The girl looked at the black-haired young man with watery eyes.
"You handle proxy accounting, right?"
"Yes." The girl was startled at first, but quickly nodded: "This is very profitable, enough to earn my tuition for university."
"You were admitted into Advanced Financial Management, correct?"
"Yes. How did you…" The girl thought for a moment and decided not to ask further.
[As long as you have been registered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, official intelligence will always be open to me. Everything about you is in my eyes.]
Horatio Cochrane smiled faintly and said, "The account books of the company I was once affiliated with are now being handled by you."
"Ah?" The girl was even more surprised; she completely couldn't fathom the complex background of the young man before her.
Horatio Cochrane gestured for the girl to calm down: "Your account books are extremely precise and detailed, and you are already familiar with how to do our accounts. It would be very difficult for us to find another chief accountant as excellent as you."
"You want me to continue handling your company's accounts?" the girl asked timidly, looking into Horatio Cochrane's eyes.
"This is a very worthwhile deal, isn't it? It just so happens that this is what you're studying, so consider it practical experience for you."
"Gladly at your service, sir."
"However, you and your father shouldn't rush to move here just yet. Wait for my notification, because someone might come looking for this place in the next two days. Don't worry, you don't need to do anything."
Horatio Cochrane had an unreadable smile and composure on his face.
—
That night, everyone discovered that the lockdown near F-4B-7 Street had been inexplicably lifted, and even the Childer of Loyalty Marines who usually patrolled this area were gone.
No one knew why; perhaps the Imperial Navy had eased up again, and everything seemed very natural.
This news attracted the gangs entrenched nearby, who sniffed out the opportunity. Their informants swarmed around like flies.
A day later, two vans with black widow spiders weaving webs painted on their sides drove into the street.
Many fully armed gang members jumped out of the vans, surrounding the entrance of the 'Workers' Club' completely, creating a huge commotion.
But for those living underground, it was no stranger—when order disappears, darkness quickly returns.
Yin Shuyao, who was entertaining guests across the street, saw this scene and her heart tightened. She wanted to tell the young man, but she didn't know how to contact him.
'Don't worry, you don't need to do anything.'
She remembered what the young man had told her, so she cautiously observed the newcomers' every move, so she could report to him next time she saw him.
"Search for me! Let me see who is so bold as to touch our property," the Poison Spider Gang's second-in-command shouted, holding two short automatic assault rifles and pointing at the door.
The door was violently kicked open, but it wasn't locked to begin with.
A group of people poured into the dark, completely redecorated interior.
"Boss, no one's here!"
The group looked around, completely bewildered and clueless about the situation.
Who would rob a brothel, then redecorate it into a bar club, and not even leave a single guard?
Isn't this just upgrading the property and then handing it back?
They turned on the lights, and a beautiful crystal chandelier illuminated the ceiling, its ample light perfectly showcasing the club's elegance to these cockroaches who had never seen the world.
"S-s-search for me! They must be nearby!" The Poison Spider Gang's second-in-command was so bewildered that he stammered.
"Boss! There's a secret passage here!"
"Quick, go in and search!"
The Poison Spider Gang attackers left two people outside to watch the vehicles, a few more in the main hall, and the rest all poured into the secret passage.
—
After the others had gone down for a while, suddenly, a large truck marked with cargo supplies stopped in front of the door, blocking the view.
"Hey!"
"These are things the owner of this shop ordered. I'm delivering them," said a short-haired woman wearing a hat that obscured her face. It was clear she was very muscular and showed no fear when facing these armed men.
"Well, well, you're delivering things right to our doorstep, aren't you?"
"Hey, inside, come out and check."
The gang members in the main hall came out. They turned on their flashlights and split into two groups: one stood guard outside the truck, and the other entered from the back.
Whoosh—
As the other group entered the truck, plainclothes men and women in work attire suddenly rushed out of the alleys on both sides. They moved extremely fast, wearing leather shoes that made little noise as they dashed to the truck.
Swish—
Blades flashed, and blood splattered.
Three people fell to the ground with a thud.
Archie adjusted his baseball cap, carefully surveying his surroundings.
After dealing with the guards at the entrance, the other two dragged the bodies into the shop—these bodies would later be handled by a garbage truck.
"Yo, woman, those two lumps in front are quite big." Because the operation was so covert, the gang member who had snuck around to the side of the truck to act like a hooligan still didn't know what had happened. His eyes were fixed on the female driver, and he was practically drooling.
"Want to rub them?"
"Heh, quite cooperative." As soon as he yanked open the car door, his throat was instantly gripped by a strong arm, as swift as a dragon emerging from the sea.
