Du An entered the Trash Realm once again.
Capturing the Insect Mother this time was no small achievement. Even Priest Jun had no excuse to keep stalling him.
His previous ambush had failed primarily because he hadn't expected the Leader to possess a Realm-Breaking Stone.
Furthermore, the man actually had the blessing of a Wizard Lord from the Myriad Ancient Pagoda.
There was no way Priest Zhu Yao hadn't known about this.
However, after subtly probing Priest Jun—Priest Qian Que rarely spoke—Du An discovered they had absolutely no idea another new priest had appeared.
This left him rather unsettled.
He suspected the White Robes of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda were hiding something from him.
Since no one else mentioned the Leader, he kept his mouth shut too, pretending ignorance.
Therefore, there was absolutely nothing wrong with targeting the Leader to get Chen Dong's divine soul back.
Du An immediately headed to the Northern Base.
He didn't show his face, choosing instead to observe from the shadows.
He soon discovered that the situation at the base had changed drastically.
The two original Ash Alliance factions had clearly fallen under the jurisdiction of Priest Zhong Ye.
His former partner, Huangzhi, was dead.
Priest Ban seemed to have left the area altogether.
This didn't surprise Du An. He understood the Leader's personality; having escaped, the man would undoubtedly seek revenge against Huangzhi.
Furthermore, Du An had shown his face when he returned to the Wizard World. If the Leader was indeed secretly colluding with the priests of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda, he would surely know about it by now and definitely wouldn't linger at the Northern Base waiting for Du An to hunt him down again.
'Where would he go?' Du An wondered, standing in the late Priest Huangzhi's room.
Beside him stood a large, bald man.
The man was immobilized by a Terror Spell, so frightened that beads of sweat popped out across his gleaming scalp.
"You were the first to discover Priest Huangzhi's death. Besides the body, did you notice anything else?"
The bald man naturally recognized that Du An was a priest.
Thanks to Huangzhi's oppressive rule, he didn't dare harbor the slightest thought of resistance against a priest.
"The... the Lord Priest was found in the small storeroom. After we retrieved his body, we immediately checked the room's inventory. Most of the items were still there, but a few High-Power Batteries were missing."
"High-Power Batteries... things to replenish energy?" Du An nodded. "As I thought, he hasn't left the Trash Realm yet."
Du An was certain the Leader had unfinished business here.
"You mentioned Priest Ban's group arrived later. What did they come to the Northern Base for?"
The bald man quickly racked his brain. "We're not sure about the specifics, but Priest Huangzhi opened up all the machines in the western sector for them to use."
"Machines... the machines here obviously didn't fulfill his goals, otherwise he would have left," Du An muttered to himself. "Where are the best machines in this world?"
"In... in Trash City. They have the Main Brain there, and the most incredible engineers..." the bald man volunteered, desperately hoping to prove useful to this unknown priest.
He could tell this priest was far more formidable than Priest Zhong Ye.
If possible, it wouldn't be a bad idea to follow him.
But the moment Du An turned around, the bald man knew he had guessed terribly wrong.
Not every priest needed a horde of lackeys waiting on them hand and foot.
With a mere wave of Du An's hand, the bald man collapsed to the ground, bleeding from all seven orifices.
"I can't leave any witnesses. If the Leader is still in contact with Zhong Ye, he might slip away again."
Du An hefted the bald man's corpse and teleported away from the Northern Base. Outside, he found a random wild beast to dispose of the body.
He gazed in the direction of Trash City. "Trash City, is it? I need to get there quickly."
Raising a hand, he pulled out a Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruit. A moment later, his body was completely enveloped in a dense mist as he shot up into the sky.
While Du An sped toward Trash City, someone within the city had set their sights on Shen 19's mech.
Shen 18 led a squad in silence down a long, narrow corridor, running into another group at an intersection.
The two sides met, the atmosphere instantly growing tense.
The opposing group was led by Karl, the Minister of Logistics. Naturally, a man of his status didn't need a numerical designation.
As for Shen 18, despite being the designated heir to the Shen family, he still had to bear the number 18 until he officially took over.
"Minister Karl." Shen 18 bowed his head respectfully to the man before him. Spotting the figure behind Karl, he added a second greeting. "Deputy Minister Jia Gu."
Jia Gu's face was flushed red, but seeing his superior maintain a polite facade, he returned the nod.
Yet, right after, he sneered, "To think an abandoned young master of the Shen family would possess such methods. I just don't know whether I should be happy for your family."
Shen 18 still wasn't entirely sure what had happened; he only knew it involved Shen 19.
The Logistics Department had apparently suffered a massive loss at 19's hands, to the point that they were escalating the matter all the way to the Main Brain.
Shen 18 didn't know the exact details, but he figured the problem couldn't be too dire. Otherwise, his father would have come today instead of him.
He blinked and stayed silent. Minister Karl cleared his throat. "Enough. Save it for the Main Brain."
The groups merged. Shen 18 politely stepped aside, allowing the two ministers to take the lead.
In Trash City, the Main Brain was naturally omnipresent.
However, certain important matters still required a sense of ceremony.
Thus, there was a dedicated grand council hall located within the main city.
