"Olivia, dear, why don't you just give in?" Monica asked sweetly.

Olivia didn't answer but struggled with the thick ropes bonding her to the bedpost. Her clothes were a mess and her face was blotchy and stained with tears. 

"Olivia," Monica said, this time a bit angry. "I saved you from your poor family. You should be grateful."

"Grateful! You took me away telling me I can earn money to support my father."

"Forget him, won't you!" Monica shrieked. "Think about what treatment you'll get here. It would be better than working at a brothel."

Tears flowed out of Olivia's eyes and she struggled silently. Bradley couldn't watch anymore. He jumped in, killed Monica, and slashed open the maiden's bonds.

"Maiden, are you alright?"

Olivia looked at him with wide eyes. "Who - "

"I'm here to save you," Bradley said.

"Bradley!" 

Bradley smiled a little when he heard Xiao calling. "Maiden, do you want to stay here or do you want to come down and answer a few questions?"

Olivia stared at him blankly. Before she could answer, someone entered the room. Bradley spun around but relaxed when he saw Monk Olga. In his mind, this monk was a life saver. 

"Knight Bradley," Monk Olga greeted. "I'll help."

Bradley smiled politely. "Please come down with us then, Monk Olga." He looked to Olivia, who got up slowly. Trying very hard not to touch her, he helped her down the stairs.

Xiao and Frank were standing in front of Curtis in the yard. They seemed to be interrogating him.

"Who's the grandmaster?" Frank asked him.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

Xiao snorted. "Why are all you criminals like this? Just say it. It's not like if you delay it you won't die."

"Who said I didn't want to die?"

"All you bastards want to live. I've met enough of you to have hundreds of men begging me for their lives," Xiao said menacingly.

"I'm not a normal bastard," Curtis said, swinging his head about all at ease.

Xiao laughed coldly. "What are you then?"

Bradley cleared his throat. "Xiao, stop bickering with him."

Xiao turned back and grinned at him. Then he lunged at Curtis and searched him through. Bradley watched with a mixture of exasperation and amusement. A few seconds later, Xiao returned with two packages of herbs and a little bird made of china.

"So this is what you use to drug innocent maidens."

Curtis snorted. "I've never done so. Those things are below me."

Xiao tilted his head. "Then why do you have them?"

"I - "

"Where do you keep the other maidens?" Bradley asked.

Xiao glanced at him and smiled a little. Bradley was just that impatient.

"I haven't an idea."

"Don't you work for the traffickers?" Bradley demanded.

"You think they would tell me?"

Xiao smiled. "Why do you think so highly of yourself when you're really a nobody?"

Curtis snorted. "Those people who eat all day and do nothing - they are missing an opportunity not using me."

"What do you know then?" Xiao asked.

Curtis looked at Monk Olga. "He knows more than I do."

Xiao spun towards the monk. "Monk Olga - "

Monk Olga saluted him. "I can tell you everything I know. Come in."

Xiao gave Curtis a hard look and the group headed inside. Bradley let Olivia sit in the back room and the rest went up into the priest's room.

Monk Olga went to the east wall and moved over a bookcase. Behind it stood a door. He got out a key from the priest's desk and opened the lock.

"This temple was my mentor, Monk Jolyn's," he said as he moved around. "This priest came out of nowhere and killed my mentor. Then he took over the place as if he was the rightful owner. But the secret places of the temple were not hidden from me."

He pushed open the door and led them into a lab of some sort. All kinds of herbs and liquids were present on shelves or desks.

"Did you learn medicine from this priest?" Xiao asked.

Monk Olga glared. "Of course not. Monk Jolyn taught me everything."

"Oh so the priest also knows the art of medicine."

"The art is wasted on him," Monk Olga said. "At first, when he took over, me and my two younger disciples could only watch. But he didn't do anything bad, really, that we knew of. He donated a lot of money to the city. But recently, he started messing with the woman upstairs, Monica, and they started bringing other women into the temple. It really stained the cleanliness of the temple..."

