Chapter 111: Crispy Outside, Tender Inside, Golden Brown

TL: LittlePeach

The Qingshe Gang was a long-established local power that had a stranglehold on logistics at Wu'ai Market, Shenyang's largest commercial district.

Wu'ai was the largest counterfeit market in Northeast China, and every kind of shady cargo sold there, from knockoff luxury goods and illicit duty-free cigarettes to contraband from North Korea, had to pass through the Qingshe Gang's massive warehouses scattered around the outskirts of Shenyang.

With this monopolistic logistics network as its foundation, the Qingshe Gang had easily expanded its influence while branching out into various businesses to diversify its revenue streams.

Among the businesses that made use of this logistics network, one of their biggest underworld operations at the moment was human trafficking.

The method was simple.

They lured people in with promises of high-paying jobs, collected fees from them, then crammed them onto trains, buses, and ships like cargo and sold them around the world through Russia, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe.

More than two thousand people had been sold off that way last year alone, and apparently they were on track to easily break that record this year.

‘Feels like I'm finally running a proper operation for once.’

Hu Tao, the society head of this criminal organization, was surprisingly timid for someone who commanded a massive logistics organization with hundreds of gang members under him.

He never gave the branch chiefs overseeing each region any real stake in the operation. Instead, he kept all of the organization's profits and power firmly under his own control, handing them only scraps for basic upkeep.

With the man at the top squeezing everyone that hard, it was only natural for the people beneath him to grow dissatisfied and start looking for ways to line their own pockets.

‘That's probably why that branch chief, Wang Chang, lost his mind the moment he got his hands on the Chongqing Society list and pulled that stunt.’

Hu Tao was currently hiding out in a private residence near Dalian Port.

It had originally been a golf resort owned by some nouveau riche businessman, but Hu Tao had bought the place and remodeled it into his own private villa.

A concrete wall that looked more suited to a prison completely encircled the two-story mansion and its garden, and with no tall buildings anywhere nearby, there wasn't even a way to peek inside.

In front of the tightly shut iron gate, surveillance cameras positioned to eliminate every blind spot continuously swiveled, their lenses flashing.

Yang Mi-ryeong had made me a proposal regarding that.

‘I've arranged for the refrigerated box truck that delivers ingredients to the villa kitchen every day. It'll get you safely all the way inside.’

And now, I was crouched in the cargo compartment of the refrigerated box truck she'd arranged.

Rattle, rattle.

The truck rocked violently from side to side, probably as it rolled over the uneven ground around the villa's iron gate.

White puffs of breath kept escaping my mouth amid the rock-hard frozen ingredients.

‘If anything goes wrong inside or you need help, contact me immediately. I'll have two teams of Kowloon Society members standing by within five minutes of the villa, ready to infiltrate.’

Yang Mi-ryeong's warning as she handed me a burner phone lingered in my mind, but would that really be necessary?

Screeeeech.

At last, the truck lurched hard and stopped with the harsh scrape of brakes.

We must have made it inside the villa.

Clunk, clatter!

The tightly sealed rear doors of the truck swung wide open.

The freezing air packed inside the cargo compartment rushed out all at once.

“Liu Bin. The meat's fresh today, right?”

“Oh, come on. Of course it is. Want to check it yourself?”

“Forget it. It's freezing my bones. Just grab the stuff and get out.”

“Sure thing. Hey, Jin Jin! Get moving!”

Liu Bin was the owner of the refrigerated box truck, and Jin Jin was his delivery helper.

While Liu Bin chatted with a man who looked like the head chef, Jin Jin climbed into the cargo compartment and began hurriedly unloading ingredients.

“You got any pollock roe?”

“Pollock roe? People are always asking for it, so I've got cases stacked up. How many do you want?”

“Yeah. Just get me one of the frozen ones for now.”

Their voices gradually faded toward the front of the truck.

Apparently, they'd moved away for a smoke.

