Undercurrents churned beneath the Golden Unfallen Imperial City.
Large numbers of elite guards hurried to the outer city.
Among them were Beast Army soldiers wearing beast-face masks, as well as broad-shouldered slave Mamluks clad in sleeveless heavy armor.
They searched and guarded every facility in the Outer City District, including the drainage canals, with strict vigilance.
At the same time, they inspected every node of the sealing magic array.
The number of soldiers patrolling the streets of the Outer City District had nearly doubled.
The eight demigod-level powerhouses had urgently summoned the chief municipal officials.
They planned to impose an even stricter grid-based lockdown, block by block.
However, doing so would easily provoke fierce protests.
For an imperial city with such a massive population, merely sealing off the city was enough to make the residents complain bitterly.
If they blocked off the streets, protests—and even violent resistance—would inevitably erupt.
Seeing this, even the dullest farmer in the city could tell that something major had happened to those lords!
Zong Shen moved through the crowd at an unhurried pace, heading toward the New Oasis Tavern.
According to the intelligence provided by the Strategy Module, it was a trading point established within the city by the Eye of the Supreme.
It was mainly used for intelligence transactions.
It was a trading venue that was not particularly secretive.
It would likely become a key target of the searches in the time ahead.
But at least for now, Zong Shen still had some time.
As an organization that profited from selling intelligence to outsiders, as long as he was willing to offer a high enough price, borrowing a secret passage out of the city was not necessarily beyond negotiation.
Upon entering the tavern, he found it even noisier than outside.
The bartender behind the