CHAPTER 99: CHAPTER 99 REUNION

The yellow-green chlorine gas billowed into the safe house. Due to its higher density than air, it looked like a cascade of waterfalls pouring down from above the doorframe.

Li Ang waved his hand, signaling his comrades to back away. He pinched a rubber hose with his left hand and leisurely pulled a full-coverage respirator from his backpack with his right, then put it on.

Through the respirator, he shouted in a muffled voice, "If you want to live, open the door yourselves!"

The metal door of the side room had already been twisted and ruptured by a grenade explosion, and a vast amount of poisonous gas surged in all at once.

Soon, labored breathing and coughing echoed from within the room.

"COUGH, COUGH."

"COUGH, COUGH, COUGH, COUGH."

"GASP... GASP..."

Below this safe room was a warehouse and factory. The extremely life-cherishing Tama Riyadi had naturally considered the possibility of toxic gas leaks and had prepared seven or eight different types of gas masks within.

The problem was, the room now contained not only Tama Riyadi and his confidants but also more than a dozen others, including Santos Aquino...

Soon, shouts and curses in Filipino, along with the sounds of disputes and beatings, emanated from the room.

"BANG, BANG, BANG," gunshots rang out. The metal side door was forcefully pushed open, and three or four people, some with blood-stained clothes, tumbled out.

Since the number of gas masks was limited, those who hadn’t managed to grab one had to fight desperately for their lives. Their only hope was to open the alloy door and surrender to Li Ang for a slim chance of survival.

These individuals’ faces were distorted as they squinted, covered their mouths and noses, and staggered towards the main door. Summoning their last bit of strength, they turned the alloy door’s circular handle and opened it.

The door swung open, and fresh air poured in.

Li Ang pulled away the rubber hose, closed the valve, packed the chlorine gas cylinder back into his backpack, and then retreated behind the wall next to the main entrance.

Those who had opened the door were now delirious, unable to open their eyes, and could only stumble and fall beside the doorframe. Before they could indulge in the sweet, pure air, they were riddled with bullets from behind.

The gunmen, naturally, were Tama Riyadi’s loyal henchmen who had burst from the side room.

These henchmen all wore gas masks but felt utterly desperate. Eighty or ninety of their brothers had been inexplicably killed, while their opponents were just a small, battered S.W.A.T. team.

Now, the ones trapped like fish in a barrel were no longer the special forces but themselves.

"RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT." The gunmen fired towards the open door while dragging Tama Riyadi and Santos Aquino, both also in gas masks, towards another room on the right side of the safe house.

Unfortunately, Li Ang wasn’t going to give them that chance.

He pulled out a grenade launcher, rested it on the doorframe, and fired a grenade at the henchmen.

The grenade pierced through the chlorine smoke and exploded with a bang, tossing the gang members around like cloth sacks.

Li Ang put away the grenade launcher and drew his rifle. Leaning against the doorframe, he precisely headshot the still-living gang members one by one. Only the balding Tama Riyadi and the black-suited Santos Aquino were left alive.

Tama Riyadi, directly hit by the blast wave, clearly felt several of his ribs break and lost sensation in one arm and both legs.

He struggled to turn over, gasping with effort as he watched Li Ang slowly walk into the room and level his gun at him.

Four gunshots rang out, and bullets pierced Tama Riyadi’s elbows and knees. As the excruciating pain hit, beads of sweat the size of beans formed on his forehead.

It had been so long since he had felt such pain... he thought, before passing out.

Li Ang lowered his gun. He had completed his task of eliminating 100 gang members, and it was only a matter of time before Tama Riyadi would die from blood loss.

The only thing left to handle was Santos Aquino, similarly affected by the blast and gasping on the ground. Li Ang took a deliberate step, his military boot landing squarely on the back of Santos’s hand. Exerting a bit of force, a "CRACK" sounded—

Santos’s pinky and ring finger were brutally fractured. Li Ang continued twisting his foot, grinding the broken bones beneath it.