Monk Olga riffled through the drawers and shelves until he found a couple of packages exactly the same as the ones Xiao got from Curtis. "Here. I didn't dare come in here when he was still here or else I would have messed up his ingredients."

Xiao took all the packages. "Monk Olga, do you know any other drugs they are making?"

Monk Olga grimaced and scratched the back of his neck. "I don't know. I'll look over everything right now."

Bradley expressed his gratitude.

"You shouldn't stay here, Monk Olga," Frank said. "What if those traffickers come and force you to make the drug?"

Monk Olga smiled coldly. "They will be using wrong drugs then. And also, I'm not entirely helpless."

"You better alert the town hall of this," Xiao said. "A priest running amok and a dead woman should be accounted for."

Monk Olga nodded. "Please, knights, if you could take the maiden away ... I'll search this place and get back to you."

"And Curtis? You'll take him to the town hall?" Xiao asked.

"I will."

Xiao, Bradley, and Frank looked at each other. They couldn't have done anything else if they had stayed, so they left the young monk.

Frank walked up to Olivia and spoke with a gentleness neither Bradley nor Xiao had.

"Maiden Olivia, are you alright?" he asked. "You can forget all that happened. We'll take you home now."

Olivia nodded and looked away shyly like all maidens would have done so when interacting with men. Xiao looked at Bradley out of habit and smiled. Bradley raised his eyebrows. What?  Xiao shook his head nothing.

"Where is your family?"

"My father lives in a stable south of the city."

Xiao's eyes widened in sympathy. An old man alone in a stable?

"We'll take you there," Xiao spoke up. 

Bradley nodded.

But in the end, they didn't need three people to escort a maiden, so Frank offered to take her back. Before they left, Xiao stuffed a tael of gold into Olivia's hand. 

Olivia's eyes widened and her mouth fell open. She had never seen this much money in her poverty-stricken life.

"Find a way to support yourself and your father," Bradley said.

Olivia nodded. "Thank you, thank you, good knights!"

Xiao smiled. "If you go to Williams Village, ask for Simon Williams. You could serve his sister or something."

Bradley looked at him, impressed. "Yes, do that."

Then the brothers headed back to the guest house. On the way, Xiao started chiding Bradley.

"Seriously, Bradley-Ge," he said, shaking his head. "I really saw through you tonight."

Bradley was confused. "What?"

Xiao faced Bradley and walked backwards. He wagged a finger in front of Bradley's face. "Look at Frank, and then look at you. You ought to be ashamed."

Bradley furrowed his eyebrows. "What are you saying?" He thought that Xiao meant his martial arts skills were not up to par, but what was all that about seeing through him?

"Frank-Ge talks to Olivia with such gentleness. And Olivia is a stranger! But you ... " Xiao shook his head more dramatically than ever. "You never talk to me like that!"

Bradley was so exasperated that he laughed out loud. The sound reverberated in the alley they were walking in. Xiao didn't look too happy about it though.

"Seriously, Bradley. You ought to be nicer to me."

"What for? Olivia is a young maiden, a young and poor maiden. Of course anyone would be nice to her."

"Yeah but I deserve to be treated nicely too!" Xiao protested, his voice rising excitedly.

"What's gotten into you, Xiao?" Bradley asked.

Xiao grinned at him. "Just messing with you."

Bradley rolled his eyes. "Just the way you act makes it hard to be nice to you."

Xiao tilted his head in thought. "No, I think people like me." He was still walking backwards so he could see Bradley. In the heat of their conversation, he forgot to pay attention to the surroundings and nearly walked into a garbage can lying in the middle of the road. Bradley grabbed him before he could.

"Wha - " Xiao turned around to see the garbage can. He laughed and patted Bradley on the shoulder. "So you do care!"

Bradley was already leaving him behind, tired of his nonsense.

Xiao wasn't about to give up though. He went up to his brother, slung his arm around his shoulder, and leaned forward to scrutinize him. Bradley pushed him away. "What are you up to now?"

"Can't I look at my brother?"

