Chapter 3220: New Investigation Direction

As for the smuggling mentioned by Yierlan, Xia Duo was not sure if it existed; checking the Void Warehouse for dangerous goods that might be smuggled in had some justification, but if one were to record the detailed types and quantities of items deposited and withdrawn by users, that would be going too far.

Even Xia Duo himself did not think this was a good idea, let alone in the current era, where as long as a little bit of wind leaked out, the reputation of the Void Warehouse might immediately rot beyond repair.

This is also the public commitment of all chambers of commerce operating Void Warehouses at the current stage; regardless of whether they actually do it or not, every one of them claims not to view the items stored by users.

In Xia Duo's view, checking and recording the detailed logs of user deposits and withdrawals is not a necessary condition for operating a Void Warehouse; this completely belongs to infringing on user privacy. He is not running those unscrupulous apps from his hometown; he still wants a bit of face, after all.

To him, security checks were already the limit of what he considered the operator could do; anything more would exceed the scope of the operator's authority.

Therefore, unless he catches them in the act, it is very difficult for him to lock down smuggling situations. The reason he returned to check immediately this time was not because of the smuggling mentioned by Yierlan, but because he associated it with the last time.

It was also because of the Illuminati's smuggling that he came up with the idea of checking the Void Warehouse, and as a result, he discovered the Excited State Magic Artifact.

And last time, the Illuminati did indeed use his Void Warehouse to smuggle, and he himself also smuggled, pressuring the Yierlan side by smuggling grain to Ailan, which later led to the plan for both sides to cooperate and develop together.

And the reason I was able to discover the Zheng Shi Hui's smuggling this time is because my "bot" Poson personally participated in the smuggling process and acted as my eyes and ears, so I knew about it.

But that time, Poson participated in the attack, so Xia Shao knew the true culprit of the attack incident and some details; as for the smuggling, that was just knowing about it.

"Difficult, difficult, difficult!"

However, Xia Shao was not too pessimistic. If the possibility of the Darkness Society testing or fishing is excluded, judging by the fact that they are still using the Tower of Time's Void Warehouse, they probably do not have their own Void Warehouse.

Perhaps the Darkness Society arranged for someone else to do it.

But rarity is also relative. For the upper-class Elves, wanting a Semi-plane is nothing more than a matter of how much they are willing to pay; as long as they are determined to have one, they can definitely obtain it.

Don't look at how Xia Shao can now mass-produce Semi-planes; before he achieved mass production, even he had to ask Iolum for one when he wanted a Semi-plane for research, and Iolum's stock was not large either.

Xia Shao felt that perhaps this was a precursor to the Darkness Society's actions, using the attack on the Magic Artifact Factory to cover up some key move, but the plan had an accident, the impact produced by the attack was too huge, and the Yierlan side was highly sensitive.

This is partly because the construction and maintenance costs of a Stasis Space Warehouse are relatively high, while the demand is relatively low; operating this is highly likely to be running at a loss unless there are other businesses to fill that gap.

Building a Void Warehouse does not have a very high technical threshold; the biggest difficulty among them is probably how to obtain a Semi-plane.

It's just that the focus of those reports was not on the warehouse situation of those Void Warehouse chambers of commerce, but more on business data such as revenue and users.

It is mainly that the natural Semi-planes discovered are very few, and man-made ones are very troublesome to manufacture; these two points lead to the fact that even in Netheril, which is in a leading position in the Plane Domain, Semi-planes are extremely rare existences.

Regardless of whether they are natural or not, Semi-planes can be used to build Void Warehouses; it is nothing more than some differences in user experience, and the function itself is no different.

Currently, the Void Warehouse on the Main Plane cannot be investigated for the time being, so Xia Shao thought that perhaps he could start from the Semi-planes outside the Main Plane; with the Plane barrier, there is no need to worry too much about the Darkness Society's divination spells.

But if that's the case, does it also mean that the Darkness Society will not consider those Void Warehouses that are controlled by multiple parties and strictly supervised? This makes their actions even more secretive and even harder to trace!

But in reality—

That is to say, there is no insurmountable threshold for the Darkness Society to obtain a Semi-plane; it is even possible that the ancestors of a certain Darkness Society member passed down several natural Semi-planes.

But there is no problem with the investigation direction going towards Stasis Space Warehouses and towards Semi-planes.

And because this kind of chamber of commerce involves supplying food to the upper-class Elves, it is actually impossible for it to be controlled by a single family, but rather jointly controlled or jointly supervised by multiple families.

From this point of view, the Tower of Time's Void Warehouse is indeed quite special; perhaps it is because of this reason that the Darkness Society chose to keep those two Excited State Magic Artifacts in the Tower of Time's Void Warehouse.

Otherwise, it might really have been successfully stolen by the Zheng Shi Hui using the information asymmetry of all parties!

It's just how should this first step be taken?

Therefore, chambers of commerce that have Stasis Space Warehouses are generally large chambers of commerce, or simply chambers of commerce directly controlled by upper-class Elves.

Because of this, Xia Shao is even more unwilling to cut off the two lines he currently holds—Poson and the Excited State Magic Artifact inside the Void Warehouse.

And in Aoruipusi's market research report, it is indeed mentioned that there are as many as 25 chambers of commerce with Void Warehouse businesses in the Northland, and this is still for Void Warehouses open to the public; those built for self-use are not included.

Thus, he sensed some actions of the Darkness Society beyond attacking the Magic Artifact Factory.

But among all these chambers of commerce, only a mere three or four provide Stasis Space Warehouse services; on average, each Elf country only has one such chamber of commerce.

Returning to the Tower of Time, Xia Shao reorganized his thoughts and finally decided not to contact Aoruipusi; he had originally planned to let the other party help investigate the situation of the chambers of commerce operating Void Warehouses in the Northland!

After all, the purpose of the research is not to track down the Zheng Shi Hui, but to give him a relatively comprehensive understanding of the Void Warehouse market.

If he goes to investigate now, the purpose is too obvious, and it is very easy to let the Darkness Society notice the abnormality.

Thinking of this, Xia Shao felt that he needed to communicate well with Yierlan and even other countries; it would be best to be able to fully exchange their respective new discoveries about the Darkness Society.

In addition, Xia Shao did not specify what kind of smuggling it was regarding the smuggling situation that Yierlan asked Iolum to remind him of; he felt that the Yierlan side most likely only sensed a trace of abnormality and did not have conclusive evidence.

However, Xia Shao traced his memory to check the report at that time, and it did indeed mention the warehouse situation of those chambers of commerce, which were basically conventional space warehouses, and few were Stasis Space Warehouses.

Now he feels that doing so is too big a move, which will make the Darkness Society notice the abnormality; the Tower of Time actually has the market research report done by Aoruipusi at that time.

It is even possible that they don't even know what was smuggled; perhaps they just discovered that the resistance organizations within Ailan were slightly more active, so they judged according to the usual judgment that it was smuggling.

Another point is that the target audience for fresh products that need to be preserved using Stasis Space in the Elf World is also quite limited, and more concentrated on the upper-class Elves; those Elves will not choose chambers of commerce at will.