assistirfilmes Chapter 205: Clan's Town
Chapter 205: Clan's Town
"Well, that was... worrying?" I muttered as we left the room, only to head directly to the place's courtyard to wait for the car assigned to take us to our next destination.
This was all a result of Cassandra's clan interference, the effects of which the clan had yet to fully shed away.
With most of the clan's assets still locked by the government, we found ourselves in quite the inconvenient position of having to rely on... well, the very same government to fund the current expansion and relocation warranted by all the heat on the original Qi factory.
But the effects of the government's interference weren't limited to just outward expansion either. With hardly any money—of a scale Chihiro and Claire were used to, that is—we couldn't really afford to keep going as we did in the past.
That's why, rather than operate out of our private mansion or work around the government freezing our funds by emptying out the coffers of my firm that, from a legal standpoint, had nothing to do with the clan and was thus saved from the taxman's scrutiny... we had all moved to a small clan's village, as it would be called in the past, or the clan's headquarters as it was its current, lore-accurate name.
This small village was where I first realized the peculiar position of the cultivation clans living within the modern world.
On one end, they were knees-deep in the local politics, business, and societies, making them pretty much a carbon copy of the local city elites. If anything, the only differentiating factor there was how the cultivator clans boasted greater personal strength than normal modern elites while also often liking to keep more to themselves than the average.
That was the picture of the high-rank cultivators within modern society. But, from the moment I first stepped into the village, this image shattered into a thousand, unrecoverable pieces.
This village was everything that I would expect a military base to be, while also being nothing like it.
"Instead, all we got was pretty much what we knew already," I tuned in only to, pretty much right away, sigh. "I mean, save for the timing, that part was new to me."
"Really?" Claire raised her eyebrows while turning her head to give me a side-eye. "Are you trying to tell me those timelines... surprised you?"
The corner of my lips moved up as my mouth twitched a bit.
"That I didn't say," I grinned back at the girl, only to then heave my head back as I looked up to the sky. "The timelines that officer provided were well within my estimates, but still," I shook my head before looking down, just in time to catch the headlights of our car appearing far up the empty street, "it's nice to have some sort of confirmation."
The conversation we had right now wasn't something of importance or great urgency. To a degree, it was nothing more than small talk, aimed both to entertain us for a moment and to help us better process what we'd learned... or, at least, were supposed to learn from the meeting.
Before long, we found ourselves in one of the clan's cars, only to, after a short and peaceful trip, find ourselves all the way back at our temporary lodge within the lone hotel of the clan's town.
"Do you need help packing?" I asked pretty much as soon as we entered the penthouse we'd rented for free, only to instantly get myself moving toward the shelves filled with brand-new clothing.
Apparently, the goal of the government freezing our funds was to press us economically into obedience.
That plan had long since fallen through with as little as a partial funds release that Chihiro secured, along with the support for the industry development of my prototypes.
Still, the majority of the clan's assets remained frozen, impossible for anyone to access. And while we were supposed to revel in austerity and save every penny we could...