Black Sail
Chapter 146: CXLVI. Newcomer

Chapter 146: CXLVI. Newcomer

Midnight.

Around one in the morning.

There was no difficulty in traveling from the Great Wetland to the Aran Affiliated Country. Within the Affiliated Country, all it took was a little bit of money.

But upon entering the "True Universe Center" of Aran.

Let me translate, what the hell kind of profession is this.

This was an underground tunnel over sixteen miles long, built eighty meters underground. It led from an inn named Nanyue Inn in the Affiliated Country, to a basement cellar of a hotel in the Aran Border City.

And this hotel owner in the Aran Border City was in contact with the boss of one-third of the Great Wetland’s districts, an incredibly mysterious figure rumored to hold a high position in the Aran Court, an anti-imperialist.

If the Emperor were to fall, he and his supporters would make Aran great again.

The tunnel was four meters wide, three meters high, and every five meters there was a long-lasting fluorite that provided a gentle yellow light embedded into the ceiling groove.

Fen was somewhat startled; the tunnel was incredibly sturdy. With a basic understanding of architectural mechanics, he could tell that the sturdiness of the internal and external forces of these steel supports were meticulously calculated. Even earthquakes and natural disasters would not easily cause a collapse. The walls were reinforced with bitumen waterproofing membranes as well.

Without external forces interfering, and barring catastrophic disasters, this tunnel would easily last two to three hundred years.

The floor was level and flat; the concrete was poured thick and even.

It definitely wasn’t the work of amateurs; both the designer and builder were quite skilled, perhaps even with official forces involved.

"Aran’s waters run deep indeed."

Fen had been to Aran before but always as a lofty committee member, treated as a distinguished guest of the Pedan Kingdom; he never touched these surging undercurrents.

This tunnel was obviously not for smuggling; perhaps it was originally built by the anti-imperialists within Aran to facilitate escape from the country.

"It’s like walking in hell itself."

Shadi, who suffered from claustrophobia, was feeling uneasy. The tunnel was somewhat dark and appeared endless. If he were walking alone, he would definitely choose to turn back immediately.

The forty pirates he brought with him were now officially in Aran territory, inoculated; this was to be an ultimate heist. If successful, each participant in the train robbery would get at least ten Golden Dragons, at the minimum.

These forty were selected through multiple rounds of choice from all the crew, the elites of the lot.

Liszt wasn’t sure exactly how much they could rob; he only hoped those ostentatious ladies would wear all their heirloom jewelry and carry a few hundred Golden Dragons to show off.

One piece would be a thousand Golden Dragons, a hundred pieces—that’s, damn it, a hundred thousand!

With Liszt’s audacity, he would at least use a tenth of the earnings to reward the foot soldiers. Soldiers need pay to be motivated for war. If given lousy food instead, one wouldn’t even talk about taking down the Boss, let alone dealing with a garbage merchant ship without mercenaries.

Every pirate was tingling with excitement.

Plundering was the training camp for pirates, and peace was their true battlefield. Internal stability was more critical than anything.

Pirates had two major taboos.

First, having no projects. It was like a salesperson unable to find clients, living daily in a brutal, restless state without money for excessive whoring and gambling, no different from hell.

Second, using others as pawns. If a captain were to include personal gain in project planning, and the brothers couldn’t earn money, purely being used as guns, once discovered, rumors would spread and everything would fall apart.

Now, with a clear purpose, they were on an impossible-to-duplicate ferocious plan, and the welfare system was incredibly attractive.

The Black Sail was like those who caught the first wave of the internet boom.

After walking in the tunnel for half an hour, they reached the end and the steel ladder leading upwards.

The two guides who led the way concluded their task and left towards their homes after giving Liszt several instructions.

Everyone climbed up the ladder, passed through two platforms, and arrived at the cellar of a hotel, surrounded by empty wine racks.

The cellar was always manned in shifts. At this moment, the person on duty was enjoying themselves with a girlfriend, or perhaps takeout, having a blast inside the cellar.

When fifty people crept up, the two were too invested in each other to notice anything. They had already reached the climax.

Returns to senses only to find the room crowded with people.

