378: Chapter 378 Unearthing 30 Billion

Chen Feng fell silent. The fluorescent light flickered, casting a momentary darkness.

"Three hundred... three hundred and seventy-one."

The camera recorded this number. It recorded how, when Chen Feng spoke this number, his Adam's apple bobbed three times, and his fingers scraped against the edge of the table, making a faint friction sound.

Night Owl turned off the camera. The moment he pressed the red record button, it was as if a supporting bone deep within Chen Feng's chest had been pulled out, and he collapsed limply into the iron chair.

He finally knew what he regretted most in his life—not building the basement in the Poipet compound, but thinking that encrypted communication would never be cracked.

Night Owl saved the video file onto an air-gapped encrypted USB drive and pushed the door open to leave the interrogation room.

In the corridor, two Shadow Blade members were waiting by the door. He said four words to them: "Continue questioning. Fill in the details."

Meanwhile, in the depths of the Cardamom Mountains, southwest of Koh Kong Province.

Old K stood in front of an inconspicuous rubber plantation.

From satellite images, this rubber plantation appeared completely identical to the surrounding terrain—the canopy density, soil moisture, and surface temperature showed no abnormalities.

But an hour ago, the ultra-wideband through-wall radar of the "Vega" system provided another image: eight meters below the surface was a rectangular space poured from reinforced concrete, with an area of about eight hundred square meters, its internal structure divided into three independent compartments.

The temperature in each compartment was three degrees lower than the surrounding strata—a typical storage environment for valuables.

"It's right here," Old K said.

Behind him, twelve combat engineers had completed the excavation preparations.

Not with explosives—the noise from explosives would be too great, and they might damage the underground structure.

They were using a "Mole-3" directional boring machine redeemed from the system: a tracked platform equipped with a high-speed waterjet cutting head and a vacuum mud suction system, capable of cutting through reinforced concrete without generating shock waves.

"Start digging."

The waterjet cutting head sprayed a deep blue column of water in the pre-dawn darkness, with a pressure exceeding six thousand bars.

The reinforced concrete was sliced open like butter under the waterjet, and the vacuum tubes sucked away all the debris and sludge, leaving a mirror-smooth cut on the surface.

The first layer of the roof was cut into six pieces, lifted, and stacked under the rubber trees.

Then came the second layer—a layer of Q345 steel plate over half a meter thick, with the plates bolted together and the gaps filled with waterproof sealant.

This was bank vault-level protection.

"Increase the pressure. Eight thousand bars."

The waterjet cut the steel plate into one-square-meter blocks, the cuts as precise as a laser.

As each steel plate was lifted, it would emit a dull metallic hum in the air.

The sky began to brighten. As the first ray of morning light shot over the ridgeline of the Cardamom Mountains, the third layer—also the last layer—a ten-centimeter-thick fireproof ceramic composite board, was cut through.

Old K walked onto the excavation platform and looked down into the hole. The morning light shone into the eight-meter-deep shaft, illuminating the first compartment at the bottom.

Inside the compartment were gold bars.

Rows of standard gold bars were neatly stacked on stainless steel shelves, from the floor all the way to the ceiling. Each gold bar was engraved with the words "Credit Suisse, 999.9, 1 kg." The aisles between the shelves were narrow enough for only one person to pass through sideways. A preliminary visual estimate suggested there were at least five hundred tons of gold bars in this compartment.

The second compartment contained cash. US dollars, euros, and Swiss francs were sealed in waterproof plastic film into brick-like shapes and stacked into cubes half a person's height.

Some of the banknotes even had labels attached— "Poipet Compound · Q3 2022" and "Pursat Compound · VIP Group Commission."

The air was filled with a scent of old banknotes, a mixture of mustiness and ink.

The third compartment was the smallest, only ten square meters. Inside was just a stainless steel table, on which sat seven completely air-gapped laptops and a pile of hardware wallets. Each laptop corresponded to a cryptocurrency cold wallet, and each hardware wallet stored the private keys for hundreds of BTC and ETH addresses. The total amount in these wallets, just for the BTC portion, exceeded eighty thousand coins.

Old K reported over the encrypted channel: "Found it. Gold bars, cash, cold wallets. Preliminary valuation—" He glanced at the technical sergeant who was counting the laptops one by one, "Over thirty billion US dollars."

Naypyidaw, Presidential Palace.

Li Lanzhi placed the audit report on Zhang Cheng's desk. The report was only three pages long, each page dense with numbers, but when flipping to the bolded total column at the very end of the last page, no one could help but subconsciously hold their breath.

"Ten billion US dollars, allocate to the Dawn Fund." Zhang Cheng did not flip through the report. As he spoke, he used a pencil to circle Koh Kong Province on the map for the eleventh time, the pressure very light, but the blue ring left by the pencil tip on the paper overlapped with extraordinary precision, "Use it for the compensation, repatriation, and follow-up resettlement of all victims of the telecom fraud compounds. The list and ledgers are to be handed over to the Dragon Country Ministry of Public Security simultaneously. Arrange special flights to send them in batches."

Li Lanzhi nodded and took notes.

"The remaining twenty billion will be deposited into the Federal Treasury. Use five billion of it to establish the 'Southeast Asia Anti-Telecom Fraud International Cooperation Fund,' open for applications from all countries willing to send personnel to participate in cross-border operations. Seal the rest as strategic reserves."

He paused, the tip of his pencil resting on that small blue circle marking Koh Kong Province.

"Regarding the handover of the victim list to Dragon Country—include excerpts of Chen Feng's interrogation video. Do not edit; give them the full version. The original files."

Li Lanzhi looked up. "Excerpts? Didn't you say the full version?"

"The full version of the interrogation video is seventeen hours and forty minutes long. Give them the full version. But what is released to the public—will be excerpts." A faint arc appeared at the corner of Zhang Cheng's mouth, "Let Night Owl edit it. He knows what should be kept and where to stop."

Li Lanzhi wrote the last stroke and closed the tablet. "Zhao Yuxun just sent a battle report: The 1st Mechanized Division of the Thai Army has crossed Pursat Province and is one hundred and ten kilometers away from Phnom Penh. The WZ-10 formation of BigDecimal own has taken over the airspace patrol over Phnom Penh. Wang Yuanshan reports that the 'guardian-2d' long-range rocket launchers have set three strike plans centered on the Peace Palace—though he says they won't be needed for now."

"They won't be needed." Zhang Cheng stood up and walked to the window. In the square outside the Presidential Palace, the federal flag fluttered slightly in the morning breeze. "Hun Sen is sitting in the basement of the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh right now, holding that red encrypted phone—waiting for a reply from the Eagle. His son has packed his passport for Paris. His generals are changing their uniforms into civilian clothes. His police chief has already cut his own external communication lines. He has one last hour to find a way out for himself."

He turned around.

"After daybreak, what he will sign is not a peace treaty."

Gulf of Thailand, 6:00 AM.

The amphibious assault ship "Peleliu" was sailing westward at a speed of twelve knots, the surge split by its bow foaming with gray-blue in the morning light.

This old ship was over thirty years old, the anti-rust paint on its hull plates patched again and again, like an old military uniform that had been repeatedly mended.

On its starboard side, the destroyer "Momsen" and the destroyer "Chafee" were maintaining distance as they followed; on the port side, a supply ship was slowly following, trailing a fifteen-hundred-meter-long fuel hose.

This was the fifth time in the past five years that the Eagle Navy's Seventh Fleet had sent a "maritime deterrence force" to the Gulf of Thailand—every deployment was described by the Pentagon spokesperson as "maintaining freedom of navigation and stability in the Indo-Pacific region."