Strongest Family System

The similarity to what the clan's network had gathered about Forgotten Moon City settled over him before he had fully finished the thought.

People entering somewhere and not returning. No survivors coming out. No physical evidence pointing towards an explanation. An absence where there should have been something, anything, that indicated what had occurred.

It might have been coincidence. The world was large enough that unrelated disappearances happened regularly, each one producing the same pattern of confused speculation and unanswered questions.

But the similarity was difficult to sit with comfortably.

The system activated while he was still thinking through it.

Related Event Detected.

Investigation Progress: Robertt looked at the notification for a moment. This was the first time the system had responded to information rather than to a direct action or a completed mission requirement. He had not done anything. He had simply been thinking about two separate events and noticing their similarities, and the system had registered that recognition.

He decided, on instinct, to try something he had not attempted before.

He directed a question inward, towards the system, the way he directed questions to Jack.

Is the missing caravan connected to Forgotten Moon City?

The response came after a brief pause.

Insufficient information. Connection Probability: Unknown. Recommandation: Continue investigation.

It was not an answer. But it was a response, and the fact that the system had responded to a direct question at all was itself significant. He had been working with the system for over a year, and this was the first time it had done anything resembling a direct reply to something he had asked it rather than simply presenting information or missions on its own terms.

A new notification followed almost immediately.

Side Mission: Trace the Missing Caravan

Mission Difficulty: B

Mission Description: Investigate the disappearance of the merchant caravan near Ashwood Pass. Discover what happened. Determine whether the event is connected to Forgotten Moon City.

Reward: 20,000 System Points

Failure Penalty: None

Robert closed the notifications and looked at the others.

Sai had already begun thinking through what investigating the caravan's disappearance would require before Robert said anything about it.

He pointed out, practically, that gathering information here before continuing west could only improve their understanding of whatever waited at Forgotten Moon City.

If the two events were connected, even partially, then what they learned at Ashwood Pass would be relevant later. If they turned out to be unrelated, they would lose some time and gain twenty thousand system points, which was not anything.

Ronan had no objection to staying longer if it meant potentially understanding what had happened to more than a hundred people.

Eissa said that the pattern itself was worth investigating and that traveling through the pass with better information was preferable to traveling through it without.

Robert agreed with all of them.

The following morning, Sai identified a caravan manager named Lena Voss who had been operating western trade routes for over fifteen years and currently managed a large merchant group preparing to cross the pass within the next two days.

She was direct and practical in the way that people who spent their lives managing complex moving operations tended to be—not unfriendly but clearly accustomed to spending their time efficiently.

She had heard the disappearance accounts in detail from three separate sources before arriving at the trading station, and she had spent the past day making additional preparations for the crossing that she had not originally planned.

She spoke with Sai briefly, answering what she was willing to answer without being asked to elaborate on things she had no information about.

What she knew was what the trading community knew collectively. The caravan had been real, well-equipped, and professionally staffed. The timing of its disappearance placed it in the middle section of the pass, based on when it had been last confirmed entering from the east and when it should have appeared from the west. Nobody who used that section of the pass regularly had seen anything unusual before or after.

She said, plainly, that she was proceeding with the crossing because she had a business to run and a schedule to keep. But she had hired four additional cultivator guards beyond her usual number, and she had reduced the distance between her wagons to ensure the group stayed within visual contact throughout the passage.

She mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that several other caravans had been sitting at the trading station for over a week, waiting, and had not yet committed to entering the pass.

When Sai suggested that Robert's group might join her caravan for the crossing in exchange for contributing their own cultivators to the guard arrangement, she agreed without significant hesitation. More capable people in the past were not a disadvantage.

The arrangement was settled before noon.

That afternoon, the mood at the trading station shifted in a way that was difficult to identify precisely but easy to feel. The merchants who had committed to crossing with Lena Voss's caravan grew quieter in their conversations.

The additional guards who had been hired moved through the station with a careful watchfulness that had not been present when the group first arrived. Equipment was checked multiple times. Supply arrangements were confirmed and then confirmed again. Small practical preparations were made that would have been unnecessary if everyone had genuinely believed the pass ahead held no particular danger.

Nobody panicked. Nobody announced that the crossing was too dangerous to attempt. They simply became more careful, the way experienced people became careful when they were moving into conditions that held an unresolved question at their center.

At sunset, Robert walked to the edge of the trading station and stood looking into the pass.

The mountain walls caught the last of the daylight on their upper faces and held it briefly before letting it go, and in the transition from lit to shadow, the pass entrance became something that looked less like a road and more like an opening in something solid. The road disappeared between the cliffs within the first few hundred meters, swallowed by stone and the particular darkness of a narrow passage where direct light rarely reached the ground.

Somewhere inside those mountains, more than a hundred people had vanished three weeks ago.