy pondered. If frontal assault wouldn't work, could they only use underhanded methods to achieve their goals?
Kidnapping? Or threats? She considered.
Who should they target?
"That Su Qianqian is probably not simple. Miss Bai cares about her very much but didn't have anyone protect her safety." The tall figure continued.
Bai Ling cared so much about Su Qianqian yet didn't send people to protect the seemingly frail and weak Su Qianqian who appeared to have no combat ability. This was strange, wasn't it?
Either Su Qianqian was hiding her strength, though this possibility was low. Suppressing one's aura so perfectly served no purpose.
Why suppress one's aura? To play pig and eat tiger?
The tall figure felt Su Qianqian wasn't such a boring person.
Moreover, from brief contact, Su Qianqian was a standard shut-in who feared trouble and disliked socializing.
If such a person had strength, she should release her presence to make others think she wasn't to be trifled with.
But she didn't do that. The tall figure could only guess that Su Qianqian truly had no combat ability.
No combat ability, yet Miss Bai didn't send people to protect her—was that possible?
Generally speaking, it was impossible. As such a powerful ability user, Bai Ling couldn't not know the dangers of this world.
She would definitely send people to protect those she cherished, like that sister whose name and appearance were unknown.
But Su Qianqian didn't have protection. She wasn't protected by Bai Ling.
So the only reasonable speculation was that Su Qianqian didn't need Bai Ling's protection.
She had people protecting her, so she didn't need Bai Ling's protection. And those people were her confidence in arguing with Bai Ling.
"You mean... we can target Su Qianqian?" The Divine Envoy hadn't thought that deeply. She thought the tall figure was suggesting Su Qianqian had weak defenses and was a breakthrough point.
"No, I mean..." The tall figure hurried to explain, but suddenly a blinding pillar of light appeared in the distance.
That light illuminated the three black-clothed figures standing in the alley. Then a vigorous girl's voice rang out, "You three! What are you doing sneaking around here!"
The Divine Envoy glanced at the suddenly appeared gray-haired girl—an A-level hero. Although not impossible to deal with, the effort wouldn't match the gain and would attract the Hero Association's attention.
"Don't get entangled with her. Let's go!" The Divine Envoy flicked her robe and turned into a cloud of black smoke, disappearing on the spot.
The tall figure and short figure looked at each other. They didn't have the Divine Envoy's ghostly abilities, so they had to run.
...
"Hah, those two really could run." Leaning against the roadside railing, the long-unseen Guild Leader was completely out of breath.
She had chased for almost an hour but still let those two sneaky people escape.
In this hour, she had almost chased from one end of Central City to the other, yet still lost track of those two guys who were obviously up to no good.
"Xia Xia, you run so fast." After resting for a while, Guild Leader's partner, wind-type ability user Miss Lu Siyu, finally reached the scene.
"Lu Siyu! Why were you so slow!" The Guild Leader pretended to be angry as she questioned. "You're a wind-type ability user, yet you can't even catch up to me, a prophecy-type ability user?"
Lu Siyu poked the Guild Leader's forehead irritably. "Who was it that suddenly ran out in the middle of eating? Don't I need to pay the bill and report this to the Association?"
By the time she finished handling all those matters, the Guild Leader had run off to who knows where.
Fortunately, she had installed a tracking device on Guild Leader's phone, or she wouldn't even be able to find Guild Leader now.
"Tch, where's Blonde Youth? Still training at the Association?"
"He's about to reach S-level. Let's not disturb him recently and let him focus on preparing for the breakthrough." Lu Siyu nodded. Blonde Youth's progress was a notch faster than theirs. In these days of hellish training, Blonde Youth's potential had been fully tapped, and now he was already at the threshold of S-level hero.
As for them, although they could see that threshold, they still needed some time to cross it.
"This place seems..." The Guild Leader looked around and suddenly felt this place seemed somewhat familiar. "Seems to be near Qianqian's house."
Had she chased all the way here?
"Siyu, how about we visit Qianqian's house?" The Guild Leader said to her good friend.
"Ah, isn't she a demon? Two heroes visiting a demon's house isn't quite appropriate, is it?" Lu Siyu had some concerns.
But the Guild Leader was already pulling her hand, walking toward the direction in her memory. "It's fine. Even Little Bai is friends with Qianqian. Who could say anything about us being friends with Qianqian?"
Even the Sword Saint didn't care about Qianqian's demon identity. What was the point of them caring?
People should be more open-minded. Only then could life become more beautiful, right?
However, when Guild Leader and Lu Siyu knocked on Leticia's door, they felt they had come at an inappropriate time.
In the living room, Leticia was holding a black stick and hitting it on the white-haired girl's head. The white-haired girl covered her head with a wronged expression but showed no intention of dodging.
