I See through Everything

Chapter 114: Chapter 92: Muddying the Waters

"No! How could you do this? I want to see my lawyer—"

SLAP!

Another slap landed on the other side of Aleksey’s face, knocking out a tooth and leaving a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.

"A lawyer? Do you have any idea how many people disappear in the Baltic Sea every year, my dear Mr. Aleksey Ivanov Ukovsky? The moment you chose betrayal, did you ever stop to think about the consequences of getting caught?"

"*Gasp, gasp*... Don’t kill me! I’ll talk! I’ll talk..."

"I barely touched you, and you’re already on your knees. How disappointing. I expect you to confess everything. Don’t even think about hiding anything. Look at the others around you. If you don’t talk, they will. There’s no need to be stubborn."

"I’ll tell you everything! I’m begging you, please spare me!" Aleksey pleaded, sobbing uncontrollably.

The other cowards in the cell watched with lingering fear.

Soon, under the agents’ all-night interrogation, these cowards spilled every last detail.

Although they were merely pawns of the Locke Consortium, these men had sold out more than just Lucia’s trade secrets.

After all, there are very few purely commercial secrets in this world. The larger the corporation, the deeper its involvement in all manner of affairs.

This was why agents had been dispatched to raid these people in the first place.

...

Meanwhile.

In Magong Town, Jiang Miao was watching the conflict unfold from the sidelines.

He didn’t know what the various factions’ internal arrangements would be, but he didn’t need to. He was the one who had sent out the classified documents. He just needed to check on the recent status of the targeted individuals to understand what was happening.

First, he looked up the day’s international news.

He bypassed the firewall and went straight to the foreign internet to search for relevant stories.

Sure enough, news sections in every region showed at least some related information.

For instance, at a military base belonging to Gaul in North Africa, a dozen or so officers had boarded a helicopter and plunged headfirst into the Sahara Desert, leaving no trace behind.

In another case, an oil company’s offshore drilling platform in the Persian Gulf had suddenly exploded, wiping out the dozen or so company executives who were in the middle of an inspection.

Then there was the head of a media company in Siam who had committed suicide by jumping from a building the previous night; the CEO of a railway company in An Nan who had died from a heart attack last night; and over twenty managers of a European Union telecommunications company who were killed in a bomb attack during a meeting...

Hundreds of similar stories appeared all over the globe overnight.

Jiang Miao, however, smiled when he saw their names. They accounted for less than a fifth of the names on the list he had provided. ’There’s still plenty more drama to come.’

’These capitalists really are ruthless,’ he thought. ’To get rid of the moles, they blew up the entire drilling platform, workers and all.’

Jiang Miao figured they hadn’t used other, slower methods to deal with the moles because they were afraid of tipping off the others. Besides, these moles had already formed a deeply entrenched network within the companies. If the traitors caught on, they could inflict even more severe damage.

Therefore, sacrificing a drilling platform to wipe out all the moles at once was a way to cut the Gordian knot.

In truth, this was partly Jiang Miao’s doing.

After all, when he sent out the classified documents, each faction assumed they were the only recipient, unaware that many other powers around the world had received them too.

This led to a misjudgment.

After all, the Locke Consortium was so powerful that these factions didn’t dare to openly purge its agents. They could only resort to "accidents" to eliminate them.

Had they known that other powers had received similar intelligence, they probably wouldn’t have chosen to act in the shadows. Instead, they would have used more direct and open methods.

「Overnight.」

The Locke Consortium lost nearly a third of its hidden agents deployed across the globe.

This development greatly shocked Noah A. Locke, who had just arrived at Locke Manor in Los Angeles, preparing to take over the Locke Consortium.

The butler, Bain, looked utterly panicked. "Mr. Noah, this is the news from our major global divisions this morning. Some of them have gone completely dark."

"Fuck! Are those bastards trying to wipe us out?" Noah A. Locke snarled. "Bain, tighten security at the manor! If you want to destroy the Locke Consortium, I’ll make sure you don’t get off easy!"

Clearly, he had been misled.

It wasn’t surprising Noah A. Locke thought this way. After all, when it came to understanding the Locke Consortium inside and out, only the other nine great consortiums within America had that level of knowledge.

Now, the Locke Consortium’s assets all over the world had suffered a devastating blow virtually overnight.

Noah A. Locke’s first thought was that the other American consortiums were behind this—that they had even joined forces to completely annihilate the Locke Consortium.

Just as his mind was racing with these thoughts, and he was preparing to take them all down with him...

RING... RING... RING...

The landline in the study rang.

Bain quickly advised, "Mr. Noah, it’s the secure line. It’s likely one of the heads of the other consortiums."

Hearing this, Noah A. Locke frowned. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked up the receiver. "Hello? Who is this?"

"Is that you, little Noah? This is your Uncle James."