What the hell is the "kill line" when you're in America?

Li Ang's attention was completely drawn to the documents.

The text above was printed out by a printer; it was densely packed with various charts and data.

He turned to the second page.

What came into view was a logo he was very familiar with, a badge made of a cross.

The sign of the church that distributes relief meals in the shelter.

Victor was still cursing when he kicked a sealed plastic box.

"Fuck! You're kidding us! This is just a storage room for wilderness survival enthusiasts!"

Li Ang's gaze continued downwards.

He saw an implementation report called "Project Nightingale".

"This quarter's 'Nutritional Supplement' program has been launched in five pilot areas, including Block 12 and Block 13, covering approximately 3,000 people..."

"...It is projected that the amount of recoverable 'assets' will increase by 30% within the next thirty days..."

"...The average acquisition price for a single 'asset' is nine thousand US dollars, and the main partner institutions are *** Medical Center and **Frontier Laboratory..."

Victor finally noticed Leon's unusual behavior.

"What are you looking at? A pile of scraps of paper!" Victor was still angry.

Li Ang handed him one of the pages.

"Take a look at this."

Victor impatiently took it and looked at it by the light of the flashlight.

Victor was somewhat surprised after only a few glances.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

He cursed repeatedly, but his voice was very low and filled with terror.

Why did they record all of this?

"Fuck..."

Victor held the paper, his hands trembling uncontrollably.

Unlike Li Ang, he only had a superficial understanding of the darkness of this world.

He had been struggling in this quagmire for over a decade, and he knew very well what these words represented.

"I fucking knew it!"

"The last shipment, the last batch of goods, was delivered to St. Jude!"

Li Ang looked at him.

"What goods?"

"What are you talking about? You haven't sold them before?" Victor exclaimed excitedly. "The boss told me to clean up a few traitors the gang dealt with, so I sold them to them!"

Victor then glared fiercely at Li Ang.

"I should have shot you dead back then."

"Fuck!"

Li Ang's face was gloomy.

He had roughly deduced these things through the system and his own observations.

But seeing this detailed, cold, business-report-like document in person still gave him a different kind of shock.

This is an organization, a huge, highly efficient, human-based supply chain.

"Burn! We have to burn all of this!" Victor suddenly shouted, snatching all the documents from Leon's hand and trying to set them on fire with a lighter.

Li Ang reached out and grabbed his wrist.

Victor's wrist was being squeezed painfully, but he didn't care.

"What are you doing? Let go!" he said urgently. "If we keep these things, we'll all die!"

"You have no idea who's behind this! It's the church! It's those upper-class people!"

"I don't want to be found tomorrow with eight bullets in my back, and then the police announce that I committed a bizarre suicide!"

Li Ang did not let go.

"If we burn it, will we be safe?" he asked rhetorically.

Victor was stunned.

"Didn't the people who wrote these reports know that these things were here?" Li Ang's voice was cold.

"We took the key and opened this place, how could they not know?"

"If they come back and find this place empty and the files gone, what do you think they will do?"

The color drained from Victor's face instantly.

He got it.

From the moment they took the key, they were already on the kill list.

Burning the documents is just self-deception.

The other party will only think that they took the documents, and will use all their power to hunt them down until they get the documents back or turn them into "assets".

He was just a low-level gang leader who engaged in street violence and betrayal.

But the matter at hand was beyond his comprehension.

This is going against an unseen behemoth.

Victor had given up by now; only the dead could truly conceal these secrets.

"Who do you think these things can threaten?" Victor shook his head and scoffed. "If you ask me, the Butcher is a complete idiot for keeping these things."

"Who is the butcher?" Li Ang asked.

"It's that black guy we cleaned out last time!" Victor shouted excitedly. "This warehouse, all these things, are his!"

"The boss sent us here to find these documents! He lied to us, saying they contained a large sum of money the butcher had embezzled!"

"So...so he didn't have any money at all!"

Victor understood.

The Butcher, a former member of the Rusty Gang, somehow managed to obtain these deadly items.

Instead of handing them over, he wanted to keep them for himself, and might even have wanted to use them to blackmail the church or medical institutions.

Then he died.

The boss sent Victor to clean house, but his real purpose was to find these documents and destroy the evidence.

But Victor was also deceived by his boss.

The boss told him there was money here and asked him to bring his men to find it, and they ended up finding the key.

Then, in order to keep the non-existent "money" for himself, Victor killed several of his men who knew the whereabouts of the key.

Victor dug his hands into his hair, his nails digging into his scalp.

He looked as if he wanted to crack open his head to see what was inside.

"Money... fucking money..."

He kept repeating himself.

"That black butcher swindled a huge sum of money from the gang, at least seven figures."

"He said the money was hidden here, and told me to bring people to clean house and find the money while we were at it."

He also said that if he found the money, he would give me 30%.

Victor laughed, a laugh that sounded even worse than crying.

"Thirty percent... For this bullshit thirty percent, I killed Peck, I killed all my own brothers!"

He raised his head, his bloodshot eyes fixed on Li Ang.

"Do you understand? I killed everyone who knew the key existed!"

"Just for a treasure that doesn't even exist!"

"The boss has been lying to me from the very beginning!"

"He doesn't want the money, he just wants these documents!"

"That idiot butcher took these things and foolishly tried to blackmail the church, but the boss found out."

"So the boss dealt with the butcher first, and then asked me to clean up the mess he left behind."

Victor was losing control of his emotions.

"Why? Why me?"

"That damned old man, he's getting so close to those church folks in white robes..."

"I should have thought of that sooner..."

"What's the point of saying all this now?" Li Ang's voice broke the silence.

Victor looked up at him, and heard him roar:

"Will it work? Of course not! We're dead! You and I are both dead!"

"The boss won't let me off the hook, and the church won't let us off the hook!"

"We'll be canned, or preserved in formaldehyde, and sent to some rich person's operating table!"

"Are you satisfied? Is this what you wanted?"

Li Ang ignored his hysteria.

"What's your boss's name?"

Why are you asking this?

"I need to know his name," Li Ang insisted.

"Carlo," Victor finally said, "Carlo Falcone."

"The godfather of the Rust Gang, an old bastard."

Li Ang searched his mind for the name.

I have no recollection of it.

This is not surprising; he has only been in this world for a very short time.

"Is he very strong?" Li Ang asked.

"Strong?" Victor asked as if he'd heard a joke. "He's almost seventy years old, spending his days tending to his garden on his estate. Would you say he's strong or not?"

"But he has plenty of men and guns under his command."

"With just one word from him, a significant number of people from all over Seattle will be mobilized!"

"He wants us dead; we won't live past tomorrow morning."

Li Ang nodded and put the document back into the military supply box.

"He won't kill us now," Li Ang said, closing the case. "At least not until he finds these documents."

Victor was stunned.

"Since Carlo sent you to find these documents, it means he is well aware of their existence and their importance," Li Ang analyzed.

"Besides, he doesn't know you've already found it."

"He will continue to let you search, and may even offer you some assistance, until he is certain that the item is in your possession."

"Then, he will take action."

Victor's mind was a little foggy.

He was overwhelmed by a series of events and had lost his basic judgment.

"So what do we do now?" he asked instinctively.

Only after asking did he realize that he was asking this homeless man, whom he had only known for a few days, for help.