Chapter 110: High Office and Wealth

After agreeing to seek refuge with the Young Master, Lin Xiaofeng was released before long. A specialist was even sent to treat his injuries.

Although his treatment improved dramatically, that did not mean the Young Master regarded him as one of his own. After all, the Young Master was using him merely to add another piece to his chessboard. The fabled “high office and generous rewards” were nowhere to be found; at most, Lin Xiaofeng was no longer subject to restrictions on his movements.

Lin Xiaofeng did not care about such things. What concerned him most were the secrets within the Dark Organization—secrets that, given his former identity, outsiders had no way of learning.

For him, the first matters to uncover were the organization’s origins and its guiding principles. To his astonishment, the so-called Dark Organization had roots far more respectable than he had imagined. At first, he had assumed it was merely a group of scientific lunatics who, thanks to their superior intelligence, had risen above the level of a rabble, becoming a kind of social parasite as tenacious and difficult to eradicate as psoriasis.

Only after becoming one of the enemy did Lin Xiaofeng truly learn that the Dark Organization had originated among the most radical factions within the leading scientific institutions and research programs of various countries. More precisely, its founders had once participated in projects such as the former Soviet Union’s “Inner Earth Research Program” and “Mechanical Soldier Program,” as well as NASA, the NIH, and the NSF in North America; Europe’s “Horizon Program”; and the world-shaping “Smart Manufacturing 2035” initiative.

The unilateralism and trade protectionism that arose in the early twenty-first century caused the smoke of conflict to spread rapidly from the economic sphere into science and technology, the military, and numerous other fields. The Cold War turned hot. Only after the large-scale use of nuclear weapons inflicted irreversible damage upon human society did people realize the importance of cooperation and mutual benefit, and jointly formulate the “Ecological Restoration Program.”

Yet during its implementation, the radicals in the scientific and military fields somehow came into conflict with the authorities. They decisively broke away and eventually evolved into the Dark Organization.

At first, the various countries blamed one another for what had happened. But after the Dark Organization resurfaced following more than a decade of silence, it refused to say a word about its origins, instead presenting itself as something mysterious and unfathomable.

Not only did the Dark Organization’s origins differ from Lin Xiaofeng’s previous understanding; its internal structure was also entirely different from what he had imagined. In the past, the Falcon Investigation Group had pieced together a picture from scattered remarks made by the organization’s members and assumed, without evidence, that it operated like a cult. That assumption was also why Lin Xiaofeng had always wanted to locate the organization’s central headquarters.

Now, however, Lin Xiaofeng knew that the Dark Organization was decentralized. It had no central leader. Instead, it resembled a spiderweb spread across the globe, linking bases of every size. Each base functioned as a small, independent organization. What bound them together was their shared belief in “saving the Earth,” along with an agreement governing the sharing of resources.

The people the Falcon Investigation Group had previously encountered—the mayor of Cash Ridge City and head of the Golden Rooster Ridge base, Jin Ming; the Grand Elder Wu Jianxue; the Young Master Zhao Zeyi; and the Crown Prince, Hitomi Yaita—had all happened, by coincidence, to belong to the same faction. Modeled after the brotherhoods of traditional Chinese martial-arts fiction, it went by the code name Fierce Tiger.

The leader of Fierce Tiger was the father of Zhao Zeyi and Hitomi Yaita.

Having learned that the enemy might be far more powerful than he had imagined, Lin Xiaofeng immediately and secretly passed the information he had gathered to Damin and Brother Long.

By then, Damin and Brother Long had followed the transport convoy all the way to Chile in South America. There, they too made a new discovery.

After the convoy reached Santiago, the capital, Damin and Brother Long found an excuse to leave. They traveled south along the narrowest country in the world until they arrived at Port Williams, reputed to be the southernmost city on Earth.

As the end of the world, this little town of just over ten thousand people did not actually have much to attract visitors. Even its claim to being the southernmost city was challenged by Ushuaia in neighboring Argentina. The main reason Brother Long and Damin had come was that, while in Chile, they had heard certain rumors—rumors concerning the Dark Organization.

It turned out that after Young Master Zhao Zeyi had been arrested by Wu Jianxue and the others, he had been brought here.

Port Williams was an ideal place to imprison someone. Facing Antarctica across the sea, it was nearly impossible to reach by land without crossing primeval forests and frozen ground, making escape virtually impossible. Escape by sea was even more hopeless; the savage westerly drift would teach anyone a lesson within minutes.

To make matters worse, it had been winter in the Southern Hemisphere. The bitter winds were so cold that people scarcely wished to leave their homes. After undergoing major surgery, Zhao Zeyi had been physically weak and especially vulnerable to such frigid weather. Had he not gritted his teeth and held on, he probably would not have survived.

After arriving in Port Williams, Damin and Brother Long not only admired the rare local scenery but also made discreet inquiries among the townspeople about Young Master Zhao Zeyi.

The locals still remembered the beautiful young woman from the East. She had arrived with a group of tourists who claimed that their homeland had finally survived the global disaster and that they had decided to travel together in celebration. That was how they had ended up there.

Before long, however, the group departed, leaving behind only the young woman named Anna and her boyfriend. They said they had not stayed long enough and intended to remain a while longer.

The two of them possessed the reserve typical of people from the East and seldom spoke with the locals. By the time they finally departed aboard a large ship, the townspeople had barely paid them any attention.

Later, another group arrived, claiming to be hunting a traitor. They seemed to find nothing, however, and left as hurriedly as they had come.

The information Damin and Brother Long gathered from the townspeople appeared worthless on the surface. But when combined with what Lin Xiaofeng had learned, everything suddenly became clear. It was not difficult to reconstruct the chain of events.

The information Lin Xiaofeng had uncovered was more or less as follows:

Zhao Zeyi’s parents had actually come from two independent factions within the Dark Organization. His birth was certainly not the result of a powerful alliance. Zhao Zeyi was an illegitimate child. This also explained why he had never been well received.

When he was young, Zhao Zeyi had spent some time with his mother and had several close friends there, especially an older boy named Ryan. Later, Zhao Zeyi’s mother died unexpectedly, and the young Zhao Zeyi was sent to live with his father.

Because the two sides were so far apart, Zhao Zeyi lost contact with his former friends. And because of his unusual identity, he had few friends on his father’s side as well.

The information Lin Xiaofeng had obtained ended there. He knew only that, some time ago, while Zhao Zeyi was being transported after his arrest, he had unexpectedly encountered an old friend from many years earlier.

Although his appearance had changed drastically—even seeming to belong to another sex—the two had still recognized one another. What followed was a carefully staged performance, after which they successfully escaped.

Lin Xiaofeng suspected that the boyfriend of Zhao Zeyi whom Damin and Brother Long had heard about was the childhood friend he himself had learned of. As for the exact nature of their relationship and what they had endured together, that remained unknown.

The secret, however, did not remain buried for long. Damin and Brother Long soon found the answer—after they visited the place where Zhao Zeyi had once lived in Port Williams.