A real killer playing a villain; the guy surnamed Zhen in Detective, run!

The guard's body convulsed twice, the blade pressing down on the final contraction of his neck muscles. No sound. Not even the air escaped from his trachea.

Lu Yuan braced himself against the crossbeam with one arm and gently laid the body down in the shadow of the shelf, a moment that took about a second and a half.

The other three were still spreading out to search when they realized their leader had disappeared. Lu Yuan was already behind the second person.

The military blade was inserted into the kidney area, and the left hand was used to block the mouth and nose. The third person heard the sound of fabric rubbing and turned his head, only to have his Adam's apple shattered by a precise elbow strike.

The fourth person immediately fired, but the bullet hit Lu Yuan's spot, and Lu Yuan was no longer there.

He kicked the gunman's elbow, breaking it, and the blade sliced ​​across his neck.

Four people, seven seconds.

Lu Yuan walked towards the core load-bearing column, stepping on the blood on the ground. The six aluminum boxes of explosives were installed in place one by one, and the numbers on the time-delay detonators jumped: 15:00.

He pressed the start button. The countdown began. He evacuated via the same route. Pipelines, gratings, substation.

Thirteen minutes later, Lu Yuan stood on the top platform of an abandoned cooling tower outside the mining area. The wind was strong, making his trench coat flutter loudly.

He pulled the detonator from his pocket; the red indicator light was flashing.

When the button was pressed, the ground gave a dull tremor, as if something deep within the earth's crust had turned over.

Then came the second and third explosions, and the secondary explosions began. The chemical energy of three hundred tons of cocaine was ignited by the high temperature, and the ammunition depot of seven thousand weapons was like a hornet's nest that had been poked open, with the chain reaction tearing the surface apart.

A pillar of fire shot into the sky from the mine shaft, turning the low-hanging clouds orange-red.

Lu Yuan pulled a high-pressure gasoline spray gun from the bottom of his luggage bag, aimed it at the six-meter-high concrete windbreak wall opposite the mining area, and pulled the wrench.

The red flames of gasoline scorched the wall, leaving charred marks.

One stroke, two strokes, three strokes. A grinning face stretched to its ears took shape, ridiculously ugly, exactly like the one on the night vision goggles of a Nordic castle.

Lu Yuan put away the spray gun and stood at the edge of the cooling tower, the flames casting a long shadow. The wind carried the smell of gunpowder from the explosion into his nostrils.

happy!

......

At Syndicate headquarters, six hours later, the intelligence chief, "The Clerk," stood expressionless before the remotely transmitted thermal image of the ruins.

The elder behind him, enraged, pierced the carpet with his cane: "Find him!"

At the scene, the clerk stood on the edge of the ruins, with scorched earth still smoking beneath his feet.

The entire K-17 was unearthed from underground; the crater was over eighty meters in diameter, and the soil around the edges was still hot. Two billion euros worth of assets, three hundred tons of cargo—not even a speck of dust remained.

The clerk didn't look at the smiling face on the wall; it was something the other party wanted to provoke him.

He crouched down and used tweezers to pick up a piece of white crystalline residue, about the size of a fingernail, from the edge of the crater. Delayed detonation stabilizer. Underground version. High-temperature resistant model.

There are no more than five people in all of Europe who can make this. And at most two who can deliver within 72 hours.

The clerk put the residue into a sealed bag and stood up.

"Retrieve the transaction records of all underground channels within a 200-kilometer radius over the past 48 hours," he told the technical team behind him. "Focus on screening chemical raw materials. At the same time, retrieve monitoring data from all relevant traffic nodes in the area."

The technical team completed the first round of screening within four hours, reducing 53,000 records to 117. The clerk personally reviewed each record.

A white van stopped for 41 seconds at a market intersection 3 kilometers from a known stabilizer supplier. Other vehicles at the same intersection stopped for an average of 34 seconds, making the van 7 seconds longer.

The clerk retrieved the complete trajectory of the van: market—port road—eastern section of the old city—disappeared, the disappearance point being an area in the old city without municipal surveillance.

The old town is densely packed with underground pubs, a breeding ground for intelligence brokers.

"File all the taverns in this area that have been in business for more than ten years." The clerk took off his gloves. "Focus on the older businesses that overlap with the Joker era."

The information network is shrinking, like a fishing net being slowly tightened.

......

Twenty-seven hours later, late at night, Lu Yuan was studying data on his next target in a safe house on the other side of the city when the signal from his personal terminal suddenly went out.

To be precise, it is suppressed. The characteristics of military frequency band jammers are: the entire spectrum from 800MHz to 2.6GHz is completely submerged in white noise.

The coverage radius is at least 500 meters, and Old Gun's tavern is 3 kilometers away.

Lu Yuan stuffed the terminal into his pocket, grabbed his duffel bag, and rushed out, hoping he could still make it in time.

......

In the basement of the KOLT tavern, Old Gun was tied to an iron chair, the blood at the corner of his mouth already congealed into black.

The clerk sat opposite, holding a syringe filled with a pale blue liquid. It was a nerve blocker, which didn't act on pain receptors but specifically severed the connection between motor nerves and willpower, rendering the person unable to control their mouth.

"The third time," the clerk said, "Where is the Joker?"

Old Gun's left little finger had been broken off, with the finger bone protruding through the skin and the white stubble facing outwards. A third of his right earlobe had been cut off.

He spat out a mouthful of blood. "Fuck you."

The clerk wasn't angry. He pushed the syringe into the old gunman's jugular vein.

Thirty seconds after the medication entered his bloodstream, Old Gun's eyes began to move uncontrollably. His vocal cords twitched, and he forced out broken syllables from his throat, failing to form any meaningful words.

Old Gun used his tongue to taste the blood to keep himself alert and counteract the drugs. Thirty years of intelligence experience had honed his interrogation skills to be among the best in the world.

The clerk glanced at his watch; there were still forty seconds left in the window for the medicine to take effect.

He stood up, walked to the corner, pressed the communication button on his watch, and reported in a low voice.

"Target has extremely high drug resistance, escalation recommended... Yes, move to node B-7 as planned in seventeen minutes... 'Sweeper' protocol activated, confirmed."

Communication ended.

On the iron chair, Old Gun's eyes stopped moving. In the few seconds of the drug's effects wearing off, his consciousness resurfaced.

B-7 is an abbreviation for geographic coordinates. The syndicate has a network of safe houses in Eastern Europe named with letters and numbers.

Old Gun etched this coordinate into the deepest part of his memory, then continued to drool while pretending to be delirious.

......

Nineteen minutes later, the cast iron cover of the sewer was pried open from below.

When Lu Yuan emerged, the alley behind the tavern was already empty. Two corpses lay across the entrance, the mercenaries who had stayed behind, each with a clean horizontal cut on their throat. A third body sat at the corner of the stairs.

The basement door was blown open, and the door frame was deformed.

Lu Yuan rushed in. The iron chair was still there, along with blood, broken bones, and torn ropes. The clerk had already left.

In the corner, leaning against the wall, Old Gun was curled up on the ground.