Red Quarter.
8 p.m.
The Vigilant Hall and City Hall had been withdrawn two days ago.
Aside from the ruins left by the battle still needing time to be rebuilt, Red Quarter had already reopened.
The entire street was brightly lit and packed with noise, with all kinds of men and women coming and going. The lowest-ranking streetwalkers secretly waved from behind dark alleys, haggled for ages after luring someone over, then hurried with them into one of the nearby bungalows;
In front of the high-end clubs, graceful hostesses solicited all kinds of customers, from drunken veterans to innocent newcomers, from newly ennobled Kingdom aristocrats with modest fortunes to tycoons steeped in money. With dazzling services and an endless feast of flesh, they devoured the wallets of everyone who passed through;
The most elite establishments had neatly dressed coachmen waiting outside, parking unmarked yet discreetly luxurious carriages before the various clubs. Several servants respectfully escorted the ladies and young women out of the clubs and into the carriages, which then drove away into the distance, only returning the next day—these were the true big spenders, whose overwhelming power and hidden identities could make the owners of the various clubs tremble.
Everything was just as it had been twenty days ago, as though Red Quarter had never experienced a bloody and terrifying gang clash, and as though its protectors and extortionists had never changed from the Blood Bottle Gang to the Black Street Brotherhood.
Except for the center of Red Quarter.
The ruins of the dozen or so buildings blasted apart by the Air Elementalist were still pitch-black.
And within that darkness, dozens of people were busy, laboriously digging beneath the ruins. The sound of iron shovels striking the earth rang out continuously.
Beneath the moonlight, one of the Six Titans of the Black Street Brotherhood, the intelligence chief—the "Sleepless Eye," Corbion Lancer—stood among the ruins. He looked at the darkness around him, then at the countless lights in the distance, and could not help frowning.
Too close... he thought.
The clubs that had reopened were still too close to the place they were digging.
In the distance, a Sleepless whistled. It was a signal: Two people had passed by. Everything was normal.
Lancer nodded to another Sleepless in the darkness.
But then he saw a club next door turn on its top-floor lights, their glow faintly illuminating a path leading here.
Lancer let out an unhappy snort through his nose.
Too close.
A perceptive Sleepless immediately left from behind him and spoke with another Brotherhood member. The latter then strode toward the club.
Before long, the lights on the club's top floor went dark, and the ruins were once again plunged into darkness.
Only then did Lancer nod.
He should have Rick extend the closing hours a little longer.
It was affecting their work too much.
Unfortunately, they could only do this at night.
But Lancer knew that trying to stop Red Quarter from operating and forcing those nobles to endure one more day would be harder than having each of them cut out an acre of land from their own territory and hand it over to the Brotherhood.
Lancer slowly moved forward.
For ten days and ten nights, they had dug ten meters deep and twenty meters wide beneath the Chess and Card Room, yet they had found nothing.
For now, they could use excuses like "searching for clues about the Air Elementalist" and "uncovering the truth behind the deaths of the Taren Brothers and Moria" to cover things up. But if they still found nothing...
If we still find nothing, sooner or later, someone with ulterior motives will notice us, Lancer thought darkly.
Whether it was the Secret Section or the Blood Bottle Gang, which was dead yet refusing to stay down.
Or even the venomous snakes hiding in the darkness.
Even if Red Quarter now belonged to the Brotherhood.
Fortunately, the Air Elementalist had blasted open the surrounding area for them. Otherwise, they would have had to rack their brains to seize ownership of every nearby building from the Red Quarter owners, who all had varying degrees of influence, before they could begin digging.
Still, this was not bad—in the original plan, it might have taken a year and a half or even longer before they could start digging. How could that compare to beginning just days after taking control of Red Quarter?
Of course, an open and uncovered excavation site also made it harder for them to conceal their secret.
That was why they had to find it quickly. Lancer could not help feeling irritated.
Just then.
"We found it!" a rough, hearty voice rang out from afar!
Lancer was shaken!
He waved away the Sleepless behind him and hurried forward.
"We found it, Corbion!" A tall, gaunt figure tightly cradling a long object wrapped in cloth came walking over.
It was a man with a narrow face. Dark-golden curls hung restlessly over his shoulders, and black leather harnesses were strapped across his body. Three short blades were sheathed beneath each rib and at his waist. Both arms were wrapped in thick bandages. In height, he was nearly second only to the two-meter-tall Qinzha, but his gaunt build detracted from his appearance.
The "Ripper," Anton Levandowski—one of the Six Titans of the Brotherhood and the chief overseer of smuggling strategic resources such as Eternal Oil and Pitch Crystal—was excitedly carrying the dirt-covered object toward Lancer.
Behind him, a burly figure—Morris, one of the Six Titans in charge of the human-trafficking business—approached with an unhappy expression.
"This should be it! I lifted the cloth and took a look. Wow... it looks exactly like the drawing..." Anton's rough accent sounded especially grating.
"You'd never have guessed it. You two dug for ten days and nearly broke through to the sewers, only to find that it wasn't buried in the ground at all—it was hidden in the partition between the basement and the ground floor!"
