204: Chapter 204 Settlement of Travel Expenses

A thick stack of greenbacks, heavy with the scent of printer's ink, was forced by Da Biao's mechanical fingers into Steven's bloody, clenched teeth, shoved deep into his throat.

Steven's eyes rolled back instantly.

He desperately opened his mouth to retch, his throat completely blocked by the stiff paper.

His body twitched and writhed frantically on the vault's floor tiles, his hands clawing wildly at Da Biao's cold titanium alloy leg armor.

"Swallow it." Da Biao pressed his knee down another half-inch, pinning Steven's shoulder.

"You usually drink blood and eat meat, so why are you vomiting when having something vegetarian today? Swallow it for me."

"Cough... ugh..." Steven's cheeks turned purple from lack of air.

Tears and snot, mixed with blood, smeared across his entire face.

Lu Chen's deep, calm voice came through the communicator.

"Da Biao. Let him spit it out."

Da Biao paused.

"Don't dirty our travel expenses. Drag him over and make him get online to handle business." Lu Chen's command was devoid of any extra emotion.

"Consider yourself lucky." Da Biao released his mechanical hand and backhanded, grabbing Steven by his golden hair.

Steven lay sprawled on the pile of money, coughing violently.

The stack of blood-stained bills fell from his mouth.

He took large, greedy gulps of the stale air in the underground vault.

Da Biao didn't even wait for him to catch his breath, dragging him by his hair as he walked out.

Steven screamed repeatedly.

His legs dragged across the floor, leaving two long trails of blood.

He was thrown directly in front of the massive bounty network terminal in the center of the conference room.

Da Biao turned his head to look at a Death Squad Soldier beside him.

"Number one and two cabinets. Smash that firewall mainframe cabinet." Da Biao pointed to the huge black metal cabinet in the corner flashing with red light.

The Exoskeleton Death Squad Soldier strode over, raised his right arm with five tons of thrust, and slammed a fist into the mainframe casing.

With a loud "bang," the high-strength bulletproof glass panel shattered all over the floor.

The pure steel casing was smashed, leaving a large hole.

The Death Squad Soldier brutally shoved his hand into the hole and ripped out a huge handful of colorful data cables by the roots.

"Wu Dong. The wires are out. Which one?" Da Biao shouted into his collar microphone.

Far away in the Jiangcheng control room, Wu Dong spoke at lightning speed: "Find the thickest blue fiber optic cable. Use the physical cracking needle on your mechanical hand and stab it right in. Hardwire it."

The Death Squad Soldier flicked open his left wrist armor.

A sharp, silver data probe sprang out and stabbed fiercely into the blue fiber optic cable.

The terminal screen flickered wildly.

A harsh buzzing of electricity echoed throughout the conference room.

"It's connected. Boss, I've reverse-overridden their signal. Now, the global dark web and all the big screens on Wall Street are under our control." Wu Dong laughed loudly.

On the huge screen at the front of the conference room, the bounty list vanished instantly, replaced by a high-definition image of the current conference room.

In the center of the screen, Steven was covered in blood, his clothes in tatters.

Da Biao's massive, dark-gray frame stood behind him, a large mechanical hand resting casually on the back of his head.

Lu Chen's voice sounded through Da Biao's speaker, echoing in the blood-scented underground bunker.

At the same time, it was broadcast to countless big screens across the ocean.

"This is the consequence of posting a bounty."

Hearing this completely unfamiliar, young voice, Steven's body trembled like a sieve.

He knew who this voice belonged to.

"Thirty billion US dollars. Now, use your own hands to cancel the bounty." Lu Chen's speed was slow, but every word was enunciated with heavy emphasis.

Da Biao gripped the back of Steven's neck, pressing his face firmly just a few centimeters above the keyboard.

"Type it." Da Biao roared.

Steven extended his blood-soaked hands.

His fingers trembled so much that he couldn't hit the keys accurately at all.

