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Without further ado, Shen Zhitao did not linger. With Shen Zhitao's Platinum Mid-Tier strength, it was unlikely he would encounter any significant trouble. After sending Shen Zhitao out of the Zhonghu Safety Zone, Wang Chao turned to Yuan Min and said, "Yuan Min, you should leave the matters of the Safe Zone to the Royal Guard. You know where the black market is, right? We need to act before the Black Clothes Society does."
Yuan Min nodded and replied, "I know. It's not far from the Zhonghu Safety Zone; I can take you there."
"Then let's set off now," Wang Chao said, his eyes gazing into the distance.
After briefly discussing the affairs of the Safe Zone and taking a few gold bricks with them, Yuan Min led Wang Chao toward the direction of the black market. According to Yuan Min, this black market was built underground and covered a vast area. It dealt in all sorts of businesses; there was nothing that couldn't be found there. Whether it was illicit substances or hiring someone for murder, as long as you had gold, you could buy anything and get whatever you wanted.
Among the three known Safe Zones, this black market was renowned; everyone knew about it. Its scale was astonishing. Hearing this, Wang Chao couldn't help but furrow his brow. Such a massive underground force could not have been built by ordinary people; it seemed that the Black Clothes Society would be far more formidable than he had imagined. As they listened to Yuan Min's descriptions of the black market, they soon arrived at an extremely desolate location.
This place could already be considered suburban; there were no tall buildings, only rows of single-story houses surrounded by barbed wire. There wasn't a single Zombie in sight, indicating that The Black-Clad Society had likely cleared the area. Yuan Min gestured for Wang Chao to follow him to one of the houses. They circumvented the barbed wire and entered through the door of the house, which was empty except for a coffin in the center.
Wang Chao felt puzzled and asked, "What does this mean?"
Yuan Min explained, "Everyone knows that the black market is underground but doesn't know exactly where it is. As long as we lie in this coffin and press the white cloth inside against the lid, someone will come to carry it away. Within an hour, someone will knock on the coffin, and we can emerge from it. At that point, we'll already be in the black market!"
"That's quite interesting," Wang Chao said with a smile as he touched the coffin.
Yuan Min continued, "Perhaps the president of the black market is afraid of large military forces entering. You see, there are countless gold and food supplies in the black market; to ensure the safety of its merchants, it has always been very discreet..."
As they spoke, Wang Chao and Yuan Min lay down inside the coffin. It was large enough to accommodate three people at once, but it seemed that other houses also contained coffins. Just as Yuan Min had said, there was a medium-length white cloth inside along with two black masks that were different from those worn by members of the Black Clothes Society.
"We need to wear masks too!" Wang Chao picked one up for inspection.
“Most people here are unwilling to reveal their true selves. I’ve heard that many members of the Seven Great Families are present,” Yuan Min said.
Members of the Seven Great Families, Wang Chao sighed. The Shangguan Family was destroyed by the Huangfu Family, and then the Huangfu Family was wiped out by his own hands. The Zhang Family, along with Zhang Fusheng, had vanished without a trace. He had encountered a few members of the Shen Family and the Lin Family, while the Wu Family had only Wan'er left. The only ones he hadn’t seen were from the Ai Family. Four years ago, he didn’t even know what the Seven Great Families were; now, he found himself entangled with them.
He closed the coffin lid and pressed down on the white cloth covering it. After a while, he heard nails being hammered into the coffin from outside. Soon after, Wang Chao felt the coffin being lifted, and it began to move gently. In the darkness, he couldn’t hear any footsteps outside. It felt as if he was drifting along comfortably inside the coffin. About an hour later, Wang Chao sensed that the coffin had come to a stop.
A few minutes later, he heard some knocks from outside the coffin. Yuan Min patted Wang Chao on the shoulder and said, “Master, we’ve arrived!”
Wang Chao nodded. The two of them donned masks inside the coffin and pushed open the lid to step out. They found that those who had been carrying the coffin were no longer around. Instead, they were in a dimly lit room with several candles flickering. A door stood before them; they opened it and stepped out into a long corridor lined with dim kerosene lamps. In the distance, Wang Chao saw stalls set up on either side of a street, bustling with people reminiscent of a night market.
“This is the stall area,” Yuan Min explained. “If you continue along both sides of the street, you’ll find many shops ahead. Those are more upscale places where transactions start at least with a gold bar or a pack of cigarettes. The stalls outside have much smaller transactions; as long as both parties agree, they can trade for any amount.”
Wang Chao nodded and walked along the street wearing his mask. The space was vast; the streets crisscrossed while dim oil lamps hung all around. He could only see about twenty meters ahead; beyond that, everything blurred into obscurity, making it feel like a ghost market where masked buyers and sellers haggled over prices.
Looking around, Wang Chao noticed a variety of items for trade: tobacco leaves, alcohol, gemstones, food supplies, and even mobile phones and chargers. It had been four years since he last saw these “high-tech” items; these people had been cut off from phones and computers for so long that it felt surreal to him. However, such stalls attracted little inquiry since these items were not necessities.
As they walked further, they encountered women dressed provocatively standing at shop entrances, flirting with passersby. To his shock, Wang Chao even saw human trafficking; several young girls were chained together in a line, kneeling on the ground with vacant expressions as they watched the crowd go by while nearby traffickers shouted incessantly.
Wang Chao shook his head; now was not the time to concern himself with such matters. He sighed silently and continued forward. After walking for two hours, they had traversed this street entirely. It appeared that there were four or five similar roads in this black market. Constructing such an extensive operation would require immense manpower and resources; even if Wang Chao wanted to establish a black market in the north, it would take at least six months to a year.
But how did the leader of this black market gather so many resources without unifying even the south?
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