With the recruitment plan aborted, Azrael could only choose to return home and rest.
His and Godfrey's actions clearly wouldn't escalate quickly. After all, while there was a bit of a stir, there weren't actually any casualties. Only one unknown young man died.
However, if Azrael and Godfrey hadn't appeared, the young man would have become a glorious limb-replacing demon, and the outcome wouldn't have been different. It would have been hard on his parents, though perhaps the death of a filial son like him would have been a relief for them.
Until Azrael went to work at the association headquarters the next day, the Onefold Doctrine remained silent.
"Strange," Azrael said, puzzled. "Last time, they retaliated so quickly, didn't they?"
This time, he and Godfrey slaughtered an Onefold Doctrine member right in front of Li Gang, and the Doctrine actually withstood it, a stark contrast to their previous character.
It was as if they had decided to play coward. Something must be wrong when things aren't normal, and Azrael didn't think the Onefold Doctrine would let it go. Their current inaction could only mean they were secretly preparing something bigger.
On his way to the office, Azrael ran into Kavach and Diesel, both of whom looked at him strangely. He knew the reason, though: Autumn's death.
"Tsk," he said with a subtle hint of displeasure as he spotted the expressionless middle-aged man standing outside the vice president's office.
"Director Godfrey? What's up?" Azrael feigned innocence.
Godfrey saw him pause for a moment before speaking. "President Azrael, someone attacked an Onefold Doctrine stronghold last night. Initial speculation suggests it was the Crimson Oath Society."
"Is that so?" Azrael raised an eyebrow. "Did you tell President Kavach?"
Godfrey nodded. "He told me to come to you."
"Is defending headquarters a good excuse?" Azrael grumbled, feigning displeasure.
The director of the Public Security Office pretended not to hear.
Seeing this, Azrael sighed. "Let's go."
There was no need for him to enter the office.
"There must be something special about this stronghold that made you come to me?"
"Yes, President Azrael, you'll see once you see it."
The familiar Sanguin Tower, the familiar two people. But this time, it was Azrael and Godfrey, not Momonga and Bradford.
"Back again," they both thought, though they couldn't show it on their faces.
Together, they reached the secret room on the third floor. It looked completely different from when they'd left the previous night.
The walls were blackened by flames, and most of the limbs and arms hanging from the meat hooks had vanished.
"Tell me what you've discovered," Azrael said, scanning the scene before turning to Godfrey.
Since he'd directly identified it as an Onefold Doctrine stronghold, he must have discovered something.
"President, look at these limbs on the hooks." Godfrey led Azrael to several of them. "This one's human, and this one..."
"This one's a demon."
"So I reasonably suspect this is an Onefold Doctrine facility used to transform demons who undergo limb grafting."
Azrael nodded, confirming Godfrey's theory. "Where are the staff here? Have you asked?"
Godfrey expressed a hint of doubt. "We've asked everyone, and they say they have no recollection of this room."
"But the madam said she was knocked unconscious yesterday by two strange young men named Mr. Lu and Mr. Xu."
With the two individuals involved right here, Azrael felt a momentary strain. Controlling his expression and brushing off the topic, Azrael asked gravely, "Where's the owner of Sanguin Tower? The employees don't remember him, but he can't possibly not remember him, right?"
While the employees might be unfamiliar with the room and simply ordinary people deceived by the Onefold Doctrine, the owner definitely knew about it. After all, the building was completed and he had to come for inspection.
Unexpectedly, Godfrey shook his head. "The boss is missing. We went to his residence but couldn't find him."
"And based on the signs of life inside, it seems no one has lived there for some time."
"By the way, while investigating the assets of Sanguin Tower, our staff discovered a number of unaccounted-for large sums this month, ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions."
Azrael closed his eyes and began to compile the information he had so far. There were only two possible scenarios for the Sanguin Tower owner: either he's dead, or he was once a member of the Onefold Doctrine.
After a long pause, Azrael opened his eyes. "Director Godfrey, please check the recent missing persons information in various areas of Donglai."
"Please pay special attention to ordinary people with criminal records or those who frequently make negative comments."
