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

"Creak—"

The sickening metallic scraping sound echoed through the empty camp.

Two fully armed soldiers received orders and each grabbed one of the heavy iron door handles.

As they exerted force with their arms, the door that Hou Liangping regarded as a gateway to "justice" and "truth" finally opened wide to both sides without reservation.

There were no filing cabinets containing account books, as Fatty Wang had mentioned.

There wasn't even a single piece of paper.

The blinding beams of high-powered searchlights shone directly into the warehouse, illuminating every detail inside, even revealing the dust particles floating in the air.

Hou Liangping slowly lowered the arm he had been using to shield his forehead. The muscles on his face stiffened with extreme astonishment, and he stood there dumbfounded, like a sculpture whose soul had been drained.

The warehouse was indeed full of things.

There were rows and rows of neatly stacked dark green wooden crates, piled up to the ceiling.

Each wooden crate was sprayed with the skull and crossbones symbol he had seen countless times in movies, a symbol of death and danger, painted in glaring red paint.

And those few lines of white spray-printed codes were enough to stop his heart:

TNT (high explosive)

82mm mortar shell

Smoking is strictly prohibited.

"Level 1 Hazardous Material"

This is hardly an abandoned militia training base or warehouse.

This is clearly a military depot in a state of war preparedness, storing enough ammunition to blow half of Jingzhou City to the sky!

A profound sense of absurdity overwhelmed Hou Liangping's cerebral cortex. He felt as if he were trapped in a nightmare from which he could not wake up.

How could that be? Fatty Wang clearly and confidently declared that this was where the stolen goods were hidden!

"Is this the evidence you're looking for?"

Zhou Weiguo's voice was devoid of any emotion, sounding particularly cold in this tense night.

Hou Liangping suddenly turned his head and stared intently at Zhou Weiguo, making a "gurgling" sound in his throat, but he couldn't utter a complete sentence.

He wanted to say it was a setup, a trap, but faced with that warehouse full of real weapons, any words seemed pale and powerless.

"Director Hou really went to great lengths to frame a member of the Provincial Party Committee Standing Committee." Zhou Weiguo took a step forward, his leather boots making a dull thud on the concrete.

"They even dared to forcibly enter this national-level strategic reserve. Do you think the Supreme People's Procuratorate is too powerful, or do you think we soldiers don't have bullets in our guns?"

Just then, a series of hurried and angry footsteps came from the side.

"What's going on! Who's breaking through the police cordon! Who did it?!"

A middle-aged officer with the rank of senior colonel on his shoulder rushed over quickly, surrounded by a group of guards.

His face was flushed, and the veins on his neck were bulging—it was genuine, undisguised rage.

This is Lei Keming, the minister of the War Preparedness and Supplies Department of the Handong Provincial Military Region.

Lei Keming immediately spotted the door lock that had been forcibly pried open, and Hou Liangping standing at the door, still holding the iron crowbar in his hand.

At that moment, the old soldier's anger completely erupted.

"Damn it! That's a war depot! It contains dozens of tons of high explosives!"

Lei Keming pointed at Hou Liangping's nose, spitting all over his face, "You're holding a metal tool and randomly prying open the entrance to the explosives depot? What are you trying to do? Are you trying to blow this up? Are you trying to start a terrorist attack?!"

Hou Liangping was so startled by the sudden roar that he took two steps back, and the crowbar in his hand clattered to the ground.

"No...no...I'm here to investigate a case..." Hou Liangping waved his hands frantically, trying to explain, "I'm from the Supreme People's Procuratorate...I received a report..."

"I don't care who you are!" Lei Keming ignored his explanations and waved his hand dismissively. "In a military restricted area, using destructive tools to forcibly break down the ammunition depot door—that's a violation of the law! That's an act of war!"

"Take them down!"

At this command, the soldiers who had been waiting in the air pounced forward like a pack of tigers descending from the mountain.

"Don't move! I'm a prosecutor! You can't..."

Before Hou Liangping could finish his protest, he was tackled to the ground by a burly soldier with a standard tactical takedown maneuver.

His cheek slammed hard against the rough cement floor, and the intense pain made him scream.

"Behave yourself!"

The cold barrel of the gun was pressed directly against the back of his head, and the metallic touch made the hairs on his body stand on end.

On the other side, Chen Hai was not spared either. Although he tried to remain calm and raised his hands to show cooperation, in this highly sensitive moment, anyone was seen as a potential threat.

Two soldiers rushed up, unceremoniously twisted his arms behind his back, and pressed him down into the muddy ground covered with withered grass.

The body camera that recorded Hou Liangping's "heroic breach" was picked up by a soldier and handed to Zhou Weiguo.

"Report!" Zhou Weiguo gave Lei Keming a standard military salute. "These are the criminals' tools. They contain a complete record of their sabotage of military facilities and theft of military secrets."

The perpetrator was caught red-handed; the evidence is irrefutable!

Lei Keming took the recorder and gave Hou Liangping, who was pinned to the ground, a cold look.

"Great, very good indeed. Bringing cameras to break into an armory—are they trying to broadcast our defenses live to foreign powers?"

Lei Keming's voice carried a chilling murderous intent, "Lock these men up immediately! Interrogate them thoroughly according to wartime regulations!"

"yes!"

Hou Liangping struggled desperately, his face pressed against the ground, his mouth full of dirt.

"It's a misunderstanding! It's all a misunderstanding! I've been deceived! I've been framed!"

Zhou Weiguo slowly squatted down, looking at Hou Liangping who was being pressed to the ground like a dead fish, and a mocking smile appeared on his face.

"Misunderstand?"

He reached out and patted Hou Liangping's face, which was covered in mud.

"Director Hou, you are a legal expert, you should know more about the law than I do."

Article 32 of the Military Facilities Protection Law stipulates that anyone who damages military facilities or endangers their safety, if the circumstances are serious, shall be sentenced to life imprisonment or death.

Article 111 of the Criminal Law stipulates that anyone who steals, spyes on, buys, or illegally provides state secrets or intelligence to foreign institutions, organizations, or personnel shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years but not more than ten years; if the circumstances are particularly serious, the sentence shall be fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years or life imprisonment.

With each item Zhou Weiguo read aloud, Hou Liangping's heart sank a little lower.

"Moreover, you are a public official, and you knowingly broke the law, so your crime is doubly serious."

Zhou Weiguo stood up and looked down at him.

"Oh, right, I forgot to tell you. This is Reserve Depot No. 031, a top-secret unit. Your actions just now have been classified as the most egregious case of armed assault on a military restricted area since the founding of the People's Republic of China."

"take away!"

Several soldiers dragged Hou Liangping, Chen Hai, and the two terrified young men like dead dogs toward a military truck parked not far away.