Bradley elbowed him hard. Xiao coughed and let go of Bradley. 

"Be more proper," Bradley told him.

Xiao pouted and rolled his eyes. "Whatever you say."

They walked in silence for a while until Xiao couldn't hold back on talking.

"Brad-Ge, we are good knights, aren't we? The first day we are here and we already chased away several criminals!"

Bradley smiled a little. He was pleased too but he didn't want to show it in front of the overexcited Xiao in case Xiao gets even crazier.

"Yes, you're happy too!" Xiao said, skipping a little. Ever since he started doing vigilante things, he'd done them alone, thus there had been no one to celebrate with. There hadn't been anything to celebrate back then, either. The things he'd done were trivial matters such as cornering a thief, threatening some local tyrant, and saving travellers from outlaws wanting to rob or kill them. The most exciting adventure he'd been on had been eradicating a tyrant from Chizi village.

Five months ago, Xiao was trekking through a mountainous terrain when he heard music and people. Thus he walking towards the ruckus to find a party going on. On passing by, he was spotted by one of the young men of the village and was invited to the party. They had been celebrating the uprising of a scholar. However, halfway through the feast, a bunch of bandits from a mountain nearby came to raid all the food and possessions of the village. Obviously Xiao stood up for the villagers and dispelled the bandits. He killed and wounded half of the raiding party. Then fearing that they will cause more harm, he visited him at night and killed the leader.

Being a knight, it was Xiao's responsibility to help the citizens, regardless of how interesting the case was. Of the two years he travelled Xenon's eastern regions, he didn't really encounter anything as serious as the Maiden Case, in which an organisation was trying to jeopardize the order of the society.

He told Bradley all this. "Brad-Ge, we've got to be happy! After a few more nights, we'll show the traffickers that the civilians here are protected. And we'll be acknowledged too! Not by the civilians, of course, but in the knight world."

Bradley let him say whatever he wanted to say. That was the best way to obtain quiet.

"What should we call ourselves when we are famous, Bradley? The knights of Mount Huai, how about that?"

"I really think that you've been deprived of company and sleep for so long that now you're speaking all your pent up words of the past two years," Bradley couldn't help but comment.

Xiao laughed. "C'mon, why are we walking? Let's run back! The road is open, the night is free, we ought to just run and let go of everything else."

Bradley chuckled at how excited Xiao was after the night's events. "Alright."

When the came back, Bradley headed straight towards the bathroom, but Xiao sat at the desk, examining the little china pigeon and the drug packages. He opened up the drug package to find fine powders. He then found that the pigeon was like an incense burner but the powder was used instead of incense, which can in inserted from the tail of the pigeon. Then the pigeon could release smoke through its beak. Xiao didn't dare try out his hypothesis with so limited amount of cure. 

"What are you doing?" Bradley asked when he came back.

"Examining this intrinsic little thing," Xiao replied. "Look, you just put the powder into here, and then smoke comes out from the beak. That's what they do to drug the maidens."

Bradley looked at the pigeon in Xiao's hand. "Destroy it. It's disgusting how they use things like this."

Xiao rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know. Only lowly bandits use them. But why can't we keep it? It's quite interesting."

Bradley tried to grab the pigeon. "Xiao! What would people say if they found that you possess something like this?"

Xiao jerked his arm upwards so Bradley missed. "I'm not going to use it!" Xiao said. "I'm just going to examine it, alright?"

Bradley grabbed for it again and succeeded. "I'm taking this away from you. There is no reason for you to examine it."

Xiao pouted. "Fine, whatever. I can't believe you think that I would use it. You of all people."

Bradley looked at him. "What do you mean me of all people?"

"You know I wouldn't do something like this!" Xiao said. "You know me, Bradley!"

Bradley pocketed the pigeon and came over. "Yes, I do. But there is no reason for you to keep something the outlaws use," he said in a gentle voice.

Xiao scrutinized Bradley's face to see whether he suspected him. "You do agree that mentor wronged me?"

"I do."

Xiao smiled. "Alright. Want to drink with me?"