"Finally, marking them on a map should yield some results."
Godfrey was confused for a moment about what Azrael was trying to do, but he obediently followed his orders.
It's undeniable that for a behemoth controlling the coastal region, the Association's efficiency at full capacity was truly astonishing. In just half a day, all the missing persons reports from Donglai over the past two weeks had been compiled and placed before Azrael, organized by region.
Their home addresses were also marked on the giant Donglai map behind Azrael.
Azrael selected the map of Fuyuke County, where they were currently located, and connected the missing persons with a red line, barely forming a circle. Sanguin Tower was right in the center of the circle.
Then, he followed the same method to connect the missing persons in the rest of the areas.
"Director Godfrey, you should have figured it out, right?"
"Let your people check if there has been any unaccounted funds recently in the consumption places in the center of these graphics."
Godfrey reacted after Azrael drew the first circle. If the Onefold Doctrine had many such places in Donglai, then all the members in each area must be operating near the headquarters of their own area. After all, you can't have members from Fuyuke County going to Laiyang County to recruit supplies.
Not long after, Godfrey received a message from his subordinates, but it was not good news, "President Azrael, we've checked everything."
"But there is only one brothel in the Ludong District that has this situation."
"Just like Sanguin Tower, the owner's gone."
"There have been a number of large expenditures recently."
Hearing this, Azrael waved his hand. "Any clue we can get is great. If the Onefold Doctrine were so easily exposed, they wouldn't have been fighting Master Tempest in the north for so many years."
"Let's go, let's go see what's going on."
At the Golden Phoenix Tower in the eastern Shandong district, Azrael and Godfrey stood in silence, observing the brothel, which seemed somewhat deserted during the day. They both had a subtle sense of déjà vu.
To avoid alerting the enemy, Azrael had the main force wait at a distance while he and Godfrey conducted a preliminary investigation.
As the two entered the Golden Phoenix Tower, the heavily made-up mama-san was initially taken aback. She hadn't expected a stranger to visit a brothel in broad daylight. However, adhering to the principle of treating guests as guests, she greeted them.
"Two of you, "
Before she could finish her words, Godfrey held out his right hand to stop her. "Association business. I ask questions, you answer them."
Unveiled in his right palm was his ID as the Director of the Public Security Office.
Momo almost fainted when she saw the director of the Public Security Office. She had never thought that her workplace would be connected to such a prominent figure in Donglai.
As for whether it was a fake, who would be so bold as to pretend to be a Lore Cardian of the association? Regardless of whether it was a fake or not, as an ordinary person, she would not dare to offend him.
"Sir..."
Godfrey frowned and asked in a deep voice, "Which floor is your staff rest area on?"
Momo, though a little puzzled, answered honestly, "The fourth floor."
"Do you have any architectural blueprints?"
"No."
Seeing that he didn't have what he needed, Godfrey turned to the young man beside him, "President?"
"President?!" Momo's heart nearly stopped.
She hadn't expected the young man next to the director of public security to be the leader.
"Take us to the fourth floor," Azrael said calmly, retracting his gaze from the first floor.
"Yes, yes, my two lords, follow me," Momo wiped the sweat from her forehead and hurriedly led the way.
The servants along the way, seeing the usually arrogant Momo's demeanor, kept their distance. For someone working in a brothel, she had some good sense.
Arriving at the fourth floor, Azrael's powerful mental power swept across. Unfortunately, just like last night, he found nothing.
Godfrey watched silently from the sidelines. He knew that the Onefold Doctrine stronghold in Golden Phoenix Tower, like Sanguin Tower, was hidden by special means. But he couldn't say it, because he couldn't explain the source of the information.
Just as Godfrey was contemplating how to break the impasse, a flat voice came over, "Momo, please ask everyone in the building to leave."
"The association's Lore Cardians will cooperate with you."
Godfrey was startled, as if realizing what Azrael was about to do. "President Azrael?"
Azrael glanced at him. "Director Godfrey, please send a message to the standby personnel to clear the area."
