Chapter 10: Encounters and Partings

A woman emerged from the thicket, clad in a tight, black dress. Her skin was dark, her figure slender and delicate, yet her upper body was full and alluring, exuding a subtle, seductive charm.

Such attire was highly unusual for someone traversing a remote forest. However, the woman was a psychic, which made the oddity somewhat less surprising.

Moro’s body tensed as he looked at the woman who had appeared so suddenly, his psychic energy undulating with caution. Yet, upon recognizing her clothing and the wide forehead framed by large vertical pupils, his tension eased slightly.

He had identified her—Gailu, the Serpent of the Hunter Association’s Twelve Zodiac Branches.

Moro guessed she had been drawn by the gunfire.

Standing on the hillside with her arms crossed, Gailu regarded Moro calmly. Their gazes met in midair—hers assessing, his a mixture of surprise and wariness.

It seemed that Moro’s nakedness, in this context, was strangely unremarkable.

Gailu’s eyes flicked lightly over the psychic aura enveloping Moro’s body, noticeably more relaxed than when she first appeared. The rapid shift from tension to ease felt somewhat unnatural.

Her gaze then shifted toward the open cargo truck door and the two lifeless bodies on the ground. She looked back at Moro and calmly asked, “Do you think I’m less of a threat than the one lying there?”

She pointed meaningfully at the dead Zazan with her index finger.

“On the contrary,” Moro replied, still cautious but with his sense of danger significantly diminished.

Initially, he had thought Gailu arrived because of the gunshots, but now it seemed she had been there beforehand. The noise at her arrival was likely deliberate.

“If you intended harm, you wouldn’t have made such a conspicuous sound to warn me,” Moro said, meeting her gaze steadily.

Though he spoke these words, he remained ready to defend himself at a moment’s notice. He knew he couldn’t win against any of the Twelve Zodiac Branches, but he wouldn’t surrender without a fight. Even if he became a corpse, he would leave a mark.

Hearing his answer, Gailu subtly glanced at Moro’s right hand, where psychic energy swirled, but maintained her impassive expression and said nothing more. She lightly leapt down the hillside onto the mountain path and silently walked toward the cargo truck.

Her approach naturally shortened the distance between them. Moro, having positioned himself at an absolute disadvantage from the start, felt a surge of pressure as she advanced.

As a traveler from another world, his view of the Hunter Association was not elevated to the status of righteous problem-solvers. Yet, aside from a few exceptions, he did not believe the Twelve Zodiac Branches were the kind to kill indiscriminately.

Still, not everyone was as straightforward as Xiao Jie.

It was no surprise that Moro felt uneasy.

Sensing the shift in Moro’s emotions, Gailu slowed her pace and stopped, no longer encroaching on his psychological space.

Her initial pressure was prompted by his insincerity, but confronting a rookie who was likely innocent seemed excessive on second thought.

She shook her head slightly and turned toward the open cargo truck.

From her vantage point, she could clearly see rows of cages inside the vehicle, each holding naked children.

The nakedness was a significant detail.

Gailu’s gaze involuntarily swept over Moro’s body again, allowing her to surmise his probable role in the situation.

Moro showed no reaction to her glance—not out of exhibitionism, but because he deemed such trivialities unworthy of emotional disturbance.

Yet Gailu’s impassive inspection reminded him of something.

When Melina had bought him and he awoke on the spaceship, she had similarly scrutinized his body.

“Your luck is remarkable—to survive such chaos without missing limbs, that’s why I paid for you,” Melina had said with the same expression Gailu now wore.

However, Melina had made a gesture that unsettled Moro greatly—she casually grasped her most vulnerable area and remarked in a tone devoid of emotion, “If you were a woman, I’d be even more satisfied.”

Her voice and action felt as if she might snap his vital parts off at any moment.

That was Moro’s first encounter with Melina.

From the start, the woman never hid the long scar crossing half her face. Perhaps because of that, she rarely concealed her peculiar thoughts, even in front of Moro and his companion, Dog Brother.

Yet after nearly a year together, Moro still couldn’t fully understand her.

Maybe because from the beginning, he had already branded Melina with the label of “antisocial personality.”

“You really trust me, don’t you?” Gailu’s calm voice whispered in his ear, jolting Moro’s heart and causing a brief flicker of regret to pass through his eyes.

Gailu noticed this and grew slightly intrigued.

From their brief interaction, she discerned that Moro was a person with very high self-expectations. Such a person, once crossing the threshold of psychic abilities, would surely prove formidable.

If not for her lack of desire for the “Two-Star Hunter” title, she might have invested some time and energy in him.

“I’m Gailu, a professional hunter,” she introduced herself directly, her gaze fixed on Moro.

“Nice to meet you. Just call me Moro,” he replied.

Gailu nodded lightly and said, “Tell me what happened. I might be able to help.”

Moro hesitated briefly, then began to recount the entire situation, carefully omitting the destination of the cargo truck—the mental hospital.

In this matter, his role was merely that of a piglet yet to be slaughtered; silence was the wisest course.

After hearing his story, Gailu roughly understood the situation and straightforwardly labeled it as human trafficking.

She showed no curiosity about Moro’s psychic abilities and paid no attention to his act of finishing off the middle-aged man.

Her reason for being in the area was simply to collect venom from a newly registered poisonous snake species.

Encountering this incident was a trivial accident.

If she could lend a hand and do some good along the way, she was willing. But she had no intention of getting deeply involved.

Gailu’s indifferent attitude was exactly what Moro wanted to see.

“Gailu, please take care of them,” Moro said with relief, grateful that she was willing to help care for the “piglets” locked inside the truck.

With the changes he had set in motion, perhaps these children could have a chance at a better life.

Gailu nodded; such matters were merely a phone call away and hardly worth mentioning.

Moro smiled faintly. Under Gailu’s watchful eyes, he stripped the barely fitting clothes off the two dead bodies. He then retrieved wallets from Zazan and the others, emptied the cash, and didn’t forget to take the handgun.

Throughout, Gailu neither intervened nor inquired, simply observing from the side.

After securing the pistol, Moro prepared to leave.

“Thank you,” he said solemnly to Gailu.

Without her, he would have been troubled over how to handle the children in the truck.

Gailu lifted her chin in acknowledgment.

Moro turned to depart but glanced toward the original destination of the cargo truck.

At this moment, he wondered if Melina and Dog Brother had already arrived at the mental hospital.

He did not know.

Now, standing at the crossroads of fate with memories of the future, he had no intention of retracing the old path.

Though their paths had yet to cross, this would be their farewell—for now.

Melina.

Moro thought silently, then resolutely set off in the opposite direction.

Behind him, Gailu watched until he disappeared from sight. Only then did she take out her phone and make a call to arrange care for the children in the truck.

The call ended swiftly. Standing beside the truck, she suddenly noticed a monitor installed inside the open driver’s cabin.

Finding waiting tedious, she entered the cabin and, after some manipulation, began playing back previously recorded footage.

In moments, as she watched the images from inside the truck, Gailu’s snake-like vertical pupils slowly contracted, gleaming with disbelief.