Chapter 142: Men have sorrow and joy, partings and reunions (3)

"Aunt Angie, I would love to escort that young master, but the problem is he isn't even here. Weren't you just with him?" Anna said with a somewhat wry smile.

"What?! What did you just say? He's not there? Impossible, I watched him leave myself, and a whole hour has already passed. How could he possibly be missing?!" Long Anqi exclaimed loudly. The rapid-fire questions made one thing clear to everyone: Ye Lang had indeed left, and a full hour had passed, yet for some reason, he had not shown up.

[...]

Everyone fell silent!

"The situation is this: Thirteen left the house, and in less than two minutes of walking distance, he has vanished! The reason could be that he didn't want to go with the others and preferred to travel alone, or perhaps something else—like him being in a daze and wandering off to the wrong place!" Seventh Brother analyzed.

"If he had wanted to go alone, he wouldn't have said he was going with Anna and the others. Given his abilities, if he wants to be by himself, no one can stop him!" Third Brother thought for a moment and said with a frown.

Judging by Ye Lang's personality, the first possibility could be ruled out. Sticking to his character traits—"That means Thirteen must be in one of his dazes again, managing to go the wrong way even on such a short path!" Seventh Brother said, frowning with a sense of helplessness.

"Then what are we standing around for? Let's go look for him!" Anna declared, dashing out first to alert her mercenaries to begin the search for Ye Lang's whereabouts.

This Thirteenth Young Master was simply impossible to keep track of. How could he manage to disappear like this?!

On that day, the small town of Ye City descended into chaos once more. In the past, turmoil was caused by outside events, but today the chaos was over a single person... The members of the Ye family and Anna's mercenaries searched all day long without finding a trace of Ye Lang. Not even a single clue remained, as if he had simply vanished from the face of the earth the moment he stepped out the door.

This hardly looked like taking a wrong turn. Could he have gone on another one of his mysterious disappearances, suddenly changing his mind and deciding to seek out Tiger Girl alone?

Everyone felt this possibility growing increasingly likely. Otherwise, how could there be not a single trace left? Whenever he got lost in the past, he would at least leave behind some clues showing what he had done and where he had been.

After this incident, everyone reached a firm consensus: from then on, even if it was only a few steps away—even if it truly was only a yard or two—they had to deliver Ye Lang to his destination in person, otherwise he would vanish into thin air all over again!

Where on earth had Ye Lang gone? Had he changed his mind, ditching Anna and the others to head toward the Tiger Clan tribe by himself?

Not at all. He had no such intention whatsoever. The whole affair was merely a coincidence, an accident—well, at least as far as he was concerned, it was absolute coincidence and pure accident!

At that time, the moment Ye Lang stepped out of the house, he headed toward the location he had in mind. He hadn't even taken a wrong turn; Anna's mercenary corps was indeed in that general direction. However—halfway there, he spotted a small alley with a sign posted above it bearing the words "XX Mercenary Corps." Because the first characters were blocked by an obstruction, he had no idea what kind of mercenary corps it actually was.

A mercenary corps? That must be Anna's base of operations, he thought. But why was it so close? Weren't they supposed to walk for two minutes?

Puzzled, Ye Lang didn't bother to investigate further. He simply walked straight into the alley and followed the directions right to the headquarters of that "XX Mercenary Corps"!

At a single glance, anyone could tell this was a small-scale mercenary corps; otherwise, they wouldn't be holed up in a narrow alleyway.

As for calling themselves a mercenary corps, it was probably a bit of an exaggeration. It could hardly be called a corps at all; at best, it was a mercenary squad!

Logically speaking, Anna's mercenary corps wouldn't be this small, nor would they be located in such a place. Furthermore, that corps was predominantly male, while Anna's group consisted entirely of women. Anyone could easily tell the difference between the two.

Yet, Ye Lang failed to notice. He simply assumed that Anna's corps had now recruited male members to make taking on missions more convenient. As for the size of the group, it all looked much the same in his eyes.

And so, in his usual daze, he convinced himself that he had entered Anna's mercenary corps. What added even more to his misunderstanding was that one person happened to be running late, and everyone was waiting for them...

"Why are you only just getting here? Do you not want to go anymore? Hurry up, we're out of time!" one of the mercenaries barked. They didn't seem to know their teammates very well and simply assumed Ye Lang was one of them.

In truth, they were a newly formed little mercenary group whose members had all come from various individual backgrounds from every corner.

"Where did you get those clothes? Change them, they're an eyesore." Ye Lang's attire truly made him stand out like a crane among chickens. Yet this group didn't find him the least bit suspicious, being just as muddle-headed as Ye Lang himself.

Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that none of the members in this mercenary corps felt their outfit had any value, as no one would ever target them for robbery.

"Change into what?" Ye Lang asked.

"Something similar to what we're wearing will do," one of them replied.

"Oh..." Ye Lang looked over the others, nodded, and went inside to change into a set of mercenary gear. It was rather worn and faded, which made it even less likely to draw any attention.

As for why he happened to possess such an outfit, it was simple: he had bought it some time ago, theoretically out of his habitual extravagance. It seemed to be a leather armor that had once belonged to a famous mercenary—or something like that; he couldn't even remember clearly himself.

"Alright! Today marks the most important mission since the establishment of our mercenary corps. Everyone must pull themselves together and give it everything we've got. Let's move out!" Prompted by the captain's speech, many of the men cheered excitedly.

Of course, a good number of them were thinking to themselves: *Of course it's the most important mission—it's our very first one!*

Ye Lang joined in the shouting from the back, looking thoroughly excited. He seemed to think it was all great fun. Even if someone were to point out the mistake to him right now, he wouldn't necessarily leave—let alone the fact that he hadn't noticed anything amiss at all.

He kept projecting his own situation onto the circumstances around him, and by some bizarre coincidence, every single detail seemed to fit seamlessly—in that hopelessly dazed sort of way.

And thus, Ye Lang tagged along with this newly formed little mercenary corps, departing from Ye City and heading southward...

Yes, southward—the exact opposite direction of where he was actually supposed to go. In his perpetually hazy state of mind, how could he possibly tell north from south? Wherever the others walked, he simply followed along.

When Ye Lanruo and the others later discovered what had happened, they pinched Ye Lang's cheeks in exasperation, demanding to know how he could be so muddle-headed as to follow the wrong people all the way to a completely different region.

After learning the truth, Ye Lanruo and her companions became even more reluctant to let Ye Lang travel alone. They lived in constant fear: what if one day, in a daze, Ye Lang wandered off to an entirely different continent? What would they do then?

However, they couldn't stop him. Not a single person could hold him back!

Shortly after Ye Lang and the others left, a disheveled mercenary rushed over in a flurry. He stood staring in a daze at the empty, abandoned house for a long moment.

Then, he muttered, "They left? Looks like I'll have to find somewhere else to scrape a living!"

Since they had already gone, it meant his presence wasn't required anyway. He was just an expendable little nobody to begin with!

(To be continued)