Dragon Clan: I am Lu Mingfei, the Intelligence Strategist, the God of Concepts!

Chapter 154 Tachibana Masamune: Princess Kaguya is more important than my life

If riddle masters in the world had levels, then the boss's riddle master level would definitely be 'MAX'.

Even before she officially joined the boss's team, Chip Girl knew this.

When the foundation was established, its first investment was in the Hebihachi family. It subsequently invested large sums of money in stages. To date, its total assets are estimated to be at least 30 billion euros, accounting for approximately 75% of the Hebihachi family's overseas assets and 45% of its Japanese assets.

This is undoubtedly a huge investment.

Chip Girl once questioned the boss's investment decision. After all, in terms of return on investment, there are plenty of high-quality projects that can earn several times or even dozens of times the profit within a cycle. Why waste so much effort on this old snake that is heading towards the sunset?

—At that time, the Sheqi Eight Families were in a period of decline.

Externally, the bubble economy has burst, and the country has been in a prolonged recession, which is expected to continue for the next decade or so.

Within, a group of ruthless demons are eyeing the area, sending numerous dangerous individuals to cause chaos in various regions, from Otaru in Hokkaido to Kagoshima in Kyushu. These lunatics are not driven by profit; their sole purpose is to harm others without benefiting themselves.

In this situation, any investment would be essentially a waste of money, and later events proved this to be true. The investment in the Snake Eight Families was one of the few stains on Potato Chip Girl's financial career, and this stain continues to grow.

She's like a goddess, constantly filling this ever-growing hole with stones, each stone worth hundreds of millions, even billions.

The reason, of course, was the boss's insistence. When he initially pushed this investment forward, he claimed, "I truly look forward to those heinous and cruel truths being revealed to the world. When the bloodshed sweeps from the ocean to the sky, how will the innocent people at the crossroads of fate cope? The pitiful and ignorant are always more hateful than the perpetrators..."

This is the standard riddle-solving segment before the boss makes any plans.

The first time Potato Chip Girl heard such mystical phrases as "the place where fates meet" or "the place of bloodshed," she was excited, but now she's tired of them.

Chip Girl can't remember exactly how many "places where fates intersect" there are in the world.

Five? Ten? Or twenty?
With the help of Chip Girl, this guy has countless plans around the world, but he usually doesn't reveal his purpose, only saying things like "I want to invest here" or "I want to build a bridge there".

If you ask him about his purpose, he'll give you a riddle.

Over the years, the boss has built a complex and mysterious maze of plans around the world, but only he knows the intricacies of it all. He never tells anyone his thoughts, as if all the plans would instantly fail once the fog clears.

Usually, just before the finale, this despicable guy will reveal a little bit of the truth, and in the meantime, tell Su Enxi, Jiu De Mai, and Ling what to do next. Ultimately, the answer to the mystery can only be revealed by themselves.

Gradually, the potato chip girl simply stopped asking.

This is why Chip Girl was particularly shocked when she heard the names of those plans from Lu Mingfei.

What the hell!
You promised to be a riddle teller for life? How come you suddenly revealed it to the little white rabbit?

Did you never actually find being a riddle teller enjoyable?

Stop messing around, okay?!
However, Chip Girl has always had doubts about Tachibana Masamune, this new-era patriarch of the 21st century.

Although she couldn't directly ask the boss, as the largest shareholder, she naturally had to conduct a thorough investigation into the CEO of the Sheqi Bajia 'company'.

As Mai Shude conducted her 'undercover visit' today, a certain suspicion in my heart gradually became clear.

"What's the problem?" Lu Mingfei asked.

"I suspect that Tachibana Masamune and the King have been in cahoots for a long time!"

Chip Girl frankly shared her guess.

"Huh?" Lu Mingfei was somewhat surprised.

Mai Shude and Zero both turned their heads to look at her.

Looking at the three curious children, Chip Girl pondered for a moment: "Do you know Sima Yi?"

"Uh, Zhuge Liang's lifelong nemesis... the one whose ultimate move is throwing a fireball?" Lu Mingfei said cautiously.