"I'll cancel it... I'll cancel it right now... Please, don't kill me. I'm taking the bounty down immediately." Steven wailed, inputting the highest-level authorization password into the terminal keyboard in quick succession.

A crisp "beep" sounded.

A huge red English prompt popped up on the screen: [30 Billion USD Bounty Permanently Revoked].

"Just taking it down isn't enough." Lu Chen's voice followed immediately.

Steven froze.

He struggled to turn his head halfway to look at the surveillance camera.

"What else do you want? The list is already down. You are safe now. No one will take the order again." Steven panted rapidly.

"Thirty billion in bounty. Just playing around?" Lu Chen sneered.

"Since the money has already been brought out, transfer it over. Consider it travel expenses for these fifty brothers to cross the ocean."

The three capital agents kneeling in the ruins in the corner heard this and looked up in terror simultaneously.

"That is the reserve fund pool for Freemasons' periphery. You cannot touch this money." One of the white agents screamed, "If you move this money, the Council of Elders will never let us go. We will die."

Da Biao lifted his leg and walked over, kicking the screaming white agent directly in the shoulder.

"Crack." The sound of a shoulder blade shattering was exceptionally clear.

The man fell to the ground, rolling and screaming frantically.

Da Biao walked back behind Steven.

"What do you say? Do you want me to help you press it? My hands are heavy; I might crush your bones along with it." Da Biao flicked his mechanical finger against Steven's forehead.

Steven let out a muffled groan in pain.

He glanced at his companion on the floor and felt completely hopeless.

"I'll transfer it... I'll transfer it all. Give me the account number. I need an offshore account with absolutely no identity markers." Steven's voice was hoarse.

"There is no account. I'm sending a port link packet. Open it. Grant all permissions. You don't need to worry about the rest." Wu Dong's voice cut in.

A black data packet with no markings popped up on the terminal screen.

Da Biao grabbed Steven's left thumb and forcibly pressed it onto the Enter key.

The indicator lights in the underground data corridor instantly turned from green to a glaring red.

The defense line of the fund pool was forcibly torn open on one side.

In the Jiangcheng control room, Wu Dong's ten fingers blurred across the keyboard.

The stealth account's ingestion mechanism was fully activated.

Wu Dong stared intently at the astronomical figures jumping wildly on the screen.

"Boss. The funds are moving. They are entering stealth pool number one." Wu Dong reported.

System notifications jumped wildly in Lu Chen's mind.

The absolute defense mechanism was running at full capacity.

"The other side is reacting fast. Wall Street's cyber army has entered the fray. Over three thousand tracking nodes are coming in. They want to lock onto our fund flow." Wu Dong shouted.

"Block them." Lu Chen replied with two words.

"Already blocked." Wu Dong slammed the Enter key hard.

"The firewall blocked them all. They can't even touch a single hair of our code. Fund interception complete. Clean as a whistle. This money is completely laundered."

Hearing Wu Dong's confirmation, Lu Chen sat on the old, worn-out office chair, fingers tapping lightly on the desk.

"Three billion in travel expenses. A bit stingy, but it'll do." Lu Chen's voice was transmitted back to the bunker through Da Biao's throat microphone.

Steven collapsed into the swivel chair, exhausted.

He looked at the fund pool interface, which had hit zero, his eyes vacant.

"The money is transferred. The bounty is canceled. You promised to let me go. Let me leave. I'll get on a plane and leave the United States immediately. I'll never get involved in this again." Steven muttered neurotically.

"Da Biao." Lu Chen called out.

"Here, Boss." Da Biao stood straight.

"The rules have been taught. Clean up the trash." Lu Chen cut off the main microphone.

Hearing this, Steven sprang up from the swivel chair, scrambling to run away.

"You don't keep your word! You said if I gave you the money, you'd spare my life!" Steven screamed frantically.

Da Biao snorted coldly.

His massive frame took a step forward, his left arm shooting out instantly, his mechanical palm firmly clamping onto Steven's neck.

