Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 359 - 71 - Beginning_1

Chapter 359: Chapter 71 - Beginning_1

"Click, click." In an unassuming corner of the venue, the sound of high heels tapping on the floor resonated. In the shadows at the edge of the room, two tall figures emerged, arm in arm, slowly stepping towards the light together.

"Passion and Indulgence." All of the guests recognized the new arrivals, among the seven captains of Shadow Hand, only these two dared to be this close to each other, a third person simply didn’t exist.

The appearance of Passion and Indulgence didn’t particularly surprise or intimidate the guests, after all, the sequential appearance of the last two people had already rendered them somewhat numb. Moreover, their ’achievements’ among the seven captains of Shadow Hand were not exceptionally notable, and they were both charming women, making them rather unable to scare people. Of course, this was all relative.

Passion’s past was not widely known, seemingly having appeared out of nowhere. By the time her name unexpectedly resonated in people’s ears, she was already a Gold Rank assassin. It remains unknown what happened before, but Passion seemed to abhor men intensely; aside from the few she approved of, any man who touched her skin would be slain on the spot. Other than that, her greatest achievement was killing a man every two days, without reason or pattern, seemingly selecting her target at random.

As her list of victims grew, so did the bounty on her. But catching an assassin of the Gold rank determined to remain hidden was a daunting task. Passion never took much notice of those pursuing her; if she happened to encounter one, she would kill him outright. If not, she wouldn’t even give them a second glance. This practice made it incredibly difficult for her pursuers to lay even a simple trap. This ’cat and mouse’ game lasted for four years, until Passion met Indulgence.

Indulgence was regarded by many at the time as a man-eating demon. Unlike Passion, she started as a lowly Iron Rank thief when she first emerged among the professionals. Her talent was alarmingly high. In just three years, she ascended to an Upper Gold rank thief at the astounding rate of one level per year. Although she seldom took lives, her two favorite hobbies made her particularly detestable and led to her being pursued.

Her first hobby was playing with men’s emotions for fun. Born with innate allure, she would become enamored with men who were obsessed with her beauty, fooling them into being completely infatuated with her, only to discard them casually and even heartlessly trample on the hearts of these men, regardless of their social status or power. Over the years, the number of men she had emotionally tortured was innumerable.

If this was barely tolerable, her second hobby was even more infuriating. She loved to steal. It was quite normal for a thief to be keen on stealing; few among them had clean hands. But her purpose for stealing was very peculiar. She would, after thorough investigation, identify the object her target cherished the most, steal it, and then find an opportunity to let the victim witness how she destroyed it. If she couldn’t let the victim see it, she would destroy the object and return the broken pieces to the owner.

These two peculiar habits made Indulgence all the more loathsome. Her bounty was even higher than Passion’s during the same period. However, it was harder to deal with Indulgence, a thief, compared to an assassin. Skilled in disguises and manipulating information; adept at diversion and setting traps, countless pursuers for two consecutive years never got a real look at her. Probably they had seen her, but just couldn’t recognize her.

Two years later, the two women met. No one knew what happened between them; only that they both disappeared for three months. After their return, they appeared to be very close, and they practically spent every day together. Indulgence would seduce men and passionately trample on their hearts, and Passion would conveniently massacre these men. Their intensified cruelty caused their bounties to rocket, even a few Legendary adventurers became interested in them. Their encounter with the Legendary ranked pursuers put them under great pressure; after more than 20 battles, they shocked the world when they managed to kill the Legendary pursuers despite being only at the Gold rank. However, they clearly paid a heavy price, forcing them to retreat to the City of Innocence and join the Shadow Hand. What surprised people even more was their rapid promotions to Legendary rank within three months of entering the City of Innocence, evidently showing how much their consecutive battles had impacted them.

After that, however, the two seemed to have simmered down a lot. Passion seldom killed people randomly anymore, and Indulgence hardly destroyed others’ cherished objects without reason. Aside from carrying out their assigned tasks, both of them spent every day close together, leaving people puzzled about their relationship.

