Chapter 80#
Ji Yang regained consciousness in a haze of strange noises, barely managing to drag himself back to awareness.
The phone he’d used to open emergency communications was no longer in his hand.
He blinked his eyelids open and found that both his hands and feet were bound, not to mention limp and devoid of strength. From the moment he’d gotten into the car on high alert to being injected and losing consciousness, no more than half a minute had passed.
He’d been careless.
The auxiliary police officer was someone he’d crossed paths with at the scene. At the time, there’d been police officers everywhere, and the forensic team’s car breaking down en route had been genuine.
Who exactly had the audacity to do something like this?
The thought rippled through Ji Yang’s mind, and he realized he was no longer in the original vehicle.
This was a box-type transport truck.
The fully sealed space made it impossible for him to determine the time, let alone whether it was day or night.
The strange noise he’d been hearing was because the truck appeared to be traveling along a very rough road, with uneven potholes along the roadside. Even from inside the cargo compartment, he could hear the sound of tires crunching over gravel and dirt.
Ji Yang lay on the floor, motionless, his mind running through various scenarios.
If it was because he’d stepped on someone’s interests in South Island, that hardly warranted such an elaborate operation.
So at its root, this had to be connected to Zhao Yuan’s arrest and Zhao Changgen’s sudden death.
And entangled with them was inevitably the maritime disaster involving the Qiming, as well as the “Blue Ocean Project” behind the catastrophe—something he still hadn’t fully understood.
What was the point of kidnapping him?
And who had gone to such extraordinary lengths to make their move on him here in South Island?
“You awake?” A voice suddenly cut through the darkness, startling Ji Yang.
But he recognized the voice, and found it almost absurd. “Lu Li?”
“It’s me.” The harsh beam of a flashlight snapped on. Ji Yang squeezed his eyes shut in reflex and cursed: “Are you out of your mind? Move that thing away!”
Lu Li actually did move the flashlight aside, setting it down nearby.
Ji Yang braced his palms against the floor of the truck, struggled to sit up, and thudded back against the wall.
Ji Yang got a clear look at him.
Lu Li was thinner than the last time Ji Yang had seen him at the entrance of Building Four. His hair was casually tied back behind his head, his face scruffy with stubble. He sat across from Ji Yang, one leg drawn up, looking for all the world like a masterless stray dog.
Ji Yang couldn’t help but mock him: “What’s all this about? Can’t patch up the financial hole Ji Chengyi dug for himself, so you’re planning to make up the difference through kidnapping and murder before running abroad with him?”
Lu Li glanced at him, then pulled a compressed biscuit from his pocket, tore open the wrapper, and tossed it over.
“Eat something,” Lu Li said. “There won’t be anywhere to stop for the next twenty-four hours for you to have a meal.”
Ji Yang glanced at the silver-wrapped biscuit by his feet but didn’t move, gesturing that his hands were bound and he couldn’t eat.
Lu Li was unmoved: “Your hands are bound in front. It won’t interfere with getting food into your mouth.”
Ji Yang wanted badly to curse him but held it back, asking: “Where exactly are you taking me?”
“Unclear,” Lu Li said. “I’m only responsible for taking over custody of you from someone else.” He glanced at Ji Yang as he continued. “Originally, I wasn’t supposed to be involved. But Nie Xu made a move with his people, putting all of South Island on high alert, which forced the people who took you to change their plans on the fly. It was messy, but we’re already out of South Island’s jurisdiction.”
At the mention of Nie Xu’s name, Ji Yang paused.
That Nie Xu could pressure someone into changing their plans at the last minute meant he’d quickly realized something was wrong. Not to mention that Ji Yang’s disappearance would inevitably shake up the entire South Island police force. Escaping from such a cordon was absolutely no ordinary feat.
Ji Yang shifted, recalling Zhao Yuan’s reaction when he’d been probed at the police station.
Ji Yang: “Whose side are you really on right now? I’m guessing it’s not Ji Yansong—it’s Ji Chengyi, isn’t it? After Zhao Yuan was arrested, he also claimed that Ji Chengyi would certainly protect him. I was still wondering what leverage he had to do so, but now it seems you people are quite well-connected.”
This line was more of a probe than anything.
Lu Li frowned slightly, seeming to want to avoid the topic, but he didn’t deny it.