Steven's feet dangled in the air.

His face turned red instantly.

His hands clawed desperately at the indestructible titanium alloy arm, his fingernails all torn back.

"Our boss never promised to let you go. The boss said to use this money as travel expenses." Da Biao stared into Steven's bloodshot eyes.

"Now that the travel expenses are settled, it's time to send you on your way."

Da Biao's metal fingers applied slight pressure.

Five tons of mechanical grip strength erupted instantly in his palm.

"Crack."

A crisp and hair-raising sound of bone breaking echoed, sounding exceptionally harsh in the deathly silent air-raid bunker.

Steven's head tilted to one side at an eerie angle.

His cervical vertebrae had been completely crushed.

His pupils dilated rapidly, his body twitched twice, and then he stopped moving completely.

Da Biao released his hand.

Steven hit the floor like a rag doll, splashing a pool of blood.

The remaining three capital agents knelt in the corner, too terrified to even scream, frantically shrinking backward, trying to squeeze themselves into the cracks in the wall.

Da Biao didn't even glance at them.

He turned to face the fifty heavily armed Death Squad Soldiers standing in neat formation.

"Draw blades!" Da Biao shouted.

Fifty ultra-high-frequency oscillating alloy combat blades were drawn simultaneously from the back armor.

The azure-blue high-temperature cutting lines connected into a blinding sea of light in the dim bunker.

"Smash everything here—the servers, network terminals, anything that breathes or flashes—into iron pancakes. Not a single complete circuit board is allowed to remain." Da Biao issued the order for total destruction.

The fifty steel thugs dispersed instantly, initiating a mode of violent physical destruction.

A two-ton supercomputer cabinet was lifted by several Death Squad Soldiers and slammed heavily onto the console, sending sparks flying everywhere.

High-frequency combat blades swung freely.

Expensive network equipment was sliced like tofu into countless metal chunks.

Coolant and machine oil flowed all over the floor, emitting a pungent, burnt smell.

The pure steel coded vault door was cut into over a dozen pieces of scrap metal by the group using their combat blades and piled in the corridor.

In just three minutes.

The entire underground air-raid bunker at 14 Wall Street, once hailed as the sturdiest fortress of the Cold War and a peripheral stronghold representing the core of Freemasons' power and money, had turned into a metal ruin.

Not a single screen was intact.

Not a single network cable was whole.

Only wreckage and mud mixed with blood covered the floor.

Just as Da Biao was about to hack apart the last set of backup power cabinets, a sharp air-raid siren suddenly rang out in the communication channel.

This was the sound captured by Wu Dong via external probes.

"Captain. Stop smashing. The situation has changed." Wu Dong's voice was filled with anxiety.

"What's going on? Is the sky falling?" Da Biao sliced through the power cabinet with a blade, sparks spraying all over him.

"The New York Police Department's SWAT team has arrived. Exactly thirty armored riot vehicles have completely surrounded the area around Pier 7 on the surface."

Wu Dong quickly reported the external situation, "There are also six FBI armed helicopters circling above you. Thermal imaging probes have locked onto your position. Twelve heavy patrol boats from the Coast Guard have blocked all water channels."

Da Biao walked over to a smashed, tilted monitor.

The screen flickered with the last remaining images.

Dense rows of black riot shields and heavy machine guns had already blocked all the sewer manholes on the surface.

The helicopters' searchlights illuminated the entire block in a ghastly white.

"They're pretty quick. These foreign trash are just here to collect the bodies." Da Biao sneered.

He turned around, took one look at the mess on the floor, shook the machine oil and blood off his combat blade, and shoved the blade back into its slot on his back.

"Boss. The ground has been plowed. The trash has been cleared." Da Biao reported.

"Come home. Stay safe." Lu Chen replied with only six short words.

Da Biao waved his arm, pointing to an abandoned underground flood discharge tunnel in the deepest part of the bunker.

"Brothers. The job is done. Let's go. Into the water. We're going home to sleep."