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

The pipe was narrow, and carrying someone on his back meant he could only walk by crouching. With each step, the fragments of Ghost's severed leg rubbed against his bulletproof vest, and he swallowed his screams, leaving only rapid breathing.

Someone was chasing after him, but Lu Yuan didn't turn around. He drew his short-barreled rifle from behind his waist and fired two shots backwards. The echo in the pipe amplified the gunshots into thunder, and the pursuers' backfire was blocked by the pipe wall.

Three hundred meters in, the pipeline outlet was beneath an abandoned railway culvert. When I climbed out, it was just dawn in Berlin, and the cold wind felt like knives in my lungs.

The ghost had already fainted. The bandages couldn't stop the bleeding, and his entire back was soaked and warm.

......

Regular hospitals are not an option, as the networked medical system will send biometric data to the insurance database upon admission.

The syndicate has planted triggers in the databases of 37 hospitals across Europe, and Interpol's automated trauma case comparison system is also in operation.

Lu Yuan carried the person for four blocks before turning into a 24-hour mobile phone repair shop.

"Is the underground surgery clinic in the Fischer district still there?"

The Turk behind the counter looked at him covered in blood and the unconscious person on his back, and dropped the screwdriver in his hand.

"Yes...yes."

"Call me a car. Any kind will do."

Fifteen minutes later, on the second basement level of an abandoned cold storage facility on the outskirts of Berlin.

The operating room light came on, and two surgeons, whose names wouldn't appear on any medical register, pushed in a wheelchair. The payment was prepaid, in cash—enough to buy two apartments in Berlin.

Lu Yuan sat on the iron bench in the corridor. The blood on his windbreaker began to harden, sticking to his skin and pulling at it. The old wound on his left arm had opened up even wider, with new blood mixed with the old, making it impossible to distinguish which layer was which.

He took out his phone, and the screen showed the real-time status of the Syndicate's global dark pool, which was now completely offline. Sixty-seven billion had vanished into thin air.

The settlement channels of more than 400 criminal networks worldwide have been cut off, and the underground credit system that the syndicate built up over thirty years has collapsed tonight.

Lu Yuan leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Old Gun was dead, Ghost was in the operating room, and the connections he had built in his previous life had been burned to ashes.

He opened his eyes and pulled the charred match from his pocket—the last relic of the KOLT tavern.

When the operating room door opened, the white light from the underground cold storage divided the corridor in two.

The door opened, and the quack doctor took off his blood-stained latex gloves, saying in Turkish-accented German, "His knees were completely shattered, but we replaced them with titanium alloy. He can stand and walk; his life has been saved."

Lu Yuan nodded, took out two stacks of euros from the side pocket of his duffel bag, and slapped them on the iron table in the corridor.

"Post-operative care lasts three weeks. Contact me again if it's not enough."

"No need." The quack doctor tossed his gloves into the medical waste bin. "Ghost helped me before."

Lu Yuan didn't stand on ceremony and took back a stack of money, saving ten thousand yuan is still ten thousand yuan.

I pushed open the door and took a look. The ghost was lying on the narrow bed, her face as white as the operating table, her legs wrapped in gauze and external fixation braces, and her chest was still rising and falling.

Lu Yuan stepped out and leaned against the corridor wall, taking out his phone. The screen displayed the last encrypted file copied from the clerk's terminal, which had taken him six hours to decrypt.

Coordinates: Mediterranean Sea, international waters. 36°41'N, 14°22'E.

A private island that doesn't appear on any nautical chart, the physical headquarters of the Syndicate Elders. Six elders, the organizational core built up over thirty years, are all located on this tiny island.

K-17 exploded, the financial center was wiped out, the clerk sank to the Mediterranean, and the Asian region was uprooted.

But as long as the elders are alive, and as long as the island continues to function, the Syndicate will be like a snake with its head cut off—it won't die immediately, but will become even more dangerous.

A venomous snake devoid of reason and driven only by instinct will bite anything within its reach, including those people in China!

Lu Yuan stuffed the matches back into his pocket, picked up his luggage bag, and walked out.

……

Hamburg, St. Pauli district, three streets behind the port, the alleyway in the early morning is only filled with drunks and stray cats.

Lu Yuan stopped in front of an iron gate without a nameplate and knocked four times. The door opened a crack, and the smell of welding and old-fashioned synthesizer music wafted out.

The arms dealer was called "The Watchmaker," a nickname derived from his obsession with precision instruments. He was sixty years old, bald, with short, thick but exceptionally nimble fingers, and behind his counter hung three broken Swiss clocks.

Lu Yuan submitted the following requirements: AP Valkyrie closed-loop submersible, two high-frequency liquid nitrogen spray canisters, one miniature directional EMP generator, and a full-matte carbon fiber tactical diving suit.

The watchmaker looked at him through a magnifying glass: "AP Valkyrie production has ceased."

"The one under your counter is the third batch of mass-produced models, serial number ends in 372." Lu Yuan glanced at it. "The oxygen tank pressure gauge pointer is off by two degrees. You replaced the seal but didn't calibrate it."

The watchmaker put down his magnifying glass and quoted a price. Expensive, extremely expensive!

Lu Yuan didn't haggle. He counted out the cash and added another three thousand euros. "I'll come to pick up the pressure gauge the day after tomorrow to calibrate it."

Back in the temporary safe house, Lu Yuan disassembled all the equipment and inspected each piece one by one on the folding table.

He fixed a cold solder joint in the AP Valkyrie's electronic circuit with a soldering iron. The EMP generator's frequency range was insufficient, so he removed the magnetron from an old microwave oven and connected it in series with the high-voltage capacitor circuit, extending the effective interference band from 2GHz to 8GHz.

On the table was a structural diagram of the island. The data copied from the scribe's terminal was limited, but enough for Lu Yuan to reconstruct the defense framework.

First layer: Sea surface. Active sonar array, AI target recognition, underwater self-destructing unmanned surface vessel, coverage radius of two nautical miles.

Second layer: From the mudflats to the outer perimeter. Intelligent pressure-activated landmines, microwave life detectors, and mechanical patrol dogs working in conjunction with two-person mobile sentries.

The third layer: the outer buildings. Disguised as a seawater desalination facility, the interior houses hidden automated firing points and exoskeleton-equipped rapid reaction teams.

Fourth floor: Core area. Elders' meeting room, underground fortifications, and explosion-proof doors locked at each level.

Each layer is an independent closed loop; a breach in the upper layer will not affect the activation of the lower layer, making it a textbook example of in-depth defense.

Lu Yuan stared at the parameters of the first-level sonar system for a long time. He had participated in the procurement and evaluation of this system in his previous life.

In an effort to save 15 percent on energy costs, the Syndicate Budget Committee cut the bottom dead zone compensation module.

The scanning sector of the six transmitters has a periodic blind zone at a depth of 30 meters on the seabed, with each cycle lasting 6.5 seconds.

enough.