Chip Girl automatically ignored the second half of his sentence and looked around.

Long-legged Girl and Zero are Japanese and Russian, respectively, and they obviously don't know much about the history of the Three Kingdoms. At most, they know about the romance of Shu Han, the integrity of Cao Wei, and the cowardice of Jiangdong from various movies and games.

"Sima Yi, the 'Tomb Tiger,' was a schemer during the Three Kingdoms period. When he was in a standoff with Zhuge Liang, the Chancellor of the Han Dynasty, he held the advantage but did not take the initiative to launch a decisive battle. His purpose was to nurture the enemy in order to consolidate his military power. In the end, he seized the foundation of the Cao Wei family in his later years and became the biggest winner of the Three Kingdoms period."

She revealed the answer: "I suspect that Tachibana Masamune may be playing the same trick as Sima Yi, nurturing bandits to enhance his own power. He deliberately allowed the Demon Clan to grow stronger, constantly increasing his own power leverage."

"Oh! So Tachibana Masamune and the King were working together, and their reputations were spiraling upwards among the Snake-Headed Eight Families and the Demon Clan..."

Lu Mingfei suddenly realized, but then a question arose: "Wait, something doesn't make sense. Logically speaking, hasn't Tachibana Masamune already become the head of the Snake-Headed Eight Families? What power does he need to consolidate?"

"If Tachibana Masamune's ascension to the throne was illegitimate, then wouldn't he need to consolidate his power?"

Chip Girl shook her head. "Or maybe he has other plans?"

"In short, based on the information I gathered from my inside contacts in the Snake Clan, Tachibana Masamune is a very strange person. Twenty years ago, no one had ever heard of Tachibana Masamune. This patriarch seems to have fallen from the sky. No one knows where he was born or what he did before. The elders of the family who might know something about this are keeping their mouths shut."

"The most crucial point is that you shouldn't look at what he says in name only, but at what he does!"

"Super AIs like Princess Kaguya are capable of so many things. If I were to gain access to Princess Kaguya, in ten days! No, in five days, I would be able to analyze various data within Japan and pinpoint the true location of the King! Every action leaves a trace; this principle always applies!"

“Even if the Snake-Headed Eight Families are far inferior to me, five or ten years is fine. No matter what, they can’t possibly fail to find even the slightest clue about the King. If the King really had such means, then the one sitting comfortably in Tokyo now, calling himself the ‘main family,’ should be the Demon Clan, not the Snake-Headed Eight Families.”

Potato Chip Girl's In-Depth Thinking and Serious Analysis:

"So the only possibility is that Tachibana Masamune never intended to seriously deal with the King! The two of them might have been secretly plotting against each other all along!"

……

It was late at night,

Genji arrived at Genji Heavy Industries, exhausted from his journey. Due to the attack on the building, armed security personnel were everywhere, and the building was brightly lit as if it were daytime.

He took the elevator to the 52nd floor.

The massive Kaguya-hime server room was in a semi-enclosed state, with the entire floor sealed off with yellow tape, and countless maintenance workers coming and going.

Shio Miyamoto of the Ganryu Research Institute is overseeing the emergency repair work.

"Head of the Miyamoto family, how is the situation?" Genji asked.

"It's alright, the problem isn't too serious. Kaguya's server room has enough space. The explosion was caused by a short circuit due to high temperature overload. Some servers were damaged, but the main core area was not affected by the explosion. After repairing these servers, Kaguya's computing power will not be affected."

Wearing a white lab coat and non-prescription glasses, Shigeo Miyamoto didn't look like the head of a mixed-race yakuza family; instead, he looked like an ordinary tech geek.

Upon receiving news of the attack on Princess Kaguya's server room, he rushed here from the Ganryu Research Institute immediately.

"However, the main server will probably be a bit busier for the next week or so. The other servers will have to be restarted and self-checked in batches, and the message processing capacity will be only about half of what it was before. They'll have to work overtime."

Miyamoto Shio sighed softly.

