Mystery: When the Lost Homelanders Meet the Lost Homeland Call

The eldest brother squinted his eyes.

"I'm asking you a question," he said. "Are you that—"

"I've already answered your question," Lynn interrupted him. "Now it's your turn to answer mine."

One of the bodyguards next to the desk couldn't take it anymore. He raised his rifle, pointed it at Lynn's head, index finger on the trigger, and roared, "Who the hell are you talking to—"

He didn't finish speaking.

Lynn didn't even stand up; he simply raised his hand with lightning speed and grabbed the bodyguard's gun barrel. The barrel began to bend, and the steel made a piercing creaking sound under the silent pressure, like a broken bone.

The bodyguard retreated in terror, his back instantly soaked with cold sweat.

With a "bang," the deformed rifle fell to the ground.

The other three bodyguards exchanged a glance and simultaneously raised their guns to fire. But before their fingers could pull the trigger, they felt a numbness in their wrists, as if they had been branded with a hot iron. The rifles slipped from their hands and clattered to the ground.

Lynn withdrew his gaze and looked back at his boss.

"Your person isn't very polite," he said. "Do you need me to discipline them?"

The boss's expression changed.

He had seen powerful figures. Having lived in Tingen City for so many years, he certainly knew that some people were not to be trifled with: those dressed as church personnel, those officials wearing special badges, and the most terrifying cult members.

With a flick of the wrist, one can twist steel into a pretzel; with a blink of an eye, one can disarm someone. This is not something a human could do; it is clearly the work of an extraordinary being.

The boss had heard his subordinates' reports, but his experience in the underworld made him subconsciously feel that they were exaggerating.

More importantly, he couldn't understand why an extraordinary person would target him so much!

The other party is not a church member, and the way it is handled is not in the church style. Just because an unrelated poor person was beaten, does that mean that an extraordinary person should wipe out the entire gang?

Is this reasonable?

  

Clearly, whether it made sense or not, the extraordinary one was standing before him.

Moreover, this extraordinary individual was more powerful than anyone he had ever met.

"What...what exactly do you want?" The leader's voice trembled slightly, but he tried to remain calm. "If you want money, we can talk. The guild has saved up quite a bit over the years—"

"I don't want your money," Lynn said. "Your money is dirty. Using dirty money to buy your life? That's too cheap for you."

The eldest brother's face turned even uglier.

"What do you want?"

"The ledgers," Lynn said. "All the ledgers. All the loan records, all the contracts, all the receipts, all the bribery records."

He paused.

"And the names of your protectors."

The leader was silent for a few seconds, then shook his head.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "We're a legitimate guild, we don't have any protection—"

"Stop pretending." Lynn stood up, walked around the desk, and stood in front of his boss, looking down at him. Lynn raised his hand, and a ghostly green flame rose from his fingertips.

"I don't intend to try you directly for the crimes you've committed. But you must first hand over the ledgers. As for your life or death, that will be decided by the residents of the dock area."

The boss's lips trembled, and beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.

He knew he had no choice.

But he still wanted to take a gamble.

"You...do you know who my cousin is?" he said through gritted teeth. "The head of the Tingen City Police Department. If you mess with me, the entire Tingen police force will be after you. Do you know how many councilors I'm connected to? Do you know—"

Lynn laughed, with an indescribable irony.

"Chief of the Public Security Bureau?" he repeated, as if savoring the word. "A councilor?"

He shook his head.

"You think I care about that?"

A ghostly green flame rose from Lynn's body, turning the entire room into an eerie color. The flame didn't burn anything, but the pressure emanating from the warp, a pressure not belonging to this world, made everyone present feel as if their souls were being torn apart by something.

The eldest brother opened his mouth, as if to say something, but couldn't utter a single word.

His four bodyguards had collapsed to the ground, convulsing and foaming at the mouth. Their mental state was simply unable to withstand this level of pressure, and they couldn't even retain any memories.

Only the eldest brother remained somewhat conscious, not because of his strong willpower, but because Lynn deliberately controlled the pressure, targeting only him.

"The ledger," Lynn spoke again, each word like a hammer blow to the boss's heart, "Now."

The eldest brother broke down.

With trembling hands, he took a tin box from a hidden compartment in his desk, opened it, and inside was a thick stack of account books and dozens of sheets of paper filled with names and numbers.

Lynn picked up the top sheet of paper and glanced at it.

Will Hopkins, Sheriff of Tingen.

Henry Crawford, District 3 Councillor.

Alfred Morris, a councilor for District 7.

……

A densely packed list, with each name followed by the amount of "tribute" the Hammer Gang gave to these people each year.

Lynn folded the paper and put it in his pocket.

Then he turned his head and looked at the boss, who was slumped in the chair.

