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The crowd of protesters didn\'t seem to faze them in the slightest, bringing forth about as much effect as an army of ants attacking a sleeping lion with all the courage and ferocity they could muster.

That, however, was still within Cassie\'s calculation, as she never expected the crowd to amount to anything more than a mere distraction.

Then there were the government officials, people from one of the few armed agencies of the government\'s fist, with both the means and authority to shut down any business, regardless of whether its owner was breaking the law or simply being a law-abiding citizen.

Those, however, Tim easily managed to deal with, showing no respect for the authority they wielded and openly threatening them with violence if they tried to use it to gain entry and interfere from the inside.

\'Given how we lost contact with them, I bet they are trying to do something now, but…\' Cassie thought, gritting her teeth as she raised her eyes to where her screens displayed the views from the tens of cameras she had set up around the factory in advance.

Whatever it was that those two government agents were trying to achieve, however, Cassie had no further control over.

\'All I could do was get them to the place. But seeing how they achieved nothing thus far…\' For a moment, the girl focused all of her attention on the topic, only to then sigh as she completely gave up on this angle and mentally moved on.

\'Yeah, there\'s no point being bothered by what I can\'t control. But that leaves us with only one angle.\'

The crowd was there for a distraction, to occupy the minds of those at the factory.

The government agents were there to get their actual attention, forcing them to tip at least a part of their hand. And while they achieved pretty much nothing… neither Cassie nor her grandpa ever had any expectations for those two to make a difference.

But with the failure of their clan operatives at cutting the power to the factory, the only actually solid part of the plan—the only angle they actually hoped would produce results—quickly turned out to be the biggest and most costly mistake of the entire plan.

"I\'m sorry, but it seems like that\'s all for us," Cassie spoke out as she removed her headset and placed it down on the table before swinging in her seat and dropping her legs down, sitting on her chair properly as she faced her grandfather\'s throne.

Up until this point, with the air of anxiety filling the room, Cassie\'s grandpa, the patriarch of the clan, was the only one who didn\'t let the mood get to him.

He just… sat there on his makeshift throne, calmly overseeing the entire operation without taking a direct part in how things went or what orders went into the comms.

Even now, as every angle of the whole operation was failing, he continued to just sit there calmly, as if not bothered by the lack of results in the slightest.

"We still have the second team, don\'t we?"

Hearing and seeing her grandfather speak, Cassie nearly forgot to breathe.

It was one thing to have him talk in private when she was the only one who could hear him, but to have him openly engage in the operation with so many eyes and ears to bear witness?

This went against every precaution she took to ensure no one could ever implicate the clan\'s patriarch in what they were doing!

Up until the moment he spoke up, the clan\'s patriarch was merely an innocent observer of the situation. But now that he spoke…

\'Shit…\' Cassie gulped her saliva down as she clenched her jaw.

With just those few words, her grandfather suddenly raised the stakes by several degrees.

\'If he\'s willing to get implicated in all of this, then…\'

The girl\'s eyes widened as she connected the increase in the possible consequences for her grandpa to the degree of involvement he was willing to accept.

\'There\'s no limit to how far he\'s going to go to stop that man from advancing, huh?\'

Cassie\'s thoughts turned into a mess, pretty much stopping her from thinking about anything else or even monitoring how things were going.

"They are merely screening the first team. If they move, there will be nothing stopping their men from finishing off the first team. And the moment they do…"

Cassie pressed her lips together, daring not to voice the uncomfortable truth.

With the initial limits on how far she was willing to let her plans reach, how much she was willing to bend or ignore the law… she had only ever used the middle level of the clan\'s operatives.

And while it was quite costly to lose them to the fighting… their deaths wouldn\'t affect the very foundations of the clan. Or, even more importantly, if their involvement was ever discovered, the clan could still weather the storm that would follow.

\'Judging from how he spoke out…\' Cassie gritted her teeth before clenching her fists, unsure if she was ready to hear what she believed her father\'s father was going to say next. \'We are pulling all stops, huh?\'

"We\'ve gone too far to just give up and accept all the incurred costs for no benefit to the clan," the clan\'s patriarch announced before doing the unthinkable… standing up from his throne.

Seeing this, Cassie instantly rose from her chair only to then fall to one knee and lower her head, ready to receive whatever instruction her patriarch conceived in his head.

