by <unknown>
The good employers couldn't find good assassins, and the good assassins couldn't find good employers. The most critical thing of all was that the trades conducted through the crystal coin of the Imperium would certainly leave traces. The killers of the Imperium had been troubled by such problems a hundred years ago.
The birth and rise of the free coin, which was almost tailor-made for the dark fields, stimulated the evolution of the assassins of the Imperium, who abandoned the traditional, obsolete, and low-efficient middleman system. All kinds of convenient and secretive platforms for assassination deals appeared, such as "Daily Killing", "Thumb Killing", "Thunderous Killing", "Have You Killed Him?", etc., which were in fierce business competitions.
In the end, it was "Daily Killing", funded and technologically supported by the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors, that defeated all the competitors and became the largest and most credible platform of assassins.
The four greatest assassin groups who had reached the unprecedented rank of nine platinum daggers, and who were bold enough to kill the people at the peak of the Nascent Soul Stage as long as the payment was enough, were "Black Flag", "Bloody Skull", "Life Claimer", and "Lamp of Death".
Chapter 2524: The Rogue Assassins |
A hundred years ago, when the platform of "Daily Killing" was just born, it was a still disordered age of wild competitions. Many unqualified gamblers, mercenaries, space pirates, and desperadoes joined the trade that barely had any threshold except for courage.
Having fought a bloody way out in the competitions and thrived when thousands of other assassins had failed and perished, the four assassin groups naturally had their specialties and unquestionable capabilities.
The creators and leaders of the four assassin groups also became the four gods of death that everybody was scared of.
They were—
Black Flag King, leader of "Black Flag"!
Red Lady, leader of "Bloody Skull"!
Hanged Man, leader of "Life Claimer"!
Revenant Of The Dead Sea, leader of "Lamp of Death"!
Since the deals were made via the Spiritual Nexus and the platforms since the beginning, nobody knew the real identities behind the four nicknames. The only thing certain about them was that they were already the most excellent super assassins on "Daily Killing" before they established their respective assassin groups.
Among them, Black Flag King was the first express assassin who made a promise of "24 hours/7 days/1 month".
The order from the same planet would be accomplished in 24 hours! If the target was in the same Sector, whatever dark corner on whichever remote resource planet he was hiding, he would be killed in 7 days! For the orders from elsewhere in the Imperium, as long as the target's hideout was clear, it was guaranteed that he would be killed in 1 month! If the promises were unfulfilled, all the payment would be returned ten times, with a compensation of three free killing experiences. Of course, Black Flag King had never failed, and nobody had ever received his ten-time refund!
Red Lady, leader of "Bloody Skull", on the other hand, was the first assassin to bring business from the periphery of the Imperium to the territory of the four families, claiming that she would not hesitate to kill the descendants of the four families.
Because of her slogan, Bloody Skull and herself had been wanted and attacked by the four families countless times. After a hundred years, too many people in the four families had died under the poisoned daggers of the assassins, but "Bloody Skull" was still as thriving as before!
"Life Claimer" was a unique group that claimed to be a professional team of spectral Cultivators. Their leader, known as "Hanged Man", was likely to be the best spectral Cultivator in the Imperium and made full use of the advantages of the unpredictable ghosts. His team was the first team of assassins that received a venture of more than five hundred million and embarked on the formalization process. When the target was a ghost, it would never be wrong to choose "Life Claimer".
The mysterious assassin "Revenant Of the Dead Sea", who founded "Lamp of Death", was perhaps the strongest and most insane one of the four assassin leaders. He started his career slightly later than Black Flag King, Red Lady, and Hanged Man, who had already divided the market. In order to rise to fame soon and seize the high-end market, he declared that he specialized in killing the people in the Nascent Soul Stage, and he successfully completed sixty-two orders whose targets were all in the Nascent Soul Stage within one year, taking down one expert in the Nascent Soul Stage every six days.
Although his targets were not all battle-type, and many of them were the admin-type, creation-type, and culture-type ones with lower combat abilities, it was still an appalling figure. Even though he debuted later, Revenant Of The Dead Sea rose to fame quickly and became a powerful competitor for the strongest assassin of the Imperium!
Of course, as their assassin groups began the virtuous cycles of formalization and industrialization, and especially after they set up abundant secret training camps in the bitter and barren lands at the edge of the Imperium to groom talents, the four gods of death had all become management. It had been decades since they killed anybody in person, and it was usually their disciples who ran the team.
However, judging from the last cases they did in person, Li Yao inferred that the four gods of death were all likely to be in the Divinity Transformation Stage!
Even the battle-type Divinity Transformation Stage experts might have different styles.
Some people were good at charging at the enemy on a Colossus in a head-on battle. They could defeat thousands of enemies on their own.
Some other people were good at stealth, camouflage, poisoning, explosion, assassination, and all kinds of other unpredictable, vicious methods.
It was doubtless that the latter was a hundred times trickier than the former!
