Novels2Search

2-27

The capital was laid out like a grid system. Unfortunately, the city manager in charge of this had decided long ago to forego doing the smart thing and numbering the blocks by where they were. No. Instead they were numbered by the order in which they had begun being inhabited. This meant that around block one were the next nine blocks.

Now I have a whole rant about urban planning where there is no room for changes and how in particular, Robert Moses is my mortal enemy, but on this fine day, at least the only problem I had with the system was the numbering.

District forty was effectively far south of the main block of single digit districts. It was far enough away that it could be a pain to go to but it was close enough that if they really wanted to they could make it a day trip.

My twenty minute walk there was about as eventful as a walk could be. I saw tons of street performances from what had to be down on their luck martial artists. They had to be because they didn't have any makeup on. Then there were several displays of actual Sect warriors trying to show how their their group was the best. I was super happy that they weren't doing the hard sales pitch. Perhaps it was because I was veiled.

I couldn't see anybody who was third realm or higher around which made me think that they were showing us the b team. That was fine, as I really had no interest in joining a sect.

It just goes to show that recruitment was big. I had a feeling that perhaps by the time that a child got to an age they would have been through so many of these displaces that they wouldn't know by then. How else the recruiters would be very picky. There had to be some Central registry to be having children were born and how many went to school somewhere.

It made no sense to me, unless they were just flexing their muscles. The children of the sect members would have a choice to join. Outsiders would have a opportunity to join. But they were only so many children around and unless I was missing something and they were all trying to drop in the same pool of applicants. How many children could actually show up and get accepted?

It wasn't immediately clear.

But these were all a distraction from my current goal.

First part of what we were doing was a stakeout.

All I had to do was it in a highest if the information we gotten was good or not. It wasn't even that old. In order for somebody to have notified the cell here that something was going wrong, they would have had to travel faster than us. I checked and there were no airships between the night and the morning. This was the first one to depart. And it had a very long flight because it went very far. So unless somebody was running cross continent, it was unlikely for them to beat us here.

But still, out of an abundance of caution, we found a reputable Inn in the fortieth district and got three rooms for a week. The woman behind the desk was more than happy to take her money up front with no questions asked. Our nondescript guard was about as nondescript as she was. Despite being absolutely amazingly gorgeous, nothing stood out about her.

It was so odd that I had to make sure that she didn't have the mark. When she didn't I was reassured by the fact that I could feel how she was first realm at best.

So that afternoon, we began our steakout. It turns out that they were occupying a club of some sort. As we got closer. It looked more like a general cultivator dief bar mashup with a definitely something going on here type club. It looked like they had a fence and as was getting close to night, I could see that a crowd was already forming and line queuing up to get inside.

I could imagine them all being there for beat poetry or improv. As he walked past the line, it wasn't immediately clear that any of them were members of the Red Fang. I would have thought that I would see more, but that apparently didn't happen. They might have kept their operatives more close holds on the interior. My guess was that the ones on the outside had not gotten far enough into the inner sanctum to get the tattoo.

Maybe they were junior members or in assistant to the assistant vice president type roles.

There had to be some sort of middle management there. It didn't make sense for one super powerful demonic cultivator to just have a flat command structure. He must have like a right-hand vampire or something like that. Now I'm not an expert, though all this might on this day, the first one I saw was one of the bouncers. I've walked past him twice and then discreetly. Had men run around and check. She confirmed what I knew. The first of the demonic cultivators was a bouncer that was holding the red carpet up.

What we did next was navigate around club red and see that there was a apartment complex on the same block. To my understanding that was where they spent their time when they were off duty. They had some very particular rules about what they did there and what was allowed. It looked like they were keeping all of the inner members of the sect close at hand.

There was definitely up some room inside for that to change though.

If I got my way? They would all be spread out to the cosmos after turning into Ash. Now I know that demonic cultivators are to actually turn to Ash when you stuck them in the heart with a steak. But I wanted to try the scientific method and see if I could test my theory out. After all, there was a chance that it could happen, right? Who Knew what would be the result of this?

On my second trip around the complex. I realized that there was no easy way to get inside of this unit of housing. It was either through some path that ran through the club itself or over the club to a particular set of stairs that was guarded. The right at that moment, was only guided by one. And it was deficated. The community that I was trying to break into, had a gate guard. Obviously I wanted to check him out and see if I could test his loyalty but I wasn't sure if he might be one of them.

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And this is where my men came in to play.

They could bring something for questioning far easier than I could. Part of their path was disabling other people's paths. I really didn't want them to know that we knew they were there as that might alert them far earlier but they were there when we began to see if we could pick them out one by one.

In short order, my spirit beast was able to map out the compound and we were able to get a good idea of what we would have to do. I signaled the girls and we regrouped at our Inn, the Lower Forty.

