Nominal: Hou Liangping blocking the door? He was slapped away!

Xishan Recuperation Area.

On the second floor, a thin slit was drawn open in front of the floor-to-ceiling window.

Zhong Xiaoai stood in the shadows, watching her grandfather being forcibly stopped at the courtyard gate by two men in plainclothes. The old man, who had wielded considerable influence in both the political and business worlds for decades, now leaned on his cane, his back revealing an undeniable sense of dejection.

The impending collapse of the building is already imminent.

Zhong Xiaoai retreated to her room and drew the curtains tightly. She walked to the safe, entered an extremely complicated password, and took out a black, explosion-proof briefcase. Inside were all the records of the Zhong family's power and money transactions over the past ten years, bounty warrants, and several paper letters that could ruin the reputations of certain powerful figures.

This is the Zhong family's last lifeline. Once these things are sent out, those who have received benefits from the Zhong family will have to step in to protect them.

She took out a spare communicator that had never had a SIM card inserted and quickly pressed a series of encrypted frequency bands.

"Activate the highest level of evacuation plan."

"Disassemble the contents of the box. Take the hard drives and paper mail separately. Arrange three convoys, all with gray license plates from the embassy district, to take the internal passage straight to the airport. Once we're on the plane and overseas, we still have a chance to turn things around."

After cutting off communication, Zhong Xiaoai handed the suitcase to her trusted housekeeper, who had been waiting outside the door for a long time.

The butler took the box, turned around without saying a word, and walked towards the villa's underground garage.

The underground command center of the Handong Provincial Military Region.

On a huge, curved electronic screen, a three-dimensional transportation network is operating in real time. Countless points of light representing vehicles shuttle across complex overpasses and main roads.

Shen Zhong stood in front of the command platform and closed his eyes.

The battlefield intuition honed in his past life amidst gunfire, combined with the transmigrator's godlike perspective on the distribution of power in this world, allowed him to quickly piece together a complete intelligence network in his mind. The Zhong family's supposedly secret escape routes were, in his eyes, nothing more than easily exposed weaknesses.

He opened his eyes, his fingers swiping rapidly across the tactical control panel, and the screen immediately locked onto three convoys that were driving out of the embassy district.

"Reporting to the commander, three vehicles have been intercepted exiting the Zhong Family Compound. All license plates enjoy diplomatic immunity, and they are currently moving at high speed towards the airport along different routes. Should we notify the Beijing traffic management department to intercept them?"

The communications officer in charge of monitoring reported loudly.

Shen Zhong picked up the black coffee on the table, took a sip, and didn't even glance at the three red dots.

"Ignore them."

"This is just a smokescreen used to death in spy movies. The Chung family would never dare to place the real core evidence on such an obvious target at this level."

Shen Zhong shifted his gaze to the edge of the screen, his finger hovering over an extremely remote side road in the suburbs. There, an inconspicuous green dot was steadily traveling north at a constant speed.

"Enlarge this coordinate."

The screen zoomed in quickly, displaying traffic camera footage from along the route. A white van with the words "Medical Waste Recycling" painted on it appeared in the frame.

"Check the vehicle's driving trajectory."

Zhou Weiguo immediately typed on the keyboard and brought up the data.

"This vehicle left the health station at the back gate of the Xishan Retirement Home ten minutes ago. Its route avoided all main roads, and its destination was not the airport, but an abandoned private helipad in the suburbs. There was an unregistered small business jet parked there."

Shen Zhong placed the coffee cup on the table.

"The mouse is here."

"Notify the surrounding reserve special forces teams that they no longer need to deploy a city-wide control system; instead, they should conduct an aerial interception. Bring the goods and the people back to me."

Zhou Weiguo immediately pressed the full-band broadcast button.

"Falcon Squad, alert! Target locked. Coordinates have been sent to your tactical terminals. Initiate physical interception immediately, dead or alive!"

On a semi-closed auxiliary road under construction outside the North Fifth Ring Road in the suburbs.