All members of Black Sail had their faces painted for war.

It seemed the woman was not takeout; brothels were illegal in Aran, making the prices inside Aran Country excessively high, far from the standard of five to thirty copper coins elsewhere, the typical consumer price.

At that moment, the woman’s face was so flushed it almost seemed to bleed, hastily covering her private parts with clothes.

The man, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care. He was a hardened individual used to big scenes, stark naked, conversing with Liszt.

"Who referred you here?"

The man inquired. This tunnel didn’t charge any fees because the hotel owner and nearly a third of the districts in the Great Wetland had cooperative agreements, which operated on an annual buyout system.

Liszt, following the advice of the guide, gave the name of the scar-faced woman from Red Tree Bay Shore.

During the negotiation with Fen and the scar-faced woman, he received a card to use for identity verification back and forth, serving as a token of trust.

Fen handed over a pure black card.

This was no magnetic card; it was crafted from a special crystal, containing a complex array of Magic Energy circuits inside that made it impossible to replicate and was used for identity verification.

In the mainland, the Magic Energy Industry was quite developed; there were even concepts of bank cards, but one needed to have assets of over a hundred Golden Dragons to apply for one.

The small change common folks had couldn’t even come close.

The burly man took the card, counted the number of people, noted the number, and said, "Stay here and wait for me for five minutes; I’m going to verify this."

Having said that, he put on his pants, ready to leave the cellar to attend to the urgent matter above.

"Excuse me, is this takeout that you ordered?"

A pirate asked timidly because since leaving Kersuna Island, they hadn’t ordered takeout. Stirred by the craving, even if it wasn’t the first pick, tasting secondhand freshness seemed good enough.

Since the pirate used polite language, the man was fairly generous.

"Oh, that’s my wife, but it depends on her own will. You guys sort it out."

The man said indifferently and left the cellar to handle his business upstairs.

Even Liszt was quite shocked; as soon as he arrived in Aran, he was given a stern message—this guy was really tough.

Instantly, over ten pirates rushed over to start negotiating and bidding, like starving ghosts pouncing on food, pushing and shoving in a frenzied state.

To their stinginess, the price was even raised to one silver coin.

The man’s wife, overwhelmed by this commotion, noticed that these foreign pirates smelled like swill and didn’t care for cleanliness, with their grimy and gruff appearances, and their tattoos and scars all over the place.

Scared out of her wits, she hastily left the cellar without even putting on her clothes.

"It’s definitely a ’golden’ wedding," Rein commented sharply.

"Is this... normal in Aran?" Shadi asked Claude, not quite understanding.

"Of course not!" Claude’s moral views were shattered; this was truly an odd person.

The group stayed put in the cellar without any reckless actions. As wanted criminals of the Cross Alliance in the safest country, they naturally had to be as cautious as possible, keeping a low profile.

Five minutes later.

The man arrived as promised, with the identity verification already completed.

"You guys brought quite a number of goods this time, almost fifty, damn it."

The man was very professional, distributing temporary identity cards to each person, one for each.

There were plenty of temporary identity cards in the hotel.

Because adventurers were a very peculiar species, lower-level adventurers often pawned their own identity cards in exchange for several dozen silver coins to splurge.

The adventurer cards in the hand of the man were all pawned by the lower-level guys.

Every pirate now had a new identity in Aran, all of them newly minted adventurers.

After three to five bottles and two punches, the brother also knew military boxing. Leave the card number, the heartfelt money; whether more or less, it’s fate.

"Alright, welcome to Aran. You can also go back through here anytime before the end of the year, provided there are no soldiers chasing you, otherwise we don’t recognize people. This tunnel is a very secret existence. But I guess your Boss probably warned you too, if trouble arises and you still run here, then your Boss can’t do business either."

The man didn’t take it seriously, but in fact, if there were soldiers chasing, the hotel owner could still handle it, it just wasn’t part of the deal.

Cutting off the revenue streams of those bosses in the disrupted districts was terrifying; none of their subordinates could handle it, the methods of the devils in the Great Wetland were too terrifying.

South America or the Triangle, they are generally called the Lesser Wetlands.