A Pawn's Passage

In this world, money could solve 99% of all problems.

Ziguang Society moved with remarkable speed. The day after Zhang Yuelu paid them, they had already mapped out all warehouse locations owned by the Nanyang United Trading Company.

There were a total of 28 warehouses. Seven of them were large warehouses, six of which were located in the port district, used for bulk cargo transfer, with constant traffic.

The remaining large warehouse sat near the Company’s headquarters, used to store valuable goods that were rarely put on the market.

There were also 12 medium warehouses and 9 small ones, scattered throughout the city. Though called “small,” each could easily hide a few hundred people, making these the most suspicious locations.

Ziguang Society had only planted one operative inside the company—the chief secretary of a senior executive. However, she knew little about the slave-trading operations. Thus, finding the exact location of the captives would still take time.

Zhang Yuelu’s logic was straightforward. Legitimate trade did not need investigation, but slave trading violated Daoist law. As long as she found the warehouse holding the slaves, that alone would be sufficient evidence. That way, she could openly station forces inside the Company and conduct a full investigation, eventually exposing their weaknesses and pulling up the entire network by the roots.

If there was a storm, it did not matter who fell into the water first or last. None of them would escape.

Aside from this, Lion City also had an underground auction house. It was obviously illegal, entirely different from the official auctions held by the Daoist Order.

This underground auction also sold humans. But its owner was not the Nanyang United Trading Company. It was the Heavenly Court. Although Heavenly Court was nominally the Taiping Sect’s private army, the latter could not fully control the former, just as Zhang Yuelu still had to pay the Ziguang Society for help.

The Heavenly Court acted as local warlords across Nanyang, doing whatever they pleased. If they dared kill, why wouldn’t they dare sell people? For profit, nothing was off-limits.

In truth, even the Li family was unwilling to police the Heavenly Court’s messes. After all, expecting a band of pirates to follow Daoist laws was nothing short of fantasy. As long as the Heavenly Court obeyed orders and cooperated when needed, the Li family turned a blind eye to their deeds.