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ArabicArknights: The Holy Son's Leisurely Life — Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Contraband and Strip Searches
After leaving the sterile confines of the interrogation room, Lucian handled the sprawling corridors of the Lungmen Guard Department. He strolled past bustling desks and ringing telephones, offering casual waves and easy smiles to the familiar officers along the way.
Anyone who didn’t know his actual background would have sworn he was an undercover plainclothes detective. It defied all conventional logic that a mere logistics company employee—one who was routinely hauled into the precinct for intense questioning—could be on such friendly, first-name terms with half the police force.
Reaching the end of a restricted hallway, Lucian stepped into a private elevator reserved exclusively for high-ranking officials. He held his freshly stamped bail slip up to the optical scanner. A soft chime echoed in the confined space.
There was no need to press a button. The heavy steel doors slid shut, and the cabin immediately engaged, dropping into a smooth, rapid descent. It bypassed the underground parking garage entirely, plunging deep into the bedrock beneath the city to a subterranean floor that existed on absolutely no official blueprints. It was a sequence pulled straight from a cheap espionage thriller.
The doors parted with a quiet hiss. Lucian stepped out into a sprawling, opulent office decorated in traditional Yan aesthetics. The air was thick with the scent of expensive sandalwood incense and aged tobacco.
He leaned against the doorframe, offering a dry, amused look to the imposing figure standing before a massive tactical monitor. “I have to say, you politicians are a fascinating breed. You always insist on conducting your business buried in the dirt. Are you really that terrified of catching a sunburn?”
The tall man turned, his voice carrying the measured, polished cadence of a career statesman. “This arrangement ensures both your safety and mine, Mr. Lucian.”
As he stepped into the ambient light of the monitors, his features became clear. He possessed an inhuman, draconic visage that leaned heavily into his ancient ancestry. Terra was home to a vast array of races. Lucian himself was a Sankta, bearing the iconic halo and wings commonly associated with angels. Swire was a Feline, carrying the distinct traits of her lineage. Officer Ch’en was a Lung, carrying the bloodline of the eastern dragons.
But this man was a Lung whose physical form was far closer to the ancient beasts than Ch’en’s, his face dominated by scales and a pronounced reptilian jaw.
Wei Yenwu narrowed his reddish-gold, slitted eyes. He took a slow, deliberate draw from his ornate pipe, letting the smoke curl around his horns. “Did you bring the item?”
The halo suspended above Lucian’s head flared with a sudden, brilliant pulse of light. A sleek portable terminal materialized out of thin air, dropping perfectly into his previously empty palm.
He tossed it across the room without a second thought. “Catch.”
Wei snatched the device out of the air. It contained highly classified intelligence detailing the downstream contacts of a major arms trafficking ring. This massive shipment of black-market weapons had been destined for the streets of Lungmen, but Penguin Logistics had intercepted and secured the cargo the moment it made landfall at the port.
The Chief Executive tapped the screen, a low hum of satisfaction vibrating in his chest. “Such convenient Originium Arts. I hear Officer Ch’en continues to give you special treatment, insisting on conducting your pat-downs personally just to satisfy her own paranoia. Yet she never manages to catch you red-handed. The Guard Department gym has lost several heavy punching bags to her resulting frustration.”
“You’re telling me.” Lucian shook his head, a genuine scowl breaking his laid-back demeanor. “That woman practically tries to strip me naked every time I’m brought in! Explain the logic to me, Wei. If a man aggressively searches a woman, he gets thrown in a holding cell and reported. But when a woman does it to a man, it’s just ‘standard protocol’? I want to file a formal harassment grievance against Officer Ch’en. Point me to the right paperwork.”
“Heh. I am afraid I cannot assist you with that.” Wei Yenwu offered a faint, rumbling chuckle. “Officer Ch’en is driven by an uncompromising sense of duty. If that duty compels her to personally inspect every inch of you, so be it. A grown, unmarried woman is making such a deep sacrifice for her work. You should be secretly counting your blessings.”
“That exact mindset is the root of the problem. I am the victim of systemic abuse here, yet somehow everyone acts like she’s the one suffering a loss while I’m hitting the jackpot.” Lucian sighed heavily, mourning the double standards of Terra. He truly felt a deep, abiding sorrow for his fellow men.
Wei Yenwu, the half-dragon titan of industry and politics, was the highest executive officer in all of Lungmen. It was his shadow that had secretly commissioned Penguin Logistics to hijack the arms dealers.
The political maneuvering behind the request was fascinating. Wei possessed the absolute authority to mobilize the entire Lungmen Guard Department to seize the weapons. Instead, he deliberately buried the intelligence, keeping Ch’en and her elite task forces entirely in the dark regarding the illegal firearms flooding their borders. By using Penguin Logistics as an off-the-books proxy, Wei bypassed his own police force, securing total monopoly over the traffickers’ upstream suppliers and downstream buyers.
Lucian nodded toward the terminal in Wei’s hand. “So, what’s the endgame here, Wei? Planning to establish friendly trade relations with the black market to stock up your own private armory?”
The older Lung snorted, a sharp exhale of disdain. “Hardly. Do I look like a man who negotiates with rats in the gutter? The problem with rats is that the moment you drown one nest, another breeds in the dark. I simply needed the coordinates of their breeding grounds.”
He took another long drag from his pipe, the cherry glowing fiercely in the dim office. “If I were to offer Penguin Logistics a secondary contract to exterminate these rats… would you accept the job?”
