Lord of Arcane

Chapter 3235: Jinshan hits the head
This topic, as well as the expression of hesitation on Doom's face, made it impossible for Chateau to guess what Doom was thinking, so he opened up and said:
"You want to say that the Tower of Time also engaged in smuggling in Elan?"

"That's what the intelligence from Yeerlan said, and we've confirmed it. But based on what we know, the Tower of Time has been smuggling grain in Elan for quite some time, at least not since the Elan factory was built. Yeerlan also admitted this, but they still found traces of smuggling, so—"

Doom did not say anything else, but Shado knew what Doom meant. He told him clearly, "I know you are worried that the smuggling in Elan will eventually lead to me, and you will not only fail to find the Illuminati, but also waste time.

“So I’m telling you now, after I reached a cooperation with Yeerlan on the development of Elan, I have never smuggled anything to Elan again.

"Perhaps the Void Warehouse in the Tower of Time has been used, but that is the personal behavior of the user of the Void Warehouse. If you find any clues related to the Illuminati, I can cooperate with the investigation."

In fact, regarding the recent smuggling, Yerlan has already talked to Xia Duo, and Xia Duo has also responded clearly. Now that Yerlan has reported the situation to the alliance, it seems that they may have really discovered some clues, rather than causing trouble for him.

As for Shado himself, he did find excited state instruments or ritual elements suspected to be stored by the Illuminati in the void warehouse of the Tower of Time, but he did not have conclusive evidence to show that it was the Illuminati who did it.

And he also had selfish motives. On the one hand, he did not trust the Alliance's (past) investigation capabilities. On the other hand, he did not want this matter to be revealed by him on his own initiative, so as to avoid users losing trust in the Void Warehouse of the Tower of Time.

After all, the two excited state magic weapons are stored in the stagnant space warehouse. No matter how dangerous they are, they have nothing to do with the void warehouse. The so-called safety inspection is more aimed at dangerous goods that can threaten the void warehouse.

If it was a threat to something else, there would be no reason to check it out, after all, magical items are inherently very dangerous, especially to ordinary people.

If the items in the void warehouse were to be subject to security checks using the same standards as for ordinary people, then most of the magical items would probably not be able to be stored there.

This is not realistic.

Therefore, the reason for the security inspection given by Xia Duo was only for the Void Warehouse itself, which other people could accept. After all, you used my warehouse, so you can't cause damage to my warehouse, right?
Now, Xia Duo has a better understanding of the alliance's investigative capabilities, mainly because he is more determined and his ability will naturally improve. Before, he was not very determined, so even if he had the ability, he might not use it.

However, concerns about the users' trust in the Void Warehouse still exist, so Shado still did not reveal to Doom the two excited state artifacts he had discovered that were suspected to be kept by the Illuminati.

But he also promised to cooperate with the investigation. As long as the alliance has any clues that point to the future, he will cooperate without hesitation and to the greatest extent possible.

As for whether doing so would delay the best time to find the Illuminati, that was not something Xia Duo needed to worry about. No one could take all aspects into consideration. He just made a choice that was more advantageous to him.

He is fully willing to take a little more risk for this.

To take a step back, even if the Illuminati starts to frantically destroy the magic network now, it will only increase the cost of using the magic network in the future and reduce the efficiency, and will not have a big impact on the upper limit of the power that the caster can reach.

And the most important thing is that no matter what the Illuminati can do, it is impossible to destroy all the magic networks in the main plane in an instant. Xia Duo even expects the Illuminati to do something crazy again!

On the one hand, this will make the Alliance more determined to wipe out the Illuminati at all costs. On the other hand, frequent actions will also cause the Illuminati to expose more clues for tracing.

What he was most worried about was that the Illuminati would do nothing and continue to endure, like a poisonous snake lurking in the dark. That would make people unable to sleep or eat!
Because from the perspective of absolute hard power, the Illuminati is far inferior to the Alliance. Even if the Illuminati dares to stand up and fight head-on, Shado himself or any country in the Alliance (except Irusk) can destroy them all.

The reason why the Illuminati is difficult to deal with is its extreme secrecy and its intricate ties with the elves' high-level leaders.

Now the Alliance, especially the elven nations, have made up their minds to eliminate the Illuminati, and secrecy, the recent Elan attack, and the smuggling problem are all clues that can be tracked down.

As the final window of time for the ritual approaches, the Illuminati will take more and more actions. It feels like a prey caught in a spider web, the more it struggles, the faster it will die.

……

After exchanging information about the Illuminati with Doom for a while, the materials used by the Alliance for the sacrificial experiment have been delivered to the camp. Like the sacrificial objects chosen by Yerlan in the experiment, the Alliance also used old magical instruments in the experiment.

A small part of it was collected on-site from Evereska, and most of it actually came from Yeerlan, who was well prepared, but the cost of this experiment will be borne by the alliance.

Even the old magic weapons that Ye Erlan had invested in before, most of the costs could be reimbursed by the alliance. Even the student assignments that Xia Duo had invested in before had someone come to ask about the cost, which made Xia Duo's heart skip a beat.

Judging from the divine grace obtained and on-site test data, the effect of the student assignments he invested was almost half of the old magic tools invested by Ye Erlan.

In other words, the amount he could apply for reimbursement could be half of Ye Erlan's!
This made it difficult for him to remain calm. Ye Erlan claimed that he had invested old magic weapons worth over 100 million yuan, and Xia Duo had also handled those magic weapons, so there was not much water in them.

Even if it is the recycling of old magic tools, the actual cost for Ye Erlan would be at least tens of millions. Although the purchasing power of gold coins is continuously declining due to the large amount of gold and silver produced by the giant mithril mines in the Gray Peak Mountains, tens of millions of gold coins are still not a small number.

Taking the current Tower of Time as an example, including all the income from mass-produced magic tools, communication mazes, void warehouses, and computing power pool orders, the annual income is only tens of millions.

But the Tower of Time has too many places to spend money, and it can't actually save much money. Considering the current net income of the Tower of Time, it may take at least ten years to accumulate tens of millions of cash.

Or to put it more vividly, the cost of a floating city might be just over 10 million, and tens of millions in cash could be several floating cities!
One can imagine how tempting these tens of millions are to Xia Duo!

Even if the alliance does not consider Iollum's repair plan in the end, and instead adopts the plan of investing magical items to allow the magic network to heal itself, then the follow-up may not just be a matter of tens of millions, but hundreds of millions, billions or even more!

The most important thing is that Xia Duo doesn’t have to worry about the alliance not being able to pay the money, because he is now in charge of the alliance’s largest source of income - the computing power pool.

Not to mention the giant mithril mine in the Gray Peak Mountains, which is a super-giant mine that may not be fully mined in thousands of years! (Based on the current mining level of the Alliance)