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

Monday, 3 a.m.

In this darkest hour before dawn, the sky above Kwai Chung Pier in the New Territories is shrouded in a thick layer of sea fog.

This is one of the largest freight distribution centers in Hong Kong, but at the edge of the pier, a row of old cold storage areas that have been abandoned for many years looks like a huge steel tomb, dead and gloomy, with only the rusty iron sheets making a teeth-grinding friction sound in the sea breeze.

"Sizzle..."

Dozens of elite Flying Tigers members, dressed in all-black combat uniforms, wearing bulletproof masks, and carrying MP5 submachine guns, moved like ghosts in the night, using containers and abandoned vehicles as cover, and quietly approached the deepest cold storage in tactical formation.

Inside the temporary command vehicle on the outskirts, Senior Superintendent Szeto Kit gripped the walkie-talkie tightly, beads of sweat forming on his forehead from tension.

"Alpha Team, in position."

"Beta Squad, in position. Sniper has locked onto the second-floor window."

The Flying Tigers commander's extremely calm voice came through the earpiece.

Situ Jie glanced at his watch; only six hours remained before the stock market opened. This was a final, life-or-death race against time.

"Action! Remember, the primary objective is to ensure the safety of hostage Huo Zhaotang! As for the kidnappers..." Situ Jie's eyes flashed with a ruthless glint in the darkness, "If they resist, kill them without mercy!"

"Roger that! Infiltrate silently! Go! Go! Go!"

With a command given.

Fully armed Flying Tigers special police officers, dressed in dark blue combat uniforms and wearing gas masks, looked like a group of black ghosts. They nimbly cut through the barbed wire on the side of the cold storage and advanced into the interior in tactical formation.

They had expected it to be a one-sided special forces rout.

But they forgot that their opponents were not just thugs who only knew how to chop people with watermelon knives, but a group of "Big Circle Bandits" who had crawled out of the mountains of corpses and seas of blood in the self-defense counterattack war and had extremely high military skills!

The corridor on the first floor of the cold storage was pitch black, with puddles and oil stains covering the floor. A Flying Tigers scout at the front was cautiously searching forward, holding an MP5.

Suddenly, his tactical boot snagged on an extremely thin fishing line, so fine that it was barely perceptible to the naked eye.

"Click."

A very faint mechanical knock sounded particularly jarring in the deathly silent corridor.

The soldier's pupils instantly shrank to the size of pinpoints!

Booby trap!!

"boom--!!!"

Can't even react!

Behind the abandoned oil drums on both sides of the corridor, two Soviet-made "pineapple" hand grenades, whose safety pins had already been pulled and whose fuses were connected with fishing line, were instantly detonated!

The enormous explosion was deafening, and flames shot into the sky!

Countless sharp shrapnel fragments mixed with the shockwave, creating a death storm in the narrow corridor. The vanguard at the front was blasted away, his bulletproof vest torn apart by shrapnel, blood spurting out, and he was instantly critically injured and unconscious! The two team members following closely behind were also thrown to the ground by the blast wave, their eardrums ruptured, groaning in pain.

"Enemy attack!! Ambush!!"

The enormous explosion shattered the silence of Kwai Chung Wharf in an instant!

Inside the cold storage, Da Dong, who was smoking on the iron shelf on the second floor, jumped up like a startled cheetah the moment he heard the explosion.

"Someone's coming!!" Da Dong grabbed the AK-47 at his feet and yelled hoarsely at the target practice boy, Flyhead, and the others who were dozing downstairs, "Grab your weapons!"

"Damn it! Could it be the cops? How did they find out?!"

Although the target shooter and the fly-head were panicked, their long-cultivated combat instincts made them immediately grab the Black Star pistol and shotgun next to them and skillfully roll over to hide behind cover.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Now that the Flying Tigers outside had been exposed, they no longer bothered to conceal their presence. The directional explosives detonated instantly, shattering the roller shutter door into pieces.

Immediately afterwards, countless flashbangs were thrown in.

"Buzz—!"

Blinding white light and deafening noise instantly filled the entire cold storage room.

"Da da da! Da da da!"

