109: Chapter 109 Identity Revealed, Alien Conspiracy Unveiled

Jacob Rothschild, sitting in the second seat on the left side of the long table, frowned almost imperceptibly.

Isabelle DuPont slowly withdrew her hands crossed over her knees and placed them on the table. She gently pushed the encrypted tablet, which was still scrolling, forward with her fingertips, her voice cold:

"Astor, you're asking the wrong question entirely."

"We didn't kidnap any alien prince."

"Nor do we have the guts to kidnap an alien prince."

William Vanderbilt V picked up his whiskey glass, took a sip, and set it down, adding in a slightly raspy bass:

"Even I only found out last night that there was a secret base under the Hoover Dam."

Rockefeller III leaned back in his chair, resting his left hand, which wore a jade ring, on the table. Looking at Samuel Astor, his tone was steady but his words were unmistakable:

"Samuel, your intelligence channels are lagging behind."

"The Deep State associated with the Hoover Dam isn't us."

Samuel withdrew his hands from the table and rested them on the armrests, leaning forward slightly. The cold light in his eyes pierced straight through his gold-rimmed reading glasses towards Rockefeller:

"If it's not us, then who could it be? Aren't we the Deep State of the Lighthouse Country?"

He slapped his hand on the table, but this time with less than half the force of his previous slam on the intelligence report. He looked more like an old aristocrat tormented by both confusion and anger, desperately trying to suppress his irritation,

"Ever since the founding of America, haven't we engineered every single economic crisis?"

"From the Panic of 1837 to the bank run of 1907, from the Great Depression to the oil crisis... Every economic winter was orchestrated by our families sitting in this very room, setting the rhythm in advance."

"If that doesn't count as the Deep State, what does?"

Jacob Rothschild separated his fingertips, which he had been gently tapping together, and laid both hands flat on the table. He lifted his dark brown eyes to look directly at Samuel, his tone calm and resolute:

"Your intelligence is indeed lagging, Astor."

"The Deep State associated with the Hoover Dam is truly not us."

Isabelle DuPont paused the scrolling intelligence summary on the tablet at a highlighted paragraph and gently pushed it toward the center of the long table, her tone as cold and precise as ever:

"My people stayed up all night combing through every Department of Defense file concerning Hoover Dam power and water allocations since 1947. Not a single document points to any entity under any of our five families."

"The organization that has been consuming power and water under the Hoover Dam for fifty years has never been us, from beginning to end."

William Vanderbilt pushed his whiskey glass aside,

an action that was more powerful than any words, as William never pushed his whiskey glass away in any meeting,

then said solemnly:

"I've confirmed it too."

"It's not us."

Samuel fell silent.

His fingers tapped several times on the walnut armrest,

looking from Isabelle's encrypted tablet to Jacob's calm gaze,

and from William's pushed-away glass to Rockefeller III, who gave him a slight nod.

Then, he slowly leaned back into his chair and rubbed his temples. Half the fury in his voice had receded, replaced by a deeper, colder tone:

"If it's not us... then who is it?"

"Besides our five families, who else would have the audacity to capture an alien on Lighthouse Country soil?"

"And a noble alien prince, at that?"

The air in the study, which had been buzzing with agitation when he slapped the table, suddenly settled,

replaced by a deeper, colder tension, like the calm before a hot war.

In the silence, the eyes of the four others shifted toward the same direction almost simultaneously:

Rockefeller III, who sat on the left side of the long table, just below Samuel's position.

Samuel followed their gaze, his brow furrowing even tighter:

"Rockefeller? What do you know?"

Rockefeller III did not answer immediately.

He slowly reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket with his hand wearing the jade ring, and pulled out a small sandalwood box. The moment the lid flipped open, all five of them saw the object inside.

A fingernail-sized, crystal-clear little cube lay quietly right in the center of the black velvet lining,

refracting a hexagonal cold light that didn't belong to any Earth mineral under the warm yellow light of the crystal chandelier.

"The Deep State actually operating under the Hoover Dam isn't us."

"The organization that kidnapped the Fourth Prince, Prince Dao Dun, isn't us either."

"The masterminds behind that organization are: the Jewish Financial Groups."

"Or to be more precise..."

He placed the little cube from the sandalwood box onto the intelligence documents spread across the center of the long table, gently pressed down on one of its corners with his finger, and looked up to meet Samuel's gaze,

"it's the Crane Family of Solomon Crane."

Samuel Astor looked at the crystal-clear little cube, then raised his eyes to look at Rockefeller III, his gaze behind the lenses filled with utter disbelief:

"Jewish Financial Groups?"

"The Crane Family?"

"With just them?"

"A bunch of lowlifes who spent centuries usury-lending in Europe have that kind of guts?"

Jacob Rothschild silently clasped his hands.

The Rothschild family itself had started out in European financial lending. In the face of Samuel's unvarnished remark, he said nothing, only gently crossing his fingertips in front of him.

The meeting room fell silent for a moment, the atmosphere freezing subtly.

Rockefeller III cleared his throat, drawing everyone's attention back to the little cube pressed under his finger:

"This thing was retrieved early this morning from the wreckage of the alien spaceship that crashed near the Hoover Dam."

"My professional team, after preliminary analysis and reverse-engineering, confirmed that this is an alien memory card."

He lifted his finger off the little cube, allowing everyone present to clearly see the crystal fragment glinting coldly under the light,

"The memory card itself doesn't mean anything."

"But what is recorded inside... means everything."

"Recorded inside are snippets of conversations where the Crane Family conspired with the Mothmen to rule all of humanity."

The air in the study suddenly turned freezing cold after he uttered the words "Mothmen."

Isabelle DuPont and William Vanderbilt quickly exchanged glances, while Jacob Rothschild slightly adjusted his posture.

Rockefeller III did not pause, continuing as he pushed the memory card toward the center of the long table:

"The dialogue inside is recorded very clearly."

"The Mothmen gave Solomon Crane orders to have the Crane Family kidnap His Highness the Fourth Prince of Zeta Star, Prince Dao Dun, in an underground parking garage in Las Vegas."

"The purpose was to use this to provoke the Grey Aliens of Zeta Star, triggering an all-out war between Zeta Star and Earth."

"Once the war begins, the Mothmen can take advantage of the chaos to achieve their ultimate goal of ruling all of humanity."