Chapter 607

Strange, why haven't we started yet?

The crowd in the room was already prepared for the meeting, but after waiting for a while, they didn't see the leader who should have been presiding over the meeting speak, so they cast strange gazes over.

Then everyone discovered that the leader, who had just been aggressively issuing successive questions to "Little Bagins," didn't know what was going on now, but was actually staring blankly at Little Bagins.

In his turbid eyeballs, which were covered with bloodshot eyes after staying up all night, fear, doubt, panic, confusion... all kinds of weak and chaotic emotions were present, and coupled with those slightly graying temples, it made him look unusually...

Old.

Right! It's old!

After this strange thought arose in their hearts, the rebels in the room were involuntarily startled.

Their leader's true age should not yet be fifty. Although his appearance was slightly aged and his eyes often carried an inexplicable fatigue, he was still considered to be in his prime.

Therefore, among these rebel members in the room, although some were dissatisfied with his arbitrariness, some questioned his decisions, and some wanted to pull him down to take his place, no one really felt that he was already old.

But now...

"Leader?"

Accompanied by a questioning voice with a slightly rising tone at the end, the gazes of the group of rebels were pulled away from the main seat of the long table and landed on "Little Bagins," who was sitting in the lowest position.

This young man, who was not yet twenty, had a slightly thin figure, but he looked very upright. Even sitting on a low chair without a backrest, his spine was still straight, without the slightest hunch.

And he probably didn't sleep very well last night either; his black hair was slightly messy, and there was even some thin frost on his collar. His eyes were filled with quite a few bloodshot eyes, but those dark eyeballs were still agile and sharp, as if they were exuding the owner's endless energy.

Especially when looking at the leader in the main seat, the focused gaze shot out by those eyeballs had a faint, soul-capturing, burning heat, like a young beast that had discovered an old and weak antelope, baring its sharp fangs at the prey that had nowhere to escape...

Is this the "tiger" in Tiger's mouth? It really is like it...

After witnessing this scene with a sharp contrast, except for little Phoebe, who was sitting in a chair with a milk candy in her mouth, almost everyone in the room had the same thought in their minds.

The leader... seems to have really grown old.

……

Not knowing that his "desire to capture" the middle-aged Joshua had been misinterpreted by the group of rebels as soaring ambition, and having waited for a long time without seeing the meeting start, Li Ang, who was eager to collect intelligence, couldn't help but frown slightly and couldn't help but urge again:

"Lord Nathan!"

"Just now, you first doubted my true identity, and then questioned my true ability, which has already wasted a lot of unnecessary time. Now it is time to continue the meeting!"

After hearing the loud reminder from "Little Bagins," the middle-aged man couldn't help but tremble slightly, finally struggling out of that strange sense of loss. But after meeting the gazes cast by everyone, the agenda he had prepared for the whole night became unusually stagnant, and no matter what, he couldn't say it.

"……"

I seem to know what the thing that just "flowed away" from me is...

Feeling this inexplicable "sense of being dominated" and looking at the gazes of the rebels that were gradually becoming strange, the middle-aged man finally understood what he had lost after the two rounds of games just now.

It was the "right to speak" to actively control the situation, the "trust" gained as a leader, and even the "blind obedience" to himself that had been gradually cultivated because of those correct judgments made in the past!

And these things are the most basic power!

"Although I haven't read many books, politics is actually about making more people believe in you, identify with your judgment, and be willing to listen to your words, thereby condensing the power sufficient to change the status quo."

Remembering the words he heard from "Little Bagins" last night and comparing them with the scene before him, the middle-aged man couldn't help but feel a sense of powerlessness.

So... Little Bagins just revealed those two flaws to me, just to make me make two wrong judgments in front of everyone, thereby shaking the credibility of my words, and then taking the opportunity to snatch away part of the right to speak?

Could it be that before he entered this conference room, he had already started planning to snatch the leader's position from my hands? Or... even those questions from last night were a test of me?

……

With a belly full of questions and a huge sense of crisis like thorns on his back, the middle-aged man, who had no other choice, had to take a deep breath and follow Li Ang's "instructions" to preside over the meeting:

"Today... we need to determine the actions for the next period of time. First is Tiger."

After taking out a few marked maps from the materials he had prepared last night and pushing them across the long table, the middle-aged man stared fixedly at "Little Bagins" and said expressionlessly:

"Your mission is the same as before, still to lead people to set fires in the Lousier Arcade and the surrounding wealthy areas, but the intensity and scope must be constantly expanded!"

