The Prime Star, capital of the Empire.
The news of Greven's death caused a far more brutal storm in aristocratic circles than the war of words across the Star Network.
The royal palace held a closed-door meeting overnight, attended exclusively by the Empire's top elites. The meeting's security clearance was maxed out, but it was no match for the moles Tinia had already planted inside the royal family with his vast wealth.
First-hand intelligence, delivered in real-time.
Baal leaned against the window of the safe house. The optical computer's projection displayed the internal royal communications Tinia had just intercepted. With his black hair scattered across his forehead, his eyes swept over the encrypted files, his face devoid of expression.
"They are going to issue a Level Three wanted poster," Tinia said, sitting on the sofa, his fingers operating three optical screens simultaneously. "The announcement is already written; it just needs the royal seal. The wording is quite interesting: 'Jiang Lijin, mentally deranged and seduced by underground forces, brutally murdered the legitimate heir to the Empire's royal family, Greven Alduin.'"
Hearing this, Baal couldn't help but let out a laugh. "Mentally deranged? Her? Even if the old Emperor lost his mind, she wouldn't."
Tinia didn't reply. His fingers flew across the screens, swiftly pulling up a new distribution plan with a few taps.
"The courtroom route is a dead end." Tinia's tone held no regret, merely stating a fact he had anticipated long ago. "The Empire's judicial system is staffed by royal loyalists from top to bottom. Even if I piled the evidence as high as a mountain, the judges wouldn't open a case. They wouldn't even issue a subpoena."
He paused, narrowing his eyes slightly.
"So we can only fight a war of public opinion. We throw all the evidence directly onto the Star Network and let the ordinary citizens of the entire galaxy see and judge for themselves. The court won't try the case? That's fine. The court of public opinion is online twenty-four hours a day, and it has no appeal period."
Baal glanced at him. "The things you send out are number one on the trending list in the morning, and completely gone by the afternoon. The Empire's Information Control Bureau isn't just sitting around doing nothing."
"I know," Tinia said, a smile hanging on his lips, his fingers never stopping. "That's why I changed my strategy."
He turned one of the optical screens toward Baal. It was densely packed with tens of thousands of accounts, platform nodes, and publishing timelines.
"Every time the Empire's Information Control Bureau bans a batch of content, their response time is eleven to fourteen minutes. This ten-plus minute window is enough for a trending topic to be forwarded over a million times. When they ban the first batch, I push the second batch up. When they ban the second, the third is already on its way. Changing accounts, changing platforms, changing keywords, even changing languages."
At this point, the smile on Tinia's face faded slightly, revealing a touch of a businessman's shrewdness.
"Every round of distribution requires buying accounts, buying traffic, and buying trending spots. The Information Control Bureau isn't stupid either; they quickly started tracing the flow of funds, so every sum of money needs to be laundered three times before it can be used. The cost is very high."
Baal heard the implication.
"How high?"
"These past three days have burned through seven percent of the Yunlan Group's annual net profit," Tinia said lightly. "And that's just for the first three days. The subsequent batches of core evidence are more sensitive, harder to distribute, and the price will double and keep rising."
He lifted his chin, his hair sweeping past his brow. "A conservative estimate: by the time this war of public opinion is over, the total expenses will eat up nearly two years of Yunlan's profits."
The room fell silent for a few seconds.
Baal leaned against the window frame, staring at him with heavy eyes.
Tinia was nineteen, the only son of the richest person in the galaxy. He had grown up in the lap of luxury, born with a silver spoon that was the entire Yunlan Group. Someone like him, by all rights, should be the most calculating, the most adept at cutting losses.
Businessmen don't make losing deals.
But the nineteen-year-old pup in front of him was using the profits of his entire family enterprise to fight a public opinion war with an unknown chance of winning for a female. And when talking about those astronomical figures, he didn't even furrow a brow.
"What does Eileen think?" Baal asked.
This was the key.
Tinia was the heir to Yunlan, true, but Eileen was the true helmsman. The title of the galaxy's richest person wasn't just for show. Eileen had dominated the business world for forty years, with a ruthless eye and an iron fist; even the old foxes in the Federation's military had to show her some respect.
She couldn't possibly watch idly as her son burned their family fortune in a fire pit.
Tinia's fingers stopped.
He looked up, the usual playful light fading from his eyes, replaced by a deep certainty.
"Mother called the moment she saw the news. She transferred seventy-two percent of her private assets into my account."
Baal narrowed his eyes slightly.
Seventy-two percent of Eileen's private assets. What did that mean? It wasn't just money; it was mining rights spread across over a dozen galaxies, energy supply chains, logistics hubs, and financial derivatives... It was a massive asset system capable of rivaling the Empire's treasury.
