Chapter 431: Frustration

“Alright, I’m entrusting this to you. Don’t worry about anything else—just focus on this matter. It’s crucial for the family. I will handle the rest.”

Carl Morgan clenched his fists, his gaze turning sinister. “Alright. I will definitely root out the traitor.”

Watching his son’s hurried departure, Old Morgan once again fell into deep thought.

He knew his eldest son was ruthless and, at times, reckless. That was precisely why he had put him in charge of investigating the mole. Such a personality was ill-suited for handling external affairs.

Especially now, when America no longer possessed an absolute advantage. In fact, serious problems had already emerged in its industrial and agricultural sectors.

Meanwhile, their opponent was advancing by leaps and bounds, their strength having undergone a massive transformation.

With one side waning as the other waxed, his eldest son’s sinister, reckless personality could very well lead to the Morgan Group being specifically targeted by their enemy.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, being the weaker party.

Right now, the America Conglomerates had very few levers they could pull to deal with their opponent.

Just then, his secretary knocked and entered in a hurry.

“Mr. Chairman, Gaul just announced they are reopening the investigation into our files related to the Alstom acquisition.”

Hearing this, Old Morgan was so furious he laughed. “Heh. Who gave those clowns the courage?”

‘I can take getting pushed around by Cyrus—they’re just better than us. But you lot from Old Europe? You’ve already got one foot in the grave, yet you’re still daydreaming. Do you really think I’m some kind of pushover?’

Old Morgan immediately gave the order: teach the Gauls a harsh lesson.

After dealing with the matter, he didn’t just sit back and wait for the worst. Instead, he arranged various countermeasures to minimize losses, while also ordering his forces in Asia to pull back or go underground.

What he didn’t know, however, was that…

…in this latest strike, more than half of the targets on the list had actually been left untouched.

For one, some assets were hidden so well that there was no concrete evidence against them. While they could have simply been made to “disappear,” eliminating too many at once would risk causing internal panic.

For another, it was a matter of knowing when to stop, maintaining an appropriate level of intensity. The main goal was to engage in conflict without causing a complete rupture.

Finally, some assets were deliberately left in place to observe their movements. This would allow them to deduce some of the America Conglomerates’ actions and, when necessary, even use these same assets to feed them false intelligence.

After all, once an asset from America was identified, they were no longer a serious threat.

Old Morgan dealt with these matters and, without even a moment to catch his breath, immediately convened an online video conference with the other conglomerate leaders.

The heads of the ten major conglomerates appeared one by one on the video conference screen.

“This incident is remarkably similar to what the Locke Consortium went through. Many of the Morgan Group’s operations in Eastern Asia have been wiped out. How have you all fared?”

At Old Morgan’s words, the others began to air their own grievances.

The new chairman of the Locke Consortium, Noah A. Locke, however, remained silent and reserved. His family’s power in Asia had collapsed long ago. Now, only a small number of their old assets remained, barely hanging on.

Consequently, in this series of surprise attacks against the Morgan Group, the Locke Consortium had suffered no losses.

But as he listened to Old Morgan’s description and the additions from the others, Noah’s brow furrowed. Inwardly, he was not nearly as calm as he appeared.

The secret meeting still failed to produce any effective countermeasures. They had already played all the cards they could, and they had seen the results. The only card left was one of mutual destruction—a trump card the masterminds behind the conglomerates were unwilling to play.

As for the oil card, America’s control over the global oil market was not, in fact, as strong as one might think.

Especially after America’s fa?ade of military invincibility was stripped away, the OPEC member nations paid it less and less heed, a trend that was becoming increasingly apparent.

Unless they instigated a regional conflict in the South Seas Islands and crippled core waterways like the Malacca Strait and the Lombok Strait, oil and natural gas from the West Asia Region would continue to flow unabated into the East Asia Region.

Moreover, their strategic think tanks had run simulations and found that the probability of success was extremely low—unless America itself entered the fray. But the consequence of direct involvement would be an accelerated decline.

What’s more, the think tanks had also analyzed that even if a plan to incite unrest in the South Seas succeeded, it was unlikely to have a significant effect.

This was because the industrial landscape had already changed.

Electric vehicles were on the rise, nearly achieving parity with traditional combustion-engine cars.

Furthermore, Cyrus had vast oil and natural gas reserves, significant domestic production capacity, and supplementary energy sources like coal-to-chemicals, green hydrogen, green methanol, solar, and wind power.

If pushed to the brink, they could even plant all their deserts with Immortal Soybeans and use them to produce biodiesel, replacing a huge portion of their traditional diesel consumption.

Unable to come up with any effective countermeasures, Old Morgan and the others could only choose to circle the wagons, shrinking their presence in the Asian Region to avoid further annihilation.

However, just as the meeting was concluding…

Noah asked Old Morgan for a copy of the internal intelligence report—the one with the detailed information on all the affiliated groups and assets that had been targeted and purged in the recent incident.

「In a quiet study, late at night.」

Staring at the thick dossier in his hands, Noah’s expression flickered. ‘It happened again… Is that guy’s luck really that good?’

He had clearly just read the intelligence pertaining to Jiang Miao.

Noah had long suspected there was something strange about Jiang Miao. But with his family’s power in the Asian Region crippled, and the need to keep a low profile at the time, he had never made a move against him.

But soon after the Morgan Group had made their move, they ran into trouble as well.

This forced him to question what was really going on.