Lucian’s expression cooled, his posture straightening just a fraction. “I’ll have to decline. We are a fully licensed, legitimate logistics company. We excel at transporting highly dangerous packages, but we do not operate as personal hitmen.”
Men like Wei Yenwu, who spent their entire lives treating the world as a chessboard, had a dangerous habit of viewing everyone in their orbit as disposable pawns. Lucian was perfectly willing to accept a lucrative delivery contract, but he drew a hard, uncompromising line at being wielded as a political weapon.
Having established his boundary, Lucian saw no reason to linger in the subterranean gloom. He offered a lazy wave over his shoulder and turned toward the elevator. “Same arrangement as always. Wire the funds directly into Emperor’s account. Until next time, Wei.”
“Indeed. Until next time.”
Wei Yenwu showed no reaction to the Sankta’s casual disrespect, his glowing eyes tracking Lucian until the heavy steel doors sealed shut. He waited in absolute silence until the mechanical hum of the elevator faded into the upper levels.
Only then did Wei shift his gaze.
From the deep shadows behind a painted silk screen, a figure detached itself from the darkness. The black-clad Shadow Guard moved with the ethereal, soundless grace of a phantom.
“Why did Duke Wei insist on meeting him in person?” the operative asked, his voice a raspy whisper. “That Sankta youth wields highly irregular spatial Originium Arts. He cannot be effectively disarmed. If he had chosen to manifest a Guardian Gun at this range…”
“That is precisely why I required you to stand in that corner,” Wei replied smoothly, his tone entirely unbothered. “, I have told you not to address me as Duke Wei. One must always assume the walls are listening.”
The Shadow Guard bowed his head. “Understood.”
Lucian’s instincts had been entirely correct. Wei Yenwu did not trust him, nor did he trust a single soul employed by Penguin Logistics. Even during a routine drop-off, the Chief Executive kept a lethal operative hidden in the room, fully prepared to strike the moment Lucian showed any hostile intent.
Yet, as the Shadow Guard had pointed out, taking a face-to-face meeting with an armed, unpredictable variable was a severe deviation from Wei’s notoriously cautious nature.
Wei turned back to the massive monitor, watching the neon-lit streetscape of Lungmen scroll past. He exhaled a thick cloud of white smoke that hung heavy in the air. “Tell me. Have you deduced the true identity of that Sankta youth?”
“This subordinate does not know,” the Shadow Guard answered truthfully.
Wei nodded slowly. “A coincidence, then. Because neither do I.”
His reptilian features hardened into a grim, calculating mask. “Lucian has resided within Lungmen’s borders for several years. Yet his background remains an absolute void. The intelligence operatives I embedded in Laterano have returned with nothing but empty hands. And then, a rather fascinating development occurred. I received a direct warning. A very specific party instructed me to cease all investigations into his past. Care to guess who issued that command?”
The operative hesitated, his posture stiffening. “This subordinate is ignorant… Could it be a high-ranking ecclesiastical authority within Laterano?”
“No.” Wei shook his head, the smoke trailing from his lips. “It was my younger brother.”
The Shadow Guard flinched, a sharp, audible intake of breath breaking his disciplined silence. It was the first time he had reacted like a living, breathing human being.
Wei ignored the lapse in composure. It would have been far more alarming if the operative hadn’t reacted.
Wei Yenwu’s iron grip over Lungmen was not solely a product of his own ruthless cunning. Whether he cared to acknowledge it or not, Wei was the scion of a terrifyingly powerful noble family within the Yan Empire—a lineage that sat at the absolute apex of the aristocracy. That bloodline had paved his path to power, but it also served as an invisible chain, binding him to the political machinations of his relatives for the rest of his natural life.
“My younger brother,” Wei continued, his voice dropping to a dangerous register, “a man who would happily skin me alive and use my tendons for bowstrings, sent me a private correspondence for the first time in two decades. The entirety of that letter was dedicated to ordering me to abandon my inquiry into Lucian’s identity., he mandated that I guarantee the boy’s absolute safety within Lungmen’s jurisdiction, regardless of the cost. What are the implications of such a demand? Can you conceptualize anything more absurd?”
“This… this…” The Shadow Guard struggled to process the sheer gravity of the revelation. “Could he… could that youth be royalty from a foreign nation?”
Wei dismissed the theory with a wave of his pipe. “If that were the case, he would be remarkably easy to manage. But Laterano possesses no royal family; they are governed by the Pope and the Notarial Hall. If he were a prince of some foreign power, I would have already drowned him in honey traps and compromised him entirely.”
Wei Yenwu was a pragmatist. If there was use to be gained, he would use any method available, no matter how underhanded. A hot-blooded young man like Lucian should have been effortlessly manipulated by beautiful women.
The intelligence dossiers already confirmed that Lucian maintained highly ambiguous, deeply entangled relationships with several female operators within Penguin Logistics, and he was dangerously close to both Ch’en and Swire within the Guard Department. He was clearly not immune to the charms of the opposite sex.
Yet, the ever-cautious Chief Executive refused to play that card. The risk of triggering the wrath of Yan’s high nobility was too severe.
The giant dragon exhaled another heavy plume of smoke, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the city lights. “The Sankta… Their theology is a convoluted maze, and they rarely tolerate outsiders. The entire race defies logic. How can a species naturally generate fluorescent halos above their skulls? It is utterly bizarre.”
A towering, half-beastman with the head of an ancient dragon, standing in a subterranean bunker, calling a man with a glowing halo strange.
It truly was a bizarre world.