'They' naturally refers to the employees of the various companies under the family on floors 1-20, as well as the main family's liaison hall on the 28th floor, Genji Heavy Industries, and even the operation of the behemoth that is the Snake Clan. All of them rely on the support of Kaguya's computing power. Once Kaguya is damaged, it will be like the gears inside this huge machine rusting. It is foreseeable that the efficiency of the entire family's operation will drop by more than one level.

Especially at this critical time... this is not good news.

"How did the intruders sneak in?" Genji frowned slightly and emphasized, "The report says there were two groups fighting inside?"

"The specific cause is still under investigation."

Miyamoto Shigeo looked somewhat puzzled: "When we first designed the Ganryu Research Institute, we set an extremely high level of security for Princess Kaguya's computer room. The only entrance and exit is that alloy door. The entire door is made of a new type of alloy, weighs more than ten tons, and is controlled by both steam valves and electronic combination locks. It is impact-resistant, corrosion-resistant, and explosion-proof, so there is basically no possibility of external damage."

"The electronic lock is composed of a 256-bit dynamic key and is protected by Kaguya's core firewall. It is impossible for it to be cracked silently from the computer level. The keys are held by me, the head of the family, and the maintenance department. Normally, maintenance and testing personnel need to be screened at every level before entering. As for forgery... that's probably impossible."

"However, we will still conduct a reinvestigation."

Genjiro's expression was not good. "So it was neither a physical means nor an informational means? The other party sneaked in like a ghost, and then left like a ghost?"

Before he arrived, he had already learned that none of the surveillance equipment in the Genji Heavy Industries building had detected the intruder's presence; such methods were simply terrifying.

"Before the intrusion occurred, there was a period of time when there was a massive attack of junk data, during which the monitoring system was hacked."

Miyamoto Shigeo corrected him, saying, "The other side came prepared."

"Young Master, the headmaster is waiting for you at Xingshen Temple."

"it is good."

Yuan Zhisheng glanced at the busy floor and knew that he probably couldn't be of much help with these technical tasks.

Take the elevator back to the thirtieth floor, push open the hidden door, and step into the terrace hidden from the world.

An elderly man with graying temples, dressed in a black patterned haori, sat in the middle of the courtyard. On a stone tea table were two cups of hot tea and rice-filled snacks.

As the Japanese-style sliding door opened, a young man in a trench coat walked in.
"You're back? Come, have a seat."

With a gentle and peaceful smile, Tachibana Masamune gestured for Genjiro to sit down and pointed to a cup of hot tea on the table.

"Dad!"

Yuan Zhisheng shook his head, and a hint of urgency finally surfaced in his eyes.

"I heard the intruder is under your..." "Don't worry, I'm fine. Have a cup of tea first." Tachibana Masamune smiled slightly.

Yuan Zhisheng sighed, picked up his teacup, and drank it all in one gulp.

Earlier, when he heard in the car that the intruder had entered the server room, Tachibana Masamune had just come out from there, the two perhaps only four or five meters apart at their closest point, and he was extremely anxious. Fortunately, the cunning enemy did not harm his father, otherwise he really wouldn't know what to do.

"Try this, it's a kashiwa mochi I made myself."

Tachibana Masamune's smile remained unchanged as he extended his aged fingers to pick up a piece of tea snack and hand it to Genjiro.

Or perhaps they were influenced by Tachibana Masamune's calm and composed demeanor.

Yuan Zhisheng also calmed down and silently savored the bland cypress cake, bite by bite. With the bitterness of the tea as a base, the tea snack made from coarsely ground rice flour also had a sweeter taste.

"The way to be a general is to first cultivate one's mind. One should remain calm even if Mount Tai collapses before one, and not even blink if a deer runs past on one's left. This is a Chinese saying."

Tachibana Masamune smiled and said, "Since it has already happened, why worry unnecessarily about bad outcomes that haven't occurred? There's no need to overthink it. Just calm your mind, like you are now. This is an old person's wisdom; you'll understand it in the future."

"I know, Dad."

After finishing his tea and snacks, Yuan Zhisheng lit a cigarette, and his gaze finally calmed down.

"What are your thoughts on the enemy?"

“Chiki,” Tachibana Masamune chuckled, “I thought you would ask me first why I happened to be in Kaguya-hime’s computer room at that time.”

