Normally those who wish to enter the border station must wait in line, while their spaceships are scanned, but the guards here were… useless.
While the spaceship was concealed, Aster used his spirit sense to inspect the situation, just to make himself an idea of how bad were things for the Rodia star cluster, and as he expected the guards here were totally corrupted.
In plain daylight there were some who asked for a protection fee, others offered to jump the line in exchange for a fee too, they weren’t different from a lair of bandits, of course that only happened to those who were judged to be too weak to have connections with people from other star clusters.
Aster softly snorted, he always wondered why the Rodia star cluster which had a quality decent enough for star tribulation cultivators to flourish, like Prasil, was so behind only having at most star axys powerhouses.
‘Well, that explains why there aren’t tourists nor merchants from other star clusters coming here, who would want to come to such a place where the ones who are supposed to maintain the order act like third grade thugs’.
Aster then changed his attention to the highest building in the city, which he supposed was the mansion of the envoy from the Atria family.
As he spied the mansion, he couldn’t help but frown, unlike the majestic exterior, the defensive spirit formation was really poor, and there were just a couple of old maids walking on the corridors.
When his spirit sense reached the main hall of the mansion, he understood what was happening.
The envoy was sitting in his throne, with a grim expression in his face, no, it was worse than that, his skin had a grayish unhealthy tone and there were bags under his eyes too, in other words this envoy had either suffered deviation when he was cultivating or he was poisoned.
“Well, it doesn’t look like he is enjoying the benefits those guys from the Lagrae stellar system paid, so I guess the guilty is someone else, whatever this makes things easier”.
Since the girls also wanted to go, Lilia transported everyone inside the mansion of the envoy, the spaceship was kept in her spatial ring of course, apparently the concealment formation could be active the whole time.
Lilia didn’t even bother to hide everyone with an invisible talisman, there were no guards in the mansion.
The envoy who seemed to have aged quite since the last time Lilia saw him from afar, just saw them appearing out of thin air but his reaction was just a sigh.
“My position at the family, my cultivation, the little stability I worked so hard to create in this city… and now that bastard has sent someone to take my life away from me”.
“I guess I should feel honored that a respectable Void Manipulation senior have personally come to get this old life of mine”.
Aster raised an eyebrow at the relaxed expression of the man, even a rabbit will bite when cornered, but this man had the words “kill me” written all over his face.
Not like he cared, what he wanted to know where the names of the guards that allowed the mercenaries hunt in the Rodia star cluster, but Aster then repeated his last words in his mind.
Any mortal transcending realm cultivator would be in awe, seeing the ability of a Void Manipulation realm to travel using space as the medium, also the words “my cultivation” were specially eye catching.
He already inspected the man in the throne even before they appeared here and it was just like Lilia once told him, a mortal transcending cultivator and a really low ranked one, if it weren’t for a few treasures Aster could detect, like the throne he was sitting on, the captain of the mercenaries would have been enough to deal with the envoy.
But now after a close inspection he noticed something else, his tendons, the bones of his wrists and the shoulders all had needles piercing them but from the inside, he only noticed those little things because they resonated with his soul energy.
“Mom what path does the Atria family follows?”, he asked in a voice only Lilia could hear.
“Energy and soul, darling”.
Aster rubbed his chin contemplating what to do, then after a couple of minutes he took a decision.
“Unfortunately for you, we aren’t here to kill you, tell me who allowed the mercenaries from the Lagrae stellar system to enter, my Rodia star cluster?”.
“Mm?”, the old man finally showed some reaction, his eyebrows furrowed as a furious expression appeared in his face, then blood dripped from his mouth which ultimately calmed his anger.
The man seemed to doubt for a split of a second before saying.
“East district, red house with a white door, number 345, what you are looking for is there, kill them if you want to, but don’t harm the owners of the stores… please”.
Aster didn’t say anything, he just nodded at Lilia and they all disappeared from the mansion, leaving the old man with a somewhat relieved expression.
“No matter where you hide, retribution always comes looking for you… karma is a bitch”, said the old man as he closed his eyes to rest.
…
Lilia brought Aster and the others to the center of the city, because her son wanted to see with his own eyes what was the situation of this place.
And it didn’t take her even one minute to see the difference, unlike that time when she arrived, most of the stores were closed but the owners seemed to live in them, it’s just that they had no merchandise to offer in the stands.
The only exceptions were a couple of stores with the emblem of the station, the problem was the prices written on the labels and the grade of the things exhibited.
“Nothing above the stellar axys realm and the prices are about triple what they should be, they are clearly limiting the growth of the star cluster”, concluded Aster.
The border stations aren’t only for control, they can be considered inter-galaxy points for commerce, since they are supposed to be sacred grounds where robbing and killing is prohibited.
“Look what I found here, a little fish who wants to escape the net”.
Aster didn’t bother speaking in a low voice, so his previous words were heard by the people inside the few open stores, and now all those guys were surrounding them, like a pack of wolves.
“I call dibs on the tall one”.
“The blue haired one is mine; don’t you dare to fight me!”.
And other kinds of similar things could be heard coming from the crowd that was surrounding Aster and the girls, all of them were wearing the uniforms of the guards of the city which made Aster shake his head.
“We have no time for small fries, Sarina, leave one alive”.
“Mm”, Sarina snapped her fingers and a whistling sound echoed through the whole street.
The guards were about to laugh out loud when as if they discussed it beforehand, they looked downwards just to see a thin line of ash-red mist burning in their chests, then before they could even scream their bodies separated horizontally.
Surprisingly the bloody scene Aster expected didn’t happen, in fact the part where the bodies were cut was cauterized, although interested, Aster decided to leave that for later.
“M-Monster!”, the last guy alive fell on his ass as he saw all his comrades suddenly dying, his face paled and a yellow stain appeared on his pants as he peed himself.
Aster drew out one of his training swords and pointed it at the neck of the last survivor.
“You probably did something similar in the previous years, so you know how this works, if you lie, you will wish that snap would have killed you too, understood?”.
The man slowly nodded, so Aster proceeded to ask what the hell happened in this place in the last years, according to Lilia it hasn’t been even forty years since she arrived, so there is no way that things would end up so bad by natural causes.
Apparently, everything started since the envoy was changed not too long ago, the previous one managed to get in the good books of someone from the main family and was called back to the Atria star cluster.
(N/A: The stellar system is called Atria, and the highest ranked star cluster in the system is also called Atria, and the same applies for the other ones and even the Heavenly Quadrant)
When the new envoy arrived a new batch of guards also came with him, but unlike the previous ones, the envoy didn’t seem to be in charge but the other way around, normally the envoy which is the strongest is the city lord, and the second one is the captain of the city guards and the vice city lord.
But in this case the city lord was also the captain of the guards, while the envoy was declared the “adviser”, in other words the power and authority weren’t in the hands of the envoy.
While at the beginning things were the same, just a normal change in the administration of the border station, not even a couple of years later, the city lord started demanding the stores to pay tribute.
Then the guards became corrupted too, but it was still manageable, until they also started controlling the traffic of the space gate, not allowing the owners of the stores to leave when they wanted.
In fact, they weren’t allowed to leave the city, and if they wanted food or other daily necessities, they needed to pay with spirit stones, which was outrageous, at first the families resisted, but once their reserves were depleted, they had no option but to give in.
“Hoh, so this city lord is acting like a king, in my star cluster”, mumbled Aster, with a swing of his sword he cut the head of the guy.