Chapter 247.1: Begging to Support the Family Part 1

“Hm? You’re giving up that quickly?” Ji Jue raised an eyebrow and offered a heartfelt suggestion. “This is a pretty serious decision. Don’t you want to think it over properly? Give it a try. Who knows? This thing looks scary, but maybe it’s actually useless.”

Yue Ting lay flat on the ground, not daring to move a muscle. He smiled ingratiatingly and said, “No, no, that’s all right. The account books are all on my phone, and the files are stored on the cloud. I have an anonymous account with Everline Bank. The account password is four zeros followed by two ones—”

“Tsk.” Ji Jue’s face fell. Another guy who had been given a chance and completely failed to make use of it.

He waved a hand. At once, Horsey raised its other massive arm and leveled the muzzle at Yue Ting. A thunderous blast rang out as a shell casing flew free. Mercury sprayed from the barrel and transformed in midair into numerous slender bands, wrapping Yue Ting securely from head to toe.

Then Horsey fished a filthy rag from the sewer that had been sitting there God knew how long, stuffed it into Yue Ting’s mouth, and tossed him into the cargo compartment in the back.

Inside the open compartment, another Chosen One was wriggling helplessly and making muffled noises. He raised his head and saw yet another companion being thrown in. As their gazes met, surprise, relief, and a touch of misery flashed across their faces. No one knew what they were thinking.

More than ten minutes later, once Ji Jue was sure no one else would escape this way, he packed up his folding chair, drove around to the front entrance, and entered the warehouse. What greeted him was utter devastation, along with desperate outlaws lying on the brink of death.

Mm. Progress! At least a few of them are still alive! Looks like my teaching has really paid off after all!

“Mr. Ji, thanks for the help.” An Ran, who had been waiting there, smiled and waved.

“It’s no big deal. Where’s the stuff?” Ji Jue leaned over for a look.

An Ran raised a finger and pointed to a cage. Inside the cage, only the upper half of the juvenile beast of doom remained. It had its eyes shut and was pretending to be dead while trembling all over.

“Damn, these smugglers are getting more and more brazen.”

After giving the relatively worthless juvenile beast of doom a glance, Ji Jue swept his gaze over the enormous crates around them and walked straight toward the one in the middle. He knocked on it, and a hollow echo came from inside. It was even hooked up to a power supply.

Once he pried the door open, a blast of cold air rushed out. Stored inside the refrigerated compartment were severed limbs and organs, each lying in its own foam container. Without batting an eye, Ji Jue reached in, picked up an arm, and examined it. Understanding immediately dawned on him.

“Artificial organs and limbs?” Ji Jue asked. “They’ve all been illegally reinforced internally. Looks like there’s a Vortex-type cloning farm behind this operation too.”

Horsey hauled Yue Ting out of the cargo compartment, and he finally spat the filthy rag out of his mouth to defend his innocence. “I-I don’t know anything about that! It’s a misunderstanding! This is all a misunderstanding! I was only paid to transport the goods! These are medical supplies, too. They’re strictly for medical use!”

Once he learned that these two were from the Security Bureau rather than another gang trying to rob him, Yue Ting somehow regained his courage and even dared to argue his case.

“For medical use?” Ji Jue gave a mocking laugh. “What kind of medical treatment turns bones into metal? And the muscles... yeah, the density’s been increased quite a bit too.” ℴℴ𝘮

He lifted the severed limb by the wrist. “There’s even a military marking right here. So tell me, who exactly is this supposed to be treating?”

“Well... we’re just the transporters. We only handle transportation.” Yue Ting forced out an awkward smile. “Sure, it might be a little... less than legal, but...”

“What about this, then?” Ji Jue tossed the severed limb aside and pointed toward the juvenile beast of doom in the cage, which was still putting on the act of playing dead.

“I-it’s for display! A customer specifically requested it as an exotic display animal!” Once Yue Ting started talking, the lies came easier and easier. Before long, he was practically weeping as he pleaded his case. “We have special transport permits, sir! This is all a misunderstanding, a complete misunderstanding. I’m from Cliff City too! I’ve done my part for Haizhou, I’ve bled for Cliff City! I want to see Customs, I want—”

But when he saw Ji Jue still smiling, completely unfazed, his voice trailed off. Yue Ting swallowed and wisely kept the name of his backer to himself.

