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"We\'ve invested so much into the interception, and you are telling me it all failed?!"

This wasn\'t the moment when the news of the string of failures reached the ears of those responsible for planning and then putting them into action. Instead, this was the moment when, right upon leaving his short seclusion, the patriarch of the family had to endure the constant face-slapping of seemingly endless failures.

Yet, for all of his rage, the old man\'s mood nigh instantly swung back to a perfect calm, showcasing the level of control he had over his own mental state.

A deed… or rather, an ability worthy the man hailed to be the strongest in the entire province!

"Let me first make sure that I\'ve heard everything correctly," Adean, the family\'s patriarch, uttered in a cold, seemingly emotionless voice as he stared at the first in line of his heirs who followed the protocol and rushed to report as soon as the housekeeper AI detected the patriarch leaving his cultivation garden.

The man, a ninth-stage cultivator himself, shuddered under the weight of the glare, making it seem as if his body mass was silently evaporating into the air, making him appear smaller and smaller for every second that his father, and Cassie\'s grandfather, stared him down.

"The Juno company acquisition has failed. Chicla corporation won the bid."

Despite all the pressure, the man managed to keep a tiny portion of his calm, presenting his report in a steady and collected manner that greatly contrasted the unsettled look in his eyes.

Even though there was only one rank of difference in the cultivation between him and Cassie\'s grandparents… He managed to reach the ninth stage only recently, while his father has long since started to knock on the doors of true cultivation, only struggling to properly advance due to how much of his attention the clan required, stopping the old man from cultivating in the spiritual world in peace.

And now, the very acquisition that would finally solve most of the clan\'s issues… fell through.

Strangely enough, however, even though it was Adean\'s bitter rival throwing a wrench into his plans, the old man ended up… smiling?

It was but a gentle smile, if one could even call it a smile when it was no more but a twitch of the corner of his lips.

Still, it was infinitely better than his cold, judging, and silently furious glare.

"If it was that bastard, then there was little to nothing you could do," Adean claimed while waving his hand as if dismissing his son\'s guilt. But then, he looked over to Cassie\'s second uncle, the middle son of her father\'s generation.

Not waiting to be called out - or maybe hoping to avoid the endless tirade of how dim he had to be not to step up when it was his turn - Kush took a step forward and stood at attention, pushing his chest out and chin up.

"I\'ve solidified our position in the southern estate development project. We currently hold twenty percent of the land and sixty percent of the total investment value. Even if we fail to buy out more of the shares, we now have enough to push through with the changes!"

Even though it was a meeting of powerful cultivators, what they ended up discussing, weren\'t matters of cultivation… but pure business.

Or, in this particular case, a perfectly legal scheme of the clan to alter the direction of the new development project towards more affluent customers, hoping to raise the land value of not only the development project itself but even more importantly, the land value of all the holdings they\'ve bought up in the area mere weeks before the city passed the bill to kickstart the development project in the first place.

In the strictest of senses, contrary to the project assigned to the oldest of the patriarch\'s three sons, this entire scheme held no political value whatsoever, limited merely to making their clan even richer than it already was.

"Good," Adean nodded his head, praising his middle son with this simple gesture as well as dismissing him, allowing the middle-aged man to breathe out a sigh of relief as he took a step back into the row of the clan\'s direct descendants.

Then, Adean\'s eyes moved over to his youngest son, Cassie\'s father, and lingered on him for a bit… Only for the patriarch to roll his eyes and move past the man.

Even for how massive their clan was, be it in terms of its members, in terms of its political power, or financial prowess… There were only so many projects that the group could focus on at the same time. And with most of their finances already bound in the southern estate development with the great majority of what was left dedicated to the bidding for the acquisition…

There simply wasn\'t any major task the patriarch could assign to his youngest!

Adean continued his stroll for just a few steps more, only to stop right in front of Cassie before turning his head and giving her his famous, judging look.

Feeling the stare, Cassie could only shrivel into herself even further, fully aware that her report, while extremely important, was only for the patriarch\'s ears. And so, as much as it meant sacrificing some of her standing within the family, all she could do was grit her teeth and keep her head low, hoping for the torture to pass as soon as possible.

"I\'ve wasted enough of my time on your lot," the patriarch finally spoke out, addressing the whole group en masse as opposed to singling Cassie out. "Everyone but Garry and Cassie, get the hell out of my sight!"

For a moment, the room filled with the small commotion of the direct descendants leaving.

Some, like the first son, looked at Garry, Cassie\'s father, with a mix of satisfaction and anger, as if they were happy the youngest would get chewed out in private as opposed to the public but quick scolding he received while, at the same time, feeling jealous over the amount of attention the patriarch would pay to the youngest.

On the other hand, Kush merely nodded his hand as he passed by his brother, free of the unjustified hate that somehow soured the relationship between the oldest and the youngest, just as he was free from any feeling of affection towards him.

When it came to Cassie, however, hardly anyone paid her any mind or attention, deeming her too unimportant to waste their time on her.

It was only when everyone in the room left, save for Adean, Garry, Cassie, and Adean\'s personal assistant, that the atmosphere took a sudden change as the patriarch casually sat down on one of the expensive chairs in the room before stretching his legs out and locking his eyes on the father-daughter pair.

"So?" Adean asked while leaning his head over his right shoulder, allowing his long, gray hair to fall down to one side of his head. "Now that we are done with the politics, how about you give your actual report?"

Garry sighed lightly, shedding the poker face he mustered up for the meeting and revealing the usual, strangely happy look.

"All five attempts failed, as designed," Garry reported right as Cassie brought her hands up to her face to massage it.

As the daughter of the Patriarch\'s favorite, she did enjoy the privilege of Adean\'s silent favor. Yet, while her acting ability was even better than that of her father… She still struggled to switch between the persona that she acted out during the meeting thus far and the calm, steady, and calculative girl she was in reality.

A switch she struggled so hard with, she actually had to massage her face to let her muscles return to their natural arrangement!

"The fifth attempt turned into a disaster, though, with those terrorist fuckers trying to get involved," she commented from behind her hard-working hands. "And while it\'s still only a guess, I believe I\'ve found out why…" Cassie squinted her eyes, only to then drop her hands down and shake her head. "No. I believe I\'ve found out who they were after.

And if I\'m right, it wasn\'t Claire as we initially thought."

Adean squinted his eyes.

"How sure are you of this guess of yours?" the patriarch asked while resting his elbow on the hand\'s armrest and then using his fist as a support for his cheek.

"Solid, but not certain," Cassie reported in a calm voice, the one element of her core personality she actually struggled to preserve and thus paid great attention to practice whenever she had the time and opportunity to do so. "If I\'m correct, then it\'s not Chihiro or Claire that we ought to worry about, but the stray they\'ve picked up from somewhere."

"That guy we tried to kidnap?" Adean asked to ensure he had the facts straight.

"That\'s right," Cassie nodded her head before quickly fishing out her phone from her pocket, tapping away on it for a moment before passing the device over with a short cut of a video ready to play on it. "Please, do check out this recording and make your own judgment."

Intrigued, Adean brought his eyebrows together a little, only to accept the phone and look down at the screen as he played the short video. As he did, however, a frown first appeared on his face, only for his eyes to then open wide.

"That\'s…" the old man muttered, only for his face to relax as a satisfied smile appeared on his lips. "Great job, kids," he then praised the two as his smile continued to grow wider. "If this video is real, then we\'ve just found out what that bastard was so desperate to hide from us!"