Miss Witch, even if we're poor, we can't sell ourselves!

Yu Citing felt that today was absolutely the worst day ever.

The two useless people she sent out lost track of Mi Ye, which made her so angry that she spent an entire afternoon squeezing her piggy pillow. Then she tried to get the market supervision bureau to cause some trouble, but that plan also fell through.

So the next day she took matters into her own hands, changed into a low-key dark hoodie, tucked her pigtails into the hood, put on a mask, and squatted in the cafe opposite Nightingale's Nest, fully armed.

After waiting for almost two hours, I finally saw the short, blond guy come out of the bar, still wearing a hoodie, shorts, and leather shoes, and holding a half-eaten churro stick in his hand.

Yu Citing chuckled, slapped the coffee money on the table, and followed him out.

Then she regretted it.

Mi Ye walked too fast. It's not that she couldn't keep up with the speed, but no matter how fast those two short legs moved, their stride was limited.

But the opponent's stamina is truly outrageous.

I walked all the way from Nightingale's Nest to Central Avenue, through half of the old town. I stopped to buy a bottle of herbal tea, browsed the window of a magic item shop, and sat by the fountain to tease a stray cat. Then I continued walking without showing any signs of fatigue.

Yu Citing followed behind, panting heavily.

Her physical abilities are completely inversely proportional to her hacking skills.

He spends all his time holed up in his villa, staring at three curved monitors. His only exercise is sliding his gaming chair from the left side of the desk to the right.

By the time she followed Miya to the main gate of the Moon Forest, she had been leaning against a lamppost, panting for a while. Her hat was askew, her mask was wet, and her two ponytails slipped out from under the brim of her hat, the pink highlights at the ends of her hair sticking to her neck with sweat.

Then she watched helplessly as Miya entered the Moon Forest.

But you can't get into this pavilion without a student ID, and climbing over the wall is out of the question. There are dozens of magical warning arrays on the walls of Moon Forest.

She could only wait outside.

And this wait lasted for more than six hours.

Yuciting practically slept through the window seats at the bakery opposite the main entrance of Tsuki no Mori.

She ate two croissants, drank two cups of coffee, and watched all the new short dramas released on MikuFans, after her phone battery went from full to just one bar.

She even used a web crawler to search for the Moon Forest's internal monitoring system.

As a result, Moon Forest's network security level was higher than that of Bellavita Central Bank. Her web crawler script was chased and bitten by three layers of proxies as soon as it touched the edge of the firewall.

She lay listlessly on the table, poking at the ice cubes in her glass with a straw, and for the first time in her life, she harbored a personal grudge against a target she was stalking.

What were you doing in there for so long? Did you even consider how I felt?

As dusk approached and darkness began to fall, Yu Citing scrolled through every social media platform she could find on her phone.

Just as she was about to give up, she suddenly sat up straight.

Miya came out, but not alone; there was an unfamiliar girl beside her.

The girl was slender, wearing a dark blue robe stained with herbs and ink, her black hair casually draped over her shoulders, with a red flower pinned in her hair, and she walked side by side with Mi Ye.

She saw the girl squatting by the pond, pressing her hand on a lotus leaf. The lotus leaf grew larger and larger at a speed visible to the naked eye, turning into a bright green umbrella.

The two walked in the rain, supporting each other on lotus leaves. Mi Ye's laughter could be faintly heard through the rain, as clear and crisp as a bell.

Yu Citing followed behind, his brows furrowing deeper and deeper.

She had a really bad feeling about that guy.

Although it appears completely harmless, even a bit clumsy, it almost tripped over the roadside pavers while holding the lotus leaf umbrella.

But her intuition warned her.

Her intuition was one of the few things about her that worked better than her code, and right now it was sounding alarm bells on the back of her neck.

The red lanterns of the hot pot restaurant were especially easy to spot on a rainy night.

Yu Citing watched as the two people pushed open the wooden door of the hot pot restaurant and were swallowed by a cloud of white steam.

She didn't go inside, but instead found a roadside tree across the street and stood under it, holding an umbrella.

Rainwater slid down the umbrella ribs, splashing in a small circle in front of her toes.

Then she closed her eyes and activated her talent.

【reptile】

The name of this talent sounds rather childish, but it is the fundamental reason why Yu Citing can roam freely in the intelligence world of Bellavita.

It is not a simple search engine. Search engines can only find publicly available information, while web crawlers can find any record that has ever existed in digital form.

She can uncover any trace of the target in any online database.

More mysterious than search engines, more elegant than hacking, and leaves almost no trace.

The last time she used a web crawler to search for Mi Ye, the result was blank, not even a birth record, but today she searched for someone else.

The flow of information unfolded before her eyes, like a data river that only she could see.

Don't stay up all night.

[A tenured teacher at the Moon Forest Magic Academy, specializing in Flesh and Blood Magic; the research lab is located in the detached wooden cabin area behind the mountain.]

All the information seemed normal. Yu Citing quickly scrolled down, her fingers unconsciously sliding through the air.

Then the data stream suddenly slowed down, and Yu Citing's pupils contracted sharply in that instant.

After all the teaching records, thesis abstracts, and college personnel files, the web crawler unearthed a single line of text from a nearly forgotten, encrypted database.

The legendary witch who survived the great war a thousand years ago

It is often referred to by people.

【The Silent Night】

Yu Citing's eyes snapped open.

She stood under the roadside trees opposite the hot pot restaurant, rainwater sliding down the edge of her umbrella and soaking the shoulders of her sweatshirt. Her pupils trembled slightly under the dim streetlights, and she almost dropped the umbrella handle she was holding.

That great battle a thousand years ago.

Almost every witch in Bellavita knows that history—the most devastating war in the history of world civilization, which nearly wiped Bellavita off the map.

Every witch who can survive such hell is a walking legend.

And that seemingly harmless witch holding a lotus leaf umbrella was actually one of them?

She vaguely remembered the title "The Silent Night".

In her memory, her teacher once mentioned in class that he was one of the most feared names on the battlefield back then, a master of flesh and blood magic, who could silence the life force of an entire enemy formation by himself.

Then she taught for hundreds of years, then went into seclusion in the back mountains and never came out again.

This person is currently sitting at the same table as Miya, eating hot pot.

Yu Citing's gaze swept across the street, and through the glass window of the hot pot restaurant, which was mostly blurred by steam, she could barely see Mi Ye sitting by the window, pouring a plate of shrimp paste into the pot, her mouth opening and closing, probably telling some interesting story.

Bie Chenye sat opposite her, his profile bathed in the warm yellow light of the hot pot restaurant, a quiet and contented smile on his lips.

Yu Citing gripped the umbrella handle tightly.

Last time, she couldn't find any information about Mi Ye. She told herself that this little maid was just lucky and happened to know a few important people and happened to be on the trending topics list a few times.

And now, the legendary witch who survived a thousand years ago is eating hot pot with her face to face. This can no longer be explained by good luck.

She put her phone back in her pocket, looked up at the warm yellow light shining from the window of the hot pot restaurant, her eyes filled with complex emotions.

Yu Citing suddenly realized that he was no longer simply investigating a mission objective.

She genuinely wanted to know the answer.

Who exactly is this Miya who appeared out of nowhere?

What exactly is her relationship with Flores?