113: Chapter 113 Escape in the Palm of Your Hand

There was no sound from the walkie-talkie for a long time.

Da Biao gripped the steel pipe, his knuckles turning deathly white.

Lu Chen fiddled with the plastic lighter in his hand, flicking his thumb over the flint wheel twice, but it didn't light.

He looked up at the independent Warehouse No. 3, a few hundred meters outside the window, his tone devoid of any inflection.

"It's not the finished product," Lu Chen said.

Da Biao gasped on the other end, "Boss, that's..."

"What Chen Hao put in there is dead material," Lu Chen interrupted him. "Do as I say. Start the timer and withdraw for five minutes."

The walkie-talkie went silent for two seconds.

Da Biao replied heavily with two words: "Understood."

Chen Hao stood at the side of the office desk, both hands shoved deep into the pockets of his lab coat, the corners of his mouth stretched into an extremely arrogant slit.

He leaned forward, sporting massive dark circles under his eyes.

"Boss," Chen Hao rubbed his nose, "Does that bastard really dare to sneak in?"

"A villa in Long Island, a green card," Lu Chen tossed the lighter onto the desk, making a crisp sound. "If it can turn a person into a ghost, then a ghost will certainly dare to sneak in through the darkness."

11:55 PM.

The rain had stopped.

The wind on the wasteland north of the city blew across without obstruction, cold enough to drill into one's very bones.

Behind Warehouse No. 1, there was a muddy ditch that had just been dug out by an excavator, half a meter deep and filled with yellow, muddy water.

Zhou Cheng lay in the ditch.

His high-end custom suit, worth tens of thousands, was completely soaked through with muddy water, clinging heavily to his body and emitting a foul, fishy stench.

He gasped for air, his right hand gripping the handle of the silver briefcase tightly.

His palms were covered in cold sweat, mixing with the mud, making them wet and slippery; the briefcase handle nearly slipped from his grip several times.

Zhou Cheng swallowed. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down twice.

The wind was howling.

He pricked up his ears to listen for movement outside the perimeter wall.

David had made it very clear on the phone: once the item was in hand, a car would be waiting at the highway exit to take him directly to a private plane bound for New York.

Once there, the affairs in Jiangcheng would have nothing to do with him anymore. He would still be an executive of a multinational corporation.

Exactly 12:00 AM.

Da Biao crouched in the shadow of the security booth directly in front of the warehouse.

He looked down at his wristwatch. The second hand clicked as it jumped to the twelve o'clock position.

Da Biao stood up and tapped the solid steel pipe in his hand against the iron pillar beside him twice.

"Clang, clang."

The sound of metal striking metal carried far across the empty lot.

A dozen or so patrol guards walking dogs didn't ask a single question; they turned, opened the doors, and got into two electric patrol vehicles.

The motors started, and the taillights quickly vanished around the corner of the intersection.

The surroundings instantly fell into dead silence.

Hearing the engine sounds fade away, Zhou Cheng lay in the mud for half a minute.

He suddenly sprang up from the muddy ditch and dashed in two steps to the back window of Warehouse No. 1.

The back window was a meter high.

Zhou Cheng grabbed the bottom edge of the rusted window frame with both hands, his ten fingers digging tightly into the gaps in the iron frame.

He lunged upward with force, hooking his thigh onto the windowsill.

His suit pants ripped instantly.

He couldn't care about the cold and rolled through the window, briefcase and all.

He slammed heavily onto the concrete floor of the warehouse.

His knees hit the ground with a sickening, muffled thud. Zhou Cheng gasped in pain, biting his tongue hard to force back a cry, swallowing the metallic taste of blood.

He lay on the floor for five seconds to recover, then quickly set the briefcase upright on the ground.

Before him was a heavy electronic access gate. Behind this door was the core area of the warehouse.

Zhou Cheng's hands trembled as he reached into his inner pocket and pulled out the pure black, military-grade decryption kit David had given him.

It was a black box the size of a matchbox, with a flat data interface.

He aligned the interface with the maintenance slot under the access gate and jammed it in with force.

In the main factory monitoring room, the four walls were covered with high-definition screens.

Da Biao stood at the very front, staring intently at the 8K infrared screen in the top left corner.

On the screen, the red dot representing Zhou Cheng's body temperature was crouching motionless in front of the electronic gate.

Da Biao gripped the walkie-talkie tightly, his steel pipe leaving a white mark on the floor.

Chen Hao took an apple from the fruit bowl nearby, wiped it twice on his lab coat, and took a big bite. A crisp crunch echoed.

"This bastard's equipment is pretty high-end," Chen Hao said while chewing the apple, eyes fixed on the screen. "Must be Morgan's goods."

Lu Chen leaned back in his leather chair, legs crossed, a half-unlit cigarette in his mouth, his eyes calm and devoid of any ripples.

"A little toy that costs thirty million dollars a set," Lu Chen said coolly.

In front of the gate, the military-grade kit slotted into the gap, and the indicator light at the tip instantly flared with a blinding red light, flashing rapidly.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

The red light suddenly turned green. With a soft "click," the sturdy electronic lock cylinder popped open from the inside, and a sliver of light appeared in the door gap.

Zhou Cheng shuddered all over. He scrambled up from the ground using his hands and feet and pushed open the iron door.

His heart was beating so fast it felt like it was going to burst through his chest.

He breathed in the dry air of the warehouse, a flash of wild joy in his eyes. Lu Chen's guards might look intimidating, but in the face of real American military technology, they were nothing but a pack of watchdogs.

The lights in the depths of the warehouse were not on. Only two emergency wall lamps emitted a dim, yellowish glow.

On the clean-room rack in the very center, over a dozen silver-gray metal modules were neatly arranged. The surface of their casings had no seams, square and boxy, with only a conspicuous yellow label pasted on the front.

On it were four black characters: Highly Dangerous.

Zhou Cheng walked over quickly, without any hesitation, and lunged straight for the edge of the clean-room rack.

He grabbed the outermost metal module.

It was extremely heavy in his hands, at least fifty pounds. The cold metallic touch traveled through his palms and spread throughout his body, causing him to shiver uncontrollably.

Zhou Cheng gritted his teeth and shoved the module into the opened silver briefcase; the size was a perfect fit.

He pressed his hands onto the lid and forced it down. "Snap." The metal latches locked tight.

Zhou Cheng straightened his back and picked up the briefcase. Just then, he caught a glimpse of a bright light flashing outside the glass window of the warehouse front door.

It was the high beams of the patrol vehicle.

12:04 AM. The motor sound of the electric patrol vehicle was rapidly approaching; the security personnel had returned early.

Zhou Cheng's face turned deathly pale in an instant, drained of all color.

He didn't dare go through the front door, so he turned and sprinted, clutching the heavy briefcase, straight toward the back window.

Running to the windowsill, he lifted the briefcase with both hands and threw it out the window, then climbed up after it, but his foot slipped and he stepped into thin air.

Zhou Cheng tumbled out headfirst, scrambling and rolling out of the muddy ditch.

The briefcase slammed into his chin, cutting it open.

He couldn't feel the pain; he scrambled up using his hands and feet, grabbed the briefcase, and plunged into the reed marsh outside the wall, running desperately into the darkness.

On the 8K infrared monitoring screen, the red dot representing Zhou Cheng's body temperature vanished completely into the night, disappearing into a blind spot.

Da Biao picked up the walkie-talkie and lowered his voice.