Dragon 3: Tide of the Black Moon (1)

"The building was designed and built by the Maruyama Construction Institute, a subsidiary of the Orange family. No one in the Japanese construction industry would doubt the work of the Maruyama Construction Institute, which is five hundred years old and whose founder built Edo's Tenshokaku for Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government trusted Maruyama Construction House to allow the elevated highway of great importance to pass through the interior of Genji Heavy Industries. In the close to ten years since it was built, there has never been an earthquake or hurricane that could affect the passage of that tunnel."

"Awesome!" Lu Mingfei exclaimed.

With a "ding", the elevator stopped at the 28th floor. The moment the elevator door opened, the view suddenly opened up, the whole floor is an office hall, and hundreds of girls sitting in cubicles while answering the phone and searching on the computer screen, full of their crisp "hai hai".

"These are the family's operators. The family's hotline is open 24 hours a day, and for a member of the mob, there are always hundreds of operators waiting to hear his request for help. When setting up this hotline, the family demanded that the service must be better than the police department's alarm line, and the tone and attitude must be cordial. In times of earthquakes and tsunamis, we also answer calls for help from civilians, and more than 50,000 people under the family have participated in disaster relief." Sakura said.

"The family is the real father of the Japanese people!" Lu Mingfei said.

Walking through the call center and up the stairs to the 29th floor, the first thing Lu Mingfei saw was a huge map of Tokyo that occupied the entire wall. Unlike the 3d projection map in the central control room of the headquarters, this map was printed on paper with colorful darts tied to it. The staff took notes on small slips of paper while answering the phone, and then rolled the slips of paper onto the colorful darts and threw them. Another group of people faced the map and thought about it, while someone suddenly got up and plucked a dart from the map, returned to their desks, and a group of black-clad subordinates gathered around them.

"It's like a combat command." Lu Mingfei said.

"We call it the liaison department. Every hour or even every minute of the day there are conflicts in the club, if it is a small matter, after receiving the call the operator will directly throw the task to the relevant class to deal with, but if the operator feels that this must be reported, they will inform the situation to the liaison department. The cadres in the liaison department are all old men with status and experience in the yakuza, some of them have good relations with the police, some have personal relationships with gang leaders, some are connoisseurs in specific industries, and they will receive assignments according to their strengths. The old people are not quite used to being at the computer, so the family agreed that they should work along the same way as before." Sakura said.

"Throwing darts?" Caesar asked.

"It was their custom in the Edo period to throw a note tied to the rib differential."

Unlike the fast pace of the 28th floor and the strictness of the 29th, the 30th floor screams relaxation. This floor is Japanese in style, with older people sitting around on tatami mats in kimonos drinking tea and whispering.

"Is this your old cadres' activity room?" Lu Mingfei asked.

"It's called the Strategy Department, and only the old people with the most status in our family can enter the Strategy Department; they used to be leaders of yakuza gangs, and there are very few things that require them to step in anymore. All they usually have to do is drink tea, but with them sitting here, this building's position in the Japanese yakuza becomes more secure. They're the pillars that hold this place together." Sakura said, "Only very difficult things will labor them to come forward, and they usually can't show up publicly because they've all been wanted by the police for over ten years."

"It's like the House of Lords in ancient Rome." Caesar said, "That's interesting."

"Is that who we're meeting with?" Lumenfly asked.

"No. Although they are also respectable old men in the family, those who are qualified to sit with your honored guests are the highest ranking people in the family, the eight family heads." Sakura said, "At this time, the Yatsu surname family head is already waiting for you all in the Temple of the Awakened God, please follow me."

"The eight surname family lords?" Lu Mingfei's mind conjured up eight skeletal old masters, dressed in pitch black kimonos, with gusts of sinister air coming out of their nostrils.

Sakura pulled open a hidden sliding door, and the sunlight penetrated in, this floor has a spacious terrace, it is hidden in the corner of the building, from the ground and the sky are not easily perceived, the only way to step into this cave is to pull open this sliding door.

It is called Seijinsa Temple, and it is a temple style, but not a Buddhist temple but a Japanese Shinto temple. There is a small vermillion "torii", the granite walls are carved with all kinds of ghosts and gods in Shintoism, from the solemn Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi to the fierce Susanoo, and vicious demons, some with lion-like faces and fangs, some sitting on their knees on a pile of skeletons, the wind and clouds surrounded by these gods and demons, as if a hundred ghosts are walking at night. The terrace has a clear flowing spring, and around the spring is a dead landscape of white rocks and grass, languidly permeated with Zen.

Sakura brought up the copper basin, which was filled with clear water. Lu Mingfei hurriedly wash his hands and rinse his mouth, the book recommended by Lu Mingze is really useful, at least he knows that before visiting the shrine there is a so-called "hand and water ceremony" to cleanse the hands and mouth.

The black and white stone tables form a circular taiji pattern, and the six people waiting at the table all stand up and bow.