“....”

Jin Jin glanced at me hiding in the corner and sharply jerked his chin.

It was the signal that this was my chance to get out.

With their fading conversation behind me, I jumped out of the cargo compartment.

“Whew.”

The moment I stepped outside, I saw a passage leading directly into the villa's kitchen.

Before entering it, I briefly surveyed the spacious courtyard.

‘Five vehicles. At most, twenty gang members can mobilize from inside the villa at once.’

Vehicles belonging to Qingshe Gang members were lined up tightly around the open lot.

There didn't seem to be anyone stationed outside specifically as security. Most of them appeared to be inside the villa.

I could see the iron gate in the perimeter wall farther away.

A bare metal frame with the gaunt look of a skeleton.

‘For all her warnings, security looks surprisingly lax.’

It wasn't a bomb shelter. If someone took any old van and rammed it at full throttle, they could probably smash their way through without much trouble.

But Yang Mi-ryeong had repeatedly warned me not to be fooled by appearances.

‘He's like a cockroach. The second he senses anything suspicious, he'll run straight outside.’

According to her, Hu Tao was an expert at saving his own skin.

Whenever he traveled, he never went anywhere on foot. He always rode in an armored SUV.

Jin Jin lightly tapped my shoulder as I stood there staring.

“What are you doing? Hurry up and help with the load.”

“Ah, right.”

Rattle.

As Jin Jin pushed a cart piled high with ingredients, I crossed the passage beside him while pretending to help.

At the end of the corridor, I caught a glimpse of the kitchen, waves of hot air rolling out from inside.

“Watch your back!”

“Three more orders of fried shrimp!”

“They want another steak! They said the first one was too tough!”

“Yes, Chef!”

Woks clanged against each other and knives hammered against cutting boards. It was closer to a battlefield than a kitchen.

The sous-chef and five or six other cooks rushed around breathlessly with dazed, exhausted expressions.

Not one of them paid the slightest attention to us hauling in ingredients.

“Is the fried stuff ready?”

“It's done! Take it!”

“Yes, Chef!”

There was another doorway deeper inside the kitchen leading into the rest of the villa.

Three or four waiters pushed carts loaded with food in and out through it.

“This way.”

“Ah, okay.”

We went a little farther past them and reached a large walk-in freezer at the back of the kitchen.

Jin Jin gave me a shove inside.

“The surveillance cameras don't reach in here. I was only told to guide you this far....”

“Ah, right.”

This was the end of the role Yang Mi-ryeong had hired him for.

After watching him leave with his head bowed, I crouched in a corner of the kitchen freezer and spent some time waiting.

A few plans turned over in my head, along with Yang Mi-ryeong's warning.

‘Please be careful.’

She was probably expecting me to sneak through the villa, quietly grab Hu Tao, and slip back out with him.

If I stayed hidden in this freezer until late at night before making my move, that kind of quiet, restrained operation would certainly be possible.

But.

‘Doesn't seem worth going through all that trouble.’

Honestly, this whole process was basically the result of Yang Mi-ryeong not realizing just how much my methods had evolved lately.

These days, my approach was to burn down the whole house just to kill one bedbug.

‘Simple is best. Let's make this quick.’

About thirty minutes passed.

When I finally stepped out of the freezer, the kitchen that had been bustling moments earlier was completely deserted.

Apparently, everyone had gone outside for a smoke.

“Oh.”

My eyes stopped on something in one corner of the kitchen.

Something every Chinese kitchen naturally had.

A deep fryer.

“Perfect.”

Dozens of liters of clear oil looked to be bubbling away inside the vat.

The ideal temperature, 170 degrees Celsius.

It was ready to fry anything tossed into it crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, and beautifully golden brown.

Without hesitating any longer, I grabbed the fryer's legs, hoisted the whole thing up, and tipped it over.

SPLAAAAASH!

