Three days later, Atahoka State, branch office of the Covert Operations Directorate.
Over those three days, not a single word had come back from either Iron Raven, the operative from headquarters, or Saqiya of Gigagods Flora Company.
The two seemed to have vanished into thin air, leaving no trace behind. The last piece of information the branch had on them dated back to the moment Iron Raven sent in his report, deciding to follow Master Shiraishi and the others into the Throat of the Star Spirit.
This situation set everyone on edge.
According to the report from the Hunting Cavalry squad, it was confirmed that Master Shiraishi had been killed by Chen Chuan, and the battle was said to have lasted a mere few seconds.
With their target displaying such formidable combat prowess, it was inevitable that imaginations ran wild with further possibilities.
Jonas Calloway had spent these past several days in back-to-back meetings, continuously receiving intelligence from multiple fronts and managing to consult several veteran martial artists. Having just hung up another call, he sat in his chair, silent and exhausted.
His assistant walked over, set a steaming mug of revitalizing drink on his desk, and said in a low voice, "Sir, perhaps we underestimated him far too much."
Calloway said nothing. He picked up the cup and took a sip. He knew very well that two Secret Palace martial artists could not possibly fail to send back any word at all over the course of three full days.
Something had definitely gone wrong with them, and now he was forced to consider the worst-case scenario.
If so, counting Noah Shiraishi, who was already confirmed dead, three Secret Palace martial artists had been lost inside the Throat of the Star Spirit. On top of that, there was Black Catfish, who had vanished mysteriously earlier. Losses of this magnitude were something headquarters would never accept.
Although he maintained an outward facade of calm and confidence before his subordinates, inwardly he had grown deeply anxious.
This was no longer just about the Throat of the Star Spirit. Headquarters and other departments had already made preparations to launch an offensive against Kawatua, with plans to capture it before the end of the year—an outcome the entire West Coast was eagerly anticipating.
Yet the loss of three Secret Palace martial artists left a gaping void. Without question, it would prevent the entire plan from proceeding smoothly, compromising preparations that had taken nearly two years.
This was not wartime; when dealing with a major population center of a million people, deploying the military was out of the question. They could only rely on organized unofficial forces. If the personnel originally assigned to the task were gone, all parties would have to coordinate and make new arrangements from scratch, which would inevitably push the timeline back.
The time and resources wasted, the various factions and interests entangled in the background, and the losses incurred from the failure of their initial investments—none of this could be brushed aside lightly. Someone had to take the fall.
The assistant ventured a suggestion: "Sir, what if we suggest to headquarters that this be resolved through diplomatic channels? After all, the Throat of the Star Spirit is on our soil."
Calloway reasoned through it and said calmly, "It won't achieve anything.
"First of all, Chen Chuan is an invited member of the Great Shun delegation and possesses a degree of diplomatic immunity. Second, Master Shiraishi fell in an open duel, so there are no grounds for prosecution. As for Iron Raven and Saqiya, there is no evidence proving he killed them; it's a completely tangled mess.
"Even if there were evidence, the man holds a Class-A unlimited defense license—an internationally recognized credential. As long as he can prove that the two attacked him, he bears no fault whatsoever.
"Naturally, everything comes down to strength. A mere license cannot constrain major powers and state organizations. Even if they couldn't touch him through official channels, there are plenty of ways to bypass that if necessary.
"The trouble is, who will do the bypassing? At the level of Secret Palace martial artists, mobilizing anyone is not a simple matter of doing whatever one pleases. This matter is beyond what I have the authority to handle or pursue further."
Moreover, he knew that the moment this was elevated to diplomacy, the East Coast Faction would certainly find ways to drag its feet and slap on endless restrictions to prevent them from resolving it cleanly. They might drag it out for years until the whole thing faded into nothing.
And once the matter slipped from his grasp, it would be entirely out of his hands. That would be tantamount to handing over the power to judge and rescue his own political life to someone else—something he could never accept.
A notification popped up on the boundary credential. The assistant said, "A transmission came in from Mr. Gaz. He claims to have critical intelligence."
Calloway quickly ran through the possibilities in his mind, sat up straight, and looked up. "Patch him through."
The field screen in front of him flickered briefly before displaying the figure of the young man he had met previously. Speaking rapidly, the youth said, "Sir, I've uncovered some intel. The Primordial Sect may be involved in what happened."
Calloway was taken aback, and then a gleam lit up in his eyes. Leaning forward, he said, "The specifics!"
Gaz tapped his boundary credential, promptly transmitting the intelligence he had gathered.
Calloway was thoroughly professional. Despite the volume of information, he extracted the core points after a swift skim, several plans rapidly taking shape in his mind.
