Chapter Fifty-Six: Misfortune Descends

“At first, his heartless parents abandoned him, and now they come back wanting him? What do they take the child for?”

“Mother?…” Xiaoyu was stunned, hiding behind the crowd as he gazed at the woman standing beside White Scorpion. She felt completely unfamiliar to him. He had been taken from his home at such a young age that he had no memory of his parents at all.

White Scorpion bickered with the villagers for a while longer before losing patience and growing furious.

“Get out of my way, you worthless scum!”

White Scorpion roared, about to step forward when a middle-aged man rushed at him brandishing a hoe. White Scorpion kicked him aside with ease.

“Trash will always be trash. Let them see what real power is!”

Brushing the dust from his clothes, White Scorpion put on his gas mask and waved his hand. The researchers behind him all grabbed their gas projectors.

“Oh no, they're going to use force! Hurry, fetch the Dark Elf King!”

“Hand over the child! Otherwise, you will all die!”

Thick green smoke billowed from the projectors, sweeping towards the dark elves, who immediately covered their mouths and noses and fled in panic.

Upon hearing that his people were about to be harmed, Xiaoyu immediately stepped forward.

“I am—!”

He had barely spoken when a nearby woman hurriedly covered his mouth, scooped him up, and fled.

“There he is! The boy with the pale skin—catch him!” The researchers had spotted him.

The woman carried Xiaoyu behind a tree, setting him down. “Shh… Don’t make a sound. Those people are clearly evil. You mustn’t go with them! Wait for your master to return—he’ll protect you!”

She nervously peered out to check on the enemy, but suddenly, a sharp scalpel pierced her brow.

She slowly collapsed to the ground, blood pooling beneath her. Xiaoyu trembled in terror.

“Auntie! Auntie!”

A few researchers ran over. Xiaoyu turned to flee, but a net shot out from behind, trapping him within.

Seeing that Xiaoyu had been captured, White Scorpion immediately ordered the retreat, lighting a torch and tossing it behind them as they withdrew. The torch landed on the lingering gas, exploding with a thunderous boom into a raging fire, blocking the dark elves who were about to give chase.

“Xiaoyu’s been taken! Fire the signal flares—alert the Dark Elf King!”

The villagers launched burst after burst of violet signal flares into the sky. The flares exploded with purple flashes, sending out infrasound waves only detectable by dark elves.

Far off in the forest, Lingxi was gathering materials for crafting a wizard’s staff when he heard the piercing infrasound. He immediately looked toward the village and saw columns of purple smoke rising in the distance.

“Something’s wrong!”

He sped toward the village at breakneck speed, smashing through countless branches in his path. His swiftness was astonishing; in the blink of an eye, he had reached the outskirts of the village. Yet fate seemed to mock him—he arrived just one step too late, missing Xiaoyu at a fork in the road.

The retreating researchers had just rounded a corner when Lingxi flew past, separated from them by a row of trees. His speed was so great that he failed to notice the group at all.

When he arrived at the village entrance, he found his kin battling the blaze. The ground was strewn with corpses, victims of the gas and explosion. Lingxi’s grief turned to fury.

“Who did this?”

“A group dressed in white! We don’t know where they came from! They took Xiaoyu…”

“White clothes… Xiaoyu!…” Upon hearing Xiaoyu was in danger, Lingxi clenched his fists tightly. “Which way did they go?”

The dark elves pointed in the direction the kidnappers had fled.

As Lingxi looked that way, another violet signal flare soared into the sky above the nearby forest.

“That’s Xiaoyu!”

Without hesitation, Lingxi dashed into the woods.

With rapid strides, he crossed the marshes and plunged deep into the vast Western Sea Forest. By the riverside, he found patches of grass scattered with signal flares and a tin box marked with streaks of blood.

“Xiaoyu…” His anxiety only deepened.

Grief, guilt, and remorse churned within Lingxi’s heart. “If only I hadn’t left Xiaoyu’s side! He wouldn’t have been taken…”

He unleashed his senses, desperately following the faintest of traces left by the enemy, Xiaoyu’s innocent face flashing through his mind. Yet the enemy seemed to possess some technique for concealing their tracks—a strange powder hung in the air, masking all scent and direction.

He crashed through the forest, searching tirelessly, crossing from one woodland to another, from the shores of the divine realm to the depths of canyons, day into night.

He didn’t know how long he ran, how long he searched, until his legs could carry him no further and his body was spent. All traces of the enemy had vanished from the forest. In the vast, silent woods, there was no sign of Xiaoyu. Lingxi collapsed to his knees in anguish, calling Xiaoyu’s name in utter despair.

It was on that day that the light elves across the river were astonished to discover that the giant tree in the center of the marsh had vanished, and the dark elves who once lived there had migrated far away…

Night had fallen. In the Demonbane Empire’s tavern, the last guests were drifting out.

Blackfeather, having listened to Lingxi’s tale, finally understood. So the day he’d run into White Scorpion and her crew in the narrow alley, it was Lingxi who had intervened—not simply to save him, but because of this old enmity.

“I thought so—someone as proud as you, Boss Ling, wouldn’t step in just to save me. I’m not that important.” He glanced at the wall. “And those three wanted posters you always kept up are gone… If it hadn’t been for you, that hot-headed Lin Aohun would be investigating those three for ages, and I’d probably be rotting in a cell by now!”

Lingxi spoke slowly, “I should be the one thanking you. By drawing those three out, you helped avenge Xiaoyu, in a way.”

With that, he opened a bottle of vintage red wine, pouring a glass for himself and another for Blackfeather.

The aroma of the wine lifted Blackfeather’s spirits. “Wow, this is excellent.” He took a few sips, savoring the taste.

“So, you came to the Holy City in search of Xiaoyu?”

Lingxi’s heart ached. He sighed softly and gazed into the distance, swirling the wine in his glass, before he continued to recount what happened after Xiaoyu was taken…

“After losing the trail in the Western Sea Forest, I began to search for news everywhere. White Scorpion’s research institute is a secret organization—its location doesn’t appear on any map, and there’s no information to be found. I could only narrow down the area to near the old battlefield in central continent. And so, I came to the Holy City, opened this tavern to make a living, and continued to search for Xiaoyu’s whereabouts.”