With Lilia's spaceship speed, it didn't take too much time for them to reach their destination, on the way Aster stood by the windows and observed the starry sky.
No matter how much they advanced, the stars were all radiated a very dim light, giving bandits and other lowlifes a perfect cover for their deeds, in fact with his powerful spirit sense, Aster witnessed about three or four cases of a group of small spaceships surrounding a larger one.
Unlike evil sects who did everything in a grand and flashy demeanor, flaunting their strength over weaker cultivators and actively clashing with those at their same level, bandits relied on ambushes and numbers to overwhelm their targets.
If a bandit survived enough and related with the "correct" people then it would join an evil sect and then get into the major leagues, no one accurately knew how evil sects recruited talents, but supposedly they kidnapped promising commoners from a young age.
According to his mother's stories, the evil sects were created by survivors of the families that used to control a Heavenly Quadrant, but lost to the current ruler families, so they hid and lick their wounds in the dark, then used the excuse of "freedom" to recruit people and grew until they were strong enough to cause trouble.
Still Lilia told Aster to not worry about them for the meantime, the only truly dangerous ones were only active in the high ranked stellar systems.
"Mm?", Aster who was patting Kana's head, while Lilia had him in her arms, saw their destination from afar.
Unlike other planets he has seen before, which although had some external strange designs, like the bone "armor" around the Red Heart planet where the Barbarian Heart sect resides, this was the first time Aster saw a planet with a non-spherical shape.
Just like its name stated, the Crescent Moon planet had the shape of a crescent moon, but it compensated it being quite big, nearly reaching half the size of the Battle Peak planet, and that was a lot to say considering the five planets which conformed the main grounds of the sect were the biggest in the whole Galatia.
Agnes who made the spaceship stop a couple of thousand of kilometers away from the planet, walked towards the windows and pointed at small asteroids which had spaceships stationed on them.
"The many unofficial "rulers" of this star cluster had set sentinels around the eight planets, to watch over them, but the only thing they do is ask for an entrance fee, that being said if they see us, it's hard to tell what they might try to pull off".
"Well, it's not like they can detect us even if we pass next to them, we'll just land at some faraway place and then mom can take us to the nearest big city,
None of the girls had any objection about Aster's decision, and just like he stated, the spaceship bypassed their detection formations quite easily, it might have been a bit more troublesome if the planet had a protection barrier, but due to the cost of the materials needed for that and since no one really owned the planet, the forces of this star cluster would never agree to waste their riches for the benefit of others.
A couple of minutes later and with Agnes guide, the spaceship descended into clear space inside a secluded forest, before everyone got off it.
The first thing he noticed was that the spirit energy in this planet was thinner and of a lower quality compared to even the neutral city of the sect, but that was to be expected, what truly surprised him was the incredibly high amount of darkness element spirit energy in the air.
But again, it made sense considering the very dim light which reigned over the whole star cluster.
"Ouch, big brother, this planet is too bothersome", Kana who was walking towards Aster, for the upcoming travel, accidentally kicked a stone which she didn't see, due to the low natural illumination of the planet.
Aster saw Kana cutely pouting and he chuckled, with a wave of his hand he covered her in a layer of golden light, which became less bright before disappearing after a second.
"Thanks~", Kana giggled and then clung to Aster, while she stole a gaze at Alice, who was about to drag her with her before she "accidentally" nearly tripped with a stone in the ground, she even stuck her tongue at her.
'You little…', inwardly swore Alice when she saw it, this was a little revenge from the previous time, when she forcefully held onto Kana.
Of course, Aster knew those two's little game, but there were no hard feelings so he didn't interfere, besides if Agnes's stories about this star cluster were true, then a bit of extra protection didn't hurt.
Especially because they won't be hiding their faces or appearances, not only because he promised the girls they wouldn't have to hide, but because remaining mysterious would go against what Aster wanted to achieve with accomplishing missions.
Lilia kept the spaceship in her spatial ring and then called everyone to get closer, with a wave of her hand a crack appeared in the space which swallowed everyone before everything returned to normal.
The travel lasted only a couple of seconds later they appeared in a dark alley of a city, per Aster's request, Lilia chose a spot in the city where there was no one around.
It took Agnes a second to more or less recognize where they were.
"Let's go, I'll guide you to the shadow eye manor", Agnes would have normally told those who accompanied her to be wary, but in case something happened she was sure the one suffering would be the other party so she didn't bother to remind them again.
