Wilderness Outside the South Gate
"Boss, why hasn’t that caravan arrived yet?"
In the howling storm, several human figures were hiding in the forest.
Huge modified chas ford a platform to ’shelter from the rain’, covering the people from the wind and rain above.
Amidst the sound of raindrops hitting the leaves, whispers echoed in the silent darkness.
"According to the data given by the client, the caravan should have set off a few hours ago," a sowhat rough voice echoed in the rain, "Don’t worry, maybe the rain is too heavy and they’ve been delayed."
"Boss, could we have been played? What if the caravan isn’t coming?" another voice asked quietly.
"Not very likely. Even though the client found us on the black market this ti, they’re very generous, having paid half of the commission upfront, that’s five million federal coins’ worth of cryptocurrency, transferred without a blink."
The rough voice shook his head, "It’s probably just the heavy rain that’s delayed them, let’s be patient and wait a bit longer."
"We’ve been waiting in this mud pit for a day already, and the caravan still hasn’t co," a figure couldn’t hold back from complaining.
"If you want to make big money, you have to endure hardship. The client said that there’s a large shipnt of valuable dicine in the caravan, and once we deal with the caravan, everything they’re transporting is ours," the rough voice said coldly, "When I was young, I’d ambush caravans and wait for two days straight, with snakes, insects, rats, and ants crawling past, not even making a peep. If you can’t handle this, why do the robber’s job?"
"Boss, that’s not what I ant." The figure quickly defended.
"Boss, what he ans is you’re a real badass, a lot more badass than us, that’s why you’re the boss, right?" another figure quickly tried to smooth things over.
"Look, a caravan is coming."
"Is it that caravan?"
"It seems not."
"It’s almost ten o’clock now, and the city gates are about to close. Maybe that caravan isn’t coming out."
"Did we wait all day for nothing?"
"Ains’s City Defense Army isn’t that great, is it? They still haven’t found us by now, I thought Ains was supposed to be impressive."
"That’s because we’ve kept our distance. If we were any closer, those idle City Defense soldiers would’ve caught us by now."
"I heard the client wants us to wait a hundred kiloters away on the main road, our current position is considered close."
A rough voice cut in, interrupting the continuous chatter, "What the hell are you all discussing? Wait patiently, dammit."
The entire valley quieted down again, leaving only the sound of raindrops hitting the leaves, drip-drop, drip-drop.
——
South Gate · South City Command Post
"Report,"
A soldier walked up to the officer reading data on a tablet and handed one over, "The patrol drone has discovered suspicious personnel in the valley fifty kiloters outside the city gate."
"Wilderness Wanderers?"
The officer took the tablet from the soldier, asking casually.
"Doesn’t seem like it, according to our observations, they appear to have been waiting there for a long ti. We inquired with the nearby Wilderness Wanderer tribes, none have camped in that valley," the soldier explained slowly.
"Interesting, I rember this valley is on the must-pass route for caravans heading southwest?" The officer glanced at the remote thermal images displayed on the tablet, "Are these robbers? Coming near Ains? Such courage?"
"Report, unable to confirm," the soldier responded swiftly, "They haven’t made a move on the passing caravan, they’ve just been waiting there."
"Waiting for soone?" The officer raised his wristband, glanced at it, "It’s almost ti to clock out, report to the General, if he permits, send a cha squad over to ’ask’ what they’re doing."
"They’ve already gone fifty kiloters out of the city, beyond the normal jurisdiction range, should we intervene?"
The soldier seed puzzled.
"No problem, we’re the City Defense Army," the officer smiled, returning the tablet, "It’s just a convenient task."
——
Ains Vincent Pharmaceutical Factory
The flickering lights illuminated the pitch-black night, roaring machines hamred at the void and the floor, and hamred at the eardrums of everyone in the building.
He Ao leaned against the outer window, gazing at the scene inside the building, a few raindrops falling onto his hat brim.
This building seems to be quite old, Linsent Pharmaceutical didn’t do any reinforcent or soundproof treatnt when they bought it from Wel.
At this mont, the machines inside the building were still in accelerated operation, and the employees working inside seed to be in a state of excitent, swiftly operating the machines, driving production.