"Activate Hilbert and have him deal with the power directly," the old man ordered while raising his hand as if he wanted to gently lay it on the top of his granddaughter\'s head, minding not the few meters of distance between them.

"But…" Cassie bit down on her lips a second too late.

Before the retribution for doing so could strike her, however, she bit her tongue down before lowering her head and asking, "What would you like to have him do, respected patriarch?"

This was the only way for Cassie to express her thoughts on the matter—by invoking the full, formal way in which all clan members were expected to refer to the patriarch, giving up the privilege of addressing the man directly, a right only the patriarch\'s lone favorite had.

This was the limit of what the brain in charge of this whole operation could do to verbally oppose what she already knew she was going to hear next.

"If we can\'t have the cables cut, then we just need to turn the power plant off," the patriarch pointed out before taking a step back and sitting back on his throne, where he leaned his head to the back and closed his eyes. "Tell Hilbert that I don\'t care what methods he uses as long as he completes the job."

The silence that followed the old man\'s words grew so loud one could nearly touch and scoop it out of the air with their hand.

"Honorable Patriarch…" Cassie spoke out, struggling against her very own sense of self-preservation as she pushed herself to try to protest. "If we do that, the chances of the world finding out about our involvement…"

"Do you really think he will let us be after all we did thus far?"

Contrary to Cassie\'s expectations, her grandfather didn\'t rise from his chair to bring down the might of his cultivation upon her, making her go through hell just for the stupid idea of not following his orders the moment he issued them.

Instead, he appeared to be in the mood to actually explain his decision?

"We went far enough; his retaliation is assured. The thing is, for as long as we stop him from advancing to the tenth stage, there is a limit to how much he can harm the clan. But if he manages to break through?"

The old man simply shook his head.

"The moment he becomes my equal in cultivation, he will be free to raise these issues to the spiritual council. And the moment it happens, it will no longer be a conflict between two cultivation clans but a conflict that involves interference with the secular world, regardless of whether we actually do it or not."

Leaning back in his seat, Cassie\'s grandfather… smiled?

"And since we are going to be implicated with this level of a crime anyway, why not just play along?" he asked, only to suddenly raise his cane and swing it up in the air… only to then drop it down on his shoulder, like some sort of sword in the hand of an arrogant swordsman trying to non-verbally intimidate his opponent. "This way, he won\'t be able to call for the spiritual council to begin with, saving us all the trouble of what would happen if he does."

\'He went as far as to explain everything, but…\' Cassie gritted her teeth.

This do-or-die attitude of her grandfather\'s was one of the main parts of her mentor and patriarch\'s character that Cassie never learned to respect, never grew to adore.

And right now, even with all the risk of opposing her grandfather\'s word… Cassie refused to let the truth be left unsaid.

"What you said certainly is true, honorable patriarch," Cassie started, still down on her knee and with her head lowered. Yet, as soon as she closed her mouth, she looked up and, against all protocol, stared right into her grandfather\'s face. "But what if it won\'t be that man who brings our crimes to bear against the clan?"

If the whole place was oppressively silent during their exchange, now, the room pretty much turned into an abyss.

The sight of anyone opposing the clan\'s patriarch, even if only verbally, was already a one-of-a-kind type of event. But to do it so openly and persistently…

"Grandfather…" Cassie bit down on her lips as she took a deep breath, gathered her courage… and stared right into her grandpa\'s face, refusing to back down regardless of what price she would come to pay for her act of disobedience.

"Grandfather, if you let Hilbert loose on the power plant, it won\'t be Chihiro\'s clan that we will have to face, but first the wrath of the city, then the fury of the nation, and finally, we won\'t be able to escape the scrutiny of the spiritual council anyway!"

That was as far as Cassie was willing to go to stop this madness from turning from a mere plan into reality.

At the same time, however, verbal protests were also all she was able to do at this point.

\'It\'s all on me,\' Cassie thought, lowering her head again as she bit down on her lips. \'If only I hadn\'t suggested for him to come and watch the operation, I could just put a stop to it before things got out of hand…\'

"That\'s certainly true, my dear," the old man, quite surprisingly, agreed with his granddaughter, only to then reveal a slightly wicked and perfectly confident smile. "But that\'s only if Hilbert allows those mortal peasants to catch him!"