“The shadowy figure is one of us.”

I smile wryly hearing Sylvia’s words.

“We’re on the same boat, I’ll be glad to help, Lady Si.”, I said as I reached out my hand for a handshake.

She smiles gently, saying, “We’ll be in your care, Sir Xue. I will be sure to compensate you for your kindness when we arrive.”

Saying this, she departs.

Right after I see her off, I go back into the tent intending to question Sylvia of the authenticity of her words.

“He’s a member too? Does he know about us?”, I ask.

Sylvia shakes her head, “He most likely doesn’t. For the sake of secrecy, only the Organisation’s higher-ups are aware of the details of the missions and even then, they are only aware of the ones within their jurisdiction.”

“Only the Boss is entitled to know everything. Secrecy is what we pride ourselves on after all.”

I nod, “How did you recognise him then?”

“He was trailing behind the Lady when she came in. I couldn’t get a proper view during the attack since we were so far, but at this distance…there’s no mistaking it, it’s a stealth technique exclusive to the Guild.”

“No other possibilities?”

“Nope.”

“Should we join up with him?”, I ask.

“Not a good idea. We don’t know what his mission is, if we turn out to be inconvenient for him, he could just-” Sylvia gestures her finger across her throat.

“But..”, she continues.

“But?”

“We rarely have protections missions.”, she says seriously.

If it turns out the man’s mission was to kill everyone in the caravan without the knowledge of a third party, for insurance he could very well just kill us too.

However, if that were so, why hasn’t he acted yet?

Maybe his mission is the rare protection mission?

I ponder over it through the night, having a rather bad night’s sleep.

I ask Sylvia more about the Assassin's Guild in the morning.

She’s adverse to the idea of use revealing ourselves since there’s no way to prove our identity.

For secrecy fellow members who go out for missions are left with no way to prove their identity. This is so outsiders don’t easily catch them if they’re on espionage missions, since it would be rather easy to reveal someone if they carried something like a token of proof with them.

Only admin and logistic members have such proof of identity, in order to have the protection of the Guild.

The Guild has various techniques left behind, and many of which are exclusive to the Guild, since they conducted a region wide “Collection” in the past, where they demanded, stole and killed to obtain as many Assassin related techniques around the region.

The most famous one is the one that even I’m aware of. The Kingdom of Shui was thriving with Assassins in the past, but now you’ll struggle to find any, since the Assassin’s guild sent a letter to the king, demanding the nationwide collection of the books.

Normally, a king would never bow down to such a threat.

However, the letter appeared tucked within the Emperor’s blanket when he was asleep.

And the Emperor didn’t even sense it. What’s more, no one saw or heard anything on that night.

Meaning that it would have been a walk in the park to take his head.

Begrudgingly, the Emperor complied.

As for why the Organisation didn’t go after the rest of the countries, maybe it was because they didn’t have that many. Maybe they wanted to leave some behind so normal people could train in the techniques and join them in the future. Maybe the Emperor offended their leader unknowingly.

There have been many speculations, but no one knows for sure.

Sylvia explained further that the guild technique she recognised was one that was hard to exchange for, so the man must have sizable power, or completed many missions at the very least.

As for how she recognised it, she wasn’t willing to say so I left it at that.

We continue to follow the group casually, with frequent visits from Lady Si’s son at night.

The group moved faster than they did before, as the horrible attack still lingered in everyone’s minds.

Surprisingly, since the first attack, there haven’t been any subsequent ones for 2 days so far.

Well, with the shadowy figure here, we should be safe regardless of the attacks.

From the looks of it at least, he was trying to protect Lady Si’s son before I acted.

So we should be on the same side at least on this.

As for escaping, sadly that’s impossible already.

If we were to escape, we’ll simply be asking to get silenced if the shadowy figure didn’t want to leave any traces.

Following the group at least keeps our options open.

We’re in a weird stalemate. Of course, only we feel the pressure.