The Flying Tigers' MP5 submachine guns spat out dense tongues of fire, sweeping across the second-floor platform and every corner of the first floor like a torrent of water. The well-trained SWAT officers, moving in tactical steps, surged in like a black tide.

"Die! You lackey of the foreigners!"

The target practicer's eyes were bloodshot; he hadn't been completely blinded by the stun grenade. He picked up the Remington shotgun with its barrel shortened and fired a shot at the doorway!

"boom!"

A barrage of steel balls struck the riot shield of a SWAT officer, sending sparks flying and forcing the officer to stumble back several steps.

But this was his final performance.

next second.

"Bang!"

A Flying Tigers sniper atop a container in the distance pulled the trigger with pinpoint accuracy.

A 7.62mm sniper bullet pierced through the broken window of the cold storage in an instant and accurately entered the target shooter's forehead!

A cloud of blood burst from the back of the boy's head. He didn't even utter a sound before falling straight backward and crashing down the first floor.

"Target practice boy!!" Flyhead roared in anguish as he watched his brother die a gruesome death. He grabbed two rifles and charged out of cover, ready to fight the SWAT officers to the death.

But he was facing a heavily armed and well-coordinated special forces unit.

"Da da da da da..."

A barrage of machine gun bullets instantly riddled Wu Feitou with holes, and blood stained the ground red.

Ultimately, the disadvantages in equipment and numbers cannot be compensated for by sheer bravery.

Looking at his brother lying in a pool of blood, Da Dong's eyes flashed with extreme grief and resentment.

We lost. We lost completely.

The other side is the Flying Tigers, and there are so many of them, which means their location has been completely exposed! Shengji hasn't returned in two or three hours; he must have been caught by the cops and betrayed them!

But he knew that now was not the time to analyze; if they didn't leave soon, everyone would die here.

"Eighth Middle School! Fatty! Take your weapons and get out of here! Go through the sewers!"

Da Dong made a decisive decision and abandoned the positional battle.

"What about the hostage?!" Fat Girl shouted.

"We can't take him with us! Keeping him here will buy us time!"

Da Dong's eyes hardened, and he turned and rushed into the small room next door.

At this moment, Huo Zhaotang was tied up and thrown in a corner. He had already wet his pants from the explosions and gunshots outside and was trembling like a leaf.

"No...don't kill me..." Huo Zhaotang cried and begged for mercy as he looked at Da Dong, who was covered in gunpowder.

"Shut up! If you want to live, you'd better behave yourself!"

Da Dong grabbed Huo Zhaotang roughly, pulled out a grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin, and stuffed it into Huo Zhaotang's hands, which were tied behind his back, before binding them tightly with duct tape.

"Listen up! The safety on this grenade has been pulled! If you dare let go or move even slightly, 'boom!' you'll be turned into mincemeat!"

Da Dong uttered a vicious threat, then kicked Huo Zhaotang to the ground in a conspicuous spot.

After doing all this, Da Dong, along with the remaining Eighth Middle School students and Fei Gu, crawled out through the sewage outlet behind the cold storage in a very disheveled state and disappeared into the vast maze of shipping containers.

One minute later.

When the Flying Tigers confirmed it was safe and rushed into the room, they were met with this chilling scene:

Huo Zhaotang, a billionaire worth billions, was lying on the ground, his hands gripping a hand grenade with the pin pulled, his whole body convulsing with extreme fear, letting out a pig-like scream:

"Don't come any closer!! Don't come any closer!! I have a bomb!! It'll explode if I let go!!!"

"Cease fire! Prioritize hostage rescue! Bomb disposal experts, come here! Call bomb disposal experts now!!" The Flying Tigers commander was shocked and immediately ordered a halt to the pursuit.

It was in those few minutes of bomb disposal and rescue time that Da Dong and his gang gained an extremely valuable chance to escape and completely break free of the police encirclement.

At six o'clock in the morning, when bomb disposal expert Pan Chengfeng arrived and helped Huo Zhaotang disarm the grenade, Huo Zhaotang was lifted onto a stretcher.

Senior Superintendent Situ Jie, who had been hiding in the command vehicle, finally breathed a long sigh of relief.

