The Legendary Man

Chapter 985 Attacking Weakness With Strength
Jonathan picked up his phone and gave Karl a call.
“Get it done. This matter has nothing to do with Asura's Office, so make sure you don't leave any traces.”
Dark Special Forces was a peripheral organization of Asura's Office that emerged to the forefront after Karl's betrayal.
Even now, the list of Dark Special Forces members was still kept secret. Other than the Intelligence Unit, no one else in Asura's
Office liaised with them.
Even the Intelligence Unit's contact with them simply revolved around providing information.
Ever since its establishment, Jonathan never meant to make it part of Asura's Office.
After all, Dark Special Forces was a unit meant to work behind the scenes.
As a military organization that covered the entire country, Asura's Office was supposed to be placed under Yaleview's command.
However, the influence wielded by the eight respectable families and other factions in Yaleview was just too huge. Even Zedfield
couldn't escape from the clutches of those families.
That was the reason why Asura's Office adopted a non-violent yet uncooperative attitude toward Yaleview, choosing to act
unilaterally most of the time.
In spite of that, as an official organization in the eyes of the public, Asura's Office had to make sure all its activities were above
board.
Clandestine operations were naturally unacceptable.
Consequently, Jonathan established Dark Special Forces just to execute such missions.

In other words, Dark Special Forces acted as Asura's Office's arm in the shadow. Hidden behind the scenes, they were capable
of doing anything to achieve their objective.
What Jonathan had just done was order an attack on the eight respectable families.
The eight respectable families each had their respective areas of coverage. For example, one could tell from the accent, outfit,
and techniques of the Mallory family that their base was in Xandaschuttes of Centum Mountain.
As for the Leeson family, who had a belligerent demeanor, their ancestral land was based in Doveston.
The Osborne family covered Drieso; the Salladay family, Huxville; the Blackwood family, Yorksland; so on and so forth...
At that moment, the intelligence available only showed that the Osborne family was outside Quadfield due to the release of
Josephine. As for the rest of the respectable families, all of them had gone into hiding.
In truth, Jonathan's inability to find them wasn't the reason why he didn't seek them out. He was actually afraid to do so.
For example, one could tell from the accent of the Leeson family cultivators that they were from Horbah, albeit there was no
information to verify their exact location.
Nonetheless, it wouldn't be difficult to locate them. One could divide Horbah into tens of thousands of areas and send tens of
thousands of intelligence officers on-site for investigations.
Once any of the intelligence officers didn't report back, one could quickly narrow down the location.
Even though such an investigation was massive and time-consuming, one could still locate the ancestral land of the respective
ancestral families.
After all, regardless of how secretive their hideout was, they were still somewhere on the planet. As long as one could comb
every inch of it, there was no reason for them not to be discovered.
That said, this was nothing but a hypothesis, for reality made such a plan impractical to execute.

Firstly, Asura's Office didn't have that many intelligence officers to begin with, and one couldn't just recruit an intelligence officer
off the street.
Every single one of them needed a huge amount of time for training so that they could be proficient in espionage, firearms,
equipment, and more.
If one were to only look at intelligence-gathering skills and set aside combat skills, these people were a cut above the
professional military.
An intelligence officer was capable of blending in among social elites as well as the gangsters in the underworld and adapting
their speech according to their audience.
On top of that, all of them were equipped with respective techniques that enabled them to gather and analyze information
efficiently.
It was a skill that was honed through one's exposure to society and was hard to impart via training.
Consequently, it had to be someone who was extremely meticulous, considering the high risks of the job.
After all, any spy who was discovered would meet a cruel end, for no one would ever show someone like that any mercy.
The nature of an intelligence officer's job made it difficult to find anyone eligible. Although it was the lowest position within a
powerful faction, it was also the role that was most hard-pressed for talent.
That was why Jonathan highly valued Freddie when he encountered the latter in Doveston.
The second reason was the fear everyone harbored toward the eighth respectable families.
The Leeson family of Doveston naturally had their own intelligence network that stretched across the entire nation.
In fact, the network was densest in Horbah, their ancestral land.

They needed to make sure they were informed of the tiniest occurrences there. Only then would they be able to react in time to
any untoward events.
As for the families based in Xemrich, such as the Mallory family, they were located so far away from Doveston that their affairs
had nothing to do with the Leeson family at all.
Therefore, the intelligence network of every respectable family was spread throughout the nation, with their home base as the
center.
The current structure enabled any of the respectable families to instantly be alerted of an influx of intelligence officers from the
outside.
Their approach to such a transgression was to execute all intruders.
Since they couldn't tell which faction had sent the cultivator to probe their position, they would just massacre all the intelligence
officers belonging to all the factions.
Hence, the drastic consequences prevented anyone from sending a huge number of intelligence officers to the doorsteps of
respectable families.
Even though Jonathan and Wilbur had agreed upon the course of action, the latter only dared to send less than a hundred
intelligence officers to Drieso.
The number was perfect to show how important Drieso was to them while still not crossing the threshold of posing a threat to the
other respectable families.
An intelligence war was usually the prelude to the actual one.
Taking action against the intelligence officers of other families was a way for respectable families to signal their readiness for
conflict.

That was exactly what the eight respectable families did to the Whitley family more than ten years ago.
Even now, the two strongest families, the Salladay and Osborne families, weren't as powerful as the Whitley family back in the
day. As for the other six families, they formed two new alliances amongst themselves.
In essence, the war between the eight respectable families was still far from reaching its climax yet.
Hence, the time wasn't right to wipe them out.
Even though it was difficult to openly annihilate the eight respectable families, sowing chaos among them was easy.
While Jonathan couldn't locate their ancestral land nor beat their elite cultivators, he still had something up his sleeve.
Since a direct confrontation would fail, Jonathan had to play smart by attacking their weaknesses with his strength.
The reason the eight respectable families could dominate Chanaea for more than two thousand years wasn't that they were
holed up in their ancestral land. Instead, it was due to their reach in every corner of the nation.
As a result, Jonathan planned to sever this very reach one by one.