From the Ship of Fools to Earl of Wugang

Chapter 105 "The Proxy" Arrives

A faint scraping sound emanating from a flat wooden box on the side of his office desk caught Edmund's attention as he worked.

He opened the box and saw the moon moth inside touching the glass with its legs.

With a small infusion of spiritual energy, the moth specimen's wings began to flutter. Edmund soon learned that the next molting night would take place two nights later.

The club's exchange program might help him fill in the knowledge gaps needed for his promotion, but there's still a guest who has already made an appointment.

That afternoon, a taxi stopped at the back door of the old relief center. A man in his thirties got out. Edmund greeted him in his office, and after closing the door, the man removed his gloves and gave him a remarkably precise bow. The information came to mind.

Julian Weiss

[Currently 43 years old, an "Agent" of the second rank of the "Path of Majesty," commissioned by Prince Conrad to verify information about the Abyss Order.]

He is an attendant to the royal family of the Principality of Plichni; his attitude towards you is more cautious than curious.

The attendant placed the thin leather case he was carrying on the table and took out a photograph.

The photo shows a short, stout, bald man with a prominent mole next to his nose.

Edmund immediately recognized Chuck. He had dealt with the guy quite a bit during his time with the Order and was very familiar with his heinous practice of selecting sacrifices through bars.

"It seems Your Highness has caught him."

"Alive," Julian replied. "His bar, two warehouses, and a vehicle depot have all been taken over. Chuck has provided a new set of numbers, some of which can be corroborated by the statements of the couriers and bookkeepers."

He opened the suitcase and showed Edmund the spoils—documents containing numerous testimonies.

"According to our agreement, I need to receive the second batch of content today, preferably in the same style as before."

Edmund knew that the other party meant it would be best to verify within a few days, without alerting the entire internet.

He flipped through the documents and obtained more information about the new numbers, then took out his notebook.

He circled two numbers with a pencil while verifying the information obtained from the previous raid on the cult's stronghold.

"The old serial number still has the last part, but the new system removes the department letter and splits the area code into the first two groups. The last four digits should be a temporary check digit, which is an old method."

Julian examined the two papers side by side for a moment: "The people in the capital only judged that they might be related, without mentioning any conversion relationship."

"Not surprising, given that they were unaware of the composition of the old ledgers."

Edmund continued writing down several items.

The standard transit method used by the core members of the cult in the past was to sell fish or rent boats in a specific format, marked with area codes and house numbers.

Later, under Edmund's influence, they switched to a telephone voicemail system, with the alternative being to use sample boxes from freight forwarding companies and duplicate bills of lading numbers to complete the handover.

After changing Edmund's design, they seem to have reverted to their old methods.

Edmund wrote down three more shell companies, and finally two names.

Victor Saen, a mid-level dispatcher in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, uses railway medical transport records to cover cross-border movements; Elena Morrow, a ritualistic materials purchaser, manages the supply of medicinal herbs and specimens in the southern part of the consortium.

The attendant watched his movements from beginning to end and finally gave his evaluation.

"Mr. Hall, you also know about the funds, transportation, personnel numbers, and the communication habits of core members." His voice lacked any joy. "His Highness seems to have a rather conservative assessment of your worth."

Edmund pushed the documents over: "This information can be verified quickly."

The attendant looked at him intently: "Do you know where the current leader of the Abyss Order is? This is information we urgently need."

"I was involved in the financial and material transfers, that's true." Edmund met his gaze.

"However, since the prince made his move, the leader must have already moved. Providing an old address now would be pointless; I need more interrogation materials to corroborate my story. What do you say?"

After a moment of silence, Julian put away the notepad.

"I will send this information back to the capital through the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Verification and transmission are expected to take a few days."

He fastened the suitcase and, as he stood up, added, "If this information is largely accurate, the oath between Your Highness and you will be officially valid. As for your true position within the Order, the King will continue to determine that."

After the attendant left, Edmund closed his office and began dealing with two long-delayed spoils of war.

With the prince's agreement settled, Edmund resumed his work at the firm.

Edmund returned to the computer room and raised his right hand. The dark red light in his palm spread outwards, and a gray-brown deerstalker hat solidified.

He put his hat on, then casually took down the painting "The Guide" from the wall, leaned the oil painting against the filing cabinet, and cleared the entire wall to hang nautical charts.

On the table were accident reports, diving logs, ship registration forms, and work notices from Red Anchor Company, all delivered by the union.

The clerk had already entered the text into the computer, just waiting for him to show his skills.

Edmund activated "Element Detection," narrowing his field of vision under his hat brim, and faint outlines of some fields in several thousand records emerged.

Coordinates, vessel number, and operation date are repeatedly displayed.

He first wrote a program to unify the standards of the port authority, the old navy, and the relevant units in Olihagan, and then used the nautical charts of that year to reconstruct the old measurement points.

After compiling the ship numbers into a number lookup table, each record was converted to the same time and coordinate system.

Edmund wrote a conversion program that transformed local coordinates, latitude and longitude, and ship position relative coordinates to the same grid on the new nautical chart.

The numbers on the monitor scrolled by line as the dot matrix printer began to print.

He then used the existing information to deduce the missing locations and printed each batch of results as a dot matrix at the same scale.

Finally, cover the base image with several sheets of semi-transparent tracing paper and secure the four corners with thumbtacks.

Accident sites that were originally scattered across different systems, ship names, and dates have finally appeared on the same sea surface.

The clustering program finished running, and it was completely night outside. Two regions, several nautical miles apart, were displayed on the screen.

The first core is close to the Farian coordinates and has a compact boundary. The location of Matthew Green's last recent communication falls on the outer edge of this core.

The second area stretched into a long strip along the last track of the Black Crown, with the accident site drifting significantly, while most anomalies occurred at similar depths and in limited sea areas.

Edmund took off his deerstalker hat and rubbed his forehead where it had been pressed.

He lacks sufficient data on the spiritual tides and tidal currents over a long period of time, and cannot determine for the time being why the second area moved.

However, the two non-overlapping ellipses on the nautical chart are sufficient to illustrate the point.

Regardless of what the people of Red Anchor are doing in this area, there is only one truth:

The Schenker family has pursued the Old Port and the Black Crown for generations, and the coordinates left by Farian may indeed point to the Old Port.

But those stray tracks seem to need to be interpreted as the Black Crown. Perhaps these are two separate things?