Chapter 176: Closing the Gap

Words : 1285 Updated : Oct 10th, 2025

Chapter 176: Closing the Gap "Should I call you stupid? Or smart!" This old geezer really knew how to keep himself breathing. If he’d gone snooping around and the ’master’ found out, his fate would’ve been pretty obvious. He was better off just taking wild guesses at the ’master’s’ real identity in his head. "That black-robed guy who delivers the messages is the key to exposing who’s pulling the strings!" Carlos sorted through the intel in his mind. The Golden Sand Society was toast, but the puppet master behind it was still lurking in the shadows. He had a gut feeling that if he didn’t dig out this puppet master, similar organizations would pop up again down the road. "Pain in the ass. What’s this puppet master’s angle in doing all this?" Carlos frowned a bit. Controllers, no matter which city-state they were in, held big-shot positions. If the person behind this was really a Controller like he suspected, then they had serious problems. Running this kind of organization and dealing with traitors while taking such huge risks—what was the payoff? "It can’t be that they’re also buying into the Black Poison Faction’s fountain-of-youth pitch, right?" After thinking for a while, Carlos couldn’t nail down a really good motive. "Whatever. I’ll put the puppet master thing on the back burner for now. In the short term, this person won’t dare pull any crazy stunts." After word of the Golden Sand Society getting crushed spread, the puppet master would definitely lay low and not dare show even a whisper of themselves. Tracking them down would be a real nightmare. Carlos’s game plan was to lean on Red Spirit’s soul reading skills to slowly work through Rock Sand City. As long as the puppet master had underlings in Rock Sand City, he’d eventually stumble across leads. "But this is gonna take forever. Right now, the hot priority is crushing the Black Sinners’ scheme!" From Salimo’s soul waves, Carlos learned that the Black Sinners would soon hold some descent ritual to crack open a passage between the two realms! Once that passage opened up, terrifying high-spirituality freaks would come pouring into the Material Realm. When that went down, all of Rock Sand City would definitely turn into a hellscape of dead bodies and burning wreckage. "This news has to get to Rock Sand City’s big shots. We need to rally every force we can to wreck the Black Sinners’ descent ritual!" How to tip off Rock Sand City’s leadership? Carlos didn’t plan to personally deliver the message. If he went and told them himself, to make them buy it, he’d definitely have to spell out where he got the info. This would blow Red Spirit’s cover and cause a whole mountain of headaches. "I need to dodge that mess." Looking around, Carlos’s gaze landed on a treasure chest stuffed with envelopes. "Bingo!" Carlos immediately grabbed a sheet of parchment and quickly scribbled on it using the Black Sinners’ alien language... After finishing up, Carlos slipped the parchment into Salimo’s treasure chest that was packed with letters. Then Carlos picked out all the treasure chests loaded with letters, clothes, and other junk that was useless to him. "Go haul this batch of treasure chests out and hand them over to Barossa." "Creak!" Several Shield Guards started the move. "This way, they’ll stumble across the Black Sinners’ scheme on their own." Everything would be ’nothing to do with him.’ Since they found it themselves, no matter what, they’d treat it with dead serious attention. After setting that up, Carlos finally turned his focus to the loot. Rare ores, chests overflowing with gold, valuable medicinal materials, bundles of alchemical potions, and tons of blue spirit gear... Though most were middle-of-the-road value, there was a boatload of it. "Did Salimo cram most of the Golden Sand Society’s assets into his own spiritual space?" Carlos gathered up these treasure chests one by one, then called in all his Shield Guards and ordered them: "Go tear apart every corner and bring me everything worth a damn!" Though there were plenty of treasure chests, Carlos figured that such a huge organization had to still have loads of stuff that Salimo hadn’t grabbed. The Shield Guards started the final sweep while Carlos waited patiently. "Counting the time, sis should show up in a few days." The puppet master who was very likely a Controller, the Black Sinners of unknown strength—Carlos desperately needed his sister Iris’s backup. "I’ll find a spot to chill and wait for sis to arrive before making any moves." Right now, things had spun beyond Carlos’s control. He had to play it smart. ... On a road leading to Rock Sand City, a cavalry unit was hauling ass at full speed. The lead rider wore silver-white armor with a silver-patterned greatsword at her waist, her white warhorse running flat out. "How much farther to Rock Sand City?" Hearing their commander’s question, the half-elf female knight behind immediately answered: "Commander, about five more days!" Upon hearing this, Iris’s face scrunched up. "Why does it still take so damn long?" The half-elf female knight replied helplessly: "Commander, this is already the fastest route." Another half-elf female knight chimed in: "Unless we could fly, there’s no way to cut across the twisting rock ridges ahead and get to Rock Sand City any quicker." Iris got that their current speed was already maxed out. Five more days! ’Carlos, you absolutely must not do anything stupid! Wait for your big sister!’ From the letter Carlos had sent back, Iris could see her brother’s ’whatever’ attitude toward the Golden Sand Society. This was seriously worrying. No matter how ’tough’ Carlos claimed to be, it couldn’t make Iris forget the fact that he was only 15 years old. Iris was really worried that those old bastards would play dirty pool, and her brother, with his rookie experience, would easily walk into their traps. ’If those old bastards dare lay a finger on you, they can get ready for the Valois family’s payback!’ Iris was braced for the possibility that Carlos might take some hits or even get hurt. As for his life being in danger, she wasn’t too freaked out about that. Because Carlos had the teleportation scroll she’d given him. No matter what kind of mess he got into, he could still bail out. Suddenly, a carriage showed up in her line of sight. When it spotted her group, it actually started turning around. "That carriage is sketchy! Run it down!" Iris’s sharp instincts picked up a whiff of bad intentions. "Yes ma’am!" ... The carriage driver’s voice was panicked: "Bishop! The psionics behind us are closing in!" The carriage wasn’t fast, and the gap between them was shrinking quick. He whipped the horses like crazy, but these weren’t quality horses to begin with. No amount of beating would make them go faster. Inside the carriage, a badly messed-up man was half-sprawled out. Countless small holes were punched through his body, and the flesh around these wounds was covered with weird golden sand. This golden sand was keeping his wounds from healing up. "Cough, cough, damn witch!" Black Poison Faction Bishop Haswith gritted his teeth through the brutal pain shooting through his whole body and sat up, looking back through the carriage window. Finally getting a good look at the rapidly approaching psionics, "Shit! It’s the Silver Sword Duke!" His face immediately went white as a sheet. This was definitely someone just as dangerous as that woman who controlled the golden sand! Forget about his current condition where he couldn’t even use ten percent of his strength—even at full power, he absolutely wouldn’t dare mess with her.

Chapter 176: Closing the Gap

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