The entire production space had practically no protective asures, the employees wore thin protective suits, with seemingly much-used, sowhat damaged filtering masks.
The filter indicator light on the masks was flashing a glaring red, indicating that the filter had long exceeded its expected lifespan.
Judging from the state of these masks, they’re likely no longer effective.
He Ao withdrew his gaze, placed his hand on the wall in front of him, and climbed rapidly up the high wall in the storm.
The entire factory was illuminated from the reception hall on the first floor to the factory areas on the over twenty floors up.
It was already past midnight, and clearly, this pharmaceutical factory operated around the clock.
It wasn’t long before He Ao reached the topmost level of the entire building, around the thirtieth floor.
This was also the only darkened place in the entire building. Looking in through the window, this floor mainly consisted of well-separated office spaces and offices partitioned off by glass curtain walls.
It seed that the factory’s senior managent personnel didn’t need to work overnight.
He Ao found a spacious office, glanced at the caras, and opened the window located in a cara’s blind spot.
The windows in this area weren’t locked, just simply shut to prevent rainwater.
After all, who would think soone would enter through the thirtieth-floor window?
Before entering the building, He Ao quickly took off his raincoat, tying it outside.
The raindrops on these raincoats would leave quite obvious water stains indoors.
After entering the hallway, he glanced at the expansive office, moving along the cara’s blind spot and quickly arrived in front of a door labeled ’CEO’s Office.’
He opened the door and entered.
The entire office was very simply decorated, with only a desk and a computer.
He Ao walked directly to the computer, turned it on, then connected the computer’s data cable to his wristband.
He is now a witness for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, helping collect so illegal evidence related to cases is perfectly normal.
Especially for enterprises producing contraband pharmaceuticals, so ’borderline’ thods to obtain evidence can be allowed.
In fact, the range of operations allowed for ’witnesses’ by the Federal Bureau of Investigation is broader than for regular Bureau agents.
The encryption level on this computer wasn’t high, and soon, Eve hacked into the computer and, through its permissions, hacked into the main control computer of the entire building.
As the computer screen flickered, pages of docunts appeared in He Ao’s field of view.
Eve then quickly searched through these docunts and popped up a summary report on the pharmaceutical factory’s operations while copying them.
Just as He Ao had previously suspected, the ’business’ of this pharmaceutical factory wasn’t very ’healthy’.
Including the contracted business, the vast majority of products from the pharmaceutical factory only brought in 10% of its revenue.
And 90% of the factory’s revenue ca from this one product: stimulants.
Within this 90% revenue, one fifth was earned from selling these stimulants to the ’consortiums’ in need.
In this ’custor’ list, He Ao saw many familiar nas, like Kopes Mining, Stars Pharma, Noder Finance, and in previous lists, even Kaijet Group.
However, although these consortiums were large, their procurent of stimulants was not considerable.
Obviously, they weren’t widely using this stimulant.
Therefore, their procurent of stimulants only accounted for ’one fifth’ of the pharmaceutical factory’s revenue.
And for the remaining four fifths of the stimulants, the ’custor’ was quite singular.
It was the caravan He Ao had just dealt with.
Of course, this caravan was noted in the pharmaceutical factory as ’Kewort Group supplier’.
Honestly, this data made He Ao slightly ’surprised’.
Because, from the mories of the caravan leader, he was able to buy the stimulants by bribing certain key figures in the pharmaceutical factory to obtain the procurent permit.
For this, he even specially registered as a supplier with Kewort Group to gain procurent qualification.
To be able to procure the stimulants, he went to great lengths, spending a lot of money and effort to successfully get in touch with the pharmaceutical factory.
Even so, he experienced considerable ’discrimination’ at the pharmaceutical factory, fearing exposure of his identity.
Now, upon pulling the data from the pharmaceutical factory, it turns out he’s the largest custor of the entire factory.
He Ao estimated that the caravan leader would be quite ’shocked’ upon seeing these data.
To confirm this data was correct, He Ao had Eve reconfirm the data sources.
Eve called up the original sales data stored in the master computer, recalculated, and ultimately found the data problem-free.
If the ’data’ from the factory is indeed this way, then it’s very likely that there is an issue with the ’handler’.
He Ao took out the black instrunt acquired from the caravan leader, frowning slightly.
