The investigator did not even bother to wipe the sweat from his forehead as he panted heavily.
“The serial number matches.”
“This unique, exclusive serial number shows that it belongs to a stack of blank passes secretly issued by the wartime dispatch desk.”
“According to the General Bureau's military supply control regulations, this kind of special pass is theoretically reserved only for the emergency transit of pollution...”
Cecil toyed with the faceted crystal glass in her hand, the dark red wine inside rippling coldly with her movements.
“Who was the recipient?”
Upon hearing the investigator's report, her expression did not ripple in the slightest, and her voice betrayed no emotion.
“In response, Madam, it was the personal assistant of the wartime dispatch officer, Simon Laird.”
At that moment, Cecil's beautiful brow furrowed slightly.
This kind of internal conduct practically treated the Kingdom's defense system as a sieve full of holes.
Before she could speak, Deputy Director Taylor, standing beside her, quickly took half a step forward.
“The assistant has already been missing for two days.”
Cecil sneered at the news. She slammed her glass heavily onto the mahogany desk with a sharp, ear-piercing crack.
“Shut down the Blue Sail Trading Company.”
Cecil issued the cold command, leaving absolutely no room for discussion.
“Do it now.”
“I'm going to the scene myself!”
She had clearly lost her patience.
“Taylor, let's go.”
The secrets Jack had brought were not yet sorted out, and the hidden hands in the dark were already eager to flip the table. In that case, she was done being polite.
Deputy Director Taylor hurriedly gestured to the elite tactical squad outside the door to follow.
A grand procession of investigators marched out of the Coast Hotel's main entrance.
The night rain fell continuously. Cold water beat down on the flooded streets, kicking up a vast, bone-chilling mist.
They boarded the armored carriages that had long been waiting in front of the hotel. Their movements were swift to the point of ruthlessness, without a single wasted motion.
The heavy wheels plowed deep ruts into the muddy streets as they sped toward the headquarters of the Blue Sail Trading Company.
The moment they arrived at the target location, three elite field tactical squads went into action simultaneously.
“Team One, seal the front door! Team Two, flank the back alley drainage system! Team Three, charge in with me!”
The roar of the field tactical team commander instantly shattered the dead silence of the rainy night.
“Boom!”
The sturdy solid wood door was violently breached, and a swarm of investigators filed in, holding firearms loaded with supernatural bullets.
The interior of the trading company was instantly plunged into a chaotic mess of screams and resistance.
A faint rustle came from a hidden compartment behind the counter. Two tall tactical team members instantly smashed through the wooden boards, dragging a bookkeeper out of the compartment and tossing him ruthlessly into the center of the lobby like a dead dog.
Several mystics responsible for checking the environment raised their spirit-measuring instruments, casting beams of pale blue light across the slightly rusty iron door at the end of the corridor.
Accompanied by the grating sound of grinding mechanical gears, the entrance to the basement was illuminated by the unique glow of the spirit-measuring instruments, casting a strange, grayish-white halo that indicated an unknown mystical reaction.
“A rat is trying to escape!”
Behind the basement's iron door, a messenger from the trading company dressed in gray wore a crazed expression. He tightly gripped a rune in his hand, which was stained pitch-black with blood.
Biting the tip of his tongue, he spat a mouthful of blood onto the rune, attempting to force open a rift to the shallow layers of the spirit world to escape in the panic.
The air in front of him warped violently, as if splashed with strong acid, and he was on the verge of slipping into the deeper layers of the spirit world.
If he were allowed to escape into the spirit world without coordinate positioning, even a transcendent of the same pathway would have to expend considerable effort to fish him out.
Deputy Director Taylor, who had been following behind Cecil, sneered. He raised his hand and threw several brass nails, which embedded themselves precisely into the geometric nodes of the space.
The runic energy stored within the brass nails erupted, turning into layers of shackles. The newly formed rift was squeezed as if by iron pincers, letting out a grating, shattering sound before collapsing on the spot.
The messenger spat out a mouthful of blood and slumped to the ground like a torn sandbag, completely stripped of any ability to resist.
Cecil walked down the steps and watched the scene coldly, her face showing no emotional fluctuations.
“If we had acted with this kind of speed the night before last, a lot fewer people would have died.”
Cecil snorted coldly amidst the ruined building, her hands tucked into the pockets of her black trench coat, making her emotions unreadable.
The sea-folk invasion the night before last had turned the entire branch into a paralyzed giant. This incompetence and internal betrayal had completely infuriated her.
The fire burning inside the room cast its glow upon her pretty face, yet it carried no warmth, making her look somewhat mercurial in the flickering light and shadow.