It felt like a wife scolding a husband who had made a mistake.
Was it an illusion?
"Miss Xue'er, what's going on?" The Guild Leader asked quietly.
Xue'er shrugged, indicating this was just daily routine between Leticia and Bai Ling. This time it seemed to be because when Leticia was lying on the ground looking at a map, Bai Ling accidentally stepped on Leticia's hair.
Then Leticia exploded.
"Guild Leader, and Little Lu, sorry for making you witness this." Due to the arrival of two guests, Leticia reluctantly put away her magic sword. "How did you have time to come play at my place today?"
"You could say it was on the way. I was chasing two bad guys and ended up nearby, so I thought I'd come see you." The Guild Leader explained. "We're on vacation today."
"Oh, I didn't expect the Guild Leader to be such a dedicated person, actively chasing bad guys even on vacation." Leticia praised sincerely. Unlike her, who would definitely slack off if she could.
"Actually, I still don't understand how Xia Xia found those two people." Lu Siyu interjected.
The Guild Leader had suddenly run out in the middle of eating, saying she sensed the aura of conspiracy.
"Because my superpower activated. I had a premonition that if I didn't interrupt those three people's conversation, Central City, even our entire world, would be in great danger." Guild Leader answered righteously. She was now a great hero who saved the world.
"Ah, surnamed Bai, do you believe it?"
Bai Ling shook her head. "Don't believe it."
After all, there weren't many heroes with precognitive abilities on the human side, but these few heroes' precognitive abilities were notoriously unreliable in the Association. Not one thing they predicted had ever been right.
The 'right' here was very broadly defined. For example, if they predicted you'd be hit by a cement truck today, even being hit by a bicycle would count as them being right.
But even with such lenient conditions, these guys' prediction accuracy was still quite worrying.
Oh wait, they were quite impressive at predicting what today's meals would be like.
"Hey, I'm the only A-level prophecy-type! Give me some confidence!"
"Mm mm, I believe the Guild Leader just saved the world." Leticia giggled. "By the way, can you describe what the people you chased looked like? I might have clues about them."
Actually, Leticia wanted to know if Guild Leader had chased her people. After all, two Heavenly Kings had brought quite a few demons into Central City. Central City was bound to be somewhat chaotic recently.
Her subordinates might well have been discovered by Guild Leader while having secret conversations.
"Feels like Qianqian is just brushing me off." Guild Leader muttered, then told everyone present about her recent experience.
"One turned into black smoke and ran away. The other two, one tall and one short, wore black clothes. Couldn't see their faces clearly. They moved very agilely. I kept taking shortcuts using prophecy, but still couldn't catch them."
"Wait, Guild Leader, can you draw that shorter black-clothed person?" Leticia looked up, asking somewhat seriously.
Just today, a short black-clothed person had thrown a bomb at the gate of the manor where Lin Qingyu lived. Leticia was now quite sensitive to the six words 'short black-clothed person.'
Maybe it was that same person?
The Guild Leader nodded. Although the three people immediately turned and fled after she discovered them, she had still clearly seen their outfits.
Of course, their faces couldn't be seen clearly.
And while Guild Leader's artistic skills weren't great, she could still manage to simply draw a person from memory.
Soon, a rough sketch was fresh out of the oven.
Leticia glanced at it, then said to Qila, "Qila, you have the memory stone, right?"
"Mm." Qila, who had been sitting to the side writing furiously, looked up in confusion. "It's with me."
"Look at this and see if the person on here resembles the black-clothed person in the memory stone." Leticia handed Guild Leader's masterpiece to Qila.
Qila took the portrait Guild Leader had drawn and immediately frowned.
"It seems similar. Sister Bai, Miss Xia, Miss Lu, please come compare as well." Qila pulled out a pitch-black stone from her pocket and injected some magic power into it.
A beam of light shot from the stone, projecting a human figure onto the white wall.
Several girls gathered around to look and simultaneously nodded. "Similar. Should be the same person."
"It really is quite coincidental." Leticia said with a light laugh. She had just been discussing with Bai Ling how to find that black-clothed person, and unexpectedly found clues so quickly.
First, the Guild Leader's discovery proved that the previous attack wasn't an individual act but organized—that short black-clothed person was a member of the organization.
Currently, they knew the enemy had at least three people, with the attacker being agile and seemingly using bombs as combat methods.
Moreover, her bombs were poison bombs. Poor Miss Xi Mengyao was a victim, but now Leticia and the others had formed a temporary alliance with the Elves. If that person's poison was just this level, her threat was quite minimal.
The strength of the other two wasn't clear, but the person who turned into black smoke and escaped before Guild Leader's eyes definitely wasn't weak.
