Chapter 2481 Cutting Operations And Decrypted Message
The operation in the middle of the night went rather well for Lin Mu and his companions. But it was the most unfortunate day for the Cloak and Dagger hall, for their entire operation had been found.
In there, Lin Mu had apprehended the man whom the Great Dagger had referred to as the 'Prime Dagger'. He was apparently one of the two founders of the entire organization and was none other than Kou Bian, the brother of Lord Kou Tua.
On the other hand, the other founder, titled as the 'Prime Cloak' was simply the Overseer of the Nine Pleasures Entrancement Pavilion above. She was the one in charge of all the courtesans and had a somewhat public front as Madame Silk.
The entire Cloak and Dagger Pavilion was divided into two main divisions, with the Daggers being the operatives that carried out active missions. The Cloaks, on the other hand, were passive members who were in charge of gathering information.
They had many members working as Cloaks spread out in the entire city and it was quite an expansive network too. It included courtesans, artists, shopkeepers, beggars and more. And from what Lin Mu and Crown Prince learned, many weren't even aware they were working for the Cloak and Dagger Hall.
Most of their members simply sold information on the side to earn a bit more. Only the higher ranked members actually knew about the organization. The existence of such a large scale black network was alarming to Crown Prince. He quickly informed the Emperor of this and an emergency court session was held. In it, all the information that had been discovered so far was revealed. It was very shocking to them as they had already been under stress due to the Black Ying Empires actions and now they had another snake that they needed to deal that was hiding right inside their homes.
The Emperor decided that he had given enough freedom to the nobles and it was time to tighten his fist. And quickly sent out an edict and all those that were involved in it were arrested and brought to the court. But not all of them got the same punishment.
The problem though was that the Cloak And Dagger Hall didn't do high value assassinations until quite recently. Their targets before this had just been some commoners or cultivators without much of an affiliation.
In fact, a major part of their work was simply in the gathering and sale of intel. This wasn't even fully illegal either, as there were many such information pavilions working openly in the empire.
But the Cloak and Dagger Pavilion had gone into the dark side of it, involving market manipulation, blackmail and more.
If it was still unto that extent, it would be fine, but the assassinations were a big offense. Especially since they started taking up those that involved nobles, and even the Treasury Minister. It turned out thats after having operated for several hundred years as a 'successful' operation they decided to expand and grow bigger.
They hid behind the facade set up by Lord Kou Tuo who had become an aristocrat and also their shield. Under his influence, a lot of the matters were easily swept away and didn't seem as big. It was why things had never reached to the point where the Imperial Court would be concerned.
The Black Ying Empire knew this and decided to take advantage of it. Giving them the capital needed to expand as the payment for a big mission.
The Assassination of the Treasury Minister would be a major blow to the Imperial Court as his death would greatly influence the market and he wasn't the only one on the list. There were other major targets like the Commerce Minister and the Agriculture Minister too.
The only reason those two had not been targeted was simply because there was no opportunity to do that. They were very busy individuals and spent a ninety percent of a month staying awake busy at work.
The Treasury Minister was also quite busy and it was his meeting with Lin Mu that had given them the chance to act. All the members that had been captured were interrogated and their establishment was stripped bare of all its belongings. Hundreds of experts were assigned to comb the documents while the Imperial Guards raided the other hideouts that were spread in the city.
Hundreds of thousands of documents were gathered up, which took over two weeks to be analyzed.
But this came with great results, as they found out something they had been searching for.
"Crown Prince! We've found it! We've decrypted the message!" A discipline hall member came to inform him in his palace.
"What?" Everyone was surprised.
"The Cloak and Dagger Pavilion was also involved in finding what the location mentioned in the scroll we obtained from the second lieutenant was. Apparently, there were several members of the Black Ying Empire whom the message was sent to. And one such member employed the services of the Cloak and Dagger Pavilion." The man explained.
"Show it to me." Crown Prince took the jade slip and quickly read through it all. "He's right. They had decrypted around half of the message while our members had decrypted a part too. Combining the two they've managed to fully decrypt it." He revealed.
"That's great!" Lin Mu said in joy.
It was the biggest gain they've had so far when considering the Black Ying Empire.
"So where is it?" Daoist Chu inquired.
"The Tri-cone Savanna." Crown Prince Feng Shun revealed.
"The Tri-cone savanna?" Lin Mu opened the map of the Dao Wind Empire and took a look. "It's in the south…" he found the location.
It was located in the Southern Peninsula and was quite a distant location from the capital. It wasn't particularly important for any resource, thus it was mostly in the lower ranked regions of the empire.
"I haven't been there in years… Looks like it's time for us to head there ourselves." The Crown Prince declared.