105: Chapter 105 The Silent War

Dr. Park had not closed his eyes for three days.

It wasn't that he couldn't sleep; he simply didn't need to.

Ever since he injected the Queen Seed, his brain had been like a supercomputer that never stopped running. Sleepiness, hunger, fatigue—the physiological shackles that had once bound him were all crushed by his rewritten neural synapses.

He sat in the swivel chair in the command room, with a map of Colombia's underground forces spread out before him. The map was densely marked with eleven circles of varying sizes, each representing a drug cartel. Dr. Park picked up a red marker and drew an 'X' over the three nearest circles.

"Alpha."

Heavy footsteps sounded from outside the door. The monster, implanted with the Dominant Placa, pushed the door open and knelt on one knee.

"Master."

"Is the first batch of 'Seeds' ready?"

"Thirty-seven people, all in position."

Dr. Park nodded. He had spent two days carefully selecting these thirty-seven people. They were all low-level drug dealers who had previously been captured as forced laborers by the "Scorpion" gang and several other small groups. After receiving the baptism of the Placa in Dr. Park's "Pasture," they had been given a new mission.

"Let them go." Dr. Park took off his glasses and wiped them; his dark golden pupils reflected the circles on the map. "Tell them to say they escaped from the Scorpion's stronghold, bring some injuries, and make themselves look disheveled. Return to their old bosses and do what they usually do."

"What about the supplies?"

"They're already packed." Dr. Park picked up a sealed bag from the table, which contained dozens of ordinary-looking cigarettes. "Each person takes two packs. The filters of this batch of cigarettes are embedded with micro-capsules of insect eggs. The taste is no different from regular Marlboros, and the eggs will hatch six hours after smoking. Additionally, the water source plan will be executed simultaneously. Each person has a small bottle of concentrate in their backpack; it is colorless and odorless, just pour it into the drinking water barrels."

Alpha took the sealed bag without any unnecessary movement and turned to leave.

Dr. Park leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

In his mind, thirty-seven points of light were slowly moving in different directions.

— —

The first to fall was the "Black Spider" group entrenched in Cauca Province.

The boss of the "Black Spider" was named Martinez, with over a hundred men under his command, controlling three cocaine transport lines. In the food chain of the Colombian underground world, they were considered upper-middle tier.

The "Seed" sent out by Dr. Park was named Pedro. He had previously been one of Black Spider's men, captured as forced labor when the Scorpions seized their territory. Now he had "escaped" back, covered in injuries, cursing the Scorpions' mothers, and carrying two pieces of route intelligence "stolen" from the Scorpions.

Martinez didn't suspect a thing.

Pedro was his man to begin with, and he had even brought back intelligence upon escaping; what else could he be but a hero? That night, they held a welcome banquet for Pedro, with over a dozen brothers sitting around in a tin shed, drinking.

Pedro took out that pack of Marlboros and passed them around with a grin.

"Those bastards, the Scorpions, hide a lot of good stuff. Just look at these cigarettes; they stockpile them by the crate."

A dozen hands took the cigarettes, lit them, and took a deep drag.

No one felt anything was wrong.

The taste of the cigarettes was indeed good.

Six hours later.

At 3:00 AM, the entire camp was fast asleep. The two sentries on night duty had just finished smoking the second cigarette Pedro had given them; one sneezed, while the other rubbed his temples, feeling a bit of swelling in his head.

Three minutes later, the swelling pain vanished.

The two sentries exchanged a look, said nothing, and continued patrolling with their rifles.

But their eyes had changed.

In the command room two hundred kilometers away, the number of light points in Dr. Park's mind jumped from thirty-seven to fifty-one.

"Pedro, well done. Continue. Tomorrow, have them add the additive to the drinking water barrels during the day."

He did not speak out loud; he simply issued an order in his mind.

Two hundred kilometers away, Pedro, who was pretending to sleep on a metal cot, felt his eyelid twitch slightly.

Received.

— —

The same thing was happening simultaneously at seven different locations in Colombia.

Thirty-seven "Seeds" had been scattered into different soils, each quietly taking root and sprouting.

There were no gunshots, no explosions, and no news of gang warfare.

On the first day, the number of light points in Dr. Park's mind grew from thirty-seven to one hundred and forty-six.

On the second day, three hundred and nine.

On the third day, seven hundred and eighty-two.

The growth curve was almost exponential because every infected person would become a new node of transmission. Smoking a cigarette, drinking a sip of water, or even eating a bite of "processed" corn tortilla—six hours later, it would be a new point of light.