Guild Leader was an A-level hero. While her direct combat ability wasn't strong, her perception abilities could compete with S-level heroes.
That person directly escaped in front of Guild Leader, and Guild Leader couldn't even find where they went—this almost proved that person's strength far exceeded Guild Leader's.
At least an S-level hero level big shot.
Then there was the taller person. Her strength should be comparable to the shorter one, otherwise she wouldn't have run together with the short one.
And having taken so long to shake off Guild Leader, her strength definitely wasn't that impressive.
"Guild Leader, how about coming to work for us for a few days?" Leticia asked with a smile.
"We can't be much help, can we?" Guild Leader scratched her head. She wasn't unwilling to help Leticia, but mainly she didn't think there was anywhere she could provide assistance.
What kind of people were around Leticia? The Sword Saint! With the Sword Saint there, what help could these little trash who hadn't even reached S-level provide?
Moreover, in terms of combat power, Guild Leader didn't think she could beat any of the people present.
"On the contrary, the Guild Leader can help a lot." Regarding the Guild Leader's self-deprecation, Leticia immediately expressed opposition. "Just Guild Leader's prophecy ability alone could be very useful."
Prophecy—this mystical thing might not be entirely reliable, but it was very useful for early warning.
Even if it was wrong many times, as long as it was right once, it wasn't a loss.
"Mm, Guild Leader is the highest-level prophecy-type ability user in the Hero Association. Her prophecy ability is definitely trustworthy." Bai Ling also agreed with Leticia's view.
She had heard from Senior Sang and other veterans in the Association that Guild Leader was the new-generation hero they valued most, even more than Blonde Youth who was about to advance to S-level.
There were many combat-type S-levels. One more Blonde Youth wasn't much, one less wasn't little.
But a prophecy-type S-level hero would be unprecedented.
Even A-level prophecy-type ability users—Guild Leader was the first. Before Guild Leader, no one had ever possessed such high-level prophecy abilities.
Compared to those charlatans who could be wrong ten times out of ten predictions, Guild Leader's prophecy accuracy was very high. She either couldn't see the future, or she could see the real future.
Although not seeing was the majority of cases, when she could see clearly, she was like having a full-map hack.
This time she could chase those two people for so long precisely because she relied on her prophecy ability.
She knew how those two would run, but she couldn't catch up.
The awkward part was here—Guild Leader's combat power was really somewhat lacking. While she couldn't be called weak, compared to normal A-level heroes, she was definitely far inferior.
This was why Guild Leader used to team up with Lu Siyu and Blonde Youth at the academy. She needed teammates who could carry her and shield her from damage.
"I'm not that amazing." Being praised by her idol, Guild Leader said bashfully while twisting her hands. "But since even Little Bai says so, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to refuse anymore."
She couldn't refuse Bai Ling, could she?
"Guild Leader, you've changed. You don't love me anymore."
"Qianqian, stop being silly. Quickly tell me what you and Little Bai need my help with." Guild Leader decisively ignored Leticia's words and directly asked about the matter's origin.
Leticia pouted in displeasure. "Let the surnamed Bai tell you. I'm just external support."
"You actively got involved." Bai Ling immediately exposed Leticia's true nature. "So you still haven't told me what Lin Qingyu's real identity is."
"Heaven's secrets cannot be revealed. You haven't given me any benefits, so why should I share my exclusive intelligence with you?" Leticia snorted.
"We're cooperating."
"As if you'll be completely transparent with information sharing with the Elves."
"Our relationship is different."
"Same, completely the same." Leticia held up three fingers. "At least in this matter, I hope you can set aside personal feelings first. I'm very seriously talking business with you."
Bai Ling was somewhat unhappy with Leticia's words. She glanced at Guild Leader and said to Leticia, "Then I won't tell you Guild Leader's prophecies either."
Since Leticia didn't want to share her intelligence with Bai Ling, then Bai Ling would follow suit and not share Guild Leader's intelligence with Leticia.
"Guild Leader was invited by me. She should count as my helper!"
"Ask the Guild Leader who she wants to be with."
"Guild Leader, quickly say who you want to be with!"
Suddenly becoming the center of attention, the Guild Leader was completely unprepared. Her gaze shifted back and forth between the two girls, and for a moment, she didn't know what to do.
Qianqian was her good friend, and indeed Qianqian had invited her first, but Qianqian was a demon.
Little Bai was the Sword Saint. As a hero, helping the Sword Saint seemed like a natural thing to do.
But the Guild Leader was afraid that saying she wanted to stand with Little Bai at this moment would make Leticia angry. After all, in her impression, Qianqian had never been a magnanimous girl.
Qianqian got angry easily, but her anger came and went quickly.
However, before the anger subsided, the angry little girl was still quite hard to appease.
"Can I... help both?"