The pain was excruciating, as if his fingers were directly connected to his heart. Santos’s body curled up like a lobster, his face flushed crimson, his wide-open eyes bloodshot. Not a sound escaped his gaping mouth.

Li Ang leisurely lifted his foot, bent down, grabbed Santos by the lapel of his suit, and asked indifferently, "Tell me your worth."

"I, I have a lot of money."

"I don’t care about money," Li Ang shook his head. The three hundred thousand dollars in cash Liu Wu Dai had given him was enough for a good while. Besides, Santos wasn’t carrying much cash on him anyway.

"My brother is Cruz, Cruz Aquino, COUGH, COUGH, aren’t you S.W.A.T. guys trying to kidnap me to threaten my brother?"

Santos, enduring the intense pain, said in a panic, "He loves me dearly, believe me. Just send him a video of me, and he will pause the attack on Malawi City...."

"Sorry, I don’t care about that either."

Li Ang tilted his head, scrutinizing Santos, his sharp eyes continuously scanning the other’s neck as if gauging from which angle to cut.

"I, I know many powerful people, you understand, very powerful."

Santos swallowed hard, struggling to speak. "They are the elite few who genuinely stand at the apex of the Pyramid, ruling human society, managing it, and setting the rules by which it operates. Bankers, industrialists, monopoly organizations, oligarchs, financial tycoons, capital giants, apex elites... I serve them. In this network of relationships, just revealing a tiny, insignificant resource could help you soar to the heavens."

"Oh?"

Li Ang had to admit he was slightly interested. He said calmly, "I don’t believe that the brother of a rebel leader from some backwater could have connections with the so-called ’apex elites.’"

Santos breathed a sigh of relief inwardly. He didn’t dare to lie and said honestly, "In the past, this would have been impossible. But half a year ago, I joined an extremely secretive transnational organization through a wealthy heir I became friends with during my studies in England. That organization is named Datura."

"..."

Li Ang’s eyes narrowed. He said coolly, "Continue."

Santos exhaled sharply, enduring the pain in his fingers. "The organization has a long history, and its members are all apex elites scattered around the world. Someone like me, who merely has contacts with a Philippine rebel group, naturally couldn’t become a formal member. However,"

Santos paused and then continued, "those people high above always need people from the lower rungs to do the dirty work for them, the kind they can’t be seen doing themselves."

Li Ang raised an eyebrow. "Such as?"

"Producing compounds."

Santos stated frankly, "As a peripheral member, I’m responsible for contacting gang leaders like Tama Riyadi within the Philippines to commission them to produce some special compounds, named ’Datura.’"

Santos then detailed the characteristics of Datura and its sub-products for Li Ang. "The lowest quality product, called Datura 1, is what you saw in the factory warehouse downstairs. The organization wants us to sell it to society’s lowest drug addicts. The goal is dissemination, not profit. A higher-grade product is called Datura 2. The conditions for making this type of compound are much stricter, and only a little can be produced each time, but its effects are much more potent. They are stored in those metal boxes in the adjacent bedroom. The organization takes every batch of Datura 2 produced very seriously and has specific plans for them. But his unauthorized actions disrupted the organization’s plans, forcing my brother to intervene. It’s imperative that we seize this batch of goods."

Li Ang interrupted, "Wait. If, as you say, it’s the elites who rule the world asking you to produce Datura 1 and 2, then why don’t they use their network to set up a few super-large factories in Africa or South America and then distribute all the goods worldwide? Why are all the manufacturing plants scattered across the globe, as they are now?"

Santos replied, "The organization’s only requirement for the Datura series products is to ensure they spread as quickly and efficiently as possible. Considering geographical and transportation factors, numerous low-level processing plants scattered worldwide are far more efficient for dissemination than a few gigantic factories. Moreover, preparing Datura 2 requires a large amount of Datura 1 for purification, so each batch of Datura 2 produced in these low-level processing plants is limited and special."

So that’s how it is.

Li Ang understood. He asked, "This batch that Tama Riyadi has in hand, where was it originally supposed to go?"

Santos hesitated for a moment, then said, "Yin City."