"If I hadn't slipped while taking a piss and stepped on it... Ha-ha, I always say you shouldn't overcomplicate things. You and Morris dug for ten days like a pair of lunatics... Ha-ha..."
Behind him, Morris unhappily folded his arms and clenched his teeth.
"See? I was only here for five minutes. When I was about to leave, I thought I'd take a piss...
After enduring it for more than ten seconds, Lancer finally could not take any more of this Nieders from the Eastern Continent, who had been rambling endlessly for more than a decade.
"Shut up, Skinny!" Lancer viciously snatched the long object from Anton's hands and, disregarding the dirt covering it, tremblingly peeled back one corner of the cloth.
Anton was about to say something else, but Morris maliciously bumped him from behind, making him stagger.
"You fat bastard... Aren't you just jealous that I'm better than you at..."
"Shut up, Anton!" Morris snarled.
Lancer gently covered the object again.
"That's right," he said softly, though the strange excitement in his voice could not be concealed. "This is it."
Lancer ran his trembling hand over the long object as though caressing a lover. "After all that hardship, and taking Red Quarter without alerting the Magic Users or the Secret Section... it has finally paid off!"
"Hey." Anton spread his hands unhappily. "Who said we didn't alert any Magic Users? Who do you think blasted these ruins open?"
"The Air Elementalist's appearance was an accident. Black Sword failed to lure him away, but he truly didn't know about this thing." Morris spoke calmly. "But I think Ashida must know something. That's why he abandoned his chance to kill Black Sword and risked rushing back to the Royal Capital to interfere in a minor territorial dispute. He might even know that we're looking for a weapon capable of dealing with him."
"But we still found it right under his nose—under the Air Elementalist's nose," Lancer said ominously as he studied the object's outline.
At the mention of the Air Elementalist, the three men fell silent for a moment.
"When I received the news, I thought you and Qinzha were both going to die in Red Quarter." Lancer broke the silence with a faint sigh.
"We were lucky." Morris lowered his head, his eyes shrouded in shadow. "You should have seen Moria and the Taren Brothers. He still likes crushing people's testicles."
"What happened to him?" Strange colors flashed in Anton's eyes.
"Maybe he met his natural enemy." Lancer tightly gripped the bundle in his hands and slowly closed his eyes. "But he definitely didn't die."
"Speaking of which, it's been twelve years... I still can't believe it." Anton clenched his teeth as he recalled the past amid a mixture of fear and hatred. "I saw it with my own eyes. Black Sword clearly killed him three times... three times..."
"Then he resurrected." Morris's face darkened as he ground his teeth. "Three resurrections in two hours."
"Four times," Lancer silently added. "Outside the palace gates, after the Crown Prince was poisoned, Great Saridon killed that monster once more."
The air between the three men seemed to grow heavy in an instant.
Anton stared at the long object before him and asked uneasily and doubtfully, "We've searched for ten years—but is this thing really useful? After all, Anti-Magic Armament is everywhere across the continent..."
"The equipment worn by those guards can only slightly weaken the influence of magic energy." Lancer answered without hesitation. "Only Legendary Anti-Magic Weaponry bestowed by the Imperial Kingdom can truly deal with Magic Users. When we were in the Secret Section, Morat told me that."
"I'm not exactly willing to trust your former boss's information." Anton's expression shifted. As if he had remembered something, he shuddered again. "...That Old Man was so poisonous that even his saliva carried venom."
"Right, about our operation this time..." Morris said worriedly. "The Kingdom Secret Bureau actually didn't intervene? After all, according to what you said, this is an unregistered piece of Legendary Anti-Magic Weaponry. That's even more serious than possessing a Magic Energy Gun privately..."
Privately possessing a Magic Energy Gun? Lancer scoffed inwardly.
Privately carrying a Magic Energy Gun meant nothing more than a death sentence. But concealing an unregistered piece of Legendary Anti-Magic Weaponry was another matter entirely.
Lancer merely shook his head. "The King is about to turn forty-eight. They're already overwhelmed with the matter of selecting a noble to name as Crown Prince. Besides, I made a deal with the Dark Chamber in Exeter. They'll release information that interests Morat, while Ramon draws the Secret Section's full attention. Morat won't discover our objective. I know my Teacher too well."
"Fortunately, neither the Magic Users of the Blood Bottle Gang nor the Secret Section knows how important this thing is..." Lancer stroked the cloth bundle in his hands, deep in thought.
"By the way, are we really not going to tell Qinzha, Feisuo, and Luoda the truth about this?" As he mentioned the names of the other three Six Titans, Anton frowned like the other two. "The Air Elementalist has disappeared anyway."
Lancer solemnly shook his head and handed the bundle to Morris. "Nekla and Catherine have already set out to find the Blood Elementalist. Believe me, I've read the Secret Section's records. Compared to the Blood Elementalist, Ashida is practically kinder than Prince Midier."
"It's enough for the three Titans of our Brotherhood and Black Sword to deal with the Magic User. The fewer people who know, the safer everyone will be." Morris nodded and tightly secured the long object in his hands. His voice carried a note of sorrow. "For the former Nine Giants."
Anton and Lancer's expressions turned solemn, and together they murmured, "For the former Nine Giants."
This chapter might have spoiled a little too much. I feel so guilty.