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

Early in the morning, in Sham Shui Po, a foreigner sneaked out of a six-story old tenement building.

He looked to be in his early thirties, wearing a faded old jacket with his hat pulled low. He looked around a few times at the door before lowering his head and joining the crowd at the morning market.

His name is James, a remnant of the ZZ Liberation Front. As for why he appeared here instead of at the villa, that story goes back three days.

Three days ago, Deputy Leader Roman and several of his men went to Huangzhukeng for a deal but never returned. Those left in the villa immediately sensed that something was wrong.

That night, the dozen or so people who stayed behind argued in the villa all night long.

"Let's go! Pack your things and find somewhere else! The police will find us sooner or later!" someone suggested they run away.

"Leave?" another person objected. "We're unfamiliar with Hong Kong Island, where would we go? Hiding here, at least no one will know!"

"Nobody knows? Roman's definitely been arrested. Do you think he can withstand the interrogation?!"

"This is just speculation. Maybe you were double-crossed by those Japanese. If you go out now, you'll be walking into a trap."

The villa instantly split into two factions: some wanted to leave, while others planned to stay. Neither side could convince the other, so they finally decided to go their separate ways.

James was a staunch "escape artist." He and a few accomplices secretly slipped out of the villa through the back door that very night.

As it turned out, they made the right bet.

Yesterday, they saw the news at a newsstand on the street: "Ocean Park case solved, one of the four robbers dead and three captured."

The disheveled man in the newspaper photo, handcuffed and being led into a police car, was none other than Deputy Leader Roman.

The group huddled in a roadside motel all night, conspiring to escape. They finally concluded that returning to the villa was out of the question, and the suburban villa where Roman had been arrested probably wouldn't hold out much longer either. However, staying together would make them too conspicuous. The best course of action was for them to disperse completely and each fend for themselves, hoping to escape as many as possible.

So the remnants of the army disbanded on the spot and fled for their lives.

James was the most intelligent of them. He had learned Cantonese in Europe in his early years and had also researched Hong Kong beforehand when he learned that the team was going to Hong Kong Island. Therefore, after the escape, he quickly devised a meticulous plan.

First, after making some inquiries, James found a cage home district in Yau Ma Tei that specifically gathered foreign poor people.

The so-called cage homes are a type of "bedroom accommodation" unique to the lower floors of Hong Kong Island. Because the entire room is made of thick wire mesh or broken wooden planks cut into sections, and because its shape is very similar to that of a cage for keeping poultry, it is called a cage home.

The cage house that James found was tucked away deep in a dilapidated alley. It had six floors, and each floor was divided into dozens of small iron cages, stacked three layers high. A thin, tattered mattress served as a bed.

The air was perpetually filled with the smells of sweat, cheap tobacco, and leftover food. Clothes hung in the corridors, never quite drying, with water droplets dripping down. It's worth recalling that when Cheng Yiyan first arrived in Hong Kong Island, destitute and alone, he had spent a considerable amount of time eking out a living in such cage homes.

The guests here are all foreigners without legal status—from Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, all sorts of people.

The reason is simple: in recent years, under the impetus of the Golden Harvest Group, Hong Kong Island has become one of the most prosperous financial centers between Asia and Europe, thus attracting countless people with dreams of getting rich. However, they are illegal immigrants without legal status, and can only crowd into such places.

The landlords here knew exactly what kind of business they were in, so they only accepted cash and never asked for identification. James paid a month's rent and successfully got in.

He planned to hide here for a while, do some illegal work to save some money, and then smuggle himself to Japan or South Korea.

The job was introduced by a new roommate he met in the lower bunk—a man who had been smuggled from the Czech Republic, named Jacob. He looked honest and had a missing front tooth when he smiled.

"Clean the sewers, HK$80 a day, cash on the spot, interested?" Jacob asked him in broken English.

"Fine!" James agreed without hesitation, hoping to escape Hong Kong Island.

Today was his first day at work, but the sewer job turned out to be much harder than he had imagined.

The passageway was narrow and dark, and you could only walk forward by bending over. The beam of the flashlight shone out as a dense network of pipes and silt that had accumulated for who knows how many years.

The sewage reached up to my calves, icy cold and carrying an indescribable stench, as if all the garbage on Hong Kong Island had been trapped in a giant pot, making my eyes water.

Even worse are the rats scurrying about in the dark. They aren't afraid of people and dart around your feet. If you step on their tails, they squeak and squeal.