The four gods of death were exactly the best experts in the second field. If they had reached the Divinity Transformation Stage when they vanished decades ago, and they had been nurturing themselves well with the money they earned or even grasped new assassination skills in seclusion later, even Li Yao would rather not fight such troublesome enemies.
It was too bad that the odds that the four gods of death appeared in the Seven Seas Grand Market was quite high.
First of all, the four gods of death all rose based on the platform of "Daily Killing". Later, they invested in "Daily Killing" instead, turning into the shareholders of the platform. So, they were half official groups of assassins.
The greatest shareholders of "Daily Killing", on the other hand, was the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors.
Based on the connection, the four gods of death extended their hands to the fields relevant to the assassination business, such as the underground weapon platforms where massively destructive magical equipment was sold, the free mercenary platform that was dedicated to fighting large-scale wars for other people, etc. Even the shipping corporations under the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors had the shares of the four gods of death.
Just like that, they were deeply associated with each other through all kinds of exchanges of interests. Also, the bloody business of the four assassin groups was based on the free coin, making them natural partners of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors.
That was why Li Yao inferred that the security work of the Seven Seas Grand Market was actually the job of the four assassin groups.
Zuo Tianying even speculated that one of the four senior managers of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors was among the four gods of death, although he did not have conclusive proof.
In terms of financial interests, the four gods of death should be Jin Yuyan's hardcore supporters. After all, their enterprises were all on the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors' platform and based on the free coin. They were even the shareholders of the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors themselves!
However, if the four of them had advanced into the Divinity Transformation Sta
ge since decades ago, financial interests might not be their only concern.
Position, power, or even breakthrough in levels could all attract them.
If the four Kurfürst families lured them with a whole resource planet or even a Sector, plus an authentic, hereditary knighthood, or if the Blackstar the Great presented the Cultivation arts he stole from the mausoleum of the Supreme Emperor, promising that he could help them advance to the high level or even the peak of the Divinity Transformation Stage, would they really not be tempted at all?
If Li Yao were the Kurfürsten or Blackstar the Great and intended to remove Jin Yuyan, he would certainly try to win over the four heads of assassins who controlled lethal combat ability. As long as they could kill Jin Yuyan, he would agree to any term they proposed.
Therefore, Li Yao was very suspicious that one or two of the four gods had betrayed, either to the four families or to Blackstar the Great in secret.
Li Yao's mission was to find out the one or two assassin leaders who had rebelled!
"Protect me. Pay attention to the noises outside and do not let anybody in."
Taking a deep breath, Li Yao sat cross-legged and pressed the helmet that had been refined into the color of deep purple, before he reminded Li Jialing.
The strengthening drugs he just swallowed turned into hot fire in his stomach. Li Yao enveloped the fire with his spiritual energy carefully and delivered it to his brain, gradually improving the activity of the brain cells.
Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!
Every brain cell was unleashing powerful electric arcs. A thunderstorm seemed to be blowing in his brain. Through the enhancement of the "super brainwave magnifier", Li Yao's telepathic thoughts spread out nonstop as if they had grown wings.
For a moment, time seemed to have halted, the wall around was melting, and the whole world became transparent. Li Yao was able to "see" clearly the complicated tube system embedded in the building, the cockroaches and rats proliferating in the tubes, the strong bodyguards in the secret chambers, and even the VIPs who were testing medicines in the few rooms next door.
He could even sense that in the fifth suite across the aisle, there were three muscular men with a rather high Cultivation. Their heartbeat, breath, sweat, and secretion of adrenalin were very weird, implying that they were highly anxious and excited.
There was no telling whether it was a normal reaction of drug-testing, or it was…
"Somebody else thought exactly the same as we did and regarded the place as their temporary base. There's no telling if they are assassins from the four families."
Li Yao mumbled to himself, "It seems that this place is not as safe as I imagined. We have to switch to somewhere else no later than tonight."
Li Yao's target was not inside the building. Slightly adjusting the frequency of his soul quakes, he faked his telepathic thoughts into the ubiquitous wireless signals of the Spiritual Nexus, continuing to spread them out to the crowded streets.
Immediately, a thousand faces and ten thousand laughs congregated into an overwhelming tide and raged into his brain.
Although Li Yao's brain was above the Divinity Transformation Stage, it was still too much of a burden to process such messy information. He felt that his brain was exploding.
Licking the roof of his mouth that was somewhat sweating because of blood, he took another deep breath and filtered 99% of the useless information, trying to locate all the dangerous persons within ten kilometers of the Commodity Market who were not regular merchants.
"If I were an assassin, where would I hide while I wait for Jin Yuyan to arrive?"
Narrowing his eyes, Li Yao mumbled to himself, while infinite stars were falling in his eyes like a waterfall, "If I were Jin Yuyan's bodyguard team, how should I be prepared for the scourges of the assassins that may come anytime? Come on, assassins, mercenaries, and bodyguards, just show up now and let me see what you are up to exactly and who among you are the traitors…"
Chapter 2525: There Are Almost Ten Thousand Assassins! |
When Li Yao spread his brainwaves to dozens of kilometers away with his vitality field beyond the Divinity Transformation Stage, initiating a scanning storm of brainwaves, everything he "saw" was different from a moment ago.
