Hong Kong variety show: The mastermind behind the scenes is emerging.

Midnight, the Corleone family estate on the outskirts of Sicily.

The night was dark and windy, with dark clouds obscuring the starlight. Only the scattered patrol lights within the manor cast pale streaks of light in the darkness.

In a thicket of bushes on the outskirts of the manor, four dark figures were lying on the ground, like four groundhogs poised to pounce.

"Gurgle..."

An untimely rumbling sound rang out in the quiet night.

"Shhh!!"

King Kong, Thomas, and David all turned their heads at the same time, glaring at Toby, who was lying at the very back.

"Sorry, the pasta at dinner was so delicious, I ate an extra plate..." Toby said awkwardly, clutching his round belly and lowering his voice.

"The operation is about to begin, so you better bear with it!" King Kong glared at him, then glanced at the luminous watch on his wrist. "It's exactly twelve o'clock. According to the plan, the maid who was bribed by Sophia should have already turned off the alarm at the back door."

"Let's split up and act separately."

King Kong straightened his tight-fitting night suit and put on his infrared goggles. "I'm going to the main building to find the secret room. Thomas, David, you guys take over the monitoring room. Toby, you go to the truck at the back door to provide backup. Make sure the engine is warm up."

"Don't worry, I'm a professional driver!" Toby gave an OK sign.

Watching the three men dart out of the bushes like ghosts and disappear through the half-open back door, Toby breathed a sigh of relief and pulled a huge sandwich from his pocket.

"A professional detective must first maintain their physical strength..."

……

The monitoring room is located on the second floor of the west annex of the manor.

Thomas and David, with their amazing skills, evaded the two patrol teams and clung to the outer wall of the annex like geckos.

"Damn, why is this wall so slippery?" Thomas grabbed onto a protruding brick seam, dangling in mid-air, with a Doberman Pinscher dozing down at his feet. Luckily, he had sprayed perfume beforehand to mask his scent, otherwise he would definitely have been discovered.

"Stop talking nonsense, step on my shoulders to get up!" David squatted on the windowsill below, taking a horse stance.

Thomas used the momentum to push off, and his whole body was lifted into the air, grabbing the louvers of the second-floor ventilation opening with both hands.

"Click".

The blinds were removed. Thomas crawled inside, then reached out and pulled David up with him.

The ventilation ducts were filled with dust and cobwebs, and the space was so cramped it was suffocating.

"Achoo—!"

Thomas was about to sneeze when David quickly covered his mouth.

"You're trying to get us killed!" David hissed. "Those four guards are down there!"

The two looked down through the gap in the ventilation duct.

Inside the monitoring room, four burly men were sitting together playing cards, while dozens of screens nearby displayed images of various corners of the manor.

"It's time to bring out the props."

Thomas took out the can of Soviet-made high-potency anesthetic spray that Sophia had given him from his backpack.

"Does this thing really work?" David asked, leaning closer.

"Sofia said she can even knock out elephants, let's give it a try."

Thomas carefully aimed the nozzle at the gap in the blinds and pressed the switch.

"hiss--"

A colorless and odorless gas drifted silently down through the ventilation vent.

The guards below were completely unaware.

"Hey, George, aren't you feeling a little sleepy?" a guard yawned.

"You drank too much last night, didn't you... Ha..." Another guard was about to laugh at him, but then his own eyelids started to droop.

Only thirty seconds had passed.

"Thump!"

The first guard slumped over the control panel.

Immediately afterwards, "plop, plop, plop."

The four burly men slumped in their chairs as if their bones had been removed, snoring loudly.

"Wow, this is a miracle drug!"

Thomas exclaimed in amazement.

He gently removed the louvers from the vent, and like an acrobat, he hung upside down and landed lightly on the floor, with David following closely behind.

The two quickly checked the guards and, after confirming that they were all fast asleep, went to the monitoring station.

"The surveillance has been taken over," Thomas said into his headset as he sat down at the control panel. "King Kong, you can walk away now. I've set all the cameras in the basement corridor to loop feeds."

Meanwhile, on the third basement level of the main building.

This is the private forbidden area of ​​Godfather Antonio, and the corridor leading to the secret room is filled with infrared detectors.

"Good job, guys!" King Kong pressed his earpiece, looking at the invisible infrared beams in the corridor ahead. He took out a spray bottle and sprayed it lightly. Instantly, more than a dozen red beams appeared in the air, crisscrossing like a net.

"Good heavens, if you touch that, not only will the alarm go off, but you'll probably be riddled with machine gun bullets," King Kong exclaimed in astonishment.

However, none of these challenges could deter the international thief.

"Whoosh!"

King Kong moved.

Like a nimble raccoon, he first did a side somersault over the first beam of light, then leaned back in an incredible arc to pass through the second beam, and then used the wall as leverage to push off, spinning 360 degrees in the air and landing steadily in a safe area no bigger than two palms.

Then, he continued his actions, performing a series of gymnastic-like, high-difficulty moves before landing lightly at the study door.

The door was locked, but that didn't stop the master thief.

He took out a thin wire and fiddled with it in the keyhole a couple of times.

"Click".

The door opened.

The study is luxuriously decorated, with a huge mahogany desk and an entire wall of bookshelves behind it.

According to Sophia's information, the entrance to the secret room is behind the bookshelf.