Jacob was scooping at the front, while James was filling the buckets at the back, passing them up one by one. After less than two hours of work, James's back was already so sore he could barely stand up straight.

"What did you do before?" During a break, Jacob leaned against the damp pipe wall, took out a flattened cigarette, lit it, and asked him while smacking his lips.

"...doing business," James said.

"Doing business?" Jacob grinned, revealing his gap-toothed tooth. "Then I'm doing business too, I'm a prostitute."

After saying that, he burst into laughter. Then, he sighed heavily, "This godforsaken place, money's hard to earn, and the shit's awful. Once I've saved enough money, I'll go to Japan. I heard it's easy to do illegal work there, unlike here, where I only get eighty dollars a day, not even enough to cover rent."

James didn't reply. He looked down at his blurry reflection in the sewage, thinking about the same place.

Japan.

The two worked until six o'clock in the evening before finishing. Since they were unregistered, they couldn't use bank cards, so the foreman paid them in cash. James folded the banknotes, stuffed them into his socks, and dragged his leaden legs toward the tenement building.

As night fell, the neon lights of Yau Ma Tei came on. The aroma of fried noodles wafted from the street food stalls, some people squatted by the roadside drinking, while others held up their DragonPass mobile phones and talked loudly on the phone.

The city was incredibly prosperous, but it had nothing to do with him.

James dragged his weary body back to the tenement building and climbed up the narrow, steep stairs.

However, just as he reached the corner of the stairs on the third floor, he looked up and was instantly struck dumb—

In the dark corridor ahead, two burly men in black stood, looking down at him with cold smiles.

His heart skipped a beat, and he turned to run downstairs, but when he looked back, he found that two burly men in black were also standing downstairs, blocking the stairs completely.

Both the front and rear roads are cut off.

James opened his mouth, about to shout, when a syringe was already plunged into his neck. The next second, a chilling sensation rushed in, and James felt everything go black before he collapsed heavily to the ground.

……

After an unknown amount of time, James finally woke up.

The sky above was framed into a small square by something.

'Oh, I'm lying in a pit,' he thought.

It was clear that the pit had only been dug recently; the fresh soil on the walls was still damp and gave off the distinctive earthy smell.

James struggled to sit up, only to find that his hands and feet were already bound, and his mouth was gagged with a rag, so he couldn't utter a single word.

"Ugh! Ugh—" James swayed in terror, and then he saw everything around him.

He wasn't the only one who fell into the pit.

Those who had escaped from the villa with him—the one who suggested going to Macau to lay low, the one who said they wanted to smuggle themselves to Taiwan, the one who said they wanted to go to Shenzhen to stay with relatives… were all neatly gathered in this pit, staring wide-eyed at each other in terror.

James's back instantly broke out in a layer of white sweat.

You see, when they parted ways, for safety's sake, none of them told anyone where they were going. Yet even so, they were still found, all of them…

Just then, the figures of two men appeared outside the pit.

One of them was tall and the other was muscular. Both were wearing black jackets, smoking cigarettes, and looking down at each other as if they were looking at a pit of livestock waiting to be slaughtered.

"Awake?" Wang Jianguo casually tossed his cigarette butt into the pit and sneered, "No need to bother thinking, all your men are here."

James shook his head frantically, making muffled sounds in his throat, as if trying to say something to beg for mercy.

However, the Wang brothers didn't care what the dying man wanted to say. He simply squatted down slowly and spoke coldly:

"Remember in your next life, never set foot on Hong Kong Island."

"You also need to understand that you must keep your eyes wide open when choosing a side or organization—lest you be dragged down by a foolish leader and not even know how you died."

After saying that, he stood up and gestured with his chin to his subordinates behind him.

A shovel scoops up the yellow soil.

Splash, splash.

The first shovelful of dirt landed at James's feet, and the second shovelful landed on his leg.

James twisted and struggled desperately, but the ropes binding him did not budge.

There is more and more soil.

James looked up at the small patch of sky above the pit, watching the last glimmer of light gradually being filled by the falling yellow earth.

……

Wang Jianjun tamped down the last shovelful of soil, covered it with a layer of withered leaves and broken bricks, then straightened up, took out his phone, and made a call.

"Mr. Rum," he said, "they've all been dealt with, not a single one left."

"You've worked hard," Fourth Brother's voice was calm on the other end of the phone. "Come back when you're done. We should get going."

"Target: East longitude."