During the journey, he had already severed the power of this instrunt through divine sense.
However, the instrunt itself also had no function; unlike the previous instrunts obtained from Moli, it was a ’one-way’ ssage-receiving device.
That ans the caravan leader could only accept commands, and couldn’t report or ask questions.
The caravan leader found this pharmaceutical factory, bribed to obtain sales permits, and even registered with Kewort Group as a ’supplier’ as his ’higher-up’ instructed through this device.
The thod for purifying illegal drugs was also sothing the ’higher-up’ taught the caravan leader through this instrunt.
Such one-way ’communication’ indeed helps avoid being traced afterward but lacks a channel for ’lower-level’ feedback, losing control over the developnts and being unable to handle unexpected situations.
Unless the ’higher-up’ himself doesn’t need any feedback, he can easily ’see’ what the caravan leader does and what result his commands achieve.
Clues are becoming more complicated.
He Ao put away the device and looked again at the report on the screen.
Upon seeing the sales price of the stimulants at the pharmaceutical factory, he was slightly stunned.
The stimulants from the pharmaceutical factory were sold per portion, every 20 grams per portion, priced at 50 federal coins.
This price wasn’t exactly cheap; after all, in a large city like Ains, the weekly salary of a robust skilled employee is only more than two hundred, less than three hundred, and unskilled temporary workers earn even less than two hundred. In small cities, weekly wages are even lower.
And a portion of stimulant is only usable for two weeks at most, even if it allows workers to put in extra hours, the return on investnt for consortiums wasn’t high.
After all, without stimulants, they could still get workers to work overti for several more hours; the efficiency would just be a little lower.
This might also be the reason the consortiums haven’t made large-scale purchases.
Certainly, there is an exception: Kewort Group, who mines in Slorx Grand Canyon, where it is very dangerous, and miners in a ntally excited state are far more productive than in a fatigued state, prompting Kewort Group to so extent to purchase stimulants.
Yet, 50 federal coins per portion was already the factory’s bottom line price. The stimulants’ production costs aren’t low, and overall, the pharmaceutical factory hardly makes any money, just enough to keep the entire factory ticking over.
However, the stimulants that the Kewort Group mines bought from the caravan were priced ’higher’ than what was sold from the pharmaceutical factory.
Because, in the caravan leader’s mory, the stimulants procured from the factory were priced at 450 federal coins per portion, not 50 federal coins.
To please Kewort Group, he even sold at a loss without earning, losing on transportation cost, selling at 450 federal coins the original price to Kewort Group.
against 50, nine tis.
This ant that even if the caravan could purify this stimulant into illegal drugs and sell at higher prices, after subtracting various roadside costs, they basically weren’t making any money.
The caravan’s vast majority of profits were used to ’buy’ stimulants.
But the price received by the pharmaceutical factory was only 50 federal coins per portion.
A difference of 400 federal coins per portion, equivalent to nearly two weeks’ salary of a skilled worker.
So where did this difference go?
He Ao had Eve sort out all reports related to the caravan.
Then he discovered that all the caravan’s ’transactions’ were handled by a single sales director.
This sales director started as just a supervisor, but after taking over the caravan’s ’transactions’, gradually rose to beco the pharmaceutical factory’s sales director.
In the caravan leader’s mory, there were related mories about this sales director, although very few, but fundantally, the caravan’s paynts always followed the sales director’s channel.
That is to say, the money most likely went into the hands of this sales director.
Upon seeing this, He Ao paused, reviewed the entire stimulant production, stimulant sales, illicit drug purification, and selling profit chain.
From the pharmaceutical factory to the caravan leader, to the underground syndicate, actually everyone along the whole line didn’t make much profit; the leading part of the profit lay in the difference of ’400 federal coins’, which was entirely taken.
It looked like soone has calculated the profit margin of the entire chain ticulously, leaving every person just barely enough to eat, and taking the largest portion for themselves.
He Ao pulled up information about the sales director.
Then he found that the sales director took a leave the night before yesterday and hadn’t co to work for two days.
The night before yesterday, He Ao took care of Colin, frightening away the Dark Lizard that attacked Denno City.
He Ao’s gaze narrowed slightly.
At this ti, information showed that Eve had completed data copying, and he unplugged the data cable.
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