He chuckled, his tone now tinged with a hint of mockery:

"But what's truly captivating isn't what's on the surface."

"This cruise ship, to put it bluntly, is a 'lawless zone,' operating on the gray area of ​​international law, where all sorts of unknown transactions and secret activities are quietly carried out."

Jingmin touched the cards in his hand and casually asked:

"What secret? How exciting is it?"

Seeing that they were interested, Lu Xingyao worked even harder:

"If we're talking about excitement, then it's definitely very exciting."

“The 13th floor of the cruise ship is an area that is absolutely forbidden to enter. It is claimed to be a staff-only area, but it is actually a dark underground world.”

He lowered his voice mysteriously:

“There are secret auctions there every week, and the items up for auction—well, they’re no ordinary goods.”

He paused, his gaze sweeping across the faces of the group, before continuing:

“You can find all sorts of things there, from trafficked children and girls to specially made ‘models’ and even newborns used for experiments.”

Zhou Chen picked up his wine glass and smiled calmly:

"That's perverted, that's exciting!"

Lu Xingyao continued smugly:

"Of course."

"What's even more impressive is that this cruise ship flies the flag of the Atlantean royal family, belongs to the territory of the principality, and is under the jurisdiction of the principality."

"Through diplomatic immunity, the royal family is virtually unrestrained by the outside world, making it essentially a 'lawless land' floating at sea."

Jingmin rubbed the playing cards in his hand and asked casually:

"You seem to know quite a lot about this. What, have you witnessed it?"

Lu Xingyao took it as a compliment and a hint of smugness appeared on his face:

"No, I've just heard about it a lot."

"In fact, the operation of the 'Royal Shadow' is ostensibly controlled by the Atlante royal family, but behind the scenes, it is actually controlled by four forces."

As he spoke, he picked up the playing cards on the table, flipped over the four suits, laid them out one by one, and pointed to one of the hearts:

"The first force, the Atlante royal family, is codenamed Red Rose."

He changed to a diamond:

"The second group is the Jin family, a powerful conglomerate in the chiefdom, whose code name is Witch Hazel."

He paused for a moment, then laid out the clubs and spades respectively, but did not explain immediately.

Jingmin looked up at him:

"What? You don't know about the remaining two forces?"

Lu Xingyao gave an awkward smile:

"It's not that we don't know. The outside world knows the code name, but they don't know which specific force it belongs to."

He pointed to the plum blossoms and said:

"This plum blossom symbol represents the influence of Chinese Australians, and its external code name is White Camellia."

Then, he pointed to the spades:

"As for this spade, it belongs to the forces in Haicheng, and its code name is Black Lotus."

Upon hearing the name "Haicheng," Zhou Chen raised an eyebrow:

"Haicheng?"

Lu Xingyao, forced to lower his voice by the others, nodded:

"Yes, Haicheng."