Strong-Weak

Back at the luxurious high-rise office building where Ronald's father, Arnold Kuangge, was currently working at, as Arnold was quickly reading, flipping through, and signing stacks upon stacks of documents that were pilled on top of each other on his desk...

*Knock*

*Knock*

"Busy." Arnold simply uttered out in a loud voice while still focusing his gaze on the papers in front of him.

However, the person on the other side of the door didn't leave like Arnold had expected him to but instead recited a phrase back.

"Whispers of the moon, secrets entwined in starlight."

Upon hearing those words, Arnold couldn't help but click his tongue as he briefly stopped working for a moment, glanced at the camera that was at the top corner of the office room, and nodded at it.

Soon after, the office door automatically opened and a middle-aged man with a good physique and dressed in relatively normal clothes walked in.

"Didn't I tell you guys not to disturb me for the next couple of weeks unless if it was important? Any business or territorial related problems should be handled by an Overseer or someone below during that time." Arnold asked in a displeased voice without paying any attention to the man whatsoever.

"Yes sir, everyone received your message without fail, but since it's regarding about Overseer Kedron, I can only report this to you." The man replied back with a serious expression on his face.

"What's he whining about now? If he's already getting bored staying by my son's side then tell him to just deal with it until my son comes back and gets the Princess situation dealt with." Arnold scoffed.

"No sir, it's not about that... you should take a look at this." The man then pulled out a photograph out of the envolope he was holding and placed it on Arnold's desk.

Arnold initially didn't look at the photograph right away and continued signing papers, but as the photograph appeared over his peripheral vision, he immediately stopped working and grabbed the picture off of his desk in a hurried motion.

And after double and even triple checking that his eyes weren't just deceiving him, Arnold finally looked at the man with a muderous look on his face.

"Kedron is dead. Am I interpreting this correctly?" Arnold questioned in a cold tone.

"Yes sir." The man respectfully answered back.

Had it been for almost anyone else standing infront of Arnold, they would've most likely pissed themselves out of fear, but since this man was a cultivator who had gotten promoted to a high position recently and is now working directly under Arnold's command, he showed no signs of being scared whatsoever.

"..." Arnold didn't reply back but leaned over on his chair and stared up at the ceiling.

With the amount of resources and manpower he spent distracting most of the global powerhouses and secretly moving Kedron internationally from the US over to China, he had been positive that nobody knew where Kedron's location was besides a few selected people.

And even if somebody did find out, there was almost absolutely no way that anybody could've actually killed Kedron.

After all, Kedron's strength and abilities were already far beyond the typical average cultivator despite not being a cultivator himself.

So the fact that someone managed to track him down and kill him clearly meant that the person was deliberately targetting the Kuangge family, and might even know that the Kuangge family in China is the same family as the one in the US.

Who though?

Based on the angle and how clean the cut of Kedron's severed limb was, it was pretty obvious that the attacker used a curved weapon, most likely either a dagger or katana.

However, Arnold felt that it shouldn't be the case at all.

Due to the little advantages a dagger provides once someone becomes stronger and stronger, Arnold was positive that there was nobody in the entire world that wielded a dagger and was stronger than Kedron.

And while the attacker could've used a Katana, the thing was that Katanas were only popular amongst Japanese people.

And let alone offend anyone from Japan, he hasn't even interacted with any Japanese people in his lifetime.

Not only that, but there shouldn't even be any non cultivators that could even kill Kedron.

"Did Jang In-Su conduct any deals with any Japanese people in the past 3 days?" Even though Arnold knew this wasn't likely the case, he still asked the man while looking up at the ceiling.

"No sir, Overseer Jang In-Su hasn't interacted with any outsiders after arriving back to Korea." The man replied.

"This is quite a dilemma then." Arnold sigh in his heart as he continued to rack up his brain.

Just as Arnold was deep into his thoughts however, he realized something absolutely nerve-wracking.