"She said," Tinia lowered his head and resumed operating the optical computer, his voice softening a bit.
"She said, since she is family, we must spare no effort."
Baal said nothing. He turned around, leaning against the window frame, the light in his eyes sinking deeper and deeper.
He thought of his own mother. Born into a military family of the Federation, she had taught him from a young age: never rely on anyone, and become so strong that you don't need a way out.
Therefore, he never understood the concept of "sparing no effort."
In his understanding, all investments should have a bottom line, a backup plan, a critical point at which to cut losses. No one was worth betting all your chips on, not even family.
But Eileen had done it.
Baal suddenly felt that his previous assessment of Tinia needed an update.
This pup didn't just have good genes; he was raised by a truly formidable woman.
What Eileen gave him wasn't money or resources, but a conviction: once you choose someone, you give it your all.
And this nineteen-year-old golden-haired pup was indeed using his entire net worth to put those words into practice.
"Once the wanted poster is issued, all transportation hubs within the Prime Star will receive her facial information." Baal reined in his surging emotions and returned to business, his tone as cold and hard as ever. "She is in the Jiyang Galaxy, so she's safe for now. But the two of us can't stay in the Empire's capital for much longer."
"No rush," Tinia said, shutting down one of the optical screens to free a hand, grabbing a glass of juice from the table and taking a sip. "The wanted poster targets her, not us. My status is the heir of the Yunlan Group; the Empire wouldn't dare touch me. Touching me would be equivalent to declaring war on the entire Yunlan Group. My mom would show them the true meaning of economic sanctions. You are the Supreme Commander of the Federation; they'd dare even less. No matter how stupid the Empire is, they wouldn't give the Federation an excuse to start a war at a time like this."
He set the glass down and casually wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "What the royal family fears most right now isn't us; it's the continued spread of that list. As long as I still hold the subsequent evidence, they need to weigh whether the cost of touching me is too high. So, I plan to stay for another two days and finish dropping the final batch of evidence before leaving."
Tinia pulled up the files for the second batch of core evidence: the site selection maps for the three secret laboratories under Greven Alduin's name, and the funding approval documents, which bore the personal signatures of six aristocratic council members.
"I made three copies of these original documents. One is in my hands, one is in the Tianyan intelligence network, and the last one has already been sent to the Federation Military Court through anonymous channels."
Baal turned his head to look at him.
Tinia tilted his head, his eyes full of absolute certainty. "What? It is not convenient for you to show your face on the Federation's side, right, Lord Commander? The moment you make a move, those old foxes in the military will know you are in league with us. Leaving this kind of work to merchants is fast and clean. It does not matter if we cannot get into the Empire's courts; the Federation's military court is not under the Empire's jurisdiction. As long as the Federation officially opens an investigation, even if the Empire wants to cover things up, they will have to consider the issue of judicial jurisdiction."
He held up a finger and waved it. "When the time comes, the Imperial Royal Family will only have two choices. They can either hold a trial for those noble councilors themselves, or they can play deaf and dumb, waiting for the Federation to use this incident to deal them a heavy blow on the diplomatic level. No matter which they choose, it works to our advantage."
Baal looked at Tinia's profile and suddenly remembered what Jiang Lijin had said when she rubbed the boy's head.
"Fight the public opinion war on the capital star well. Do not let me kill this person in vain."
This little brat was indeed fighting it. He was fighting with precision and ruthlessness.
Legal and illegal, out in the open and hidden in the shadows, everything was arranged flawlessly.
The royal family wanted to turn the tables?
Tinia held three times as many trump cards as they did. Furthermore, standing right behind him was the richest man in the galaxy, someone who had wagered his entire life and fortune on this endeavor.
Baal fell silent for a few seconds.
"You mother and son," he said, his tone stiff, clearly unaccustomed to saying such things. "I underestimated you before."
Tinia froze for a moment, and then his entire face lit up with a brilliant, joyful smile.
"Wow, Commander Baal actually knows how to compliment people? I am going to record this and tell my sister!"
"Shut up and get to work."
"No, no, no, wait a minute, let me record an audio clip."
"Say one more word of nonsense and I will pour out your juice," Baal said, delivering the weakest possible threat in the toughest tone he could muster.
Tinia immediately snapped his mouth shut, but he could not suppress the upward curve of his lips. He lowered his head and resumed operating his optical computer, his fingers flying across the interface even faster than before.
He thought to himself that when this war was finally over, he would take his mother to meet his sister.
He would let his mother see with her own eyes whether or not the bet she placed was worth it.