Inside a small conference room on the 10th floor of the hall, the two parties sat on opposite sides of the table.
Due to the highly classified nature of the incident, only two people from each side were allowed into the room.
Shen 18 had brought along one of his father's trusted confidants, Gu 332.
Sitting across from them were, of course, the Minister and Deputy Minister of Logistics.
The meeting commenced without any pleasantries.
A screen rose from the center of the conference table.
The screen was double-sided, allowing both parties to view the displayed information.
Only then did Shen 18 finally get a clear picture of what had transpired.
When did that younger brother of his—a waste of space ruined by games and drugs—become so capable?
To think he could actually alter the data on a points card and even deceive Deputy Minister Jia Gu.
Crucially, when Jia Gu took the initially verified card to balance the system's books, the system flagged an anomaly.
The data didn't match the cloud records.
When the Logistics Department's financial system attempted to diagnose the error, the points card suddenly unleashed a Virus, crippling their entire network.
Reading the damage report submitted by Logistics, Shen 18 raised an eyebrow and glanced at Gu 332 beside him.
The man truly lived up to his reputation as his father's confidant; faced with such staggering numbers, his expression remained perfectly flat.
Taking a cue from Gu 332, Shen 18 also smoothed away his own outward reactions.
[Please confirm whether you acknowledge these facts after reading.]
Since this document had been submitted by the Logistics Department, the two ministers promptly nodded their confirmation.
Naturally, Shen 18 took a bit longer, even pulling up the surveillance footage provided by Logistics.
The Smart Mecha in the footage was indeed 19's.
Because 19 had been stripped of his inheritance rights, all of his financial assets were strictly monitored. Even if he wanted to sell the Smart Mecha, the transaction would first have to pass through a Shen family corporation for asset notarization and transfer before the buyer could claim usage rights.
This protocol also prevented Smart Mecha units from accidentally falling into the hands of the Ash Alliance.
Gu 332 immediately checked his portable computer, verifying that the Smart Mecha's control rights had not changed hands.
He pushed his laptop screen toward Shen 18.
Shen 18 nodded, then addressed the central screen. "Based on the information we currently have, the buyer in the footage is indeed Shen 19. However, we have no idea where he obtained that unregistered points card, nor how its balance jumped from 100 points to 1,000. The Shen family possesses no such technology."
"Without the backing of the Shen family, how could Shen 19 possibly acquire such technology?" Deputy Minister Jia Gu demanded.
Shen 18 shrugged. "Shen 19 no longer holds any inheritance rights. Outsiders might not know, but the major corporations and the Main Brain are well aware. It's entirely possible he defected to someone else. Furthermore, if I'm not mistaken, the location in this footage isn't the Logistics Department headquarters, is it? I wonder where exactly you were, and what machinery you sold to Shen 19? Do you have a contract?"
Underground transactions left no paper trails. How could there possibly be a contract?
Yet, since the Logistics Department dared to escalate this to the Main Brain, they had naturally come prepared.
Minister Karl tapped his index finger lightly against the table. "Of course there was a contract. However, because we were in the middle of uploading it to the cloud when the points card unleashed that unknown Virus, the resulting data corruption means we can no longer locate it."
Deputy Minister Jia Gu chimed in, "But rest assured, we have the sales registry for that reader. As for the location—heh, sometimes special clients have special, albeit reasonable, requests. We do our best to accommodate them."
'What a joke,' Shen 18 thought. 'With the Logistics Department's arrogant attitude, you'd actually accommodate a client's requests?'
It was obvious at a glance that they had been selling supposedly scrapped equipment on the Black Market.
Still, this was a semi-open secret between the human corporations and the Logistics Department. As long as the books looked clean on the surface, no one would flip the table.
After all, even the Shen family occasionally bought and sold goods through the Black Market.
"The most pressing question right now is, who exactly gave Shen 19 that points card, and who possesses such terrifying Virus technology?" Minister Karl summarized.
Virus technology?
Shen 18 and Gu 332 exchanged a glance.
Speaking of Viruses, they really had encountered one recently.
It was on a Mechanical Dog submitted by Sergeant 132 and Soldier 9899. That Virus had similarly inflicted severe damage on the Shen family's corporate network.
However, they had later submitted the Virus to the Main Brain and assisted in adjusting the Mechanical Dog's early warning override system. That had earned them a massive reward, effectively covering their losses.
As for prosecuting 132 and 9899, that had been more about venting their anger than anything else.
Besides, Shen 18 had a friend who had taken a fancy to 9899's heart.
He inputted this information into the Main Brain, letting it decide whether to share it with the two men across the table.
Seeing Shen 18 apparently recall something, confer with Gu 332, and immediately start uploading data into the Main Brain from their computer, the two Logistics ministers took note.
The other party definitely knew something.
The two exchanged a look, realizing they might have a chance to touch upon the Shen family's deeper secrets.
Yet, the moment the Main Brain received the data, a prompt unexpectedly popped up on the screen.
[Incident escalated. The Logistics Department's financial system is temporarily sealed; reopening time unknown. Personnel Karl and Jia Gu are to vacate the premises and await further instructions.]
The Minister of Logistics immediately furrowed his brow.
This matter... did they actually lack the clearance to even participate anymore?