Beside her, Deputy Director Taylor wiped away his cold sweat in panic, offering a stream of placating smiles.
His heart was pounding wildly, and his palms were slick with cold sweat.
Others might not know, but Taylor was well aware that this Scale Three special envoy beside him was not just the student of Roland T. Orphal, one of the founders of the Seventh Agency.
She was also a favorite of Director Rothwell at the Landon headquarters.
Offending her was equivalent to cutting oneself off from the Landon headquarters.
Furthermore, despite only having Scale Three strength, the treasures she carried were of the absolute highest caliber.
Ordinary transcendents had to pay a cruel, even maddening price to use containment objects, but this lady did not.
She even possessed supernatural relics that could resist these prices, essentially wiping out the negative feedback.
This meant she was fully capable of fighting above her rank, using powerful tools with no side effects to crush high-level transcendents to death.
Under normal circumstances, if she had come to Hastings Port alone, Taylor, as the Deputy Director, could have relied on his local influence and would not have needed to be so terrified.
But as fate would have it, Lord Orphal, who was famously protective of his own, had also arrived!
This bearded old man was practically a living legend in the internal history of the Seventh Agency.
This elder was the only one among the founders of the Seventh Agency who did not come from a magical family.
He had relied entirely on his own strength to rise step by step to become a Royal Chartered Mystical Advisor.
In the past, the old man had saved a prince, and had even slammed his hand on the table to defy the Prince Regent in a public hearing.
The royal family had awarded him the empire's highest medal of honor, but he had immediately used it to prop up a wobbly table leg.
If such an eccentric and lawless old man in Landon felt that his student was being slighted in Hastings Port, Taylor shuddered to think how miserable his end would be.
Deputy Director Taylor swallowed hard, the smile on his face becoming even more submissive and flattering.
Just then, a tactical team captain ran up from the basement, his visor wide open, his face covered in charred grease and dust.
“Madam Special Envoy, Deputy Director.”
His voice was solemn.
“We can confirm that a remnant outpost of the Mist Veil Society is hidden below.”
“We found this.”
“You two should take a look for yourselves.”
He handed over a half-burned file folder, the parchment emitting a scorched stench.
Cecil opened the file, tearing open the charred outer shell with her fingers to retrieve the few remaining pages inside.
Although the cultists cleaning up the scene had been fast, this dispatch serial number, which they hadn't managed to burn in time, became the most solid piece of ironclad evidence.
Tucked inside were several transit slips bearing the same dispatch serial number, the black digits standing out starkly against the charred edges of the paper.
“A single loophole in an otherwise flawless plan.”
Cecil sneered, a cold glint flashing across her eyes.
Half an hour later, the field squad finished cleaning up the scene, and the large force withdrew to the penthouse suite of the Coast Hotel.
Back at the Coast Hotel, Taylor pulled out several pieced-together remnants of the ledger pages and examined them closely under the bright gaslight.
Holding the paper with a pair of long tweezers, the old man's expression darkened slightly.
“These aren't in the port authority's format; they are our branch's temporary dispatch passes.”
“This is a product of the internal special command system. Ordinary people wouldn't even be able to lay eyes on it.”
“Who can issue them?”
Cecil asked.
“The wartime dispatch desk can issue them, but every single one should leave a retrieval record.”
Taylor replied.
“For any serial number, once entered, there should be the most detailed handwritten signatures and approval logs.”
Soon, the retrieval records were brought over, and a thick ledger was laid out on the desk.
But before Cecil and Taylor could investigate further to find the specific co-signing names...
A highly confidential official document from the royal capital of Landon was delivered, having crossed a vast geographical distance via a spirit world messenger.
Cecil unraveled the top-secret barrier on it, broke the wax seal, and her cold gaze swept across the official wording.
“Prince Edric has requested the Royal Maritime Advisory Board to review the reasons for deploying the Octowin.”
She murmured to herself.
There was a hint of mockery in her eyes. The old geezers of the royal family had ultimately made a procedural compromise in the face of the public opinion that Thomas had marshaled.
“Wayland has taken the initiative to request a risk assessment on Moon Bay from a third-party supernatural judicial institution.”
Thomas's move of taking a step back to move forward—by actively requesting official presence and supervision—was played flawlessly, completely blocking all of the Seventh Agency's overt leverage points.
However, as Cecil's gaze continued to move down the letter, sweeping toward the final name of the so-called “third-party supernatural judicial institution,” her pupils suddenly contracted.
Looking further down, a name appeared at the bottom that Cecil had absolutely not expected—
The Storm Inquisition.
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