I assembled the strongest swordsman group.

"Miss Sanako, where are we?" Natsume Tsuki asked Sanako with a look in his eyes.

"Calm down," Sanako replied to Natsume Tsuki with a calm gaze.

Influenced by Sanako's calm demeanor, the look of terror on Natsume Tsuki's face lessened somewhat... but her body was still trembling slightly.

In fact, Sanako is also very scared now.

Just one glance at their current situation and a review of their memories before they fell into a coma is enough to tell who has kidnapped them.

Kidnapped... This was the first time Sanako had ever experienced something so terrifying.

The intense fear was making her heart pound so hard it felt like it might leap out of her throat at any moment.

Who kidnapped us?

What is the purpose of kidnapping us?

For money?

Or... for something else...?

A host of unpleasant thoughts flashed uncontrollably through Sanako's mind... These terrifying thoughts further accelerated Sanako's heart rate.

The reason Sanako is still able to maintain a calm expression is entirely due to her strong willpower.

She is now relying entirely on her strong will to forcefully suppress her worries and fears.

After signaling to Natsume Tsuki to calm down and not be agitated, Sanako took several deep breaths to compose herself. Then she looked up and scanned her surroundings, trying to deduce the location where they were being held by observing the environment.

However, Sanako was disappointed after a short while.

Looking around, all that could be seen were dust and the corpses of various small insects. Apart from confirming that they were currently locked in a cellar, there was nothing else to be found.

Sanako then twisted her body and hands forcefully, trying to break free of the ropes binding her.

Seeing Sanako's actions and realizing what she was trying to do, Natsume Tsuki quickly twisted his body along with her, trying to work together to break free of the rope.

Then disappointment gradually appeared on the faces of the two women.

The ropes binding her and Natsume's hands, as well as tightly tying them together with the wooden pillar behind them, were quite secure.

With the strength of women alone, they simply couldn't untie the ropes binding them.

Natsume Tsuki slumped her head in dejection, perhaps because she was too terrified... Her eyes gradually welled up with tears.

She sniffled hard... she didn't want to cry so embarrassingly.

But the more she tried to hold back her tears, the more watery her eyes became.

Finally—the water vapor turned into teardrops the size of beans, which rolled down her cheeks.

"Father... Father..." The girl, no longer cheerful as before, repeatedly murmured the name of the person in the world who gave her the most sense of security, her voice trembling with sobs.

As Natsume Tsuki silently shed tears, Sanako beside her... had her beautiful eyes half-closed, expressionless.

--What's this……?

As Sanako thought this, she straightened her right middle finger.

Just now, as she twisted her hands, trying to open the rope binding them, her right middle finger inadvertently touched a cold, foreign object.

As she extended her right middle finger toward the direction where she had just touched the foreign object, the icy sensation returned to Sanako's fingertip.

It was a loose iron nail inside a wooden pillar.

"..." Sanako took a deep breath, then stretched out her right thumb and used her thumb and middle finger to pinch the loose nail and twist it little by little.

Sanako's slender and long fingers are very dexterous.

Sanako, who received the strictest "Yamato Nadeshiko" education from a young age, can not only grip a sword and naginata firmly, but also perform delicate tasks such as tailoring and embroidery.

With Sanako's persistent and powerful twisting, the iron nail was finally pulled out of the wooden post.

Feeling the cold touch of the nail she was holding between her fingers, Sanako took another deep breath.

She is still very scared.

They were suddenly kidnapped and imprisoned in a place whose exact location they didn't even know. They didn't know who their kidnappers were or why they had been taken away...

She was afraid of these unsettling thoughts.

She is afraid of the uncertain future.

Although she was afraid... she was even more afraid of giving up and just sitting there waiting to die!

Even if she were to die, she would fight with all her might to survive before she died... Thinking this, a sharp light flashed in Sanako's beautiful eyes.

She held the nail between her right thumb and middle finger and rubbed the sharp nail tip against the hemp rope binding her hands.

……

……

Natsume Sohachiro's words... they just seem so strange no matter how you look at them.

What the hell is the coincidence?!

Sanako happened to go out with Natsume Tsuki today.

Sanako just happened to go missing today.

Natsume Tsuki's grandmother's letter informing her that she was ill arrived in Edo today.

Natsume Tsuki just set off this afternoon to visit her grandmother in Osaka.

Not only Aoto, who was a "police officer," but even Chiba Jutaro felt something was off.

So many coincidences piled up together, it's like writing a novel!

However, no matter how much Aoto and the others questioned him, Natsume Sohachiro insisted that "Natsume Tsuki is not in Edo, she has returned to Osaka."

Although Natsume Sohachiro spoke with great conviction and conviction, Qing Deng still listed Natsume Sohachiro as a "problem subject that needs to be investigated in detail".

The Chiba family, known as the "Number One Martial Arts Family," truly has impressive connections.

Chiba Sadakichi went directly to Ando Masanobu, the then-senior councilor.

What kind of official position is Lao Zhong?

Excluding the "Daio," a position that was not permanent, the Rōchū was the highest-ranking official in the shogunate... second only to the shogun, similar to the "prime minister" in China.

Chiba Sadakichi went directly to the "Prime Minister" and asked him to help them uphold justice...