Although several criminals escaped and two Flying Tigers officers died, as long as Huo Zhaotang lived, the police force's hundreds of millions of dollars would be saved, and his official position would be safe!

This is a "great victory"!

however.

Two flowers bloom, one branch each.

Although the gunfire at Kwai Chung Pier has subsided, a media storm, even more deadly and terrifying than the kidnapping by Fok Siu-tong, is brewing and erupting at Queen Mary Hospital on the other side of Hong Kong Island.

……

Six o'clock in the morning.

As dawn broke, the entrance to Mary Hospital was already packed with dozens of news vans and countless reporters. A forest of cameras and microphones illuminated the dawn like daylight.

Why?

Just two hours earlier, Qiu Gang'ao had called an ambulance to take the person away from the police headquarters building in order to save them.

When they saw an ambulance with sirens blaring rush out of the underground parking garage of the Wan Chai Police Headquarters building and speed into Queen Mary Hospital, the paparazzi, with their keen sense of smell like hunting dogs, immediately perked up.

An ambulance was taking someone from police headquarters? And it was late at night? This is definitely a juicy story!

As a result, numerous reporters flocked to Queen Mary Hospital. A veteran paparazzi from a gossip magazine put his "money power" to use. He sneaked into the back door of the emergency department and stuffed a thick wad of thousand-dollar bills into the pocket of a male nurse on duty.

"Hey, what's going on with the ambulance that just arrived from police headquarters?" the paparazzi asked in a low voice.

The male caregiver looked around, and seeing no one was nearby, he whispered to the paparazzi with a mixture of mystery and lingering fear, "That ambulance was taking a suspect. He was already dead when he arrived... The attending physician said the deceased was beaten to death!"

"Shot dead?!" The paparazzi's eyes lit up instantly. "How was he shot?"

"The on-duty doctor was bragging," the caregiver swallowed, gesturing with his fingers, "that person didn't have any external injuries, but I heard their internal organs suffered varying degrees of damage, and their nasal cavity and lungs were full of water! It's obvious they were subjected to extremely cruel torture, and their heart couldn't take it, causing them to die of fright!"

"And... the policeman who brought him here, I think his name was Inspector Qiu, I've seen him on TV before, he's the rising star of the police force!"

boom--!

Police brutally beat a suspect to death in an interrogation room?! And it was a star inspector of the police force who did it?! If this gets out, it will be a major scandal involving the police force's rule of law!

"Breaking news! Absolutely breaking news!"

The paparazzi was so excited his hands were trembling. He immediately rushed out of the hospital and dialed the editor-in-chief's number.

……

Eight o'clock in the morning.

When the first rays of sunlight shone on the solemn police emblem of the Wan Chai Police Headquarters building.

This place has completely fallen.

Hundreds of reporters blocked the gates of the police headquarters so tightly that not even a fly could get in.

Oriental Daily News, Sing Tao Daily, and even the pro-British South China Morning Post all published emergency editions immediately.

The front page headline is shocking:

"Midnight Murder at the Police Station! Suspect Dies Tragically in Interrogation Room!"

Vigilante justice?! Murder?! Police twins Qiu Gang'ao suspected of torture leading to death!

A Tragedy for the Rule of Law! Are the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Enforcers or Executioners?!

Faced with the reporters' barrage of questions, the police superintendent in charge of public relations was sweating profusely, forced to retreat step by step under pressure, and could only repeat that pale and powerless official statement over and over again:

"No comment! The case is under investigation! No comment!"

And on the top floor of the headquarters building.

Having just returned from his successful mission at Kwai Chung Wharf and not even having a chance to drink a celebratory drink, Situ Jie froze completely in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, staring at the surging crowd below and the headlines in the newspapers.

The wine glass in his hand fell to the carpet with a "clatter," and the scarlet wine spread like blood.

It’s over.

He saved Huo Zhaotang and the money.

But the death of the chicken was like a time bomb that had been planted long ago. At this moment, it shattered the little fig leaf that the police had just built up with the "successful rescue of the hostages"!

And Qiu Gang'ao, whom he pushed out to be the "knife".

They are destined to become the most tragic sacrifice in this political and media storm.