“If even you don’t believe me, who should I believe?” Genji shrugged and exhaled a puff of smoke.

“You should ask these questions; these are all points of doubt.” Tachibana Masamune smiled, then his expression turned serious. “However, I still need to make things clear to you.”

"First of all, I had anticipated that enemies would try to infiltrate Princess Kaguya's server room."

"What?" Genji was taken aback.

Tachibana Masamune said slowly, "That's right. After so many years of accumulation, Princess Kaguya has too much authority in Japan. I guess those lawless hunters might try to use Princess Kaguya's power to help them find people."

"As you know, I'm getting old and not very good at new computer gadgets. This time, I went to Kaguya's server room to use my privileges to install some guards, just in case. But I didn't expect the other party to be more efficient and capable than I imagined. They actually managed to break into Kaguya's server room without me noticing. Fortunately, Kaguya's core database was not compromised. After triggering the alarm, the other party decisively chose to leave."

"Is the intruder a hunter?" Genji was taken aback. "There are hunters this powerful?"

"I'm not sure if he's a hunter, but I only know one thing."

Tachibana Masamune stared directly at Genjiro, his eyes shining. "Princess Kaguya's database holds far too many of our secrets, secrets that must never be known to outsiders!"

"Whether it's a hunter or anyone else, anyone who harbors malicious intentions towards Princess Kaguya is our enemy!"

Yuan Zhisheng's expression hardened slightly.

Indeed, Princess Kaguya monitors all matters related to the dragon race throughout Japan. If someone were to analyze this carefully, they could easily detect the anomalies of the Snake-Headed Eight Families and the Demon Clan. Thus, it is not impossible to analyze the fact that the origin of their dragon bloodline comes from the 'White King'.

There are even more secrets.

These are things that the Snake Clan must protect with their lives.

Princess Kaguya's existence enhanced the Snake Clan's ability to control the entire territory of Japan, allowing the executive bureau's agents to detect any anomalies immediately and rush to the target location to handle them, thus preventing the secrets from being leaked. However, it also became a double-edged sword; if someone stole Princess Kaguya's core data, the consequences would be unimaginable.

After a moment of silence, Yuan Zhisheng nodded solemnly: "I understand."

"Father, I will be in charge of guarding Princess Kaguya for the next period of time. I will stay at Genji Heavy Industries and be responsible for Princess Kaguya's security."

"Thank you for your hard work, Zhisheng..."

Tachibana Masamune sighed with a complicated expression, "You, Amaterasu, should have been conquering all corners of the world and spreading your glory to every land... Unfortunately, my bloodline is nothing special, otherwise I should have been in charge of security. I was only able to survive this time because the other party did not want to alert us."

“I feel a little bad about having you, the future head of the family, do the security work, but the situation is critical. This Genji Heavy Industries building needs an owner... Only with you in charge can I feel at ease.”

"Dad, if you put it that way, you still don't really understand me."

Yuan Zhisheng chuckled self-deprecatingly: "I've never been interested in power or anything like that. I'm just standing on your side, supporting you as a person, and our family... I really hope all these things can be resolved soon. Then I don't care who gets the position of Director of the Executive Bureau, whether it's Crow, Yaksha, or someone else."

“You can continue to sit in the position of patriarch. If you don’t want to sit, then hand it over to someone else. The head of the Miyamoto family and the head of the Sakurai family are not old and are more suitable to lead the family than I am. I am just someone you have promoted. Sometimes I often wonder if I am really suitable to be a leader?”

"You may not know this, but I spent my days sightseeing in Kyoto with those old men from the Kansai branch, and I felt that I had more happiness than I had in the past year combined."

"Actually, Kyoto is also a good place."

Tachibana Masamune remained silent for a long time: "Is that so? I apologize, I am a novice, but you are the emperor, and you were born to sit in that position... Perhaps it is not my own will, but the rules of the family. After all, besides you, the other emperor is Erii. If we have to say who is 'suitable,' I'm afraid Erii is even less suitable."

“Eri’s?” Genji murmured.