Boiling oil poured out like a waterfall and surged across the kitchen floor.

The air reeked of hot oil.

Sssssizzle.

At the same time, my shoes rapidly began frying.

“Mmm. Smells nice and rich.”

The hot oil crackled across the floor and released clouds of oily vapor, and before long, a slick white haze filled the kitchen.

Splashing through the oil, I walked to roughly the middle of the kitchen.

Whoosh!

The flame from a gas burner caught the layer of oil vapor hanging in the air.

Fwoooooosh.

The flames raced through the vapor and spread across the entire kitchen in an instant.

“W-wait?”

“Aaaaargh! F-fire!”

“Fire! Run!”

The screams of the kitchen staff faintly reached me from outside after they spotted the flames.

The fire caught the pool of oil spread across the floor, transforming the kitchen into a vision of hell in seconds.

Explosions always ended in an instant, so I'd never really gotten a feel for them. Flames, on the other hand, had a strange way of making the heart race.

‘Arson's not so bad either.’

After standing there for a while, happily basking in the heat, I heard a commotion from the doorway connecting the kitchen to the villa.

“F-fuck! What the hell happened?!”

Qingshe Gang members came pouring through the door.

Their eyes met mine as I stood calmly in the middle of the blazing red kitchen.

They stared at me, visibly shaken, as though they'd seen something they were never meant to see.

“C-crazy....”

“What the hell....”

“Ah.”

It must have been the flames licking at my shoes and the cuffs of my pants.

Pat, pat.

I brushed them off with my hands, easily extinguishing the flames clinging to my lower body.

Of course, the huge pool of oil spreading behind me and the flames burning across it were still going strong.

“Why hasn't it blown up?”

“W-what?”

The bastards reacted to my muttering.

“I thought the fire would've reached the gas line by now.”

While the frozen Qingshe Gang members stared at me like idiots, I turned my head and looked around.

Then I spotted the modern gas piping winding along the wall.

“Oh. They've got really good safety systems here.”

So I casually pulled a handgun from my waist.

A Glock 19.

It had probably been waiting quite a while for me in Owl No. 5's rooftop room.

“Uh, huh?”

The gas line.

The handgun.

As the Qingshe Gang bastards realized what those two things together meant, their faces gradually drained white.

“N-nooooooo!”

“F-fuck! Run!”

But by the time they'd figured out what was happening, it was already far too late.

Bang, bang!

The instant my bullets punched cleanly through the gas pipe.

FWOOOOSH!

The flames raced violently along the gas line and rapidly disappeared into one corner of the villa.

Before long.

KABOOOOOM!

“Ungh!”

At the same moment as the tremendous explosion, I felt my body get hurled away and slam hard into something.

For the brief instant the entire world was swallowed by the blast, it felt as though my body had been tossed into a blender and spat back out.

“Oh.”

When I came to, the building's ceiling had been completely blown away by the gas explosion, revealing the blue sky beyond.

I hauled myself up from where I'd been slammed into a corner of the kitchen and, fortunately, my clothes were mostly intact.

‘Come to think of it, did I really need to blow the place up?’

Crackle, pop.

Funny thing was, the massive blast wave had actually wiped out nearly all the flames that had been spreading through the kitchen.

I crossed the shattered passageway and stepped outside through the faint embers still clinging to the oil left on the floor.

I casually patted down the half-charred edges of my clothes and straightened them.

“Oh.”

“Ah, ah....”

My eyes met those of the kitchen staff who had evacuated well away from the villa.

They had been standing there in a daze, staring at the exploded mansion.

“Dear God....”

Their gazes locked onto me as I walked out through the flames.

I gave them a bright smile.

“Everyone. You should run.”

“Y-yes?”

“There's about to be a gunfight around here.”

Their faces turned deathly pale, and they scattered in every direction.

Even as they fled, every one of them kept glancing back at me with expressions like they'd just seen the devil himself.

*****

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