Chapter 356: Racing Against Time

Palm Tree Inn.

Gao De arrived at the front desk.

He had originally only booked the room for three days, but since matters here would clearly take more time, he needed to extend his stay by another week.

Handing over two Goldfinch coins and one Silver Dragon coin, Gao De reviewed today's itinerary while waiting for the landlady to write him a receipt.

After the Rose Inn, he had scoured all the other mid-range inns in the city, but found nothing more.

It seemed that apart from staying at the Rose Inn on her first day in Lagos, Aisha had found a new place to stay afterward.

This was somewhat untraceable.

Fortunately, the waitress at the Rose Inn had provided a key clue—the shipyard.

Although Aisha did not understand shipbuilding, since she had asked about it, there was a high probability she had some need for a shipyard.

However, it was already late, so Gao De decided to wait until tomorrow to visit the shipyards in the city one by one.

As a major traditional fishing city, Lagos had a well-developed supporting industry for fisheries, and there were quite a few shipyards—over twenty in total.

Therefore, this was clearly a massive undertaking.

More importantly, while the small shipyards were easy to deal with, the large ones were basically backed by the city's nobility.

In this situation, he fell back into his previous predicament—his status as a Hai Shao Bing apprentice magic user was highly likely insufficient, and those large shipyards might not necessarily give him the time of day.

This caused Gao De a slight amount of annoyance.

But annoyance aside, he still had to go where he needed to go tomorrow; in short, he would just take it one step at a time.

Gao De thought to himself.

"Excuse me." Just then, a dry, hoarse voice came from the side.

"May I ask, has the inn recently hosted this young lady?" Gao De instinctively turned his head to look and saw a man with his figure hidden in a black cloak appear at the counter. He pushed a piece of parchment toward the landlady.

On the parchment was a portrait.

Gao De glanced at it casually, and then, his mind was violently shaken.

Because he was incredibly familiar with the portrait on the parchment.

It was exactly the sister Anna was looking for, Aisha!

Besides himself, there were others looking for Aisha?

Was it an old friend of Anna's father?

This was the first thought in Gao De's mind.

But it was quickly dismissed by Gao De.

"Haven't seen her." The landlady, who was writing the receipt, didn't even look up as she gave a decisive answer.

The corners of Gao De's mouth twitched slightly: couldn't she even be bothered to give a perfunctory response?

"Cough, cough." The man was very calm; he just coughed twice in a low voice and tapped the table lightly. A Silver Dragon coin appeared on top of the portrait out of nowhere.

Clearly, the man understood very well that if he didn't offer some benefits, even if the landlady had hosted the woman in the portrait, she wouldn't reveal anything to him.

Without money to pave the way, things couldn't get done.

Unless one was like Gao De, asking questions while wearing a Hai Shao Bing uniform, which allowed him to save a lot of expenses by borrowing that "tiger skin."

The landlady was clearly buried in writing the receipt, but she seemed to have a third eye, knowing the man had unleashed the "Silver Coin Technique." The next moment, she looked up, stared at the Silver Dragon coin on the portrait, chuckled, and swept the coin into the drawer with an inadvertent flick of her finger.

Afterward, she scrutinized the portrait carefully for several moments before giving a definitive answer: "Haven't seen her."

"Many thanks." The man didn't have much of a reaction; he put away the portrait and left the inn after offering his thanks.

After the man left the inn, the landlady finished writing the receipt and handed it to Gao De, "Mr. Officer, your receipt."

"Sorry for the trouble." Gao De took the receipt and thanked her.

After the man left the inn, he couldn't help but look back at the Palm Tree Inn.

Seeing Gao De go upstairs, he withdrew his gaze.

For a split second just now, he felt as if the other party had been paying attention to him.

But he didn't notice anything wrong afterward; the other party looked like an ordinary guest—after returning to the inn, Gao De had already changed out of his Hai Shao Bing uniform, and there wasn't even a trace of a magic user to be seen.

Therefore, he didn't think much more about it.

The matter at hand was more important.

It wasn't that he lacked vigilance.

It was mainly because this was his first time in the Goldfinch Empire, and he didn't know a single soul here, so under normal circumstances, who would pay him any mind?

Opening the door.

The little girl was frowning as she looked at her clothes.

When she came out, she hadn't brought anything except herself.

So the set of clothes she was wearing had actually been on for several days.

Normally, in this world, for most people, let alone a few days, not changing clothes for a week was actually a very normal thing.