Guided by Agnes, Aster and the others left the alley and calmly walked towards the center of the city, on the way Aster observed the weird architecture of this place.
The locals and residences were painted with some kind of glowing paint, but that only illuminated two meters around the locals, so that the street was still semi illuminated, there was also a lot of people walking around wearing masks or other similar things to cover their faces.
But everyone was minding their own business, at least on the surface, Aster's eyes glowed for a split of a second and he saw some people pickpocketing others, some were successful and some weren't which ended in the one trying being punched or chased by their target.
Aster turned to the left to see Alice, one of the bystanders moved his hand to try and steal one of her rings, but she reacted faster, Alice's left arm suddenly moved at a high speed and without any warn she cut the hand of the guy wearing a white mask.
"What are you… aghhh!", a loud scream made the other people in the street to look at them, but they immediately stopped doing so and kept walking.
Alice's slash was so clean that it took a moment for the guy to process what happened, his hand separated from his arm, but he didn't bleed, Alice cauterized the wound because she didn't want to get stained by with the blood.
"Get lost", Alice coldly snorted as she kicked the severed hand of the masked guy, forcing him to go look for it, while he tried to not scream due to the blazing pain he was feeling.
Aster chuckled, the poor guy chose not only the wrong target, but the wrong thing to steal, what he aimed for was the ring he gave to Alice.
After seeing the miserable state of the guy who tried to steal Alice's ring, the bystanders took some distance from them, if they were confused as thieves and wrongly attacked, no one would speak for them after all.
With Agnes guiding them, after a couple of minutes walking they arrived in front of a three-floor pagoda with two eyes engraved on its door, unlike the other locals instead of trying to draw attention by using a glowing paint, the pagoda was painted with black paint, making it even harder to discern it from more than ten meters away.
Outside of the pagoda there were two guards wearing helmets which only left their eyes visible.
The left guard approached them and stood in front of them before saying a single world.
"Information", Agnes took the initiative to answer, since she has come to this place once before.
The guard nodded and then pointed at the third floor as he handed a small wood token with the number 84L.
"You can come inside, the payment will be required prior to the deal, show the token to the guard standing at the beginning of the stairs".
Aster received the token and they all entered the pagoda, the insides were pretty normal, instead of a business it seemed to be the reception of an inn, the different was that the whole floor was occupied by different rooms.
Each one only had space for two people, the one asking for the information and the dealer, but they ignored them and instead went to the stairs, after showing the guard the token they were allowed to go upstairs.
In the second floor there were less rooms but they were bigger for groups of about five people besides the dealer, and on the third floor there were only ten doors, each one with a small board on it, the third from the left had the same number as Aster's token.
They entered the room and once the door closed, the wall in front of them opened and a woman wearing a veil with two eye metal decorations on it, appeared.
"Please take a seat, it's not that often that we receive a visit from an elder of the Myriad Occupation sect".
Reputation was a big thing for information dealers, so a good way to show they had a decent network was to know who was visiting them.
Aster and the others took a seat in the table and the woman did the same, she quickly evaluated the whole group and then turned to see Agnes.
"So, what information does an inner elder of the battle peak might want to get from my Shadow Eye Manor?".
Unfortunately for the woman, this time she guessed wrong.
"The guys who attacked the outpost of the alchemy peak, who are they and where they are?", asked Aster in an indifferent voice.
The woman raised an eyebrow behind her veil, as far as she knew male disciples didn't have a high standing on the Myriad Occupation sect, so she was a bit surprised to hear him speaking instead of Agnes.
But then her eyes sparkled remembering a piece of information that was discarded as a dumb rumor, that a male core disciple finally appeared.
"Oh, that is an important matter, I hope this young master is aware that the price of such specific information isn't cheap, in total it would be three million of low-grade spirit jades", said the woman in a calm voice as she poured in a cup of tea.
Aster took out a ring he prepared beforehand from his pocket and placed it on the table, the woman inspected it and only then she smiled.
"It is a pleasure to do business with disciples of the Myriad Occupation sect", she said as she took out a scroll from her spatial ring and left it on the table, she stood up and slightly bowed before taking her leave through the wall from where she appeared, not without saying.
"Once you open the scroll, it would burn itself after half an hour, you can stay in the room until that happens".
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