As we exited the Lord’s mansion Gray conveyed us the plan of action: “We will first go to the suburb area and look at the first locations where the facts happened, then we will go to the most recent ones and look for clues.”
(Thai Hua) “Why don’t we start with the most recent ones? They seem more likely to hold clues than some places where the disappearances happened more than a year ago.”
(Gray) “To piss off the Lord.”
(I, Red, Huan Long, Thay Hua) “???”
(Gray) “ From the markers on the map of the 567 disappearances only 2, the most recent ones, were from the richer part of town. I’m pretty sure that the Lord knew of the disappearances way before what he let us intend and just acted when were touched his interests or the one of those near him.”
(Red, Huan Long, Thay Hua) “Oohh”
And with that, we went over a bridge towards the western area. While we were walking, Gray explained to us the origin of the name Boarbridge: “ It is said that a thousand years ago there was a rank 5 boar rampaged through the land. One ancestor of our Myriad forms sect slain the beast and crafted these bridges with the bones of the beast to commemorate the city where he was born.”
(Huan Long) “There is more than one ancestor?”
(Gray) “It’s not publicly known how many ancestors are still alive, but surely more than one: when a sect master reaches the Soul formation realm they step down from their position and take the title of ancestor. That’s all I know.”
After a while, we arrived at the location of the first disappearance, a rundown shack full of drafts. There wasn’t a lot to search for so soon we left for the richer part of town.
An hour later we were in front of an opulent building with some guards around it. We were guided to the owner: a chubby man with a slightly annoyed look. As he saw though, he put up a mask of benevolence and started buttering up and criticizing us at the same time. I didn’t listen but he seemed quite pissed that we went to the slums before him.
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A couple of minutes of useless blabber later he guided us to the room of one of his children that had been kidnapped. The room was spotless but I could sniff a familiar qi scent in the air, it was too thin to identify it.
After another fruitless search, we started wandering around town until I smelled the same qi as before, this time I identified it: it was yin qi.
I immediately started to sniff around and understood the direction of the origin I bolted after it with a roar.
The others were perplexed at my behavior but, once they saw that I wasn’t outside control and that I wasn’t attacking anyone, decided to follow me.
I arrived in front of an open padlock that used to lock an iron grate.
(Gray) “This is the entrance of the sewers, if the culprit is hiding here then we may have a problem.”
(Huan Long) “Why? And shouldn’t the sewers be one of the first searched places? It seems a pretty obvious place to hide to me.”
(Gray) “Not. Rogue demonic cultivators are still cultivators; they have their pride. They usually stay at inns and transport bodies in their storage rings. If someone resorted to using the sewers it’s probably because the people were more useful to him alive or he needed a place to set up something, or maybe both. In any case that's not good.”
(Thai Hua) “What do we do now? Do we go in or do we ask for reinforcements?”
Gray thought a bit and then said: “We go in. The person needs to set up something and do it in secret. Since nothing has happened so far, the preparations are probably not complete and he probably doesn’t have enough strength to do it openly. Our lineup should be enough to deal with it. In any case, I will send a message to the sect and to the city’s Lord to report the situation”
So, after Gray used two talismans that disappeared in a glowing golden streak, we ventured into the sewers. First went Gray, then Red, Huan Long, Thai Hai, and, in the end, me. But after a while it was evident that they needed my nose and my sensitivity to yin qi find the way so I swapped places with Gray. This was done so the sturdiest of the team were at the beginning and the end of the formation.
We walked for an hour and a half before we arrived at a hole in the wall from which the yin qi smell came. We returned to the previous formation and we entered. The tunnel went down and down. At the end of the tunnel, we found a cave.