But Anna used to change her clothes at least once a day, so now, looking at the "dirty"—though not actually that dirty—clothes, she felt somewhat uncomfortable, her nose wrinkled high.

"Big Brother!" Hearing the door open, Anna immediately looked up, her big eyes wide as she called out obediently.

Truly an incredibly cute little girl... Gao De thought to himself as he walked to the bedside, crouched down to be on the same level as Anna, who was sitting on the bed, and then said in an extremely "stern" tone:

"Anna, regarding your sister, what else have you been hiding? You must tell me today."

Watching the little girl's face shift from surprise to gloom, along with her slightly trembling eyelashes, Gao De felt helpless. His heart softened, and he sighed, his tone turning gentle: "Just now downstairs, I ran into a guy who didn't look like a good person. He had a portrait of your sister and was investigating her movements."

"Ah?!" Anna's little face froze, and then she lowered her head, seemingly afraid to look directly at Gao De's face, looking incredibly pitiful.

"Big Brother, please help my sister, don't let him find her..." Her voice became pitiful: "He is a bad person!"

Gao De crouched down a bit more, looking up at the little girl's finely carved face; her beautiful big eyes were already filled with tears.

He pursed his lips and said gently: "So, Anna must tell me what you've been hiding, only then will I have a way to help you."

Perhaps it was this brief time spent with Gao De that truly allowed Anna to build sufficient trust in him; the little girl raised her head again and said earnestly:

"My sister did indeed bring Anna here to escape, that is true, but we actually don't owe any debt. There are bad people who want to steal our family's treasure... Even though we fled here, the bad people followed us all the way and haven't given up."

"It's just that my sister didn't come to Lagos to make a living," at this point, Anna looked at Gao De cautiously, her voice becoming barely audible as she mumbled: "But to find a way to avoid the bad people... Anna lied to Big Brother, Anna is a bad child."

Gao De looked at Anna deeply, his eyes revealing a hint of scrutiny, as if trying to discern whether this current explanation was the truth or a new set of lies.

He watched her earnestly for a while; he had always been good at reading people, but for a little girl, this ability didn't seem to work very well.

Gao De didn't watch for too long and quickly said: "So, looking at it this way, the reason your sister was asking about the shipyard wasn't to find work, but to buy a boat?"

Asking for the location of the shipyard, excluding the possibility of a diversion, naturally meant she was going there to conduct business.

And for an outsider to specifically rush to Lagos to find a shipyard, besides working, what else could it be but buying a boat?

Furthermore, buying a boat also happened to align with what Anna called "finding a way to avoid the bad people."

If the "bad people" were really following so closely, putting himself in her shoes, what would he do?

Back then, Gao De's choice was not to take any transportation, relying on his own 【Adaptive】 ability to leave Saint Xi En by boat, achieving true untraceability.

Aisha couldn't possibly have the 【Adaptive】 ability, so not relying on any transportation was impossible.

But there was another way to achieve a certain sense of untraceability... making the transportation her own property.

Which was what is known as buying a boat to go to sea.

Of course, going to sea wasn't something one person could handle alone; it required hiring crew and so on, but in short, once on the boat, as long as the captain didn't reveal the specific destination, at least it could guarantee that for a not-insignificant amount of time, no one would know where the boat was heading.

A very reasonable and clever method.

"Perhaps... is that so?" Anna blinked her eyes, unsure: "Big Brother, what should we do now?"

"It should be that," Gao De thought for a moment and added: "You don't need to worry too much; at least we have two advantages now."

"Eh, two?" Anna tilted her head to look at Gao De, the tears on her small face not yet dry; the confused look was both pitiful and cute.

"First," Gao De held up a finger and explained patiently: "The Palm Tree Inn is a relatively central inn in Lagos. Since this bad person only just entered the Palm Tree Inn to investigate your sister's movements, it's highly probable he has only just started investigating."

"Because in an unfamiliar place, central and visible inns should be the priority targets for a tracker. If nothing else, at least we can be sure he hasn't asked at the Rose Inn and hasn't obtained any further information."

"And now," Gao De looked up at the sky outside the window, "it's already night, so he can only wait until tomorrow to continue the inn-by-inn search."

This world was not like his previous life, where the service industry had become so competitive that 24-hour front desk service at hotels was common.

Here, the front desk staff at most inns were the owners themselves, and even if they hired specific staff, to save costs, given the limited night traffic, few would hire an extra person to stay at the front desk all night.