The illusions on the crowded, busy streets were peeled one layer after another. The "big fishes" that were lurking in the deepwater surfaced one by one, revealing their different features in front of Li Yao.
From that perspective, inside the Seven Seas Grand Market, and especially around the Commodity Market, it was like the dark cloud before a major storm. Fatal traps were everywhere.
Li Yao detected seven groups of… unusual people after a random glance.
The first group was a bunch of people in the uniform of the regular guards of the Seven Seas Grand Market. Those people were like the "police" of this place, the defenders of order and peace openly.
By logic, the general policemen couldn't have a high combat ability, and their main job was to calm the people down until the real experts arrived. In the meantime, while the seven policemen were trying to pretend to be normal, Li Yao could keenly sense their toughness from their gaits, postures, and constrictions of pores. The intense stink of blood leaking from their pores could've only belonged to the butchers who survived mountains of corpses and oceans of blood.
Those people were either elite assassins or kings of mercenaries. They could be dominators on any random planets. Why on earth were they working as minor patrollers in this place?
Besides…
Li Yao detected hard, ring-shaped objects on the fingers of the policemen.
Although they had covered the objects with a flesh-colored bionic skin, and there seemed to be nothing at first glance, how could they escape Li Yao's attention?
However wealthy the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors is, how can they afford to equip any random policeman on the street with a Cosmos Ring?
Li Yao sneered in his heart and marked the seven unattractive policemen.
He recorded the heartbeats, breaths, gaits, and body features of the seven policemen and combined them into a series of complicated information. Wherever the seven policemen escaped to, he could lock onto them easily.
Not far away from the area where the seven policemen were patrolling, a dozen merchants in fancy clothes were chitchatting with each other delightedly, as if they had just closed a few big deals. They were fat and greasy and just like all the other merchants.
However, their acting skills were slightly too much. A war was coming, and the Business Alliance of Ten Thousand Sectors was not a sure winner. One moment of carelessness, and all their belongings would be gone. At this moment, most of the merchants were rather uneasy. Even if they had truly accomplished several great deals, their joy was rather restrained.
Those people tried to look casual and comfortable to cover the anxiety in their hearts, but their disguises only betrayed them.
One block away from them, the third group of unusual people was the customers and a boss in a magical equipment store who were bickering.
Their disguises were immaculate, and they were completely devoted to their quarrel, as if they were about to burst into fury and start a real fight.
It was a shame that Li Yao had already seen them arguing inside the store when he wandered on the street with Li Jialing a moment ago. It had been such a long time, and they were still quarreling? Nobody was there to intervene?
It was too fake.
As for the fourth group of people, Li Yao was not even sure if they were real "people".
It was an open van parked in a dilapidated street, fully loaded with rusted battle puppets and the remnants of artificial bodies. At first look, it was picking up the wasted and abandoned artificial bodies from the magical equipment stores on the street.
The ragged, rusty artificial bodies that were covered in dust looked like cold, iron bodies.
But were they really iron corpses?
Li Yao recalled
"Life Claimer", one of the four major assassin groups. The killers in the group were all ghosts. "Hanged Man", their leader, was a powerful competitor for the strongest spectral Cultivator of the Imperium. If the open van was not loaded with outdated artificial bodies but ghost killers with Hanged Man himself among them, what would happen?
The other three groups of people were of similar cases. They were all lurking around the Commodity Market under different disguises.
In the meantime, they were absolutely not the only death dancers on the stage, just the weakest rookies, which was the reason why Li Yao noticed them after only a quick look.
Li Yao had no doubt that more dreadful, stealthy, and fatal assassins were hiding in places he could not see, holding their breaths and stopping the release of their brainwaves, transforming them into cold stones while they waited in patience…
It could be seen from the raging swirls in the air caused by the collisions of the wireless signals and the brainwaves. There were simply too many telepathic thoughts in the air, as if hundreds of experts were releasing their senses and examining the environment.
With Li Yao's capability right now, if he were to boost his brainwaves to the maximum, it would be possible for him to track all the assassins hiding in the dark.
But as a result, Li Yao's head would also become the most brilliant lighthouse that could be detected by everyone within a dozen kilometers.
Naturally, the loss could not make up for the gain.
Therefore, after locking onto the seven most eye-catching targets preliminarily and scanning the structures of all the streets, tubes, and buildings around, Li Yao abandoned the idea to boost his brainwaves and further investigate the environment.
He retreated 90% of his senses and simply left 10% of them around as the extension of his eyes to be the first alarm line.
"Pu—"
Although he retreated most of his telepathic thoughts in time, his brain cells were still seriously worn out. Li Yao felt that his head was dizzy and vomited a mouthful of golden blood.