Seeing that his immediate superior had made the decision, Godfrey stopped trying to dissuade him. However, a vague thought still arose in his heart: I felt inferior to Bruce.
Soon, under the gentle persuasion of Momo and the subtle threats of the association's Lore Cardians, the few guests who had arrived during the day were all expelled.
"Hey!" a portly customer tugged at Momo's sleeve. "Do you know what's going on?"
"Why are these devils coming to your shop?"
Momo, well aware of the dangers of talking too much, simply remained silent, shaking her head frantically.
On the fourth floor, realizing he and Godfrey were the only ones left, Azrael immediately summoned Misaka and Aizen.
He planned to tear the fourth floor down. It was just a brothel; he could afford the damage. Besides, if the Onefold Doctrine truly had a stronghold here, the association would naturally foot the bill.
The crowd outside the building heard a sharp thunderclap, and then the fourth floor of the Golden Phoenix Building was instantly reduced to dust.
"Holy shit!"
"Momo, are you demolishing it?"
Momo stared blankly at the scene before her, trying to figure out how to explain it to her boss.
But what happened next made the ordinary people present wish their parents had given them two more legs.
To say the fourth floor was completely reduced to dust isn't quite accurate, as one lone room had survived Misaka's attack. Even a deaf person would know something was wrong at such a commotion.
"Really..."
"One or two, why bother me?"
A helpless voice lingered in their ears, and then a pale figure suddenly appeared in mid-air.
Azrael's pupils shrank as he saw the leader, and he muttered to himself, "Lannide..."
"I've won the lottery."
"But where's Li Gang?"
Azrael only saw Lannide now, not the middle-aged man in the red dragon robe from last night.
In mid-air, the pale female demon once again donned her glasses and gazed down at Azrael with a hint of pity. "How dare anybody dare to challenge me?"
She first glanced at Misaka, "Poor and feeble."
The brown-haired girl's eyes twitched, feeling that the woman in the sky was making indirect accusations.
Lannide then glanced at Aizen, "..."
She seemed to have no desire to judge Aizen.
Hearing Lannide's words, Azrael frowned slightly, a suspicion forming in his mind. "Could those glasses be some kind of detection device?"
Yesterday's performance had already made him suspect they were some sort of detection device.
"Just like Shiraori's identification?"
He quickly dismissed the idea. After all, if it were the same as Shiraori's, then both he and Godfrey's disguises would have been revealed long ago.
"But is Aizen weak?"
[Disguiser]: Aizen's years of disguise prevented others from detecting his true strength.
"Her glasses seem quite limited, then."
"Similar to the combat power detector in Dragon Ball."
Azrael assumed they could only give a rough estimate of a card's strength, unable to detect detailed skill information.
Just as Lannide was about to say something else, Godfrey's [Prime Minister Turtle] struck first.
A high-speed, swirling stream of dark blue water instantly slashed from the ground into the sky.
"Squeak!"
A sharp, grinding sound echoed. The female demon in mid-air, holding an open book, formed pure white defensive arrays around her.
"You've been whining since the beginning." At this moment, a trace of electricity ran through the brown-haired girl's hair. "Poor?"
"You're not that old either!"
"?" Lannide, in mid-air, tilted her head in confusion. A pure white magic circle blocked a coin that was about to fly.
Then she seemed to realize something, "...Boring."
As if losing patience, Lannide flipped the pages of the book in her hand rapidly, and several huge magic circles condensed in the sky. The next moment, flames mixed with lightning fell from the sky.
"Bakudō #81: Dankū."
A gentle voice came, and a transparent barrier suddenly formed in mid-air.
"Boom!"
A deafening explosion sounded, and Lannide couldn't help but raise an eyebrow, "I was wrong."
"Another interesting card."
"It's worth asking the teacher for this opportunity, hahaha."
A strange laugh came from her mouth again, just like when she saw Shiraori last night.
Under Lannide's gaze, the brown-haired man, who had been smiling all the time, now had a gradually cold expression. The black frame of the glasses was removed by his right hand, quietly shattering in the air.
As the man used his left hand to brush his hair back, he spoke in a cold voice.
"Don't get too cocky, ant."