"My son! Is he okay?!" Arnold suddenly jumped out of his seat and ferociously roared out loud.

"Yes sir, my subordinate saw Young Master Kuangge peacefully dining with the Young Master of the Gu family the day after Overseer Kedron died."

"Good to know that the family bodyguards are properly doing their jobs." Arnold breathed a sigh of relief as he slowly sat back down on his chair.

Although the Kuangge family bodyguards were significantly weaker than the Kuangge Overseers and most of the Kuangge elite guards in terms of offensive power, since most of them were raised and trained together at a very young age, they have extremely good synergy with one another.

Sure, while that might not sound impressive at all, the actuality of it was that it was much stronger than one would expect.

After all, to be able to work together as a group and cover each other's backs, coordinate different attacks, adapt to changes, and make use of each other's strengths and weaknesses just by sole instincts and not even have to communicate with each other at all was ridiculously overpowered especially in situations where every milliseconds counted.

Hell, even most of the Kuangge elites wouldn't even be able to defeat any Kuangge bodyguard in a 1 versus 2 fight despite being a full cultivation realm higher, which is typically unheard of in the cultivation world.

"About that sir, your son didn't bring any of the family bodyguards over with him." The man said.

"That stupid brat! You're telling me the only guards he actually has are the 4 men Kedron brought along with him?" Arnold screamed out.

"No sir, according to their testimonies, apparently about a few hours after Overseer Kedron's death, Young Master Kuangge ordered them to go back to the Kuangge family manor and await orders there."

"And they just listened to him without even questioning why?" Arnold said.

"Yes sir, since Overseer Kedron didn't properly convey to them that they were there to protect the Young Master under your request, Kedron's orders ended up being overridden by the Young Master's order."

"So what you're saying is that my son is currently completely alone over at the capital city, yes?" Arnold questioned in a frighteningly calmed tone.

"Besides his personal maid he brought with him, yes sir."

"Since when did he appoint himself a personal maid?" Arnold said with a confused look on his face.

"About a month and a half ago, sir."

"Who is it?" Arnold asked.

"No idea sir, she had never worked for us prior to the Young Master hiring her as a personal maid."

"An outsider then? Did anyone run a background check on her?" Arnold stated.

"Young Master Kuangge personally vouched for her so nobody did. Should we run a background check on her anyways?"

"No need, if my son doesn't care then it doesn't matter. I would've known about her much earlier if she was truly a threat to my son. Tell me how many available elites and personnels we currently have in this city." Arnold said.

"2 elites and 216 personnels including gate guards and bodyguards, how many shall we send over to Young Master Kuangge?" Immediately assuming that Arnold wanted to send people over to his son, the man asked.

To his surprise however...

"We don't need to send anyone over to my son." Arnold replied back in a calm tone.

After hearing what Arnold stated, the man couldn't help but blink at Arnold a few times before asking, "Sir... I don't mean to question your orders, but isn't it a bad idea to leave your son over at the capital city without any family guards?"

While the man hasn't worked under Arnold for very long and barely even knew about any of his feats, it was common knowledge amongst all the people working for the Kuangge family that Arnold valued his son greatly.

So the fact that Arnold seemed to not care about the safety of his son, especially at a time when his son needed protection the most, felt particularly odd to the man.

"Logically speaking, yes, it would usually be a bad idea to leave my son by himself when the Kuangge family is being targetted, however, it's clear that he's not considered a target." Arnold stated confidently and intended to leave it at that.

But seeing as how his subordinate still had a confused look on his face and seemed to still have doubts however, Arnold decided to elaborate further.

"Think about it, if my son was also indeed being targetted, they would've already done something to him, right? But since they didn't do anything to him after Kedron was killed, it's safe to say my son's of no value to them. At most they're trying to create the illusion that they're going to do something to him in order to lure me out." Arnold announced confidently.

"That makes more sense now, but I strongly still believe that we should send some people over just in case if..." Before the man could finish his sentence however, he had noticed that Arnold's mood suddenly shifted and was now staring at him dead in the eye, causing the man to immediately stop talking.

