Late at night, in a narrow alley in the Lower Korus District, three furtive figures poked their heads around a corner one after another.
After confirming that no Night Watchers were passing nearby, they immediately crouched low and approached a textile workshop by the road whose lights had long since gone out. The man in front took out a wire with a flattened tip, slipped it into the gap in a window frame locked from inside, and deftly pried a few times, soon releasing the latch.
Seeing how smoothly it had gone, the three exchanged glances, pulled open the window, and climbed into the workshop one by one. By a sliver of moonlight falling into the room, they skirted the enormous machinery and headed purposefully deeper inside.
Their target tonight was naturally neither the textile machines, which would have to be dismantled before they could be moved, nor the finished silk goods, which could fetch a high price but were easily traced.
According to the information they had gathered beforehand, the thousand-plus Verl D'Or the workshop manager had prepared over the past few days to pay the workers and buy more raw materials was very likely stored in the safe in his office.
As long as they pried it open, the three would not have to risk doing this sort of thing again for the next year.
Nursing hopes of getting rich overnight, they felt their way through the darkness and soon reached a half-open wooden door.
"This should be it..."
The man in the lead spoke quietly and pushed open the door. He had barely taken two steps when he suddenly noticed that the footsteps behind him had somehow gone from a jumble to a regular rhythm, as though only one person had followed him into the room while