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

An intelligence dealer who had been interrogated was not worth taking with him. He had two bullet holes in his abdomen, which were probably repaired before he left.

Lu Yuan slid down to his knees beside him, his hand reaching for his carotid artery. There was still a pulse, extremely faint.

"Old Gun".

Old Gun opened his eyes. His eyes were bloodshot, and his pupils were dilated. He could see the face in front of him clearly.

The lips moved, "B...7..."

Lu Yuan pressed his ear close to the screen.

"Monaco... Port of Riga..."

Each word was stained with blood, enunciated with extreme precision, each word spoken slowly and deliberately.

"His next stop... is there... to rejoin the main force..."

After saying the last word, Old Gun lightly scratched Lu Yuan's forearm with his fingers.

"...The accounts are settled."

The hand loosened, the breathing stopped, and it was very quiet!

Old Gun's eyes were still closed, and a faint smile played at the corners of his mouth. The intelligence dealer's last transaction had been completed; the goods had been delivered.

Lu Yuan sat in the pool of blood in the basement, holding his body, for a very long time.

The basement was quiet. The only sound was the dripping of water from the pipes.

Finally, he stood up, grabbed an iron bar, and smashed the encrypted terminal, communication equipment, spare hard drive, and router on the table, leaving nothing behind.

The sound of the iron rod falling echoed in the sealed room, each strike heavy and muffled.

The clerk's men will return for a second round of cleanup. If they extract any data fragments from the wreckage, they could potentially trace back to all the informants Old Gun has handled over the years.

Lu Yuan dragged the gasoline can from the corner and unscrewed the cap. The clear liquid flowed onto the ground, over the iron chair legs, over the shattered equipment debris, and down to Old Gun.

He pulled out a box of matches; it was the same box that was on the bar counter at KOLT pub.

Lu Yuan pulled out the third match. Just like when he verified his identity a few days ago, it was the third one.

The torch lit up his face, the flames reflecting on his expressionless face.

He threw the match, and the blue flame spread along the gasoline, the temperature rose, and the color turned yellow and then white.

Everything in the sealed room began to melt, distort, and disappear.

Lu Yuan turned and walked out of the basement, up the stairs, into the darkness of the back alley, with a fire burning behind him.

Old Gun's body was in the fire, the communication equipment was in the fire, the old stronghold that once belonged to the Joker was in the fire, all reduced to nothing!

Alleyway entrance, Monaco, Porto Riga!

Lu Yuan looked up; there were no stars in the night sky.

The wound on his left arm was twitching, and the gauze was soaked through again. He ignored it, picked up his luggage bag, and walked towards the car that was parked in advance.

The engine started, the headlights pierced the darkness, the cleanup wasn't over yet!

......

Monaco, Port of Riga. The port wind carries a salty, fishy smell. In the distance, a row of private yachts is moored. The largest one, brightly lit, has six decks and the word "AURORA" is painted in gold on its hull.

On the east side of the port area, there is a very narrow alley with a Turkish sign for a laundry shop at the entrance, but the actual business is information services.

In his previous life, Lu Yuan had bought intelligence here three times. The seller was a one-eyed Armenian nicknamed "Ears." He had been a middleman for twenty years, never taking sides and only caring about money.

The door was closed. Lu Yuan knocked four times, paused, and then knocked twice more.

The door opened a crack, and an eye peered out.

Lu Yuan slipped a stack of cash through the crack in the door, and the door opened.

Five minutes later, Lu Yuan got what he wanted.

The Syndicate's intelligence chief, "The Clerk," was evacuated from Eastern Europe 48 hours ago and is currently on the AURORA cruise ship.

There's a closed-door dinner on board tonight at 10 PM, the main event being high-end Texas Hold'em in the VIP gaming room. There are many syndicate "accountants" there, financial killers who specialize in laundering money through gambling, moving funds between their own pockets.

The K-17 bomb cost 1.2 billion euros, and the clerk must patch the hole tonight.

Lu Yuan asked, "What are the conditions for boarding?"

Ears perked up, finger pointed: "Invitation letter, five million euros in capital verification, full-body security check including X-ray, guns can't be brought in."

"An invitation?"

"There's one left on the outer perimeter, belonging to an agent accompanying a tycoon from the Persian Gulf. The holder was caught soliciting prostitutes last night and was scammed; the documents are with me," Ears quoted a price.

Lu Yuan paid the money, and then he sat for three hours in the small room behind his ear, which was filled with fake certificates.

In front of the mirror, he used medical-grade bone glue, silicone implants, and professional-grade foundation, which he bought at high prices from black market brokers, to gradually alter his facial structure.

The brow bone was raised, the bridge of the nose was widened, the jawline shadow was pushed outward by half a centimeter, and thin patches were applied to the cheekbones. The entire face was transformed from an East Asian male to a Middle Eastern face with a strong mixed-race appearance.

As a final step, he rubbed half a bottle of hair oil into his hair, combed it into a slicked-back style, and changed into the custom-made suit provided by his ear.

The person in the mirror is arrogant, greasy, and exudes the air of a nouveau riche.

......

At 9:58 p.m., at the boarding gate of the Aurora, security scanned the invitation, verified the identity chip, and allowed boarding.

Silicon-based implants have the same density as human soft tissue, appearing as a blurry gray shadow under X-rays. This is an old trick that the Joker used countless times in his previous life.

The third-floor VIP gaming room was dimly lit and filled with the smoke of cigars. Six Texas Hold'em tables were arranged in an arc around the edge, each with a starting blind of 500,000 euros.

Lu Yuan carried the box of verification chips, chose table number three where the clerks and "accountants" were gathered, and plopped down on it.

"Gentlemen," he said in fluent Arabic-accented English, "who wants to get rich tonight?"

The five people at the table exchanged glances. One of them, the "accountant" in a tweed suit, smiled. "Here comes a sucker."

On the sixth floor of the cruise ship, in the monitoring room, the clerk stands in front of a screen wall, with twelve screens corresponding to twelve gambling tables.

His attention was focused on the real-time reports of the money pool. At table three, in the first three hands, the Saudi agent had lost 800,000. His gambling style was brutal, his betting haphazard. A classic case of rich but brainless.

The clerk didn't look any further and turned his gaze back to the general ledger. Tonight's task was to launder four hundred million euros; time was tight, and there was zero room for error.

Fourth move. Accounting report number five: The Saudis won 1.2 million.

On the fifth move, another win. On the sixth move, yet another win.

The clerk cuts the camera to a close-up of table number three.

The Saudi man leaned back in his chair, twirling a chip in his left hand and holding a whiskey glass in his right. He was relaxed, languid, and nonchalant.

But the numbers on the report don't lie. In twenty minutes, the net outflow from the Table 3 syndicate account had exceeded twenty million.

The clerk pressed the intercom button: "Croupier at table number three, initiate Level C intervention."