At this moment, the assistant spoke up from beside him: "Sir, the Primordial Sect is deeply tied to the East Coast Faction. Could this setback have been caused by interference from the Strategic Affairs Department?"
Calloway knew very well that their operation had moved too fast; even if the Strategic Affairs Department had caught wind of it, they couldn't possibly have meddled in time.
Yet since the Primordial Sect had appeared, and given its deep ties to the East Coast Faction, could it have been acting on East Coast orders, striking some agreement with that Secret Palace martial artist from the Great Shun delegation? Could the collaboration between the two parties have been what caused their operation to fail?
After all, the delegation had come at the invitation of the East Coast Faction, and the First Delegation was currently engaged in exchanges with them at the Executive Yuan. It wouldn't be surprising in the least if their cooperation went deeper.
He knew whether this was the actual truth did not matter; it only needed to appear plausible and sound.
Even if the Directorate brass saw through it, for the sake of internal stability and deflecting tension, they wouldn't go out of their way to expose the truth. They would most likely accept this narrative, allowing him at least to walk away with some dignity intact.
Having calculated all this, he told the young man on screen, "Gaz, the lead you provided is very useful. It has helped the branch clear up some critical doubts."
The young man immediately snapped to attention on the screen.
Calloway offered him an encouraging smile, added a few words of commendation, and ended the field transmission. Then he stood up quickly, his posture straight as if he had just won a battle. Turning to his assistant, he said, "Send a telegram. Contact headquarters."
"Yes, sir!"
He swiftly dispatched a telegram to headquarters, focusing on explaining the reasons behind this setback, and then waited to see how headquarters would respond.
During the wait, though a tremor of unease lingered in his heart, he kept an entirely calm facade. Based on his understanding of the director and the bureaucrats at headquarters, they would never admit that the failure and blame lay with them. He was quite confident that superiors would accept the excuse he had served up.
He had thought a reply telegram would arrive in the afternoon at the earliest, since they would surely need to convene a meeting to discuss the matter and couldn't possibly decide on the spot. To his surprise, in less than five minutes, a telegram came back.
This left him unsettled and suspicious. When the telegram was delivered to his hands and he read the contents, a look of perplexity surfaced on his face.
There was not a single word of reprimand, nor any comment or feedback on what he had submitted. Instead, it instructed him to keep watching developments around the Throat of the Star Spirit closely over the coming days, and to take immediate action the moment anything changed.
Action?
What action?
He considered it; there was definitely something going on that he was unaware of.
He looked toward the map of the Throat of the Star Spirit displayed on the field screen. After staring at it for a moment, a sudden conjecture crossed his mind.
If that was the case, then everything made sense.
***
Inside the Throat of the Star Spirit, at the end of Jewel Lake facing the highway, a large tent capable of holding a dozen people had been erected. Chen Chuan was currently cultivating inside, sitting cross-legged midair, still wearing that external implant.
During cultivation, this external implant acted like a resonance nest, blocking out external interference, making it easier for him to gather his spirit and regulate his breathing, while also providing a degree of defense and early warning.
The more an external implant was utilized, the more tightly it bonded with him and the more smoothly it answered his will. After the battle against Iron Raven and the others, the implant had noticeably improved, adapting better to his rhythm and breathing, so he had simply kept it on while cultivating.
Over these past three days, all the medicines he used in his training had come from the Throat of the Star Spirit. Though their potency had degraded somewhat after prolonged storage, their initial quality had been high enough that they were still quite serviceable overall. Moreover, the stockpile was abundant, allowing him to use them freely for a considerable period.
It was only medicines for spiritual cultivation that were comparatively scarce.
He had made a special point over these days to inspect the medicine repository on the Visage of the Divine side. As he had initially guessed, most of the storage there was indeed empty, and the few items left were not what he needed. Even after scouring all the stepped platforms, nothing remained, which went to show that back then, the dire emergency had forced them to use everything up as offerings.
Since that was the case, he put it out of his mind for now. He would finish handling and arranging matters here first before looking for a way to search for more.
In truth, he had considered that these materials must have originated from the trans-limit creatures the Isutar people had once bred or enshrined. After only a century or so, there was a very strong chance those creatures were still around. If they could be located and a new agreement struck, he could obtain more from them.
The Isutar people probably had little use for such things right now; he could offer martial security or various supplies in exchange for them. That, of course, was assuming they could be found.
Several hours later, his cultivation came to a temporary pause. Checking the time, he saw that it was the window agreed upon with the delegation to exchange telegraph messages. He stepped out of the tent, passed through the veil of mist, and arrived at the end of Jewel Lake toward the exit.
Chapter 1089