Chapter 43: The Mastermind Behind Everything

This discovery made everything murky and confusing again.

After all, the city guards hadn’t received her treatment, so it couldn’t be that Wei Anna had tampered with her healing magic.

If Wei Anna wasn’t the cause, then what was? Who had taken their lives?

Xing Yue’s heart was in turmoil. She instinctively wanted to take a deep breath to force herself to calm down, but the strong smell of blood and smoke flooded her nostrils, making her frown even deeper.

“People don’t die for no reason, especially at a time like this, in such an eerie way… There must be a common thread I’m missing.”

She forced herself to shift her gaze, no longer focusing only on the dead silence before her, but recalling the scenes she had seen while flying over.

“I clearly saw guards who had survived and were fleeing along the way—why were they fine?”

What was the difference between the survivors and the dead?

Suddenly, an almost absurd yet logically clear thought, like a match struck in the darkness, lit up a corner of her mind.

‘If… what took their lives wasn’t a specific “culprit” or “spell”… but a condition?’

‘A certain condition that, at a specific moment, triggered a killing mechanism for a specific group?’

‘Daibi, the beastman slaves, and these guards… what did they have that the surviving deserters didn’t?’

Xing Yue had a vague guess, but she needed to catch someone and ask!

Xing Yue summoned the pitch-black forbidden book.

【33:07】

The bloody countdown numbers flickered ruthlessly in the corner of her vision. Time was slipping away fast.

There wasn’t much time left.

Leaping off the city wall, Xing Yue flew back even faster than before. Before the beastmen could slaughter all the deserters, she managed to find one who had strayed.

She dove down from high above, blocking his escape.

Seeing that he still tried to run, Xing Yue cast a spell, summoning several ice walls to completely seal off the guard’s retreat.

As soon as the ice walls appeared, the guard tried to ram into them with his body, but only ended up covered in ice shards, stumbling backward and falling to the ground.

Seeing Xing Yue approach, the guard quickly turned around. Under her surprised yet slightly exasperated gaze, he knelt and kowtowed without hesitation. “Please! Spare me! I’ll give you anything you want except my life! Do you want money? I have lots and lots of money! I can give it all to you! Please let me go! I don’t want to die!”

As expected of a deserter…

He’d do anything to survive.

Xing Yue had no intention of wasting words with him. She cut off his tearful pleas, her voice cold and sharp as she got straight to the point.

“I ask, you answer. If you lie… then you’ll stay here forever.”

The guard nodded frantically, indicating he understood.

“First question: How did the soldiers on the wall die? I mean the ones who collapsed suddenly without any visible injuries.”

The guard shuddered and spoke rapidly, “I-I don’t know! Milady, I really don’t know!”

“It was… all of a sudden! The south side was holding at first. Even though those beastmen charged hard, we had a lot of men, and the crossbows were… were okay… and reinforcements had arrived. It was only a matter of time before we beat back the beastmen…”

“But all of a sudden, so many people—so, so many—just collapsed without a sound, like their souls had been ripped out all at once! A huge swath fell! The formation fell apart instantly! And then… then the beastmen charged in! That’s why we… why we…”

He was rambling incoherently, but the key information was clear enough: simultaneous, large-scale, instantaneous death.

This was definitely not normal battlefield attrition. It fit some kind of area-of-effect, non-physical lethal effect—poison, for instance.

Xing Yue’s suspicion solidified further.

She continued asking, “What was different between those who fell and those who didn’t?”

“Were the ones who fell rookies? Veterans? From the same place? Or had they done something together before?”

The guard shook his head blankly. “N-no difference, I think? They were all a bunch of peasant scum conscripted from the city…”

He added nervously, “I’m a young master from the ‘Black Thorn’ merchant guild. I came here just to… to get some experience, to pad my resume. My father sent the Baron generous gifts.”

“I didn’t talk much with those lowly soldiers anyway. Who cares what they did before? So you have to believe me—I really don’t know what happened to them…”

The undisguised contempt born of class division made Xing Yue’s heart sink.

It seemed she wouldn’t get far trying to pry out any obscure common connection among those soldiers from this privileged young master who knew nothing about the lower ranks…

Hmm? Wait.

Class division.

A flash of inspiration struck Xing Yue’s mind.

She pressed quickly, “Are those guards all slaves?”

“Uh… I think so?” the guard said uncertainly.

Hearing that answer, Xing Yue’s pupils trembled.

She took a deep breath, gave the deserter one last look, kept her word and waved her hand, melting the ice walls to let him go.

She had already gotten the information she needed.

“If all the dead were slaves…” Xing Yue murmured, recalling the scene of Daibi collapsing.

“Then doesn’t that mean…”

“All slaves are tied to a single core. Life and death are decided by the slave owner…”

“Once the slave owner dies, all the slaves die too?!”

“…Holy shit! It’s that Baron! He had another trick up his sleeve!”

Xing Yue summoned the pitch-black forbidden book and flipped through to review what was written.

【You delivered the blade of revenge, but failed to see the deadly threads wrapped around its edge.

The client gained what they sought, but at a far greater cost than anticipated.】

“So that’s what it meant!”

At this moment, Xing Yue finally understood everything.

None of this was caused by Wei Anna. Phyllis’s words had only distracted her, making her overthink too many irrelevant things.

The true cause of this tragedy was none other than herself!

She had been overly cautious about countless minor details, always thinking too much, yet completely missing the real danger.

And because of her, it wasn’t just the guards she had seen on the wall—now likely all the slaves in Black Crag Territory had died innocently, just because she helped Daibi take revenge…

At that moment, the sounds of slaughter in the city surged again.

The beastmen had found the dungeon where the slaves were held, only to discover all their comrades already dead. They went completely mad, venting their unstoppable fury on the other residents of the city.

Black Crag Territory, this border town, had turned into a living hell overnight.

From high above, Xing Yue watched helplessly as the situation spiraled completely out of control. Regret and powerlessness made her clench her fists.

“So I was… the one who caused all this…”