“Sir, I know the rules. I get it, I really do!” He wriggled forward a couple of times and forced an ingratiating smile onto his face. “We were blind. We shouldn’t have brought this dirty business into North Mount District. I’ll pay. I’ll definitely pay! Whatever the fine is, we’ll take it.”

Seeing how cooperative the man had become, Ji Jue’s smile finally gained a hint of warmth. He gave Yue Ting an approving pat on the head and reassured him, “Don’t worry. Of course, you’ll have to pay. We’ll follow proper procedure, so there’s nothing to be afraid of. Haizhou is fair and aboveboard. We can’t have innocent victims suffering twice over, can we?”

“Yes, yes, yes! Exactly! Absolutely!” Yue Ting’s eyes widened as he played along, swallowing every curse that was threatening to burst out of his mouth.

Ji Jue placed a hand on the metal case beside him and gave it a light pat. A hollow echo came from within. Slowly, he said, “It’s just that... this case looks a little unusual to me.”

Yue Ting watched in shock, his face going awfully pale.

“Generally speaking, an aluminum-alloy case this size shouldn’t be this heavy.”

Ji Jue tapped lightly against the edge of the case with his fingers. As the sounds spread through the room, Yue Ting’s face grew paler by the second.

“The echo’s too light, the vibrations are too fine. The sound, the feel, the density, the weight... none of it matches.” Ji Jue paused, then asked expressionlessly, “What you’re really smuggling out is prime orichalcum, isn’t it?”

There was only one word separating orichalcum from prime orichalcum, but the two were completely different materials.

Orichalcum was merely a spirit matter conductor that, after undergoing a complex smelting process, could increase the toughness and strength of the material itself severalfold. It was expensive, but still widely available and hardly considered rare.

Prime orichalcum was another matter entirely. Because of its unparalleled special properties, every region in the Federation capable of producing prime orichalcum was now under strict control by Central City. Haizhou’s only vein lay right beside the main base of the Haizhou garrison. The inspections were so thorough that they practically spread everyone’s ass cheeks to check inside before letting them through.

Aside from its exceptional performance, which far surpassed ordinary materials, prime orichalcum could also adapt perfectly to the vast majority of Supreme Benevolence blessings. More importantly, it could withstand more than nine rounds of repeated processing by a craftsman while retaining the special properties granted by every previous round of processing. That was precisely why it was used to manufacture the reaction chambers and precision components of top-tier powered exosuits.

Any model important enough to use prime orichalcum was, without exception, a genuine weapon of war capable of deciding the outcome of a battlefield even amid armies of thousands. It was a crucial material in every sense of the word, the kind where if even a little of it leaked out, countless people along the entire chain would end up having their whole families wiped out.

Ji Jue tapped the sheet metal of the case and scoffed. “I’m not trying to be mean, but this smelting job is downright awful. Did you get an apprentice to do it? Hm, no. This was probably made to look bad on purpose, wasn’t it?”

If the smelting had been even slightly better, Ji Jue would never have noticed anything wrong through a layer of paint. But that incomplete smelting was precisely what kept the prime orichalcum from reacting with the other metals as much as possible. The temperature had been carefully controlled, stopping the smelting process right at the threshold of reaction so that the material’s properties would remain intact.

Unfortunately, the craftsmanship was still mediocre. The crude method was really just a way to cover for the smelter’s lack of skill in Transformation, which meant whoever was receiving the shipment probably wasn’t much better. Otherwise, even if the prime orichalcum had been smelted into an alloy and allowed to react fully, they should still have been able to extract it again through other methods.

Judging by the weight, the amount of prime orichalcum in those two cases alone was enough to ensure this guy suffered some spectacularly improbable “suicide” in prison.

The real question was just how deep this whole mess went. Things were starting to get troublesome.

He had only come along to lend a hand. How did something this messy always come up whenever he got involved?