# Chapter 396: Century Thief
The World Government was enraged.
Above Holy Land Mariejois, several terrifying auras were clearly visible, black-red lightning intertwining and spreading in the air.
It seemed to form a large net, enveloping the entire Holy Land.
The oppressive aura was suffocating.
Immediately, the Five Elders issued an order for the Government and the Marines to jointly form a Special Investigation Team to investigate this extremely heinous Heavenly Tribute Theft Case.
They were granted unimaginable authority, second only to the Five Elders, and even the Fleet Admiral had to fully cooperate.
The first step was to investigate the state of the treasuries on the other eleven Heavenly Tribute transport ships.
At the same time, additional personnel were sent to protect the remaining Heavenly Tribute transport ships, as other Heavenly Tribute shipments might also encounter problems.
Nearby Navy Branches sent people to the site of the transport ship explosion to rescue the injured personnel.
At the same time, they dragged up the treasury that had sunk to the Seabed.
It took several days to transport it back to Red Port.
At this time, Red Port gathered various higher-ups from the Marines and the World Government.
Their gazes were all fixed on these treasuries.
So far, the remaining Heavenly Tribute transport ships arrived at Red Port one after another, and fortunately, nothing had happened to them.
Things were just as they had expected; the treasuries inside the twelve destroyed transport ships were empty, containing nothing.
This was news that couldn't be any worse.
The destruction of the transport ships, coupled with the affected warships, and the soldiers who died from the explosion, among whom were also important officials from Member Nations.
The losses were simply unimaginable.
What was worse, they didn't even know who had stolen the Heavenly Tribute.
The Special Investigation Team immediately arranged for people to collect the wreckage of the transport ships after the explosion.
The Great Sea was turbulent, and the wreckage of the transport ships had long since drifted away to who knows where; some had even sunk to the Seabed.
It took a full month, using who knows how much manpower and material resources, just to collect a small portion of the transport ships' wreckage.
Obviously, even searching there with a microscope, they couldn't find any traces left by the thief.
There were only a few residual remains of a bomb, just tiny fragments, and it was difficult to identify what kind of bomb it was or where it came from.
Unfortunately, the location where the bomb was placed was unclear.
The power of the explosion was too terrifying, completely destroying the transport ships.
Who could have imagined that the location where the bomb was placed was in the interlayer of the transport ship.
To place something in this location, the interlayer would have to be damaged first.
The only opportunity would have been to place the bomb during the construction of the transport ship.
No matter how they investigated, they couldn't find any clues that would help the case investigation.
The World Government even offered a bounty of one hundred million Beli in the Underworld for information about the Heavenly Tribute thief.
Facing the endless stress behind them, the Special Investigation Team began to change their investigation direction.
Since they couldn't find anything externally, they would start investigating internally.
They would investigate the construction of the transport ships, the Responsible Parties who knew about the Transportation Route, as well as various related personnel.
This was a super case concerning Heavenly Tribute worth over sixty billion Beli.
With no favorable information whatsoever, they had to suspect everyone who could be suspected.
The members of the Special Investigation Team included World Government CP0 Agent Higher-ups and the current Navy Chief of Staff.
Only if it was an inside job was it most likely that the Heavenly Tribute could be stolen silently and stealthily.
Even the Five Elders suspected whether there was a problem internally.
Of course, they also didn't rule out whether there was some special Devil Fruit User involved.
After all, to pull off an inside job without leaving any trace, the network of connections needed to navigate was too vast; it was fundamentally impossible to achieve.
Unless the mastermind was one of the Five Elders.
This conclusion was impossible.
As World Nobles who already stood at the pinnacle of World power, how could the Five Elders possibly do such a thing?
Once the internal investigation was complete, if there were truly no issues, then it could only be some special Ability User, and possibly a group effort.
However, even if they got such a result, it would be useless.
The Five Elders' requirement was to find the thief and recover the lost Heavenly Tribute.
This concerned the Government's next year's fiscal planning.
With one-tenth less Heavenly Tribute, expenditures in all aspects would be reduced.
The Marines' military budget would even be reduced again because of this.
The Government and the Marines had just managed to recover and get back on track, but they didn't expect such a thing to happen.
It should be known that last year, when the New World Trade Route was destroyed, the losses for the World Government and the Marines were considerable, and they consumed a large amount of funds.
Especially the great battle that the Marines proactively started to clear out Pirates, the losses in military strength were even more heavy.
Currently, they still owed a lot of unpaid compensation.
The Heavenly Tribute had just managed to increase by five hundred million Beli each year.
Looking at the current situation, if this couldn't be resolved, the Marines and the World Government would definitely face difficulties for a while longer.
No matter how much Heavenly Tribute there was, sixty percent of it had to be contributed to the Celestial Dragons.
This was a rule that had never changed for hundreds of years.
From the beginning, the Heavenly Tribute was a tribute offered to the Celestial Dragons.
To be precise, it was for the nineteen Celestial Dragon Families, and then each Celestial Dragon Family would take out some money to maintain the construction and operation of the World Government.
Later, feeling it was too troublesome, it was changed so that the World Government would take forty percent of the Heavenly Tribute as the government's development funds.
Now, this one-tenth of the Heavenly Tribute that was stolen naturally couldn't be counted against the Celestial Dragons and could only be borne by the World Government itself.
Moreover, in recent years, the decrease in the Heavenly Tribute's share, coupled with the devaluation of Beli, meant the Heavenly Tribute that the World Nobles themselves received had already decreased significantly.
During the Rocks era, they even took out a considerable amount of their own treasure to maintain the operation and rule of the World Government.
Some Celestial Dragon Families suffered even more heavy losses; more than half of their assets at God Valley were plundered or were destroyed by the terrifying bombardment of the Heavenly King.
No matter what, they would not agree.
The Five Elders alone could not possibly pass this proposal in the Celestial Dragon Council.
Moreover, they themselves were members of the Celestial Dragons.
The Special Investigation Team was working hard to search, inspecting the interior of the World Government like headless flies, finding many "rats," but none were related to this case.
They could only confirm that it was the work of some Mysterious Organization.
With twelve Heavenly Tribute shipments stolen in a row, it must have been a group effort.
In a sense, they were right.
The news simply couldn't be blockaded.
During this time, it quickly spread throughout the entire Great Sea.
The mysterious person or mysterious faction who stole the Heavenly Tribute was given the title of "Century Thief".
The impact brought about was profound and widespread.
One after another, factions, especially Kingdom Kings, strengthened the defensive strength of their treasuries.
Even the Heavenly Tribute was stolen, could their Kingdom Treasuries possibly stop this thief?
In the market, the price of Seastone even doubled.
For special Ability Users, treasuries needed to have Seastone mixed into all four sides to be completely protected.
(end of chapter)