He roughly imagined his younger sister sitting in the position of the head of the family, but spending her days writing and drawing in a small notebook to convey orders, and suddenly couldn't help but laugh.

Tachibana Masamune scratched his head, thinking of the same thing, and also laughed heartily.

The once quiet Xingshen Temple, where only the sound of the wind and the Zen-like 'Startled Deer' in the dry landscape pond in the courtyard could be broken by the laughter of an old man and a young man.

The slightly somber atmosphere was immediately swept away with the appearance of the name 'Eri'.

A moment later, Yuan Zhisheng's laughter gradually stopped.

“Aren’t rules meant to be broken?” he said softly.

For no reason, the image of Chigami came to mind again... If Chigami weren't a 'demon,' perhaps he would have been more suitable to sit on the throne than he and Erii.

Back then at Shikatori Shrine, the young girl was favored by the chief priest to become the next chief priest and inherit the shrine.

Young girls learn everything very quickly; he memorized the shrine's dances and etiquette after watching them only once.

The young girl was humble and always had a clean smile on her face. Perhaps such a smile could change the atmosphere of the underworld. If she became the patriarch, would there still be so much conflict?
Unfortunately, the girl was a 'ghost', and she was already dead.

Tachibana Masamune also fell silent, whether from hearing the bold statement of 'breaking the rules' or from remembering his younger brother who was killed by Genjiro many years ago.

It is a secret that Genjiro once had a younger brother named Genjiro, who also had royal blood flowing through his veins.

Within the entire Executive Bureau and the entire Snake Clan, only the two of them knew.

The tea in the cup was empty.
"Don't worry, Dad. Until this is completely over, I will always be the family's Amaterasu. During this time, you should stay at Genji Heavy Industries. I will protect you."

Genji grabbed the spider cutter, stood up, his eyes flashing with a light that screamed "man," his trench coat fluttering in the wind.

Tachibana Masamune nodded with satisfaction, feeling a sense of relief.

“However, there’s one thing you must remember, Chisei: if anything unexpected happens in the next few days, and Kaguya and I are both in danger, your first priority in rescuing her must be Kaguya,” he emphasized.

……

Park Hyatt Hotel, Shinjuku Ward.

"So we still have to find a way to hack into Princess Kaguya," said Mai Shutoku.

"On one hand, it's to find the King, and on the other hand, it's to find evidence of Tachibana Masamune's collusion with the King?"

Chip Girl shook her head: "If I were Tachibana Masamune, I would definitely use the patriarch's authority to delete the relevant data immediately... It's either him, or one of his closest confidants, definitely a computer expert. Of course, I'm more inclined to believe the former. For a schemer, all the most important secrets must be in his own hands."

"However, he can't completely clean it up. Just like falsifying accounts, falsified accounts will always be falsified accounts; they can't be made to look exactly like real ones."

"If we can find Tachibana Masamune, we can try interrogating him."

Lu Mingfei interjected, "I'm an expert in interrogation."

This time, it wasn't just Chip Girl and Mai Shude who glanced at him; even Zero couldn't help but look at him.

"Tsk...believe it or not." Lu Mingfei curled his lip.

"Ahem, Rabbit Bro, it's not that I don't believe you, huh?"

Mai Shude chuckled dryly and tried to smooth things over, saying, "Tachibana Masamune is surrounded by countless guards; it's not that easy to arrest and interrogate him."

"If it weren't for chance, it would be difficult to even see him. It is said that this patriarch's bloodline is actually very weak, so he is as timid as a mouse."

"Alright then! I'll try infiltrating Kaguya's server room one more time. This time, I promise there won't be any mistakes!"

Chip Girl glanced at this pathetic ninja and rolled her eyes: "Infiltrating directly is out of the question, unless you're really planning to become a Demon Ninja and play the role of the defeated one!"

"Then what do you suggest we do?"

Mai Shiranui gritted her teeth and secretly kicked her under the table with her long leg.

"I choose... a direct approach!"

The potato chip girl chuckled: "I have a plan, called 'internal and external cooperation, with external forces cooperating from within!'"

(End of this chapter)