Chapter Forty-Six: Plunder Amidst the Storm
Inside the mobile command vehicle.
They were struck speechless by the scene before them—a complete loss of control, a tableau straight out of a Hollywood war film.
“Chief!” Zhao Yi’s voice crackled through the comms, ragged with breath and punctuated by gunfire. He shouted, “We’ve lost control! The ‘Phantom’ squad’s firepower is overwhelming! Should we—should we launch a full assault, at any cost, to turn the tide?”
Yet in the midst of this utter chaos, Xiao Ran saw a sliver—the only and the best—
Opportunity!
“No.”
Her voice, icy and clear, cut through the pandemonium like a scalpel: precise and unyielding.
“Let them fight.”
“Zhao Yi! You and Groups A and B, feint an attack! Stir up confusion! Muddy the waters for me—as murky as you can get! But remember: under no circumstances are you to approach that painting!”
“Group C! Janitorial team!”
She paused.
“Listen to my orders.”
“Prepare to… enter and ‘clean up.’”
…
In the VIP suite, bullets flew like rain.
The “Sweepers” and the “Phantoms”—these two elite assassin squads, supposed allies—had now, driven by mutual suspicion and Anderson’s “purge” order, erupted into all-out war.
While everyone was blinded by the carnage, all eyes drawn to the bloody chaos—
Two men, dressed in hotel janitor uniforms and pushing a massive cleaning cart laden with various “trash,” entered through a fire escape leading from the kitchens—a passage nobody had noticed.
On their faces was the unique mix of fear and numbness common among the underclass when caught in a gunfight. In the thickest Shanghai dialect, they grumbled and cursed under their breath.
“Damn it! Are these bastards shooting another movie? Glass everywhere—how the hell are we supposed to clean this?”
They were like two mortals blundering into a battle of gods.
Suddenly!
One of the “janitors” stepped on a spent shell casing, lost his balance, and slipped, crashing to the floor.
His grip on the cleaning cart loosened, sending it careening into the wall.
From inside, a giant plastic bottle—ostensibly filled with “industrial kitchen cleaner”—just so happened to smash open.
With a dull thud, a cloud of thick, acrid, but non-toxic white smoke erupted from the bottle, billowing through the room in seconds, shrouding the already chaotic suite in a blinding fog.
“Cough… cough, cough—”
“What the fuck?!”
Everyone’s vision was overwhelmed.
And within that blinding, choking smoke—
The two “janitors,” moments ago all awkwardness and clumsy feet, now moved with supernatural speed utterly at odds with their appearance. In a flash, they were at the feet of “Sea Storm,” the painting that had fallen in the melee.
They ignored the decoy—the one both the “Vipers” and the “Phantoms” believed to be the original. They simply checked that it was undamaged, lying intact on the floor, then wheeled their half-emptied cleaning cart into the smoke, blending in with guests fleeing the suffocating fumes, and slipped away into the darkness of the fire escape.
…
Minutes later.
The smoke dissipated. The battle neared its end.
In the end, the superior firepower and equipment of the “Phantom” squad prevailed, though not without cost—two of their members gravely wounded. They routed the now-frenzied “Viper” and his last followers.
They seized what they believed to be the original painting lying on the floor—unaware it was a forgery.
Then, as silent as their name, they slipped out through a window they themselves had blown open and vanished.
…
Inside the mobile command vehicle.
Lin Feng watched the entire “Oscar-worthy” performance—the reversals, the counter-reversals—through the last hidden camera inside the cleaning cart.
He looked at the woman beside him, whose face remained utterly impassive, and spoke with genuine awe.
“Queen Xiao,” he said, reverence clear in his tone.
“I give up. Anderson wanted us to be the praying mantis stalking the cicada.”
“But in the end, you made him—and that clever ‘Phantom’—”
“—both dance circles around us like—”
“—like the cicada.”