Chapter 265: Lady Van Graaf.

"Are you nuts?" Goos shushed him, "That’s Lady Van Graaf!""Sorry! I’m new here." Lee said, "Care to explain?"

The man looked at Lee in disbelief, but then seemed to understand something, "Right, right! You guys came with the last group six days ago ..."

Then he leaned closer, and whispered, "She went missing around a month ago and Lord Van Graaf has promised a huge reward for finding her."

"He’s the local ruler?" Lee guessed, trying to ignore the stench of alcohol that the man breathed right in his face.

"Mhm. An incredible elemental lord." Goos said, "It’s quite a romantic story ... and a tragic one."

"How come?"

Lee was thrilled he could finally find out more about his companion. All it took was the occasional innocent question, and the man was ready to spill every bit of gossip he knew. With Lieve unconscious, Lee could figure out what kind of trouble he had gotten himself into and there was no reason to not make use of the situation.

"It took many years for our lord to find a wife. Many already began to think he wasn’t particularly interested in women, if you know what I mean, but then, all of the sudden, he brought Lady Van Graaf home from another world." Goos said, "She also turned out to be a talented spatial cultivator, and everyone celebrated the continuation of the tradition of the Van Graaf family."

"Tradition?" Lee asked.

"Yea. The heir would only take a spatial cultivator for a wife to increase the chances of their children igniting a spatial spark." The man said, "Usually the chances are slim, but Van Graaf family has followed this unwritten rule for centuries, maybe even millennia."

"Does it work like that?" Lee asked.

"It did up until now." Was the answer, "I don’t know what the trick is, but every generation has brought a successor who later became a powerful spatial elemental lord."

"Interesting!" Lee said, "Let me get another round! Waiter! Ironbites here! ... so ... Lord Van Graaf brought home a foreign wife. What happened then?"

Goos happily emptied a cup of ironbite the moment waited brought them over more drinks, and continued, "You can easily guess – there wasn’t a local woman who didn’t hate her guts! No matter if they were cultivators or not, with how handsome and strong the lord is, all of them hoped to become his wife. But he ... she wasn’t the most pret ... I mean, there were more beautif ..."

"I get it." Lee said, "There were women who thought they were prettier than the new lady, right?"

"Yea, that’s what I meant!" Goos happily nodded, sighing in relief. He was about to say something improper, but his new acquaintance saved him, "So, while many said the couple were in love and all that shit, there were even more of those who hated her. Imagine how thrilled the haters were when she suddenly disappeared!"

"Maybe she went back home to visit her parents or something?" Lee innocently asked.

"How? Without the lord knowing about it?" Goos said, "No, someone surely kil ... I mean, someone kidna ..."

"So she disappeared." Lee helped out again.

"Yea. Disappeared." The man nodded, and emptied another cup. Turns out that telling this story was more stressful than he imagined, "Her bodyguard, an elemental lord, was found dead, and she vanished without a trace. Poor girl ... she probably didn’t even saw it coming ..."

"Maybe she’s fine?" Lee asked.

"Buddy! A month has passed!" Goos said, "The lord has gone nuts looking for her! Imagine his despair – you’re the strongest man in the world and still can’t find your lost wife! Of course, there are those who think that he was the one who kil ... that he had her ..."

"You probably mean that there are people who spread ill lies." Lee said, and Goos happily nodded.

He said, "Yea. But he’s a spatial elemental lord, you know? He could’ve opened a rift and thrown her out just like that."

"Why?" Was the logical answer.

"Well, there’s this local damsel. Pretty as a doll. And talented." Goos said, "Everyone thought she’ll become the next lady before the lord brought his knew wife home."

"But why kill the bodyguard?" Lee pondered, "If someone’s strong enough to kill an elemental lord, to deal with an elemental master is a child’s play. On the other hand, assuming she ran off, how did she overpower someone vastly stronger than her?"

"Oh, buddy!" Goose said, "You would’ve loved to drink here half a month ago. Everyone was discussing the subject and coming up with the craziest theories."

"I’m free tonight!" Lee said with a wide grin, "Lay them on me!"

***

Maybe it was the characteristic the locals had, but Goos could blab endlessly, just like Minnie. The more he drank, the braver he became and before passing out on the table he managed to compile most of the theories circulating in Stonegate about the disappearance of Lady Van Graaf.

Ranging from her escaping or getting kidnapped, to lord disposing of his wife – everyone had a different story. Some of them were so unrealistic, the only conclusion Lee could come to was that people shouldn’t live underground if they didn’t have a TV. With the amount of ironbite everyone drank, their imagination had developed way too far.

To Lee the whole situation didn’t make sense.

After finding a place to stay, he sat in a cross-legged position to cultivate. Unfortunately, no matter how he tried, his thoughts kept going back to the unconscious lady lying on the bed.

She was certain that her husband was behind her assassination attempt – one couldn’t call it any other way. Shackling a cultivator in Nullite shackles and throwing her in the middle of nowhere was nothing but a murder.

The problem was – assuming he really hated her so much, for an elemental lord there were better ways to deal with someone.

More importantly, no one used Nullite shackles in this world! Regardless of the cultivation level, every criminal was killed and fed to varnhollows. It didn’t matter what crime they committed – no one ever took prisoners. That’s the reason why Lieve was certain that it was impossible to find a key to her shackles.

Lee had no clue why she thought her husband tried to kill her. Maybe she had done something that was punishable by death. Or maybe, like in Victoria’s case, she was discarded after the man discovered she couldn’t give birth to a healthy offspring.

But in that case the whole love story was a lie, and Lee found it unlikely. From the moment he met Lieve, it was clear that her unstable emotional state was genuine. More importantly, the more he spent time with her, the more certain he became that dying was not the part she was worried about.

And she was strong willed and decisive. Getting slapped on purpose until her own mother wouldn’t be able to recognize her was clear proof of that.

But why was she left alive? If the husband was the bad guy, why did he had to pretend to madly look for her? And why would he kill her bodyguard – an elemental lord working for him? Elemental lords weren’t mushrooms that grew en masse after rain. But then again, why was she afraid of him?

There were too many fishy things about the whole situation.

Ignoring the fact that almost every young single woman in Hollowreach would want her dead, no one actually knew what happened. And likely that included Lieve as well.

The more Lee thought about the situation, the more annoyed he grew. It was to the point that when she woke up, he was the one with the migraine.