229: Chapter 230 The Price of Touching the Enemy's Threat! The Border Sweeper's Cross-Province Blitz

On the banks of the Huangpu River, where the night wind howled, a figure with a lowered hat brim walked quickly through the sparse crowd.

In less than ten minutes.

After a simple disguise, Secretary Shen Hai, wearing a black baseball cap, arrived silently at the riverside railing and stopped behind Shen Hong.

"Fourth Brother, thank you for rushing back from the border overnight."

Secretary Shen Hai lowered his voice, his tone revealing a deep sense of exhaustion.

Hearing the familiar voice.

Shen Hong turned his head without hesitation and spat the half-smoked cigarette from his mouth onto the ground.

He raised his heavy motorcycle boot.

With the hard sole, he crushed the glowing red ember, leaving not even a wisp of smoke behind.

The moment he turned around.

The terrifying aura of a thug that Shen Hong possessed in the underground chambers of the border miraculously vanished completely.

He put on an extremely gentle expression, with even a hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth:

"Second Brother, what are you saying?

If it weren't for the Old Master pulling me out of a pile of corpses and bringing me back to the Shen Family,

how would I have the qualifications to be any 'Border Cleaner'?

Now that some blind scum is bothering the Old Master, as the fourth son, I naturally cannot stand by and watch."

Secretary Shen Hai looked at the fourth brother in front of him, the one who was the most hidden yet also the sharpest in the Shen Family.

There was no long-winded preamble, nor did he say a single word about the complex international situation involving Shen Du's strategic layout.

He knew exactly where Shen Hong's weakness lay, so he went straight to the point and threw out the most fatal piece of information.

"You know, your Third Sister loved you the most when you were growing up."

Secretary Shen Hai looked directly into Shen Hong's eyes, his voice becoming heavy:

"She returned yesterday.

In order to save Shen Du, she knelt straight down in front of the Old Master..."

The moment he heard this, the gentle expression on Shen Hong's face froze, as if doused with ice water.

Accompanied by the shrill wind on the Huangpu River, the violent murderous intent that had been suppressed in the depths of Shen Hong's eyes

surged out uncontrollably like a beast whose absolute reverse scale had been touched, turning completely grim.

Secretary Shen Hai did not let his fourth brother's emotions continue to spiral out of control.

He spoke extremely fast, explaining in a few words the cross-national layout Shen Du had made at the Bund,

and how, at this critical moment of sanctions, someone domestically

had secretly used the media to stir up public opinion, attempting to roast the Shen Family on a fire.

Having grown up in the Shen Family and spent years wandering in the gray zones, Shen Hong

almost instantly grasped the key to breaking the situation from this complex web of intelligence.

"Is that so..."

Shen Hong's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty; he gritted his teeth and spoke slowly, his voice ice-cold and devoid of any warmth:

"Third Sister has finally returned... I understand the general situation; I will take full charge of the external investigation from here on out.

I want to see exactly which blind scum dares to break ground on my Shen Family's territory at a time like this."

Seeing the undisguised, tangible murderous intent in Shen Hong's eyes, Secretary Shen Hai's heart tightened.

He immediately reached into his pocket, took out a brass key covered in mottled rust, and handed it over.

The moment Shen Hong reached out to take it, Secretary Shen Hai deliberately used force, gripping Shen Hong's wrist tightly.

"Fourth Brother, this is a serious matter. This time, your methods must be as moderate as possible. You absolutely cannot add chaos to the situation at this critical juncture!"

Secretary Shen Hai stared into his eyes, setting the tone with extreme seriousness:

"After this storm has passed safely, the Old Master will take action personally to settle accounts with these people.

This is the warehouse key, the same old place. Everything you need has already been prepared for you."

Feeling the warning pressure on his wrist, the violence in Shen Hong's eyes receded slightly.

He gripped the rusty key in his hand without even glancing down at it.

Shen Hong turned around directly, waving his hand casually with his back to Secretary Shen Hai.

Subsequently, he strode over to the heavy motorcycle covered in mud from the border and twisted the throttle hard.

Accompanied by a violent roar that tore through the night wind of the Huangpu River,

the black motorcycle, like a shadow flying close to the ground, instantly disappeared into the endless stream of bright traffic in Shanghai.

Half a month later, inside an unregistered underground safe house in the Old City District.

"Thud!"

A piercing, sharp sound rang out.

A custom-made military dagger, carrying a fierce force, was pinned with pinpoint accuracy into a worn-out map of the East China region.

