Chapter 1433: The Thief's Identity
"Why?" Duan Cheng began to suspect that Yan Jiayu was deliberately going against him.
However, Yan Jiayu just glanced at him. "Isn't that only natural? Everyone has different thoughts and ways of seeing the world. I'll go to the places you've checked, and you come to the places I've checked. We'll fill in the gaps."
Duan Cheng didn't want to cooperate. If Yan Jiayu had been willing to go with him earlier to track those criminal players, they might have already finished the job.
But Yan Jiayu didn't care about that. Since she had said it, she was going to do it whether Duan Cheng agreed or not.
She walked away without looking back, leaving Duan Cheng standing there.
But after waiting at the city gate for a while, Duan Cheng still left. He didn't go to find Li Kun, but instead followed behind Yan Jiayu.
Keeping a certain distance between them, he watched as she went through the streets and alleys, stopping wherever there were groups of residents to chat. The content of the conversations was extremely boring—nothing more than who had bought what vegetables today and what they were going to cook, or which family had traded a gemstone with an outsider for a new toy for their child. She even discussed with a bunch of middle-aged women which brand of face cream sold well and whose accessories were pretty. Thanks to her good looks and extremely supportive attitude, she received a warm welcome from the residents of Gem City along the way, reaping several baskets of fruits and vegetables. Some people even took the initiative to give her clothes and hats.
Duan Cheng couldn't take it anymore. After following her for two hours, he finally revealed himself. But before he could say anything, Yan Jiayu waved at him. "I got some items!"
He paused and immediately walked over. "What grade of items?"
"D-grade items, two pieces." Yan Jiayu gestured with the clothes and hat in her hands. "Both are defense items."
As she spoke, she pulled and stretched them with both hands. "When they were worn by the people of Gem City, they clearly had no defensive ability. I didn't expect that once they were given to me, they turned into items... I'm so lucky!"
Duan Cheng felt that continuing like this was just a waste of time. With a dark expression, he said, "Since we can't catch the person, I'll go meet up with Li Kun first."
"Sure." Yan Jiayu didn't offer any explanation or try to stop him. She waved at him with a cheerful expression.
Yan Jiayu ate the dried meat given to her by the residents of Gem City as she watched him walk away, then joined the conversation with the aunties beside her. "So the best jewelry-making shops have all moved away... What? They were poached by other countries with high salaries, and they took the elderly and children with them? They're not coming back?"
"Maybe they have a life they yearn for out there." The auntie who spoke smiled. "Many young people in the city want to go out and make their mark in the world, bringing things back from outside to make Gem City better and better."
"Isn't Gem City good enough now?" Yan Jiayu said. "Everyone is very happy."
The auntie maintained her smile. "There are different kinds of happiness too."
Just as she was speaking, the auntie's little grandson ran over from a distance, pointing at a candy stall nearby. The auntie, beaming, took his hand and went to buy some.
Yan Jiayu saw that the time was about right, so she pulled the wheeled cart that a resident of Gem City had lent her, loaded with the gifts she had received, and returned to the performance ground.
Xu Huo had already returned. The two met and began to organize the information they had gathered.
"You go first," Xu Huo said.
"Once a criminal leaves the city, they can't come back in," Yan Jiayu said. "I asked the guards. They said they can successfully stop people at the gate every time. I suspect Gem City has some special rule—players tagged as criminals are blocked from entering the city."
"So once a criminal leaves Gem City, it's impossible for them to clear the instance."
"Another thing is that I triggered a side quest: 'The Mystery of the Artisans' Disappearance.' According to the people in the city, those artisans started disappearing about half a year ago."
Xu Huo nodded. "I triggered the same quest, but there are different accounts of where the craftsmen went and why they left."
He first shared the several versions he had heard, then listened to what Yan Jiayu had learned. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. "This city probably isn't a purely innocent fairy-tale world."
Yan Jiayu felt the same. "If everyone were only pure and kind, they should be like those dim-witted people we saw at the city gate and the performance ground yesterday—speaking without thinking."
"But the ones we met today are different."
"The people of Gem City usually have a shared understanding of what happens in the city," Xu Huo said. "For example, identifying criminals, knowing how many people are in a certain household, and what those people look like. Generally speaking, their information is interconnected, and most people know similar things. But when it comes to the disappearance of the artisans, there are several different versions. That's clearly abnormal."
The two fell silent for a moment, then Yan Jiayu said, "Could it be related to the players?"
Her original intention in asking about the empty houses was to find the thief's hiding place, especially places that the residents of Gem City didn't frequent or pay much attention to. Empty houses were a good target, since the residents of Gem City also didn't have the right to enter without the owner's permission, and the king's guards couldn't possibly cover so many places at once.
"Not necessarily," Xu Huo said thoughtfully. "I think it might be related to the king. One of the rumors mentions the king. From the king's perspective, those Gem City residents who have some independent thinking are people who break the rules. Expelling or dealing with rule-breakers is a common operation for those in power under normal logic."
"Also, there's one thing worth noting in this matter: the gemstones."
"Almost all the jewelry made by those craftsmen is set with gemstones. Although only a very small part of the rumors about their disappearance mentions that the artisans seemed to value a new type of gemstone, when you connect it with the recent theft at the king's castle, a new perspective emerges."
"The guards at the city gate said that recently, people can only enter but not leave. Although players are an exception, regardless of whether the guards count this exception, this information suggests that the gemstone thieves include both outsiders and locals in the instance."
"Every person in Gem City has an equal share of gemstones. The idea of stealing the king's gemstones sounds a bit absurd. The residents of Gem City are all convinced that the thieves are outsiders."
"According to the instance background, the gemstone theft happened a month ago. From this perspective, the likelihood of players stealing the gemstones is very small. And since the thief hasn't been caught yet, the probability of people from countries outside Gem City is also reduced. After searching for so long without success, maybe the residents of Gem City are covering for each other."
The situation from last night, when players were being caught, was clear for all to see. It seemed that in the eyes of the people of Gem City, criminal players were like game characters with labels on their heads. Whether criminals in a fairy-tale world were the same was hard to say.
When the bounty hunters were catching people, the residents of Gem City didn't come out. It was unknown whether this was because they could directly determine if the person being caught was a criminal, or because they adhered to the common sense of normal people in a fairy-tale world—there were no bounty hunters among the residents of Gem City.
(End of Chapter)