PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

The reason was quite simple, in this place were concentrated almost all the resources of the sect that were not the possession of a specific individual, the number of magic minerals, precious fruits, and miraculous medicines stored in the place was enough to cause wars.

But the place served more than just as a gigantic treasure vault, in the treasure pavilion there were also the workshops where forgers and alchemists used the natural resources found by the sect to create weapons and medicines.

In the martial sovereign world, the forgers and alchemists were extremely coveted people and their techniques were guarded with suspicion, so each sect in this world had only a limited number of these.

And although they were not as rare as the previous ones, people capable of assisting and managing things related to the work of said smiths and alchemists were still rare.

Mainly because in a world where only the force was respected, few people were willing to spend their time helping others in their forging or refining work surrounded by herbs, metals, and administrative records.

Of course, that didn’t apply to a certain hair hunter like obsidian, using a bit of Xiauyue’s influence; Desmond had managed to secure himself a job as an alchemist’s assistant in the medical ward.

Whether it was luck or fate, Desmond ended up as an assistant to what was probably the only alchemist with a good personality within the sect, not to mention that this person turned out to be a mature woman who suited the tastes of the young womanizer a lot.

Of course, given Desmond’s current circumstances, he had been more focused on finding any available clues related to his mission than on flirting with the beautiful alchemist or at least trying.

.....

Shortly after a week working inside the medicinal ward, Desmond had won the favor of his companions with his kind smile and warm demeanor, while his intellect and attention to detail won the favor of the alchemist with the one he worked for.

And with those new connections, Desmond found some pieces of information that made him even more certain that he was following the indicated trail.

It turned out that in the last year there was an abnormal amount of disappearances or resignations within the external and service personnel that operated within the medical ward, such a thing would not normally attract the attention of superiors but for people who used to work day by day close to missing persons, it was difficult to go unnoticed.

After spending some time discreetly asking questions, Desmond discovered the names of the missing girls and something else that caught his attention, many people did not give a second thought to a particular detail probably because the disappearances occurred with a long time between each one of them or because no one cared about the missing girls in the first place; but all the missing girls worked in the cleaning service of a particular area of ??the medicinal pavilion that was the area where the alchemist workshops were.

This reinforced Xiauyue and Desmond’s theory that it was unlikely that the person behind the killings was a disciple and instead was someone within the sect with a certain status, resources, and strength greater than that of the core disciples.

Of course, the alchemists within the sect lived up to this description, although that was part of the problem, even if Desmond found a way to prove beyond any doubt who the serial killer was; the sect would never let that person be punished for killing a couple of unimportant women.

So Desmond dismissed any notion of getting help from the Miao family through Xiauyue, he would have to handle this person on his own.

From that moment on, Desmond devoted his efforts to discreetly investigating all the alchemists within the sect, but after another week of investigation, he still had not discovered anything relevant.

The first person to be discarded was the alchemist Desmond worked with, Ai Zulin, she was a woman in her thirties with long slightly wavy dark hair and hazel eyes, but in addition to her great talent as an alchemist and her problems with alcohol, there wasn’t much to discover about her.

Leaving aside the fact that Ai Zulin always invited Desmond out for a few drinks and possibly some intimacy, the girl never displayed suspicious behavior; In any case, you could see that she was a girl who felt alone locked up in her laboratory all day.

Of the five alchemists within the sect, Desmond had already investigated three of them by the end of his second week inside the treasure and medicine pavilion, having discovered nothing significant thus far Desmond began to consider the possibility that it was not necessarily an alchemist who was behind the homicides but someone with access and who visited the place constantly.

Soon it was dusk on the last day of Desmond’s second week inside the venue and after politely rejecting Ai Zulin, Desmond made his way to Mei Fei Long’s pavilion.

As soon as he arrived at the place Desmond saw Xiauyue sitting waiting for Mei to place the dinner on the table, already used to seeing the girl around Desmond was indifferent to Xiauyue’s presence like a calm lake.

Over the past couple of weeks, it had become common to see Xiauyue at the scene, usually, it was her trying to spend time with Mei but there were also times when she would show up to chat with Desmond about the course of her investigation.

As usual, Desmond pulled out a couple of notebooks and began jotting in them, one of the notebooks containing all of Desmond’s leads and suspects so far.

Regarding the second notebook, this was the result of Desmond being too bored, as the person in charge of transporting and storing medicinal materials that will later be requested by various alchemists, Desmond had access to a lot of information regarding the flow of materials.

Remembering the time that Desmond spent with Sasha in the laboratory talking or helping with her alchemy projects, he had gained some interest in the subject and Desmond began to use that information in conjunction with the records of drug production by alchemists to derive the alchemical formulas for certain drugs.

Due to the amount of information Desmond prioritized the alchemical formulas that were intended to strengthen the body and with two weeks of information gathering, Desmond already had a rough idea of ??the formula of several of these medications or so he thought.

“Again with that notebook? I don’t see why the interest if you are not even an alchemist “Xiauyue commented taking interest in Desmond.

“There’s not much else to do besides training, I don’t even have the proper resources for training so this is better,” Desmond replied with little interest in satisfying Xiauyue’s boredom.

“You just have to ask for them,” Xiauyue replied with a pout.

“I’d rather earn my way,” Desmond replied dryly.

“Well, I hope you do not die poisoned sir who prefers to earn things, one of the alchemists you have been spying on has played a trick on you” Xiauyue replied apparently without interest.

Obviously, Desmond wasn’t so disinterested when he replied, “What do you mean?”

” That’s the formula for the bone marrow strengthening medicinal bath or at least it would be if the alchemist didn’t purposely add three useless ingredients to the list and one poisonous ingredient, it shouldn’t even surprise you; It is a very common practice among alchemists to prevent their assistants from stealing their recipes like you did “Xiauyue replied with some mockery in her voice.

Desmond almost felt the need to wipe the imaginary cold sweat from his forehead upon hearing that alchemists had such practices but at the same time he found something fishy about the whole thing. “Wait, since when do you know about alchemy?”

Perhaps due to the bad mood of having to wait so long to eat or because he had not been able to talk much today with Mei, Xiauyue was in a bad mood so she responded with some disdain to Desmond: “You never asked, besides The Bai family may specialize in medicine but they are not the only family with knowledge of alchemy; the other families cannot afford to be too ignorant on the subject or they will be scammed by the Bai family ”

Unable to argue anything about it, Desmond ended up being silent for a moment before commenting back: “Are you not interested in asking about the progress of my investigation?”

But to his surprise, Xiauyue was quite indifferent to his question, although this was not because she lacked interest in the subject but rather that after meeting Desmond for a couple of weeks she already had a vague idea of ??his personality so she knew that if Desmond had discovered something interesting he would not be so calm about it.

Of course, with the kind of upbringing Xiauyue had received, she wouldn’t leave Desmond unanswered: “Not really, even if you find out who the killer is, I’m pretty sure you’ll try to deal with him before saying anything to Mei or me at all. it doesn’t make much sense to ask, in any case, I’m more interested in what your plans are for the harvest festival, which is in a few days ”