The fact that Bai Ye was the Black Night Knight was known to very few people—Queen An Jieli being one of them.
Though it wasn’t so much that nobody knew. To ordinary people, even the name Bai Ye was unfamiliar.
Unlike the renowned Black Night Knight, Bai Ye’s name hadn’t spread very far.
Aside from Bai Ye’s friends and the people in the palace, perhaps only the nobles of the Royal Capital had vaguely heard the name. They knew only that Her Majesty the Queen doted on Bai Ye. That was all.
After all, An Jieli didn’t like Bai Ye drawing attention to herself. So whenever Bai Ye went out beyond the palace, she either used her identity as the Black Night Knight or wore a mask and went under an assumed name.
Even so, An Jieli had been keeping an increasingly close eye on Bai Ye.
Before, she’d at least let Bai Ye lead the Knights as the Black Night Knight. But for the past six months, An Jieli had barely allowed Bai Ye to leave the palace, insisting she stay inside and keep her company.
In that case, the man at the next table might not have been wrong after all.
“Lord Black Night Knight is actually the queen’s forbidden…”
The breakfast-stall owner hurriedly clapped a hand over his mouth and glanced around. Then he leaned toward the middle-aged man and whispered,
“That’s a juicy bit of gossip. Is your source reliable?”
“Whether anyone else believes it or not, I do.”
The middle-aged man shrugged.
“At least it sounds more believable than ‘retired and went home’ or ‘the queen grew suspicious and had her assassinated,’ doesn’t it?”
This was so embarrassing. Bai Ye hadn’t expected listening to two greasy middle-aged men gossip to be this mortifying. So that was how the outside world described her and An Jieli.
If it were all made up, that’d be one thing. But the truth was actually pretty close to the rumors.
Bai Ye couldn’t take it anymore. She finished her noodles in two or three bites and got ready to leave. If she heard any more rumors about herself, she might just die of embarrassment.
“Speaking of which, have you heard about the nobles trafficking slaves?”
Bai Ye had just been about to leave, but when she heard the man beside her say that, she froze for a moment and stopped.
Slave trafficking? What slave trafficking? Ever since An Jieli inherited the throne, the Holy Radiance Empire had abolished slavery and banned the buying and selling of people. All these years had passed—where had this talk of slave trafficking come from?
“I’ve actually heard about that. I’ve got a friend who works for a noble, and his master told him about it. It was at a brothel in the south of the city, right?”
“That’s right.”
The middle-aged man nodded and lowered his voice.
“Ever since the new law explicitly banned the sale of slaves, buying and selling people had stopped for years. But who’d have thought some nobles just couldn’t sit still? Lately, they’ve started secretly trafficking women again.”
“Tsk. And they’re trafficking women, too! That’s a serious crime. Is no one brave enough to report those nobles?”
“Who’s going to report them? Would you?”
The middle-aged man curled his lip in disdain.
“Can you just go straight to the queen? Or guarantee that the people taking reports aren’t in league with those nobles? I don’t know if anyone else would dare, but I sure wouldn’t.”
“Sigh… Her Majesty the Queen must not know about this. Otherwise, she’d give those damn nobles what they deserve!”
As the two men lamented, someone suddenly walked up and spoke to them.
“Could you tell me more about the slave trafficking?”
The breakfast-stall owner and the middle-aged man turned around in confusion. What they saw was a silver-haired girl.
The girl’s expression was cold. Her face was breathtakingly beautiful, but the two men could tell she was in a bad mood.
“Little girl, this isn’t something you should get mixed up in. You’d better—”
Before the middle-aged man could finish, the girl casually tossed two brand-new gold coins onto the counter.
“Tell me everything you know. These two gold coins are yours.”
“Th-those are gold coins!!!”
The two men jumped in shock.
Gold coins weren’t something ordinary people saw often. In their day-to-day lives, they mostly used copper and silver coins.
A hundred copper coins made one silver coin, and it took a hundred silver coins to exchange for a single gold coin.
The breakfast-stall owner sold his meat buns for just one copper each. Those two gold coins could buy a full twenty thousand buns. How could they not be stunned?
“May I ask who you are, miss…?”
The middle-aged man asked cautiously.
Anyone who could casually toss out two gold coins without even blinking had to be someone important.
Besides, these coins looked different from the ones usually in circulation. The gold coins the girl had thrown were remarkably new.
Their surfaces gleamed like mirrors. There wasn’t a scratch, a sign of wear, or even a speck of dirt—as if they’d just come from the mint.
How could gold coins be this new? Had they come straight from the treasury?
Whatever the reason, the middle-aged man understood that this girl was no ordinary person.
“You don’t need to know who I am. Just answer my questions.”
The silver-haired girl’s voice was lovely and gentle, as comforting as a feather brushing past.
But the middle-aged man didn’t dare take her lightly. He’d lived half his life, and while he might not have many other skills, he knew how to read people and judge things.
This girl was not someone he could brush off or fob off with vague answers. If he didn’t want trouble, he had to do as she said.
“I can answer your questions. It’s just that this humble man doesn’t know much, so I might not be able to satisfy you.”
Without thinking, the middle-aged man addressed Bai Ye respectfully. He held the coins out to her in both hands, as if to say that the information he had wasn’t worth so much.
“That’s all right. Go ahead and tell me.”
Bai Ye seemed to notice how nervous the middle-aged man was, and her voice grew even gentler.
“You can keep the gold coins, too. If you can tell me anything useful, I’ll reward you further.”
“As you command.”