Dr. Park sat in the command room, closed his eyes, and his consciousness switched at high speed between more than seven hundred perspectives.

He saw the exact location of the "Black Spider" group's armory—in the basement of an abandoned church in Cauca Province, hiding enough AKs and rocket launchers to arm two companies.

He saw the scene of a boss of a group in a neighboring province called "Silver Eagle" in bed with his lover—this detail was not important, but the password to the safe at the head of the Silver Eagle boss's bed was 291076.

He saw that the "Red Horn" group had just imported a batch of fentanyl from Mexico, hidden in three trucks full of bananas, which would pass through a checkpoint on the C-7 highway tomorrow morning.

These drug dealers, who had once run rampant in the jungle, had exposed everything about themselves to him. And they were completely unaware of it.

He picked up the red pen and drew three more 'X's on the map.

"Alpha."

"Master."

"What was the name of the Silver Eagle boss again?"

"Gonzalo Villa."

"His deputy, Juan, is already our man. Tonight, have Juan do it himself. No need for guns; a pillow will do. After suffocating him, dispose of the body cleanly, and tell the outside world that Villa drank too much last night and ran off overnight to defect to The Federation."

"Will they believe it?"

"They don't need to believe it." Dr. Park tapped the table lightly. "Once Villa 'runs,' Silver Eagle will be leaderless, and internal power struggles will be inevitable. When that happens, our people will whisper to both sides, claiming the other party wants to swallow them up. Within three days, they will be fighting each other. Once the fighting is over, we will absorb the survivors."

Alpha stood there, his eyes, modified by parasites, flashing with a hint of... not awe, but instinctive submission.

His master was playing a game of chess, and every piece was a living human being.

"Also, that batch of fentanyl from Red Horn." Dr. Park continued, "Have our people at the checkpoint leak a tip to the government army patrol. Anonymously, using a burner phone. If Red Horn gets raided, it will at least hurt their foundation. Then we will send people to help."

"Understood."

Alpha retreated.

Dr. Park picked up the now-cold coffee on the table and took a sip.

The most terrifying conquest in this world is not by bombing with shells, but by making the enemy become your own people without them even realizing it.

— —

Within forty-eight hours, a series of events occurred in the Colombian underground world that left everyone baffled.

Martinez of the Black Spider group was shot dead on the spot in his own office by a trusted subordinate; the killer was his personal bodyguard who had been with him for eight years. After the shooting, the bodyguard walked out and calmly told everyone: "Martinez made a secret deal with The Federation and betrayed his brothers. I have eliminated this traitor for everyone. From now on, I am in charge."

No one opposed him.

Because among the twenty-some armed personnel present, nineteen were already Dr. Park's pawns.

Silver Eagle split into two factions and fought for an entire night, with over thirty people dead. The sixty-some survivors were lost and confused when a "middleman" appeared, saying he could help them find a new backer. They followed the middleman, tears of gratitude in their eyes.

The three trucks of fentanyl from Red Horn were intercepted by the government army, and the boss, Santiago, was furious, convinced that someone inside had tipped them off, and killed three of his subordinates to vent his anger. The remaining people were panicked, and half of them ran away that very night. Among those who ran, eight carried the insect eggs back to other groups.

Dr. Park's "Pasture" expanded from a secret base into an underground network covering three provinces.

The number of light points in his mind exceeded two thousand on the seventh day.

He even began to classify and manage the groups that had been taken over.

The ringleaders and core members riddled with crimes—the scum who had personally killed civilians, trafficked people, and forced villagers to grow coca—were secretly escorted back to the base. In the underground laboratory numbered "Zone A," they would become the raw materials for Dr. Park's latest batch of experiments.

He tested new variants of the Placa on these people, recorded data, and advanced his research. These people had once slaughtered hundreds of innocent villagers without hesitation; now they were just paying their debts.

As for the low-level personnel who had been dragged into this—teenagers of fifteen or sixteen who were forced to carry guns, farmers who joined drug dealers because they had no other way out—Dr. Park gave them a different treatment. He implanted the most basic, ordinary Placa, eliminating aggression while retaining basic cognition, and assigned them to the base's peripheral security or logistics labor. Work, eat, sleep, and no longer worry about being shot to death by stray bullets one day.

In Dr. Park's own words: "A good shepherd must not only know how to kill wolves but also how to raise sheep."

He even built a Zone B next to Zone A, specifically to house the villagers rescued from the drug dealers.

This was the last window he left for his own conscience.

— —

The tenth day.

Dr. Park looked at the map and crossed out the second-to-last circle.