The medical waste collection truck bumped along the potholed road. The truck bed reeked of disinfectant.

The butler, wearing a worn-out orange vest resembling that belonged to a sanitation worker, gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands. He glanced at the rearview mirror; the area behind him was empty, not even a car following him.

Drive another five kilometers, and you'll reach that private helipad. Once you're on the plane, you're safe for life.

His tense shoulders relaxed slightly.

Ahead was a sharp bend, and the roadside was piled with cement pipes used for construction.

Just as the butler turned the steering wheel, a violent tremor suddenly came from the road.

A military-grade Mengshi off-road vehicle, painted in a dark black color and without any license plates, sped out from the construction side road on the right. The heavy vehicle left a long black trail on the asphalt road, and with an extremely violent lateral drift, it completely blocked the entire auxiliary road.

The butler was terrified and slammed on the brakes.

The tires screeched violently against the ground, emitting acrid white smoke. The van came to a stop just half a meter away from the Mengshi off-road vehicle.

Before he could even shift into reverse and try to escape...

Several fully armed black figures suddenly leaped out from behind the cement pipes on both sides.

"Bang! Bang!"

Two special stun grenades shattered the side windows of the truck and fell into the cab.

A blinding flash of light and a deafening roar exceeding 160 decibels erupted simultaneously, completely robbing the butler of all his senses. He clutched his ears in agony and slumped onto the steering wheel.

The special forces soldiers moved with lightning speed.

The driver's side door was violently yanked open, and two pairs of tactical-gloved iron hands reached into the car, grabbed the butler by the collar, dragged him out of the car, and slammed him heavily onto the gravel road.

The hands were tied behind the back, and restraints were applied; the whole process took less than five seconds.

Another team member drew a tactical knife and sliced ​​open the leather stitching of the passenger seat. From the thick foam padding, they pulled out an encrypted hard drive with multiple layers of waterproofing and shockproof protection, along with a sealed document bag.

"Safety!"

"Target controlled, physical evidence obtained!"

The special operations captain leading the team walked to the Mengshi off-road vehicle, pulled out a data cable from the equipment box, and directly connected the captured encrypted hard drive to the military tactical terminal.

Command Center of the Handong Provincial Military Region.

A progress bar appeared on the big screen. The military's top-notch hacking program forcibly destroyed the hard drive's underlying defense logic in less than ten seconds.

Dense data files and transaction details cascaded down the screen like a waterfall.

"Sir, the rat has been caught, and everything is intact."

The special operations captain's report came through the communicator.

Shen Zhong walked to the large screen and examined the decrypted core lists.

Zhou Weiguo stood to the side, his gaze sweeping over the names, a thin layer of sweat seeping out from his back.

The transaction records on this list extend far beyond the corrupt officials in Handong Province who have already been purged. The final destination of the funds clearly points to several powerful clans deeper within the province. Several names that are usually only seen in internal reports are even prominently listed.

The reason the Zhong family dared to be so arrogant in Handong, even resorting to armed force for cross-regional kidnapping, lay entirely in their deeply entrenched network of vested interests. This was a massive black web shrouding the entire country.

"Sir, this involves far too many people."

"If this list is leaked, there will likely be a major upheaval there. Those powerful families will definitely unite to retaliate in order to protect themselves."

Zhou Weiguo suppressed his inner turmoil and stated the objective facts.

Shen Zhong reached out and typed a few times on the keyboard, packaging all the data into a top-secret file.

Without any hesitation, he sent the document directly to Xu Lao's private encrypted terminal inside the Red Wall.

"A counterattack?"

Shen Zhong leaned heavily against the edge of the command platform, his hands crossed in front of his chest.

"What I fear least is their counterattack. Enemies hiding in the shadows are difficult to deal with, but if they dare to jump out, I can chop them all up with one strike each."

He turned around and looked at Zhou Weiguo, who was fully prepared to go.

"All our cards have been played."

"Weiguo, have the entire Dragon Fang Special Forces team board the plane."

"We should go and knock on that broken door."