The Witch Hunter System

Over at Marquis Salamrut's estate, Moonwater Soldiers and Fanghorn Soldiers formed two defensive lines, holding the angry crowd of civilians from hurting themselves against the spirit barrier.

At the same time, several higher-rank officers from the two armies ordered their men to control the crowd. It was not easy for the two armies to disperse the angry crowd in their incited state.

Boom! Boom!

Dozens of Knights continuously struck the sturdy spirit barrier in a bid to deplete its energy before ultimately breaking it.

However, the spirit barrier suddenly deactivated on its own, as if someone inside had willingly turned it off. The Knights did not miss the opportunity to dash inside the estate immediately.

The sight excited the angry crowd as they also wanted to follow the Knights to kill the scummy nobles inside. Unfortunately, they lacked the power to push past the line of trained soldiers barring their path.

"Stay back! It's dangerous here. Please return to your homes and wait for further news! This is not a place for you folks to be!"

"To hell with that! I want to kill some scummy nobles! Who are you to us?!"

Although the enraged crowd felt frustrated by the soldiers' obstruction, they didn't dare to engage in physical altercations with them.

After all, they were only angry, not insane. They haven't lost their shred of reasoning.

They understood the soldiers were trying to protect them. Still, they were just a mob with a lot of anger and not enough wisdom. They didn't know how else to express their dissatisfaction with the nobles.

Meanwhile, a large group of three hundred Fanghorn Soldiers poured into the marquisate estate, following the Knights.

The bloodied, maimed corpses of servants and guards littering the courtyard floor surprised them immediately.

After all, it did not look like the work of the Knights who entered before them. Instead, there were clear signs of infighting within the estate prior to their arrival. Moreover, the fight seemed especially fierce.

When the soldiers entered the inner courtyard, they quickly discovered the Knights fighting against a group of nobles—No, rather, they were trying to escort a young lady out while defending against Marquis Salamrut's noble family.

From the young lady's luxurious attire, everyone could tell she was clearly a noble lady.

However, her beauty could not be seen due to the terrifying bruises and cuts on her face. Her silky white dress was dyed in her blood, having suffered various shallow to deep cuts throughout her frail body.

More notably, her nails were pulled out, her fingers were broken, and her tendons were all sliced. Evidently, she had been tortured terribly.

The Fanghorn Soldiers could not understand why the scummy Marquis Salamrut was directing such a murderous gaze at his own child as if she were his mortal enemy.

"Don't let them get away! Bring that bitch back here!" Marquis Salamrut roared furiously.

The Fanghorn Soldiers were able to confirm their suspicions after hearing the scummy Marquis's roar. However, they became even more confused.

"Isn't that the scum Marquis's illegitimate daughter? Why does he want to kill her so badly? What did she do? And why are the Knights protecting her?"

Although Fanghorn Soldiers had a lot of questions, the answer wasn't difficult to find after a bit of thinking.

Vaan was also observing the situation closely after it attracted his attention.

By the looks of it, the Marquis's illegitimate daughter was the rebel leader in charge of leading the Knights against the nobles. While the young lady didn't have any noteworthy cultivation, she appeared to be a computer expert.

She was a master in hacking.

Her room, which had been bloodied from her torture, was a hidden mechanism leading underground, where she stored all her data, servers, and computers. One underground room even had over two hundred different monitoring screens.

All the clues pointed to her as the mastermind behind the massive evidence dump, which exposed the nobles' true faces.

However, Vaan didn't believe it was that simple.

For starters, some of the Knights had grudges with the nobles for thousands of years. Moreover, the nobles' nature wasn't something that started in the past few thousand years either.

It was very likely that the nobles had engaged in such twisted activities since several hundred thousand years ago. The young lady's age was nowhere close to any of that.

As such, Vaan was more inclined to believe the young lady was only the successor carrying out the will of her predecessors. But even then, the detail and quantity of evidence she dumped on the Celestial Network far exceeded what a hacker was capable of acquiring.

Even if the city had cameras installed everywhere, she could not have accessed all of them at any time to spy on the nobles' secret activities.

It already required tremendous time and effort to collect so much dirt on one noble. To do so for hundreds of them in the past few thousand years simultaneously was simply unthinkable for someone as frail as the young lady.

Whether it was her or her predecessors, Vaan figured they also received higher-level assistance from someone else—someone with true authority in the city.

Vaan was certain of this once he looked into the young lady's background.

Her name was Aliyah Salamrut. She was the daughter of Marquis's seventy-third concubine, who died of poor health when she was five. Her mother was most likely another victim of the Marquis's whimsical depravity.

She was neglected as a child and did not receive any extensive education, especially not in the computer software and networking field.
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As such, how she grew to become a master hacker on her own was questionable.

How did she even come to possess such an intricate setup in her basement right under the Marquis's nose?

Although Vaan didn't believe Aliyah was the original mastermind, who collected all the evidence, he figured she knew who it was. As such, she was a valuable target he couldn't leave to die.

Swoosh!

A wave of spatial power suddenly rushed toward the young lady, causing the escorting Knights to pale in horror as they imagined the worst.

"My Lord, please spare her!" the Knights cried.

However, they thought too much. The spatial power wrapped around Aliyah gently and brought her to Vaan's side, where she received his immediate treatment and care.

Marquis Salamrut quickly glared at Vaan's hovering figure in high air. Disdain and rage shortly flickered across his eyes.

"Little bastard, give that bitch back to me!" Marquis Salamrut bellowed.