"Cough-gag!"
After a choked gurgle, the deceased, whose neck had been completely caved in by fingers, was single-handedly dragged into the driver's cabin. Then Valina pressed a button.
The rear door of the truck instantly closed.
"Hey! Who did that! Let us out!"
Hiss—
A layer of mist began to fill the dark interior of the truck.
"Cough! Ugh!!" The Poison Spider Gang members who had entered the compartment suddenly widened their eyes, clutching their throats as if suffocating. Their mouths gaped wide, and they fell to the ground, legs kicking wildly, but soon became still.
This was a neurotoxin commonly used by the Imperial Navy to clear 'parasites' from inside warships during port repairs. It was only lethal to humans at very high concentrations and would not contaminate equipment or supplies.
Underground in the building.
"Damn it, when did this underground area get such a large secret passage?"
"Boss, all these rooms are locked."
"Look inside! Maybe their den is right opposite, they must have taken our men from in here."
A group of gang members arrived at an open space with four intersections. Just as they were about to discuss which way to go, the gates at each intersection suddenly closed.
"Oh no! Retreat!"
"Our way back is also locked!"
The Poison Spider Gang's second-in-command's heart jumped, and he gasped for air, analyzing the surrounding structure.
"Don't panic! Besides a frontal assault, they have no other route to kill us. Guard every gate for me!"
Sure enough, after a while, a green light flashed overhead, and the gates slowly opened.
"You dare to ambush our Poison Spider Gang with just you lot? Kill them all!" The second-in-command let out a triumphant laugh.
More than twenty gang members simultaneously opened fire into the dark corridor.
Da da da! Gunshots instantly erupted in the narrow space, and the echoes made the gang members' ears ring for a moment.
"Hahahaha, hahahaha-hoo~ They must be dead now, right?" The second-in-command, having unleashed his firepower, gasped for breath, contentedly replacing the magazines on his dual-wielded short automatic guns, and spit out his cigarette butt with a thick glob of phlegm onto the ground.
Hoo—woosh.
The muffled exhalation of breath through a filter was amplified by the sound system, echoing through the corridor.
This oppressive and muffled sound spread an invisible terror.
"What… what… is that… sound????"
Behind each gate, a pair of terrifying deep-red circular eyes floated out of the darkness.
Hoo—woosh.
The muffled breathing was accompanied by heavy footsteps, growing closer and closer.
"Open fire! Kill that thing!" The second-in-command shrank into the middle of the gang members, using his subordinates' bodies as shields.
He no longer knew what he was facing, so he used the word 'thing' to describe it.
Another burst of fierce gunfire.
The deep-red circular eyes continued to advance. What first emerged from the darkness into the light was the slender barrel of a Ryza-pattern Hellgun.
It was then that the Poison Spider Gang's second-in-command finally saw the faces of these 'devils'.
Small-caliber homemade ammunition struck the sturdy Void Blue Carapace like pebbles, unable to even scratch off the anti-detection paint.
The bullets either shattered immediately or turned into popcorn shapes, falling to the ground.
When the fact that their defense was completely impenetrable was laid bare before these gang members, many of them went weak in the knees, collapsing to the ground in terror, urine streaming down their pant legs and puddling on the floor.
In the face of the most direct terror, humanity's most primal survival instinct made them rush desperately towards the blocked path they had come from.
They screamed and shouted, crowding together, futilely pulling at the hydraulic gate from below, their fingers bleeding, but the gate remained unmoving.
"Who are you!!" The second-in-command cried out in terror.
[+Open Fire+]
The Ryza-pattern Hellgun unleashed the Emperor's wrath in full-auto mode, mowing down the insignificant gang members like cutting wheat.
This was a one-sided slaughter, a pure overwhelming of strength and equipment.
Some still tried to pick up guns from the ground for a desperate last stand, but their heads were melted by high-power lasers almost instantly.
"Cough cough—ow." The Poison Spider Gang's second-in-command wasn't quite dead yet. The hot laser that grazed his face had melted his jaw, and he had lost an arm and a leg.
A tall figure walked up beside him. He could only move one eye, his body trembling, blood mixed with saliva continuously flowing onto the ground.
The red-eyed grim reaper removed his dark blue combat helmet, and a thick head of black hair came into the dying man's view.
"Horatio Cochrane," the young man coldly answered his previous question.
This name, which had once made countless gang leaders uneasy, made the Poison Spider Gang's second-in-command's eyes widen in instant, extreme terror.
His vocal cords, melted and seared by the high temperature, mumbled indistinctly. The heavy clatter of armored boots was the last sight of his life.