Out on the vast sea, a luxury cruise liner glided slowly along, its speed pared down almost to nothing; from a distance it seemed not to be moving at all.

"Luxurious on the outside, secrets hidden within—who'd ever guess that a cruise ship like this is a branch of the Red Conch? Brother Dafeng, you've got some nerve." Wei Zhao leaned on the railing and gazed into the distance. Blue sky and blue sea stretched boundless, and even with his eyesight he could not pick out a third thing.

"Heh heh, Leader Wei Zhao, don't go underestimating this cruise ship of mine. Everything aboard is the very latest technology, all communications signals are kept strictly covert—even the satellites overhead can't pick them up. And this is international waters; their hands can't reach this far." Brother Dafeng chuckled, following behind him.

"What I mean is, you actually dared to invite me straight out here—aren't you afraid of being discovered?" Wei Zhao shot him a glance. The people to guard against here were, naturally, the ones from the Center. Red Conch or Fire Wolf Gang, the two were the same organization through and through, both branches of the Center. And for Brother Dafeng, the real danger came from the Center's headquarters—after all, he was Wei Zhao's mole now.

"Rest easy, Leader Wei Zhao. Everyone on this cruise-ship branch is one of us, thoroughly trustworthy, and the branch has a great deal of autonomy. So long as we don't report in on our own initiative, even headquarters won't know our exact position." Brother Dafeng spoke with confidence.

"Oh? Then do you know the specific location of the Center's headquarters?" Wei Zhao asked. Ever since he had discovered the Nexus Chamber of Commerce on Cloud Terrace Island, his interest in the Center had only grown. It was rare for his primal spirit to be projected back into the mundane world this time; given the chance, he even intended to infiltrate the Center's headquarters himself and see what was there.

"That I truly don't know. Rumor has it the Center's headquarters isn't fixed in place—only the people at headquarters know where it actually is." Brother Dafeng shook his head and smiled bitterly. "All these years headquarters has left us to our own devices, and we've been just as tight-lipped about them. Apart from the routine reports at fixed intervals, there's essentially no contact at other times. And even the routine reports go through satellite communications—to be honest, I still don't know what my superiors even look like."

"Then can you think of a way?" Wei Zhao couldn't help frowning. The Center was cautious to such a degree—it left not even its own subordinate organizations the slightest opening. Truly beyond anything he had expected.

"To be frank with you, Leader Wei Zhao, ever since I received that letter you sent back from Cloud Terrace Island two years ago, I've been making attempts in that direction. I tried many methods, before and after, but never succeeded once. Half a year ago I came closest—my superiors were already preparing to summon me to headquarters for a face-to-face meeting, but then for some reason it was suddenly called off. The mere thought of it still feels like a waste..." Brother Dafeng could not help but lament.

It wasn't only to gather intelligence for Wei Zhao; in truth he himself was intensely curious about the Center's headquarters. Everyone has a thirst for knowledge, and the more unfathomable headquarters seemed, the more those of them below longed for a chance to probe and learn. That was simply human nature.

"Such a thing happened?" Wei Zhao thought it over, then said suddenly, "There must be some reason it was suddenly called off. Could it be that you fell under suspicion?"

"Surely not!" Brother Dafeng started in alarm, then shook his head again and again, saying dismissively, "Impossible. If the higher-ups really had doubts about me, they'd have moved long ago. How could they sit idle for half a year?"

"That's true enough..." Wei Zhao nodded. If the Center truly was an organization of the utmost rigor, then the moment suspicion arose it would surely strike at the root at once to forestall future trouble; it could not possibly hold back for a full six months without acting. It seemed he had indeed been overthinking.

"Honestly, Leader, your sudden return this time was quite a surprise. When you called me before, I thought you were joking—never imagined it was real..." Brother Dafeng laughed.

"It's been hard on you these past few years." Wei Zhao said with feeling. True, these years he had not asked Brother Dafeng to do anything especially dangerous, but even if he did nothing at all, the sensitive identity of mole alone carried enormous risk—to say nothing of his having to find ways to probe into the Center's headquarters. Every attempt he had made was in fact a gamble, a trade with his head strapped to his waist. Most people truly might not be able to withstand such crushing pressure.

"What are you saying, Leader Wei Zhao? This is all what I ought to do." Brother Dafeng chuckled.

Wei Zhao clapped him hard on the shoulder. In truth, Brother Dafeng's inviting him directly to this cruise-ship branch this time showed not only that he had the branch fully under his control—it was not hard for Wei Zhao to guess his other, more important purpose: to pledge his loyalty.

Being a mole is the least secure and least belonging profession in the world. Take Brother Dafeng at this moment: to the Center he was a traitor, and to Wei Zhao and the others he might not win a hundred percent of their trust either—after all, who could say whether he might secretly turn coat again?

Originally, the best way for a mole to pledge loyalty was to provide important intelligence, but because the Center's headquarters was so mysterious and unfathomable, in all these years Brother Dafeng had never managed to dig up intelligence of real value. Now, suddenly summoned by Wei Zhao, it would be an outright lie to say he felt not the slightest panic—and so came today's meeting aboard the cruise ship.

In doing so, Brother Dafeng was laying everything he had before Wei Zhao's eyes. If in the future he ever wished to turn traitor again, the underlings of this cruise-ship branch alone would be a fatal liability; at that point, any one of them could tip off Wei Zhao, and he would have no place to be buried.

To go this far was no different from signing a pledge of allegiance. Wei Zhao could believe in his loyalty a hundred percent, but Brother Dafeng had to pay a tremendous price for it. He was walking a tightrope—should any one of the cruise-ship branch's underlings prove unreliable and secretly inform the Center's headquarters, he would likewise have no place to be buried.

Still, he trusted his own grip on things. Moreover, throughout the entire cruise-ship branch, he alone held the means of contact with the Center's headquarters—and even that was one-way: headquarters could relay orders to him, but he could not call headquarters at will. So even if a traitor did appear among his underlings, passing word along would not be so easy. The risk was not as great as imagined.