King Kong walked to the bookshelf and found the switch that concealed the Bible.

Press.

"Boom!"

The bookshelf slowly slid away, revealing a high-tech metal door. There was no keyhole on the door, only a fingerprint scanner.

"That's more like it, a little bit high-tech!"

King Kong took out a delicate little box from his pocket, carefully used tweezers to pick out a semi-transparent silicone finger cot, and put it on his thumb.

This is a fake fingerprint mold made based on the fingerprints provided by the maid.

"Open Sesame!"

King Kong pressed his thumb on the scanner.

"Beep—Verification successful."

The green light came on, and the metal door slid open silently.

The secret room was small, and contained no gold or silver treasures, only a safe embedded in the wall.

King Kong walked to the safe, took out a medical stethoscope, placed it on the safe door, closed his eyes, and gently turned the combination dial with his fingers.

"Click...click...click..."

The subtle clicking of mechanical gears was exceptionally clear in the silent vault.

One minute.

Two minutes.

"Click!"

A crisp click of the lock clicked shut.

"It's open!"

King Kong opened his eyes, revealing a confident smile. He gripped the handle and pulled hard.

The heavy safe door slowly opened.

There were no mountains of cash or gold bars inside. There was only a single shelf with a black box on it.

King Kong opened the box.

Inside lay a 5.25-inch floppy disk and a thick, somewhat worn black photo album. This was the culmination of half a century of work by the Corleone family, their "nuclear weapon" controlling the lifeline of Italy's underground economy.

"Bingo!"

King Kong excitedly stuffed the floppy disks and ledgers into a waterproof bag and put them into his backpack.

As a master thief with professional ethics (and extremely flamboyant style), since I'm already here, how can I not leave some souvenirs?

He pulled a specially made card from his pocket, which featured a black cat wearing sunglasses and a line of cursive text below it:

[Best Partner – Black Cat was here.]

He even mischievously placed a stink bomb in the safe, with the pull ring already pulled but the safety lever taped shut...

"Hehe, Godfather, have a nice morning."

King Kong chuckled wickedly, closed the safe, and swaggered out of the secret room.

"Call Toby! Call Toby! We've got it! Let's get out of here!"

King Kong pressed his earpiece and said in a low voice.

"Roger that! The car's already started at the back door! Hurry, hurry, hurry!" Toby's anxious voice came through the earpiece.

Ten minutes later.

The wall at the back gate of the manor.

King Kong, Thomas, and David reunited, panting heavily.

"How's it going? Didn't get caught?" King Kong patted the bag at his waist.

"Don't worry, those guards are sleeping like logs!" Thomas wiped the dust off his face. "Let's get going, the best effect of the drug only lasts for three hours."

The three of them climbed over the wall and jumped into a delivery van that was already waiting.

"Hold on tight!"

Toby floored the accelerator.

Just then, the headlights suddenly turned on at the main gate of the manor, and several patrol cars seemed to have noticed something and began to drive over.

"Oh no! We've been discovered?" David gripped the doorknob nervously.

"Don't panic."

Suddenly, a few extremely faint popping sounds came through the headphones.

That was the sound of a sniper rifle with a silencer.

The tires of the vehicle chasing the manor were instantly punctured, and the car went out of control and crashed into a tree on the side of the road.

On a distant hill, Xiao Zhuang holstered his sniper rifle and said calmly into his headset, "The roadblocks have been cleared. Boss, they're safe."

Taking advantage of the chaos, the bread cart disappeared into the Sicilian night.

……

It's six o'clock in the morning.

"Ugh... my head hurts so much..."

The supervisor in the monitoring room woke up, clutching his head. He glanced at the time groggily and was instantly terrified.

"It's six o'clock?! How did I fall asleep?!"

He quickly woke up his other subordinates, only to find a strange smell in the air, and the monitor screen on the control panel was full of static, indicating that the surveillance tapes had been taken away.

"Something's happened!!"

The foreman scrambled towards the main building and sounded the highest-level alarm.

"Waaaaah—!!"

The piercing alarm instantly resounded throughout the entire manor.

In the master bedroom, Godfather Antonio, awakened by the alarm, grabbed a pistol without even changing out of his pajamas and rushed into the study surrounded by bodyguards.

"A secret room! Look, a secret room!"

Antonio pressed the button with trembling hands.

The door to the secret room was open.

Although the safe door was closed, he keenly noticed that the lock had been touched.

"No...no..."

Antonio walked over shakily, entered the password, and opened the cabinet door.

"puff--!"

A thick plume of yellow smoke instantly shot out.

That was a stink bomb left behind by King Kong.

"Cough cough cough!!"

Antonio's eyes watered from the stench, but he didn't care and reached into the smoke to grope around.

empty.

Empty.

The photo album and floppy disks that originally contained half a century of family secrets have disappeared.

Instead, there was a card with a black cat pattern printed on it.

[A black cat was here.]

"puff--!!"

Overwhelmed with anger and anxiety, Antonio felt a sudden darkness engulf him, and he spat a mouthful of blood directly onto the safe.

"The Godfather! The Godfather!!"

"Call a doctor immediately!!"

Amidst the chaos and turmoil, this once-powerful Mafia godfather suddenly rolled his eyes back and fainted.

The Corleone family's fortunes have collapsed.