Putting away the device he had just used to send a message, Wang Jingdu walked down the street with his hands in his pockets, his gaze deep and somber.
The higher his status within the Inspection Bureau, the more he came into contact with—and the heavier his heart became.
The Federation now had a population of 2.1 billion. The birth rate was still considered high, yet strangely, the population kept dwindling, dropping from five billion to four billion, then all the way down to just 2.1 billion.
Every year, the Inspection Bureau's classified archives recorded a vast number of missing persons. The number of documented disappearances alone exceeded one million, and who knew how many had gone unmonitored.
Without exception, those missing people all came from ordinary backgrounds. They had virtually nothing to do with the direct descendants of aristocratic families and financial magnates, as though those people possessed a talisman exempting them from death.
Yet the giants of the Federal Inspection Bureau turned an unusually blind eye to this. When he had tried to investigate it back then, he had received a warning and been transferred from his original post.
It was only later, through some secrets about the Eternal Life Society that he learned from his master, Sun Lutang, who had always taught him in secret, that he joined the Celestial Empire Sect.
Only because... he wanted to do something.
He wanted to change all of this.
Not long afterward, his phone vibrated softly. Wang Jingdu took it out and glanced at it. It was a reply from his master.
[Understood. Come at once.]
His master was coming!
Early the next morning, after waking up, Huo Yuanhong washed up briefly and began examining the things he had obtained from the Eternal Life Society expert the previous night.