Our two buddies arrived, not 5 minutes later, after getting the nod from my spirit beast. We headed back to my room and sat in Kauai meditation while I used men's ability to display a 3D image of the compound. My companions were very familiar with this ability and they looked around trying to parse what's going on. The blue codes on the other hand were shocked. Not only that they were shook.

"This is an amazing ability. What path is this on?" Feng said.

"Would you believe that I made my own path? With dream aura?"

He gave me a look and said he didn't really believe me but he was going to drop it. The fact that I had a spirit beast that could do so much just like Moon Lee's spirit beast meant that I was a highly available member of this team. Now this was not going to be a Smash. Rob operation. Man. I didn't fight at least 20 people and it looked like they worked in teams. The one that we saw on the outside of the club doing all of the holds of the line, had a buddy nearby. See that person, but men did. And she identified that they were both marked and both close enough to support each other!

They were both within shouting distance of each other.

"If this pattern plays out, then instead of facing an individual cultivators, will be facing groups of two or more. More. It's even more important now to stick together as teams so that we don't have to return your remains back to the city," I said.

" I would appreciate it if we kept this as low-key as possible, but still understanding that we're going to need to identify some of these people and flush them out. Out. And the more we can identify it at once and incapacitate the easiest going to be to convince the emperor and the local constabulary that we're not just here doing real bullshit. We are here tracking down a very hot lead and we need to figure out where that goes before it goes very cold."

"We need a place to take them," Moon Lee said. " It doesn't have to be the police station. It can be a part of this building."

That let me down to him that rabbit hole where I had to think about what would happen if the demonic sex was the one that was running the club and then all of a sudden they all got disappeared. Who would own the club after that? Was it going to refer back to the prior owner? Was there even a prior owner or had this whole thing? Just been up front for the start. I was leaning more towards this had been a front from the day was built.

If this had been a front, then there was a small chance that they had living humans somewhere somewhere underneath or around the club that they were using as chattel. This meant that for every man we spent here, there was a chance that more of these people would die. Being in a monocultivator fence and the blue coats here. Probably think that s*** really seriously. If we could produce victims, they would be on this like nothing else. It might in fact delay a return back to Western Jewel if we got so much scrutiny. But on the other hand, I was a man that believed in government actually functioning because we pay our taxes. So if I was going to have them show up and do their work, I didn't want to answering them by not giving them enough people to ask questions from.

People being kept underground as slaves to be turned into meat, that was disgusting.

Now, that is hell.

One way or the other, we were going to burn this place down. My only question was did we have the backing of the blue coats here and that was what one of my guys went to go check. With one confirmed demonic cultivator already there, it was only a matter of time until we found enough to make what like a nest? There was no proper term for I thought of like a murder as a group of them, but that would be too awesome.

Fang return within an hour saying that a little blue coats had been advised to step up their patrols around district 40 and that was all that I needed. Well that had been going on, men was still trying to figure out if there were any victims that we could quickly show to local authorities. Just like the last time, we were looking for interior places where there were hidden doors or obstructions to Passage. It would probably We're here a little bit weird about this and they obviously need protection. underground but I wouldn't put it past them to have a building that was be used for this purpose.

With a legal president already said, I was ready to kick some ass. I talked to my girls and we were ready to kick some ass together. The only problem was that the blue coats. We needed the legitimacy of their office.

They needed our detection skills.

I gave him an hour to get ready and they spent that time contacting the low authorities. Then it was time. Night was fast approaching and this was the time when district 40 heated up. With the opportunity to go see them in their natural environment and f*** s*** up sideways, we approached the club ready to pay away in. In. Once inside, we were going to do our best to find out if there was a false floor somewhere or with globe itself. Was just a money making thing unrelated to their other work. They knew what they were doing and if a few called if it has appeared at a club one night, no one would be what more the wiser. It looked like a win-win on their side except that if someone showed up with a friend, they would say to leave with a friend. And this is exactly how I found myself in line to go to the club but by myself when the rest of my crew was that ten to fifteen feet behind me or having on their own. Yeah it wasn't exactly ideal for me but I just made it work.

The first thing I noticed was that at night, they had way more lights than I expected. The second thing I noticed was that as it got closer, it was more hypnotic than I had thought it was going to be. I had to actually stop myself looking at some of the lights and turned to look at some of the people heading into the club. For the most part. It looked like they were there to. Have a good time and it don't start contrast to the young Masters from the Western Jewel, most of them did look like they were here for a fight. Sure. They looked like they could fight, but it looked over or they were saving it for exactly the right person.

I struck up a conversation with a few of them trying to figure out what they were doing. Trying to speak in general tones. The sense I got from them was that this was something they did a little bit but not with regularity. That made them happen here every week or something like that.

It wasn't like there was rampant alcoholism here. It was working hard to even get me drunk without how high my tolerance was. Then two men with the tattoo showed up on the opposite side of the bar.