That was the key.
But Ji Yang didn’t let it go, pressing on with another question: “He’s the chosen one, isn’t he?”
These words were also Zhao Yuan’s; Ji Yang put them to immediate use.
Lu Li’s pupils contracted slightly in the half-light. Ji Yang wasn’t sure how much Lu Li knew, but Ji Yang clearly saw the fleeting struggle that crossed his eyes.
“It doesn’t matter what you say.” Lu Li glanced at Ji Yang’s leg and added: “I can’t release you, and you can’t escape either.”
Ji Yang shifted his legs: “I wasn’t planning to run. If you were worried, you should have taken my prosthetic off from the start. I’m just curious—right after the Ji family’s crisis, Ji Yansong chose Ji Chengyi as the core person-in-charge of the shipping division, effectively designating him as the Ji family’s next successor. But Ji Yansong, a man who built his empire on smuggling and clawed his way up over countless lives, still had to contend with the other Fanzhou families and Xilemen. So how is it that Ji Chengyi can now so effortlessly reach so far? Why is that?”
As Ji Yang seemed to be asking, he was also sorting things out in his own mind.
Ji Chengyi believed he had been reborn, but the abilities he’d shown so far were quite limited, and the things he knew weren’t all accurate.
So he absolutely wasn’t hiding his strength or playing a long game.
Combined with Zhao Yuan’s recent capture, Zhao Changgen’s quasi-elimination as a witness, and the “Blue Ocean Project” looming ever closer to the surface—Ji Chengyi’s appearance at this particular moment seemed to confirm Zhao Yuan’s words.
Ji Chengyi had been chosen.
The “Blue Ocean Project” had chosen him.
This also explained why Lu Li had appeared in South Island, and how the people who took him could afford to have so many contingency layers.
Ji Yang didn’t expect to learn from Lu Li’s mouth exactly what the “Blue Ocean Project” was—he might not know either. Ji Yang simply asked: “Enabling tyrants is your business, but at the very least I have the right to know why you grabbed me.”
Lu Li said nothing.
Ji Yang waited three seconds, then finally cursed: “What a fine dog—”
“I don’t know,” Lu Li said, arms crossed, eyes closed. “I can’t access his information right now. Asking me is useless.”
The curse on Ji Yang’s lips was swallowed back.
The cargo compartment fell silent.
Ji Yang knew saying more would accomplish nothing at this point. He picked up the compressed biscuit by his feet and took a bite.
Lu Li opened his eyes and glanced at him. Ji Yang swallowed dry and rolled his eyes: “What are you looking at? You don’t think I’m going to go on a hunger strike, do you?”
Lu Li: “I just think you have absolutely none of a young master’s image.”
Ji Yang shot back: “I think you still look like the lunatic who kicked that guy at the airport.”
From the moment Ji Yang woke up until the truck finally stopped, roughly half an hour to an hour had passed.
When the cargo doors opened, Ji Yang realized the night wasn’t over yet.
It was still dark.
And he hadn’t been wrong—the truck had stopped on a dirt road.
The road wasn’t wide. On one side was a hillside, on the other, dense shrubbery. Following the bushes down along the roadside led to a large lake.
Ji Yang had regained some of his strength. Pushed along by the driver, he descended a narrow path to the lakeshore, where he spotted a small boat moored at the edge.
The driver was no longer that auxiliary officer, and the person in the boat was also a stranger.
The driver exchanged a few words with him in the local dialect. Ji Yang didn’t understand a single word.
Lu Li frowned: “Why change routes again so suddenly?”
“Don’t ask what’s not yours to ask,” the driver said impatiently.
The man in the boat, however, looked at Ji Yang, then said to Lu Li: “Driving is too conspicuous. They’ll catch up.” He bent down, pulled something from a box in the boat, and tossed it to Lu Li across the distance. “Just in case, give him another shot.”
Ji Yang eyed the slender syringe and instinctively backed up a step.
Lu Li gripped the syringe, not meeting Ji Yang’s eyes, pressing lightly: “Won’t need it. I’ll be watching him. He won’t run.”
“And if he does, will you take responsibility?” The man in the boat had sun-darkened skin and a furrowed brow. “Since we’re going this route anyway, just make sure the goods stay alive. He won’t die—hurry up and administer it.”