After joining the Shadow Hand, the two would frequently disguise themselves in the men’s quarters, waiting for men to fall into their trap, and Indulgence would step in to clean up. The morning after, Indulgence would ruthlessly ridicule her bedmate’s abilities, causing the men, who were already feeling inferior due to their failure the night before, to fall into a deeper pit of despair, from which most failed to recover.

If you could say that Cruelty and Madness were destroying the body directly, then Indulgence was torturing the opponent’s spirit, and Passion playing the accessory role. It’s hard to determine which of the two behaviors was more distressing, but any infliction on the spirit didn’t directly harm life, coupled with the fact that they never attacked those of the same sex unless hostile, they gained many female supporters. Therefore their reputation amongst the guests was much better than that of Cruelty and Madness.

However, some disagreed. Several men of varied ages turned pale, their heads hanging low in hopes that the devil from their nightmare wouldn’t notice them. But Indulgence did. He bore a taunting smile on his face, sent them a mockingly air-kiss with his index finger, followed by a regretful sigh. These actions further whitened their already pale faces. They felt disgraced among their friends. The reality didn’t fail them-- everyone saw the situation clearly and knew exactly what had happened. To the affluent and noble, this was juicy gossip. Probably in less than a month, tales of their incompetence in battle would spread throughout the human world.

The guests watched as the two women, arm in arm, strolled leisurely to the oval-shaped dining table as if strolling in their own garden. They chuckled at the table setting, dragged over a chair, and sat directly opposite the host.

Witnessing this, the guests recoiled almost simultaneously, feeling their hairs stand on end. Because, under everyone’s gaze, a figure suddenly appeared on the chair to the left of the cruel host, like a ghost.

The sudden apparition had long arms and legs, looking much like a monkey. He behaved like one too— hunching on the chair, he grabbed a few exotic fruits from the table, observing them curiously, sniffing and biting them now and then. It seemed he was more interested in the fruits than anything else.

Almost no guest recognised him, but guessed who he should be— at a time like this, retaining such inquisitiveness could only be Curiosity.

As his name indicated, Curiosity was born a curious cat. Since childhood, he had been intrigued by everything unusual around him. He dismantled countless machines and devices, which concerned many. But he was smart— he always found answers to the inner workings of these items and his curiosities. He was physically gifted and had early ascended to the Silver Rank of professionals. Despite being an unpopular thief, he was praised by many and expected to have a promising future. The people’s idea was not wrong, but they had overlooked the cold light in his eyes when he destroyed things and his unconcealed unethical means to find answers.

And then one day, when his curiosity extended to life itself, everything went beyond the point of return. Despite reading an abundance of books on life, he couldn’t find answers. He firmly believed that life had a tangible form, hidden somewhere in the body when it was alive, always playing hide-and-seek with him. To verify his assumption, he started killing. Right after each murder, he dissected the body to ’find’ life but found nothing even after hundreds of dissections.

Later, he realised his folly. Dead bodies had no life; looking for the living from the dead was foolish. Then, he began to dissect them alive, escalating his number of victims from one digit to two. During each procedure, he tried to examine everything— skin, muscle, bone, internal organs— while keeping the victims alive as long as possible.

This insane act shocked the entire academic community. However, Curiosity had already sneaked into the City of Innocence, where he deemed the unlimited resources the world’s best for his purpose.

Biting into each fruit, Curiosity abandoned it after understanding its texture and taste and moved on to the next one. Cruel and Mad sat in meditation with expressionless faces. Indulgence and Passion, shoulder to shoulder, head to head, also fell silent, allowing the silence to continue.

Ten minutes later, Cruel finally opened his eyes and lazily said: "It seems Suspicion won’t be returning for now."

"Elegance doesn’t plan on showing up either." Passion just hummed a response, Indulgence spoke: "Right, Elegance has never appeared for such private gatherings."

"Then...." Cruel dragged out the word, and said softly, "Let’s begin." (To be continued. If you like this piece, please visit qidian.com. Your recommendation ticket or monthly ticket will be the greatest source of motivation for me. Mobile users, please go to m.qidian.com to continue reading.)