"Your brothers are still lying in the dock area square." Lynn patted his shoulder, leaving a faint, eerie green mark on the other's shoulder with his fingertips. The boss's body immediately went limp, as if all his bones had been removed, collapsing into the chair like a pile of mud. He was still conscious, but his limbs were completely unresponsive.

"You should go too."

He dragged his boss and bodyguards along and began confiscating the gang's illegal gains.

He first went to a hidden room in the dock area where the Hammer Gang was hiding. It was an abandoned old cellar with the entrance hidden behind a false wall. If it weren't for the green flames permeating the entire building, Lynn might not have been able to find it even if he had to demolish the whole building.

Lynn pushed aside the false wall, and a ghostly green flame rose from his palm, illuminating the scene in the cellar.

The vault wasn't large, only about ten square meters, but what was inside made him pause for a moment.

The shelves against the wall were stacked with banknotes, mostly in Ruen gold pounds, but also in Fenerbaht francs and Intisfel gold, as well as some currencies from the southern continental colonies.

In the corner were several small boxes. Lynn opened one, and inside were jewelry pieces—gold rings, silver necklaces, brooches set with rubies, and pearl earrings, some of which were exquisitely crafted and clearly valuable. The other boxes contained silverware, antique pocket watches, and even a few beautifully decorated pistols.

Lynn roughly estimated that the cash alone amounted to at least five or six thousand gold pounds, and with the gold and silver jewelry, the total value might be ten or twenty thousand gold pounds.

Ten thousand gold pounds.

This number left Lynn silent for a long time.

He had studied history and knew that for a relatively developed city like Tingen with import and export trade, the total assets of the gangs that controlled the docks could exceed 100,000 pounds. However, when there was actually 10,000 pounds in cash in front of him, the stark contrast still shocked him.

He had read in the original book that the Moretti family's weekly living expenses were less than one gold pound, Benson's weekly wage was one pound and ten sous, and an ordinary worker's weekly wage was even less than one pound. Ten thousand gold pounds would be enough for a family of four to live a decent life for hundreds of years.

Moreover, this is just cash; the real income of this gang and guild complex lies in assets that can generate money.

The guild's monopoly on labor created a stable pool of cash. The guild used apprenticeship fees and membership fees to restrict entry into the workforce, squeezed money out of workers through daily and weekly wages taxes, and extracted money from shipowners through the licensing system.

After acquiring gang violence, they also forcibly established guild taverns and general stores to make exorbitant profits, charged "security fees" to suppliers, and precisely stole and sold high-value, damaged goods. They then used the collected wages to lend back to workers at usurious interest rates and embezzled mutual aid funds, among other methods.

Not to mention the money that gangsters often make from casinos and brothels.

All of this money was squeezed out of the dockworkers and the poor.

Behind every banknote lies a pair of shoulders bent by usury; behind every piece of jewelry lies a forced prostitute; behind every gold coin lies a family driven to despair.

"The money will be used to pay off the debt."

Lynn packed all the banknotes and gold and silver into a sack he had prepared beforehand, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and left the cellar.

In the square, over a hundred unconscious gang members were bound with ropes and piled up densely, resembling some kind of undignified human sculpture. Old Neil stood at the edge of the square, a loaf of bread in his hand, watching Lynn dragging a man in a large burlap sack and his boss approach, his lips twitching.

"Old Neil, what brings you here?" Lynn threw his boss into the crowd, clapped his hands, and looked at Old Neil while holding the sack.

"Older people don't sleep much; three hours is enough for me to rest. I originally wanted to come to their headquarters to see you, but I ended up seeing this instead."

He pointed to the crowd gathered in the square.

"Is there a problem with the spiritual aspect?" Lynn adjusted the order of the crowd to make sure no one was crushed to death, while also checking on Old Neil's condition.

"It's been better than ever before," Old Neil replied with great enthusiasm. "After completing that grand ceremony yesterday, I felt something inside my body dissolve and merge with my spirit."

"I'm in good shape right now."

"It seems you've digested the potion." Lynn nodded, then focused intently on Old Neil. From the perspective of analyzing the world, Lynn saw that some stagnant points of light in Old Neil's spirituality dispersed and evenly merged into the spirituality.

Lynn's reshaping was a complete replica, with only minor repairs to some damage. He didn't touch the potion part at all, so the digestion progress didn't change much.

It seems that the warp cannot directly provide feedback to potions, otherwise he would have digested my information by now. Lynn silently kept this in mind and then explained the role-playing method to Old Neil.

After responding to Old Neil's thanks, Lynn looked at the morning light on the horizon, then at the group of gang members in the square, and took a deep breath.

"Now, it's time to inform the people in the dock area."

He paused, a slight smile playing on his lips.

"After dawn, there will be a trial here."