Ji Yang stepped back and reached out toward Lu Li: “I’ll do it myself.”
The other two exchanged a glance.
They seemed to be laughing.
This time, Ji Yang understood.
“Well, that’s a first. Usually, none of them go quietly—crying and wailing. This is the first time I’ve seen one this obedient.”
“This one isn’t for sale. We’re just borrowing our route to move him out. He’s not cargo the other side wants.”
“Let’s go. South Island is completely cut off now—several of our outposts have been shut down. One wrong contact and we’re done for.”
Before he was pushed back into the boat, Ji Yang heard what sounded like a vehicle approaching on the main road in the distance. No one noticed that as he lifted his foot, something slid down from inside his trouser leg, and he quietly kicked it into the grass beside the path.
…
That night in South Island, police sirens wailed through the darkness.
At dawn, the atmosphere in the entire police station was stretched to its breaking point.
A ten-minute gap.
A person was gone.
And it involved an auxiliary police officer from the station. This situation was spiraling out of control no matter how you looked at it.
People in the office who’d pulled an all-night shift were yawning without pause, no appetite for breakfast, each one looking grimmer and more haggard than the last.
Just then, the front doors of the police station were pushed open from the outside.
The tall man was still wearing the same black T-shirt he’d had on the night before, now smudged with dust. His boots struck the floor with a rhythm that somehow felt oppressive without reason. Several people followed behind him, heading straight for the interrogation rooms.
Someone instinctively stepped forward to block them—then noticed his own superior right behind them, waving him off with a casual gesture that said it’s fine.
“What’s going on?”
“This is complete chaos, isn’t it? Even for a cross-jurisdiction transfer, there are procedures and barriers to go through. These people aren’t even in the system, and we’re just letting them in?”
Such doubts were quickly quelled by the police station’s top leadership.
As for why they were quelled—
It was because the higher-ups had received directives from even higher up.
The vague understanding was that this incident was far more complex than the theft of antiquities and gold. It involved a national-level biological/chemical research project that was ultimately exploited by malicious actors to become a breeding ground for transnational crime, spanning nearly twenty years.
Someone had been developing “controllable perfect weapons,” researching novel biological agents and neural weapons, and conducting live-subject experiments—all to monopolize the underground arms and biochemical weapons market.
This criminal enterprise had been documented both domestically and internationally in recent years.
It was known as the “Blue Ocean Project.”
Nie Xu’s company, Jianyuan, operated on the interface between business and weapons, yet no one knew that every piece of firsthand intelligence regarding Fanzhou’s underground in this case had almost exclusively come from him.
In the official archives, he was listed as an orphaned survivor of the “Blue Ocean Project,” and at the same time, the most critical node of Fanzhou’s underground intelligence network.
His identity had always been protected at the highest level.
Even the local Fanzhou police, when dealing with him or investigating him, might not have had the clearance to do so.
But he had made an exception in South Island.
The authorities had likewise opened a special liaison channel.
Zhao Yuan was escorted out of the interrogation room.
A new inquiry room containing nothing but a single chair and a desk—no surveillance cameras, no windows, no one else present.
The old man lunged up from his chair, only to be shoved back down with a kick.
The chair toppled over.
Nie Xu took two steps forward, grabbed the handcuffs and looped them around Zhao Yuan’s decay , repugnant face. The cold metal bit into the loose flesh of his neck until a wheezing, guttural sound escaped his throat.
Zhao Yuan could barely form a voice. He laughed and said: “Same answer as before—I don’t know.”
Nie Xu pulled tighter. “It seems I’ve been too gentle with you.”
Zhao Yuan’s face darkened to a purplish red, terror of death flickering across his features: “This is a police station—are you seriously going to kill me?”
Nie Xu’s voice was cold and heavy: “Of course not. On the boat to South Island, you said you didn’t know where my father’s blueprints were. Now, you’ve hidden things in South Island for all these years, with the bulk of your fortune sitting right here. As Ji Yansong’s ’living map’—are you telling me you don’t remember the final route either?”
Nie Xu tilted his head down slightly, eyes gazing upward at the desk lamp, whose light was far from bright.
He spoke slowly: “Uncle Zhao, my patience extends only this once.”