Chapter 3269 — Discovered

Lute took the elevator to the twenty-ninth floor of the Red Conch Group. He stepped out, walked to the office at the end of the corridor, and knocked on the door.

After a moment, a questioning voice came from inside: "Who is it? What's this about?"

"It's me, Lute, Secretary Fanny." Lute was clearly well acquainted with the general manager's secretary; the moment he gave his name, the office door swung open.

"Good day, Mr. Lute. The general manager is right inside. Please come in," Fanny said politely.

That single gesture told Wei Zhao he had found the right man. It seemed Lute really was a core figure in Red Conch; otherwise he could never have walked into the general manager's office as though it were flat ground. Then again, it made sense—the business managers in the business department might not know, but Lute, as its director, could not possibly have been ignorant of the group's money laundering.

"Lute, what brings you—" a deep male voice began, only to shift tone the instant it sounded: "Fanny, check whether someone's been following outside."

Even as he spoke, the full cultivation of a peak late-stage Heaven Rank grand perfectionist radiated from his body, as though he meant to sweep the area with his spiritual sense and divine perception to find out whether a tail had come after them.

Wei Zhao tensed at once. He had not expected Red Conch to hide such dragons and tigers. He remembered Brother Dafeng saying that the Red Conch headquarters had no truly formidable experts—and now it was plain that Brother Dafeng clearly had not been let in on many of its core secrets.

Wei Zhao instinctively withdrew his probing of divine sense and mental power. His perception had already been detected by the other party; to press on would risk ruining everything.

Since his goal was achieved and he now knew the location of the general manager's office, there was no need to probe any further. Whatever Lute and the general manager discussed, Wei Zhao hardly cared. He was not there to do real business, after all; those commercial secrets were worth nothing to him.

Outwardly, of course, Wei Zhao remained seated in Lute's office with his eyes shut, resting, betraying nothing out of the ordinary.

"Honored boss, there's no one outside." Fanny might be a pretty young secretary, but she was an Earth Rank expert in her own right. Granted, with her strength it was utterly impossible for her to sense Wei Zhao's presence—especially now that he had withdrawn his divine perception, leaving her with not the faintest impression.

"Perhaps I was being oversensitive." The general manager nodded. It had been no more than a flicker of a feeling, but after he circulated his mental cultivation technique and carefully searched the area around the office, even as far as the elevator bank, he found that no outsider had entered. Everything was normal. "Lute, what is it?"

"Boss, it's like this. The purchasing manager of the Bufon family's hotel has come, hoping to work with us on procuring aquatic products." With that, Lute laid out Wei Zhao's terms one by one for the general manager.

"So this Yi Ling has come to mooch off us?" The general manager gave a faint smile. "Handing us a large order, yet not wanting us to make any money?"

"That's right. From what Mr. Yi said, and from what he left unsaid, one can tell he knows we're in the drug business and that these foreign trade deals are merely a front for money laundering. That's why he came to us for cooperation," Lute said with a nod.

"Heh, it's no great matter. With the Bufon family's resources, learning our true colors would be child's play. He's out to take advantage, we're out to launder money—mutual benefit!" The general manager laughed. "We can agree to his terms, and on top of our current lowest wholesale price, knock off another ten percent—but on the condition that his monthly cash flow exceeds fifty million euros."

"Understood, boss. I'll tell him," Lute said with a nod.

"Of course, you can ask him this: if he can push the volume above two hundred million euros, I can go straight to knocking off twenty percent!" the general manager said. In truth, the supplier of the aquatic products was also a subsidiary of Red Conch—an aquaculture company.

That company was not in business to make money; it could not even break even. It survived comfortably only on covert financial backing from Red Conch's headquarters, and its sole reason for existing was to help Red Conch launder money.

After all, the cost of aquaculture was a genuinely slippery thing to pin down. A loss could just as well be called a profit; it was simply a matter of what one's own people said it was.

"I understand." Lute did not linger. Once the report was delivered, he left the office and took the elevator back to his own.

"Fanny, look into the background of this Yi Ling fellow. Ask the Bufon family whether such a person exists," the general manager said to Fanny once Lute had gone.

"Oh? Boss, you suspect there's something off about him?" Fanny asked, startled.

"I don't know. Call it a hunch, perhaps. Earlier I felt a high-level cultivator probing this place. I don't know whether it has anything to do with this Yi Ling," the general manager said.

"Ah! Understood. I'll contact the Bufon family shortly," Fanny said, nodding quickly.

"Tomorrow we do business with President He of the Overseas Cultivators Association. That old thing is a wily old fox—I'm afraid he may be plotting some scheme," the general manager went on.

"Oh? Boss, you mean this Yi Ling is one of the Overseas Cultivators Association's people?" Fanny blinked.

"Yes. I fear they've come to scout the place. If they trade honestly, fine—but I dread that they won't," the general manager said with some worry.

"Boss, why is the Overseas Cultivators Association dealing in drugs? Aren't they cultivators? They never used to touch this sort of thing," Fanny said, puzzled. It was a question she had meant to ask earlier.

"Cultivators they are, no mistake. But for some reason—word is they're short on money. I couldn't well pry further; the Overseas Cultivators Association is a transcendent organization, and I don't dare investigate them too closely or offend them," the general manager said with a shake of his head.

Fanny clicked her tongue and did not dare press further. Red Conch was quite domineering in ordinary times, wasn't it? Yet compared with the Overseas Cultivators Association, it still fell far short. After all, the Overseas Cultivators Association was a proper organization where cultivators gathered in numbers, while Red Conch was merely a drug-trafficking ring with cultivators sitting on its board.

Back in his office, Lute enthusiastically relayed the general manager's terms to Wei Zhao—whose heart, of course, was never in it.