Within the entirety of Colombia, out of eleven drug cartels large and small, ten had already been annexed or dismantled by his parasite network. More than three thousand points of light were scattered across the jungles, towns, and roads, like an invisible spider web, firmly covering this land.

The last remaining circle was drawn larger than all the others and marked with a double line.

Next to it was a name—"The Federation."

Dr. Park put down his pen and leaned back in his chair, wearing a grave expression for the first time.

The Federation was not an ordinary drug cartel; it was a behemoth of the entire South American underground world. It was a super-alliance formed by more than twenty groups, with a sphere of influence extending from Colombia to Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru, controlling forty percent of the global cocaine production.

Even more troublesome was its leader.

A retired officer with the nickname "The General," whose real name was Antonio Reyes. A former brigadier general of the 4th Brigade of the Colombian Army, he was forced to retire due to his connections with drug cartels, and he immediately turned around and used the connections and tactical expertise he had accumulated in the military to integrate the scattered drug dealers across South America.

This person was different.

Dr. Park called up all the intelligence on "The General" collected over the past ten days in his mind.

This person was extremely suspicious and never slept in the same place for two nights. His core guard was entirely recruited from abroad, all former special forces personnel with no ties to local forces—this meant that Dr. Park's "old friend comes home" strategy was completely useless.

What was even more fatal was that "The General" had already noticed the anomaly.

Three days ago, Dr. Park learned through an infected mid-level intelligence dealer that The General had held a secret meeting. At the meeting, he said: "In the last month, ten groups have disappeared in Colombia, and a bunch of inexplicable accidents have occurred."

What was worse was the follow-up intelligence.

The General had not only noticed the anomaly but had also begun countermeasures. He ordered all members of The Federation to have no contact with external personnel, and all food and drink were to be purchased through designated channels and distributed only after being inspected by specialized personnel. Core members were to undergo a blood test every forty-eight hours—although he didn't know what to look for, this kind of blanket screening was enough to severely compromise Dr. Park's infiltration strategy.

Furthermore, The General had an inside man at the major general level in the 7th Division of the Colombian government army. If things escalated, he had the full capability to mobilize regular troops for "bandit suppression."

Dr. Park took off his glasses and rubbed his brow.

His dark golden pupils contracted slightly.

"Interesting." He whispered.

His fingertip pointed at the largest circle again, stopped for three seconds, but did not draw an 'X'.

He put down the pen, picked up the satellite phone nearby, and dialed a number.

"Boss, it's me." Dr. Park's voice was too calm to sound like he was making a call for assistance. "The construction of the Pasture is progressing smoothly, but there is a tough nut that may need your help to crack."

There was a silence of two seconds on the other end of the line.

Chen Feng's voice came through, sounding a bit lazy: "Speak."

"The Federation. The leader of the opposing side is a retired brigadier general; his methods and brain are not comparable to ordinary drug dealers. The infiltration plan cannot break in in the short term, and a frontal assault is even more unrealistic. I need... a higher-dimensional solution."

A slight tapping sound came from the other side of the phone, as if Chen Feng was tapping his fingers on the table.

"Dr. Park, you've worked hard."

"I am very satisfied with the results of these ten days."

"I will take over the matter of The Federation. You continue to consolidate your Pasture; don't let what has already been eaten be spat back out."

"Understood."

"By the way," Chen Feng paused, his tone suddenly becoming more playful, "You just said 'higher-dimensional'—that's a good word. You will soon know what true high-dimensional strikes are."

The communication cut off.

Dr. Park put down the phone and leaned back in his chair.

More than three thousand points of light in his mind flickered steadily, like stars in the night sky.

He looked at the last circle on the map that hadn't been crossed out and whispered to himself.

"General... you are the first difficult problem I have encountered."

"But you won't be the last."

The lights of the command room shone on his dark golden pupils, cold and bright.

Meanwhile, at Umbrella Headquarters ten thousand kilometers away, Chen Feng hung up the phone, toyed with a pen in his hand, and looked at Sarah beside him.

"Help me investigate someone."

"Antonio Reyes, nicknamed 'The General.' Former Colombian Army brigadier general."

"Investigate everything about him. From the first day he entered military academy."

Sarah nodded and turned to leave.

Chen Feng turned his chair to face the world map covering the entire wall behind him.

On the map of South America, a thumbtack was stuck alone in the location of Colombia.

He reached out, moved the thumbtack down a bit, covering the entire northern part of South America.

"Pasture..." He murmured the word and smiled.

"Dr. Park wants to be a shepherd, so I will be the one who sells the land."

"But before selling—the nails on the ground must be pulled out first."