Most of the time, guests arriving at night needed to ring a bell or call out to wake the resting staff to provide service.

If you were staying at the inn, that was one thing, but waking someone up just to ask a question—you can imagine what kind of look you'd get.

Therefore, that man would definitely have to wait until dawn tomorrow to continue the inn search.

"This is one of our time advantages."

"The second is that we have already finished the inn-search stage and entered the next stage," Gao De took a piece of parchment from his pocket, "The two of us can determine the target tonight, which gains us nearly a day's time difference."

As he spoke, Gao De unfolded the parchment.

On the parchment was the information he had collected on the shipyards in Lagos, including scale, main ship types, addresses, etc., listed in order of size.

"Then how do we determine the target?" Anna opened her big eyes, confused.

"Look, assuming your sister is really preparing to buy a boat, it's to escape to sea. For things like boats, the larger they are, the more manpower they need. Since your sister is only trying to avoid bad people and not really doing business, naturally, she doesn't need to buy a large boat."

"Since that's the case, these large shipyards can be excluded first." Gao De's fingertip swept over the large shipyards at the top of the parchment.

"Then, since you fled here, I assume your sister's finances aren't too abundant, so when buying a boat, she would naturally seek cost-effectiveness."

"Another point is that she is an outsider, so when purchasing a boat, she would likely look for some relatively less formal small workshops. These small workshops value every transaction, so naturally, their identity verification isn't as strict."

Anna nodded continuously, feeling that every word Gao De said made perfect sense.

"Therefore," Gao De's fingertip stopped on a name on the parchment, "the main ship type of this shipyard is a two-masted sailboat, which is a small ocean-crossing ship type suitable for small traders and explorers. Additionally, they have gone bankrupt and stopped building ships; they are currently clearing out the backlog of ships and transferring the shipyard at a low price."

In this situation, their boat prices would definitely be the most affordable.

And they wouldn't care about the buyer's status as an outsider; anyway, they were closing the factory after selling the boat, so even if the authorities wanted to punish them, there would be nowhere to punish.

"Right, right." Anna's big eyes squinted as she looked at the shipyard Gao De pointed to, reading its name word by word.

"Harland Shipyard."

"Then we'll get up early tomorrow and head straight to Harland Shipyard." Gao De was always a decisive person and made the decision immediately.

"Mr. Officer, yesterday there was indeed an outsider young lady who wanted to buy our last remaining Harland two-masted boat, but that young lady didn't have enough money and said she needed to prepare for a few more days, so she left first."

The chubby Harland owner, after a slight hesitation, glanced at the crisp Hai Shao Bing uniform on Gao De and finally spoke to reveal some information.

A Hai Shao Bing apprentice magic user wasn't a particularly big figure, but he was a Hai Shao Bing magic user nonetheless; as a bankrupt shipyard owner, he didn't need to provoke someone for no reason.

Anyway, it wasn't any important information.

"Not enough money... yesterday..." Gao De's eyes lit up slightly; he was almost certain he had found the right person.

"Then do you know how to contact her?"

Harland shook his head, "This young lady didn't leave any contact information, nor did she leave a deposit, so I specifically reminded her to be quick, otherwise if I ran into other guests, I wouldn't be able to hold the boat for her."

"I see..." Gao De fell into deep thought.

Clearly, Aisha was very vigilant.

But this vigilance also made it impossible for Gao De to find her further.

While thinking, Gao De unconsciously examined the shipyard's environment.

Harland Shipyard was located around the Lagos port, which was to facilitate the boats being launched and going to sea immediately after completion.

Around it were a large number of lumber mills, rope workshops, and canvas workshops, forming a relatively complete shipbuilding industrial chain.

Therefore, the air was filled with the fragrance of wood, the pungent smell of tar, and the salty, fishy smell of seawater.

The core facility occupying the largest area in the shipyard was the dock.

In addition, there were corresponding wood processing areas, workshops, and other work areas, but because Harland Shipyard had gone bankrupt and stopped building ships, they were all empty and very desolate at the moment.

Gao De smelled the unique scent of the shipyard permeating the air, and a thought suddenly emerged from the depths of his mind.

"Boss, are you currently transferring the shipyard at a low price? Have you found a buyer?"

"There are a few interested buyers, but they are all unscrupulous merchants; the prices they offer are so low that even a dog wouldn't look at them!" Mentioning this, Harland immediately became energetic and couldn't help but complain.

"What is your psychological price, if I wanted to take over the shipyard?" Gao De asked suddenly.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 357 =====