On the originally empty gray-white wall,

it was now densely covered with hundreds of candid photos of news media heads, financial influencers, and dark water army leaders.

Countless scarlet threads were interwoven between these photos and classified documents.

Finally, in the center of the map, they converged into a hideous and massive web of public opinion relations.

Shen Hong was shirtless, his lean, strong muscles covered in hideous scars.

He held a bottle of iced beer upside down and took a large gulp; his eyes, bloodshot from exhaustion, were filled with cold and mocking glints.

For a "Cleaner" who had wandered the border for many years and held multiple levels of authority,

following the trail to investigate a few news media outlets stirring up trouble online was as easy as turning over one's hand.

In this short period of less than half a month,

he had gone alone, crossing three entire provinces and more than a dozen prefecture-level cities.

In this secret blitzkrieg that spanned nearly half of China,

using the most direct and brutal methods of physical interrogation, following the flow of overseas funds and the secret contact points of various water army leaders,

he had stubbornly followed the trail.

He had dragged this group of media rats, who hid behind keyboards thinking they could deceive the world, out of the sewers, every single one of them!

Shen Hong tossed the empty beer bottle into the corner, which made a dull thud.

He strode to the wall and grabbed a thick-tipped red marker from the table.

On the section marked "Beijing Circle Forces," he drew a huge, glaring red cross without hesitation.

According to the clues he had pried out of the water army leaders' mouths over the past half month,

the direction was not in the north at all.

Those families in the Beijing Circle had their backbones completely broken during the last brutal stock market war,

losing so much they had even lost their underwear.

Several small and medium-sized families even declared bankruptcy directly.

These stray dogs, themselves struggling to stay afloat like clay bodhisattvas crossing a river, were too busy trying to save themselves now.

They had no spare energy, let alone the courage or financial resources, to set up such a precise international public opinion trap!

Since it wasn't a fierce tiger from the outside...

Shen Hong turned around.

He grabbed the internal intelligence report that Secretary Shen Hai had given him from the table and compared it with the red-line network he had dug out with his own fists on the wall.

He performed one last meticulous comparison.

As his gaze moved, his eyes narrowed, following the final convergence point of the countless red lines.

Finally, his eyes, filled with murderous intent, locked onto the all-too-familiar area in the center of the map like a hawk.

"Swish!"

Shen Hong suddenly raised his arm and drew a heavy, scarlet circle on the "Local Shanghai" section with the red pen.

The tip of the pen pierced through the paper, scratching directly onto the wall plaster!

It wasn't an invasion by foreign enemies at all!

The ones who had been frantically stirring up trouble behind the scenes at this critical moment of sanctions, attempting to force the Shen Family into a dead end,

were actually a force that had been lurking deep within the Shen Family's heartland, silent for far, far too long—

so long that even the Shen Family had almost forgotten about their existence: the local, old-school political rivals!

Everything had come to light.

Shen Hong did not delay, immediately taking out the special encrypted mobile phone.

He took several photos of the financial flow evidence and the list of contact persons on the wall, "click, click."

His fingers tapped rapidly on the screen, efficiently packaging all the data into a single file.

He pressed the confirm button and sent it directly to Secretary Shen Hai's internal line.

"Beep—"

Watching the green success message pop up on the screen, Shen Hong tucked the phone back into the pocket of his windbreaker with a backhand motion.

After half a month of continuous, almost sleepless cross-provincial racing and high-intensity interrogations,

if it were anyone else, their tense nerves would have completely collapsed and they would have fallen over the moment the task was completed.

But not only did Shen Hong show no signs of fatigue, a more fanatical sense of excitement burned in his eyes instead.

Without even taking a sip of water, he grabbed the black leather jacket from the table and put it on efficiently.

He grabbed the motorcycle keys and strode out of the underground safe house.

"Vroom—!!"

The black heavy motorcycle, like a cannonball fired from a chamber, violently tore through the silent alleys of the Old City District.

Shen Hong leaned the bike over sharply.

The motorcycle tires screeched harshly against the asphalt, completing a beautiful drift.

Facing the cold night wind of Shanghai, his gaze crossed the brilliant neon lights and locked firmly onto the direction of the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai.

In the raging wind, the corners of Shen Hong's mouth slowly curled into an intrigued, arrogant arc.

"Let me go see for myself.

What exactly this nephew, who could stir up the whole city of Shanghai and even dare to scheme against the Old Master, looks like now!"