Setting fires in the Lousier Arcade?

After hearing middle-aged Joshua's words, Li Ang's eyebrows couldn't help but twitch slightly, and he remembered the mission the red-haired director had once given him: to investigate the arsonist appearing in the Lousier Arcade. (Chapter 116)

So the director really found the right target. If he hadn't gone to the Rose Manor to save people at the beginning, he might have met the anomalous object holder among the rebels earlier than now... Speaking of which, the rebels have been setting fires for so long, but they haven't really set a big fire. I'm afraid the purpose is not to attack the wealthy areas, right?

"Good! This job is not bad!"

Just as Li Ang was frowning and thinking, the burn-scarred man took the map, looked at it, and then smiled with cold intent in his eyes.

"I worked in a smelting plant back then and was almost scalded to death by the material juice that flipped down. Those bastard factory owners insisted they had no money to compensate, but privately they had money to live in such good houses. I've long wanted to set a big one!" "Pay attention to the scale."

After glancing at Li Ang, who did not raise any objections, the middle-aged man turned his head to look at the burn-scarred man and reminded him with a frown:

"Your purpose is not to hurt many people, but to cause panic through large-scale arson, force those wealthy people to put pressure on the Police Department, and try to transfer the patrol power of the capital there to facilitate the actions of others!"

"I know, I know, isn't it just being a target?"

The burn-scarred man waved his hand impatiently:

"I'm very familiar with this job, there definitely won't be any mistakes. You can just say the next one directly!"

"……"

Having no way to deal with this unruly guy, the middle-aged man took another deep breath and began to assign tasks to the group of rebels one by one.

"Oliver continues to be responsible for transactions, but this time, besides finding the Ryan family's arms company to buy weapons, you must also take advantage of the arms trade to focus on probing the locations of several armament warehouses.

Taking advantage of the chaotic period of power transition in the military, we need to seize the opportunity to raid the armament warehouses and try our best to get some high-powered weapons and bombs..."

"Next are Lucy and Luke. Your missions are changed. Lucy, prioritize infiltrating the 'Gear' Shipping Company to investigate the situation of those private ships that do not receive ordinary passengers.

And Luke, you must mix into the Landing Tower, check the flight schedules of those airships heading to the Kroke Kingdom, and lead those members in the organization who have retired from the army to place bombs on the important pillars of the Landing Tower!"

"What?!!!"

After hearing the task assignments given by the middle-aged man, not only did Li Ang, who was sitting at the end, shrink his pupils, but the group of rebels in the room was even more in an uproar.

The pot-bellied Oliver was the first to stand up, his expression stunned as he asked:

"Lord Nathan! You want us to attack the Landing Tower?"

"To be precise, it is to attack an airship heading to the Kroke Kingdom."

After correcting Oliver's statement, the middle-aged man said calmly:

"Blowing up the Landing Tower is just a last resort. What I truly hope for is to be able to kill the sniffers of the Kroke Kingdom and get back all the information they have regarding the mineral deposits in the various counties of the kingdom."

Sniffers of the Kroke Kingdom? Mineral deposit information for the various counties of the kingdom?

"Is there any significance to getting these back?"

The short Luke couldn't help but stand up and question:

"We can't use those materials at all, and that is the Kroke Kingdom, the City of Machines! The strongest country in the entire Western world. The kingdom hasn't finished paying back the money it owed them six years ago!

Not to mention whether this attack can succeed, if we finally blow up the Landing Tower and kill those sniffers, under the pressure of the Kroke Kingdom, the entire kingdom will desperately hunt us down! Even if the assassination of the king succeeds, I'm afraid the consequences wouldn't be as serious as this!"

"I know, but this matter must still be done."

Facing the questioning of the group of rebels, the middle-aged man said:

"I still cannot explain the reason to you, but just like the countless correct judgments I made at those critical moments in the past, if we don't do this, the only thing waiting for us and this country will be a worse result!"

"But..."

"There are no buts."

The middle-aged man knocked on the table and announced calmly:

"Regarding my true ability, you should all have some guesses. Now I can tell you directly that being able to shuttle between all the doors in the capital is indeed only a part of my ability. My true ability is... Little Bagins? What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

After getting up from the chair at the end of the long table and walking to the door of the conference room, Li Ang reached out to the nameplate on the door frame and answered without looking back:

"You say yours, I'll just touch it."

(End of chapter)