Right then, more news traveled into his ears.
The missing third batch of the sunstones had been found in Erudia.
The moment they heard about it, Bruce and the others leaped in joy.
“Where did you find it?” Bruce asked, his eyes bright with delight.
After a moment of hesitation, the man who came bearing good news said, “As it turns out, the sunstones were not transported out at all. They’re still at the mining sites!”
Boom!
The reply was like a bolt from the blue for Bruce.
He had been searching everywhere like a madman, but it turned out that the sunstones never left the mining sites from the start.
Bruce finally understood what it meant by the most dangerous place was the safest.
The mysterious force had only wanted to stop the sunstones from leaving Erudia; they never robbed them at all.
They had swapped out the sunstones with ordinary stones at the mining sites, so what they had transported had been normal stones.
They had been fooled.
Realizing that, Bruce’s eyes turned red as his expression turned as dark as night.
After all those efforts in searching for the sunstones, they turned out to be at the mining site all along. They were never lost; they had always been in the hands of his own men.
They had truly played the entire Lab of Gods like a fiddle.
How humiliating.
It was the greatest humiliation he had ever suffered.
Bruce would rather hit his head against a wall and end his life than convey the message he just heard to the Lab of Gods.
It was the third time, but still, they were fooled.
It would have been better if they had stolen the sunstones away from him, but that was not what happened.
They had merely been tricked.
Smack!
Crack!
In his fury, Bruce threw everything he could lay his hands on.
A subordinate beside him tried to calm him down. “Mr. Johnston, please don’t be mad. Although we’ve been tricked, we’ve still found the sunstones. They’re still with us. Our efforts haven’t gone to waste.”
The others quickly chimed in. “Yes, he’s right. What’s most important is that we still have the sunstones!”
All of a sudden, Bruce snapped his head in their direction and glared at them. “Are you all idiots?”
“Huh?”
They were taken aback by his words.
“The sunstones are with us? How are they with us? Aren’t they still in Erudia? Do you think you can transport them here?”
His bombardment of questions made the others blink in shock.
“If we could, I would have been able to get the sunstones that are at least a hundred years old. Don’t you know that the six major mining sites are in Erudia? Do you think that we can take a single sunstone back? It’s an impossible feat!” Bruce roared.
It was only then they understood what he meant.
Technically, the sunstones were theirs, but whether or not they would physically own the stones was another matter.
With the mysterious force around, they could never take any sunstone out of Erudia.
Although they had found where the missing third batch of the sunstones were, no one could put on a smile on their faces.
Everything was back at square one.
They still could not bring the sunstones back to the Lab of Gods.
Furthermore, even though they had found the sunstones, they could not find any clue about the mysterious force.
Not even Cyrus had found a hint about them.
Now, Bruce only had two options—to transport the third batch he had found or to continue mining for more.
It was a tough question.
Bruce was afraid, and he did not have much courage to transport the sunstones again.
He was scared that the fourth batch would go missing as well.
Indeed, Bruce was terrified.
After all, he knew nothing about the mysterious organization behind the missing sunstones.
Fear was a normal reaction when faced with the unknown.
Thus, Bruce gathered his men to discuss what they should do for their next move.
“Mr. Johnston, why don’t we keep trying? Let’s try to transport the sunstones back again. We’ll do it the same way as we did before, but we’ll increase our security even in Erudia. I refuse to believe that we still can’t take it back this time,” someone suggested.
“That’s right. What happened the last time was because they managed to find a loophole in our transportation process. Now that we’ve found out what we’ve made a mistake on, I’d like to see what other tricks they can pull out of their hat!”
“Hear, hear. As long as we keep tight security all the way, there isn’t anything they can do about us taking the sunstones out of Erudia.”
Everyone made the same suggestion, which was to take the sunstones out of Erudia first.
At that, Bruce sighed and agreed, “All right. We’ll give it a go.”
Just then, someone yelled, “Bad news! Something happened again!”
