Soul echo

Chapter 372 Guess
Schwenningen, the town at the birthplace of the Neckar, has nothing special about it except a port to match.

On the way to Schwenningen by car, Zhong Ye saw several boats risking their way across the river with broken ice.

He stopped them, and he could tell that the boats were supposed to be looking for Marcus.

Whether it was to confirm the 'murder result', to put on a show, or to really want to find Marcus, sailing at such a time was very dangerous, so Zhong Ye stopped them from this dangerous behavior, which was tantamount to suicide.

In order to prove to those ships, he even pulled out Marcus who was sitting in the carriage to let them take a look, and they returned to the voyage with confidence.

Zhong Ye set off with Marcus ahead of schedule and arrived in Schwenningen ahead of schedule.

This is a quiet, peaceful and unremarkable small town with no specialties except the Neckar River.

Zhong Ye sent Marcus back to his home—as expected, he was the son of the current lord of Schwenningen, but he was only the second son.

Even in such a remote town, there is an adventurer's home.

After Zhong Ye and the others sent Marcus back, they drove the carriage to the Adventurer's House and checked in as usual.

When registering, Zhong Ye asked the guard at the warehouse: "Is there a mysterious and mysterious ship here that never pulls people along?"

The caretaker paused at the tip of his pen, thought about it carefully, and shook his head, "It seems that there is no..."

Before he finished speaking, he himself said "huh": "Although I haven't heard of such a ship, we do have a big ship here."

The caretaker put down his pen and looked up at Zhong Ye, "Everyone in Schwenningen knows that the lord's family has a big ship, and every time they go out, they can bring back a lot of wealth and novelty goods. Because it is the ship controlled by the lord's family, so they No one else will be hired on the ship, only the locals who pass their selection can become the crew of that ship."

Zhong Ye nodded thoughtfully, and smiled at the guard, "Thank you."

"Are you looking for something?" the caretaker asked curiously.

After thinking for a moment, the brainstorm that had just started stopped instantly, and Zhong Ye smiled and said: "The ship I inquired about may be a tool used by a group of human traffickers to transport people. In order to avoid inspection, they would rather spend money to bribe the guards at the local port. Long, and never pull people along the way, never let outsiders board the boat."

"...Wow." The caretaker stared blankly at Zhong Ye, not knowing what to say.

The big man in front of him didn't look like a wandering paladin, but rather a demon hunter, but no matter what kind he was, he was fighting for the better welfare of mankind.

——After all, 'human trafficking' has been strictly prohibited in Westland for a long time.

Even so, residents of Schwenningen still disappear from time to time. Some of them can find dead bodies, some can find living people, but some can't find anything.

The caretaker can quite understand what the big man in front of him is doing, because his neighbor lost a child a few years ago. At that time, the church helped to search the town, but they couldn't find the child, nor did they find any traces of monsters. , I can only wonder if someone abducted the child.

He had seen the grief-stricken appearance of the neighbor couple, so he also hated the human trafficker who didn't know whether he existed or not.

"Good luck."

When Zhong Ye was about to leave, the caretaker stood up and shook hands with him vigorously, "I hope you can find your target as soon as possible!"

The corner of Zhong Ye's mouth hooked slightly, and he nodded and said, "Thank you."

After saying that, he turned and walked out of the warehouse to the hall.

Zhong Ye met Lilian and the others in the lobby, saw Lily making a secret gesture, tapped his chin lightly, walked to the front desk to register without saying anything, and then walked to his room with the key.

After he put away his luggage, there was a knock on the door.

Zhong Ye opened the door, and Lily and Lilian jumped in.

"What did you find out?"

The gesture Lily made to him earlier was an agreement between them. Once they encountered something that was inconvenient to talk about in front of outsiders, they would make that gesture, expressing that 'this matter requires a private conversation'.

"There have been many disappearances in this town."

Lily said with a serious face: "Before the establishment of the Adventurer's House, there were more than a dozen disappearances in this town in the eight years. It was not found, not even a body.

"The receptionist at the front desk is the younger sister of one of the missing persons. Her brother disappeared five years ago and the body has not been found so far. So she has always been concerned about the disappearance of Schwenningen."

As soon as this information floated into Zhong Ye's ears, it was absorbed by his brain.

Immediately, he raised his own question: "Did you ask her this question in public?"

Lily froze for a moment, then nodded.

Fragments of information were randomly pieced together in his mind, giving Zhong Ye many weird guesses. He rejected these guesses one by one, leaving only a few suspected possibilities.

"How many people were there in the hall at the time? Were there more than ten?"

Hearing Zhong Ye's question, Lily and Lilian looked at each other and thought about it carefully.

"Ten people?" Lily guessed.

"Twelve?" Lilian also asked.

Schwenningen is a quiet and peaceful small town with few adventurers and outsiders.

"Unsurprisingly, the news that you have asked the receptionist about these things has spread." Zhong Ye affirmed.

Lily and Lilian opened their mouths slightly, but they didn't ask Zhong Ye why they said that.

Zhong Ye seldom speaks affirmative sentences. If he is not sure whether something is true, he will often add adverbs such as 'possible' and 'perhaps' to the sentence.

Even if something is affirmed, he will add the phrase 'no surprise' in front of it.

Zhong Ye must have thought of something before explaining this. As for what he thought of, they didn't need to know, it would only be a waste of time.

"Perhaps the target we are looking for is in this town." After a pause, Zhong Ye hesitated for a moment, and then said, "If there is no accident, the lord of Schwenningen may have some problems, but I don't know what they are involved in. to what extent.

"When I was registering in the warehouse, I asked the warehouse manager by the way. He told me that everyone in Schwenningen knew that the lord's house had a big ship, and that big ship could bring back a lot of goods and wealth every time it traveled. If nothing else, in the eyes of the residents of Schwenningen, it was a merchant ship, and it was still full of cargo when it set off.

"The crew on that ship are all locals, and they need to pass a selection before boarding the ship, and their families live in this town. Only in this way, the crew will be willing to 'always' keep the secret."

After Lily listened to what Zhong Ye said, her brain quickly processed the received information.

"In other words, based on the premise that 'the group of human traffickers transported people by river', the lord of Schwenningen really has the ability to quietly transform his merchant ship into a slave ship for transporting people?"

After hearing Lily's explanation, Lilian finally figured out the joints of these things.

She blinked and looked at Zhong Ye, "Teacher, is that so?"

Zhong Ye nodded, "If these conjectures are true, the place where the group of traffickers and Lord Schwenningen's merchant ship handed over is probably not in Schwenningen, but somewhere else."

"But if that's the case, what happened to those missing people?" Lilian glanced at the barrage and asked a question.

"I don't know." Zhong Ye replied truthfully, "I haven't been able to connect those disappearances with this matter for the time being, and there may be no connection between them in the first place."

"In this way, our next move should be to find a way to get in touch with the lord's house..." Lily said thoughtfully.

Then, the three of them looked at each other and said a name in unison.

"Marcus!"

(End of this chapter)