"As someone who only takes orders from me, I've granted you permission to argue and question some of the decisions I make that don't seem to make sense, however, don't push it too far, especially when it comes to my son's well-being, understood?"

"...My apologies sir, you're right." The man slightly bowed down and apologized.

"It's fine." Arnold waved his hand to dismiss his apology and continued, "Is there anything else important I need to know about?"

"Yes sir, here." The man then proceeded to pull out another 3 pictures from the envolope and handed it to Arnold.

And upon seeing the three photos, Arnold couldn't help frown.

Based on the first two photos shown to him, it was painfully obvious that The Golden Cobra had failed to defend his facility and died.

And while Arnold didn't really care about it all that much considering that The Golden Cobra didn't work for the Kuangge family, since they were still quite affiliated with one another, Arnold had a strong feeling that the forces behind this attack were also the ones that had killed Kedron and are deliberately also going after his affiliates.

It definitely wasn't any mere coincidence that both Kedron and The Golden Cobra had died within a span of a day from each other after all.

This also confirmed to him that someone knows that both the Kuangge family in China and in the US are one of the same.

Now if that wasn't bad enough, in the third picture shown, there seemed to be no dead bodies of any of the facility's test subjects laying around anywhere at all, which means that the attackers most likely kept all of the test subjects alive.

And if that is actually the case, that also means that...

"The cultivator that was being experimented on, Lin Minyi... she's also free, yes?" Arnold questioned.

"If you're talking about the woman with the long grey hair then yes sir, she was last spotted walking towards the mansion where her younger sister lived." Slightly surprised that Arnold already knew about Lin Minyi before he had even mentioned her to him, the man couldn't help but pause for a second before answering.

"Walking? With her own two legs?" Arnold questioned in a somewhat curious tone.

"Uh... yes sir." Unaware of Lin Minyi's previous conditions, the man replied back in a confused tone.

"That's interesting..." Arnold's lips slowly curled up into an amused smile.

Although he wasn't really surprised about Lin Minyi somehow managing to get cured despite having an extremely rare disease, nor did he really care about it, the fact that she had managed to get cured meant she could most likely talk again.

And if that was the case, then he could just easily get her to tell him who had saved her back at the facility.

So with that in mind...

"Equip 1 elite guard and 20 of the strongest Kuangge family bodyguards with our latest armor and send them over to the capital city to recapture Lin Minyi." Arnold ordered.

"But sir..." The man spoke with an uncomfortable look on his face.

"What is it now?"

"According to the database that we managed to grab from the facility, Lin Minyi is at the 9th level of the Innate realm."

"And?" Arnold said.

"You don't know this since you're not a cultivator sir, but the difference between a cultivator in the Qi Transformation realm and one in the Innate Realm is like the difference between an ant and a human. I suggest spending an extra couple of days rallying up all of the Overseers and figuring out how to capture her alive."

After hearing those words come out of the man's mouth, Arnold didn't immediately reply back but smiled at the man in a simple but yet so menacing manner that it sent shivers down the man's spine despite fully knowing that he was stronger than Arnold.

"I'm a weak man, there's no doubt about it, but don't let your ignorance of me and my family fool you like it did with everyone else." Arnold then slowly got off of his chair, turned his back towards the man, and looked down at the city through the glass windows, "Let me ask you something, did you know who my wife was?"

"Yes sir, I'm aware of her existence." The man nodded.

"Then answer me this, despite being the strongest cultivator to have ever lived in history, why do you think that she chose to marry me over the other 8 billion people in this world?"

"..."

"Was it because of my charisma? Was it because of my wealth? Or perhaps was it because of my intellect?"

"..."

"No, it's none of that." Arnold then suddenly turned back around and looked at the man again.

"The real reason why is because in this world where the law merely provides a false sense of security for the weak and true power means everything..."

"I still prevail in the end."