It's not hard to guess what will happen next.

With a single order from the senior councilor Ando Masanobu, chaos erupted in both the southern and northern outposts of Edo.

In order to find Sanako, the two garrisons mobilized an extremely large search team—three men from Yoriki and six men from Doshin—and also mobilized all the officials from their own garrisons in Edo.

Qing Deng was also among the members of this "search team".

In Edo, where the magistrate's office was often short-staffed, there was no rule that "relatives or acquaintances involved in a case cannot participate in the investigation."

Although the magistrate's office has mobilized all available manpower to find the missing Sanako, the search is progressing very slowly...

In an ancient society with no surveillance network, no big data, and investigation methods limited to door-to-door visits, finding a missing person in a metropolis with a population of one million... the sheer difficulty of that task is enough to send chills down your spine.

Moreover, the Southern and Northern Magistrate Offices in Edo did not yet have a strong grassroots control.

The magistrate's office relied heavily on the assistance of "townspeople's self-governing organizations" for its management of the grassroots level.

In short, the administration of Edo at the grassroots level by the magistrates was a complete mess; they couldn't even figure out exactly how many people lived in Edo or how many able-bodied men there were.

Such poor grassroots control... directly increased the difficulty of the already extremely challenging task of finding missing persons by several levels.

Upon learning that he had also been transferred to search for Sanako, Aoto immediately applied to go and investigate Natsume Sohachiro, whom he found extremely suspicious.

Natsume Sohachiro's strange words and actions, along with his own intuition, were frantically telling Aoto: there was definitely something wrong with Natsume Sohachiro, and he was very likely to be the key to finding Sanako.

The process by which Qing Deng requested approval from his superiors to investigate Natsume Sohachiro was quite convoluted.

Because most of his superiors didn't think Natsume Sohachiro was a target worth paying much attention to.

They felt that instead of investigating Natsume Sohachiro, the right thing to do was to concentrate manpower on visiting and exploring every area that Sanako might have passed through on the day she disappeared.

It's not hard to understand why superiors would have such thoughts.

For them, "making meritorious contributions" is secondary! "Not making mistakes" is the most important thing!

Whether "concentrating manpower to conduct investigations and visits" will be effective is anyone's guess. And Qingdeng's superiors don't seem to care whether it will be effective!

They only care about whether their own interests will be harmed.

Just put on an act as if we're seriously investigating the case. That way, we won't get any great credit, but we also won't get any major blame. In short, we can give those higher-ups an explanation—that's the general idea among Qingdeng's superiors.

This bureaucratic style of these people... made Qing Deng feel so disgusted he wanted to vomit.

His friend had been kidnapped, but the government officials were only thinking about "not making any big mistakes" and "just getting the job done"... Qing Deng couldn't think of any words to describe his extremely disgusting and nauseating feelings.

Relying on his current prestige and achievements, Qing Deng went to great lengths to successfully persuade his superiors, including Bo Jing.

"Since you're so eager to investigate Natsume Sohachiro, then go ahead and do it yourself." With these words, Usui's superiors dispatched Aoto to investigate Natsume Sohachiro. However, without any help, Aoto could only rely on himself and his subordinate Saito to conduct the investigation.

Qing Deng sneered at his superiors' arrangement, thinking to himself: This is good! No one of higher rank or equal to me will participate in the investigation of Natsume Sohachiro, and I will have fewer constraints and restrictions!

"Mr. Jutaro, don't worry. I will do everything in my power to find Ms. Sanako." — Before officially launching the investigation, Aoto reassured Chiba Jutaro, who seemed to have lost weight due to worry about Sanako's safety.

Although Aoto and Sanako's relationship wasn't particularly close, and he hadn't even spoken much to her, she was, after all, Chiba Jutaro's sister and Chiba Eijiro's cousin.

Chiba Jutaro is a very good friend of Aoto's, and Chiba Eijiro recently gave him some martial arts guidance... This alone is enough to motivate Aoto to put all his effort into finding Sanako, who has gone missing.

Aoto had a rough plan on how to investigate Natsume Sohachiro.

He now strongly suspects that Natsume Tsuki and Chiba Sanako were kidnapped by someone for some reason.

The kidnappers demanded that Natsume Sohachiro conceal the fact that Natsume Tsuki had been kidnapped, or they would kill him. That's why Natsume Sohachiro made up some nonsense about "Natsume Tsuki going back to Osaka to see his grandmother."

In private, Qing Deng approached Natsume Sohachiro alone and subtly hinted to him: "If Miss Natsume Tsuki has also been kidnapped, please be sure to give me some information. I will definitely find your daughter and Miss Sanako."

However, Natsume Sohachiro remained unmoved... He kept insisting that "Natsume Tsuki is fine, she just went back to Osaka to see her grandmother."

Since Natsume Sohachiro refused to reveal any useful information no matter what, Aoto had no choice but to change his approach to the investigation.

Aoto found three places Natsume Sohachiro frequented, including the Natsume family home. He then planned to personally lead Saito and the others in disguise to stake out these three locations and see if any suspicious people appeared around Natsume Sohachiro.

This was the last and most useful method Qing Deng could think of in this era of extremely limited investigative methods and scarce clues.

The surveillance of Natsume Sohachiro naturally had to be around the clock.