The place Du Cong rented was in a nearly twenty-year-old apartment building. Behind the building was an open space that used to be a school. After it was demolished, it temporarily became a free parking lot for nearby residents.

He drove the black SUV to an inconspicuous corner of the parking lot and parked. He took the suitcase from the back seat, went upstairs, and returned home. Du Cong opened the case and only found some clothing inside. Just as he was feeling disappointed, he discovered three cards in the corner.

The cards were Maple Forest Late Hotel stored-value gift cards, each with a face value of ten thousand, totaling thirty thousand.

If these were three gas cards, that would be a solid thirty thousand. Selling them at ten percent off face value would definitely find buyers immediately, which would at least offset some of his losses. But how much were these gift cards from San Jiang Kou’s local five-star hotel worth? He opened a local secondhand trading app on his phone to check, but there were no such items listed for reference. After thinking it over, he decided to take the cards directly to the hotel tomorrow to ask if they could be refunded for cash.

Meanwhile, Zhou Rong sat restlessly in his house, waiting anxiously.

Zhang Debing beside him was covered in cold sweat on his forehead. After dialing several times, he finally gave up: “Brother Rong, the… the phone is still turned off.”

“Why didn’t you just ask Li Penggai where he was!”

“Just now… just now Li Penggai said he’d already controlled those two and was bringing them right back. I was careless for a moment—”

“Careless my ass!” Zhou Rong directly splashed a cup of water in Zhang Debing’s face. Zhang Debing stood there with his head lowered, not even daring to wipe his face.

After Li Penggai called Zhang Debing, Zhang Debing waited over ten minutes before calling Li Penggai back. But after the phone rang a few times, someone cut it off. When he called again, the phone was already turned off.

Hu Jianren on the side also criticized: “Li Penggai is truly more trouble than he’s worth. Did he think those two robbers would be that easy to handle? He wanted to control both of them by himself—now he’s definitely fallen into their hands. If he’s dead, he deserves it.”

Zhou Rong irritably smashed his teacup to pieces and roared: “What do we do now!”

“This…” Zhang Debing couldn’t think of any solution.

Hu Jianren’s eyes lit up as he said: “Brother Rong, Li Penggai’s car has GPS anti-theft tracking. We can check and find out where the car is.”

Without waiting for Zhou Rong’s instruction, Zhang Debing hurriedly said: “I’ll check right away.”

Huo Zheng returned to the hotel, and Zhu Yifei immediately asked: “Is it taken care of or not!”

“Brother Fei, I found the taxi, but—”

“But what? Did you get the thing back?” Zhu Yifei asked impatiently.

“The taxi is parked in a scrap yard. There are two people inside—they’re the ones who grabbed the case yesterday. I was about to go in and handle it, but I saw Boss Zhou’s people go there.”

“Zhou Rong? That’s impossible.”

“I couldn’t be mistaken. The car and the person in it belong to Zhou Rong, without a doubt.”

Zhu Yifei was half-convinced: “Could there be some misunderstanding? The business is worth tens of millions—not small—but Zhou Rong wouldn’t stoop to this, would he?”

“Brother Fei, before I found Liu Bei last night, he called Zhou Rong. So Zhou Rong sent someone to meet Liu Bei. Later, when I killed Liu Bei and was handling the scene, Zhou Rong’s subordinate must have seen from a distance that I had Liu Bei’s corpse and the chime bell. Not daring to confront me directly, they used a taxi to steal my case.”

“Why would Zhou Rong’s people use a taxi to meet Liu Bei?”

“A taxi is the perfect cover.”

Zhu Yifei narrowed his eyes and pondered for a while, slowly shaking his head: “From my conversations with Zhou Rong, I don’t think he’s that kind of person.”

“Brother Fei, do you know how I found that taxi today? I searched that area all day without finding the taxi. Then I saw a police car leave a scrap yard, so I went to investigate—the taxi was in that yard!”

Zhu Yifei was stunned: “How are the police involved now?”

“Our case had Liu Bei’s corpse in it. Zhou Rong took the chime bell and handed the body over to the police.”

“Zhou Rong is buying excavated artifacts—how dare he notify the police?”

“Zhou Rong is San Jiang Kou’s richest man—of course he’s in collusion with the local police. He handed the body to the police and probably sold us out too!”

Zhu Yifei nervously clenched his fist.

“Brother Fei, if you don’t believe me, I’ll call Zhou Rong right now and see what he says.”

Zhu Yifei thought for a moment and nodded.

With that, Huo Zheng dialed Hu Jianren’s number and deliberately asked: “Manager Hu, everything’s been taken care of. When can we continue the transaction?”

At that moment, Hu Jianren was right beside Zhou Rong. He said to wait a moment, covered the speaker, and asked quietly: “Brother Rong, it’s Zhu Yifei’s man asking when we’ll continue the transaction?”

Zhou Rong said irritably: “At a time like this, how would I have the mind to buy his broken bell? If we don’t get the thing back, we might attract the police again!”

“Like this… directly refusing isn’t quite appropriate.”

“Not appropriate? If he hadn’t suddenly changed his mind about yesterday afternoon’s agreed transaction, I wouldn’t have had no cash at home. Without cash, even if those two robbers took the USB drive, their first move would be to demand ransom money from me, and I could have had someone deal with them both! Wasn’t that broken bell the root cause of this whole mess!” After cursing, Zhou Rong turned and walked out.

Hu Jianren pressed his lips together, thinking that a direct refusal would offend Zhu Yifei and his gang of desperados and cause unnecessary trouble. He reopened the speaker and reluctantly put off the other party: “Our boss is quite busy lately. How about we do the transaction after some time? What do you think?”

“How long is ‘after some time’?”

“Well… I can’t give you a definite answer right now.”

“Manager Hu, it wasn’t easy for us to come to the mainland. It’s not appropriate for you to suddenly not buy, is it?”

“It’s not that we’re not buying—we just think the price is a bit expensive and need to consider it further.” Hu Jianren made up a random excuse.

“Wasn’t the price already agreed upon?”

“In business, before a deal is closed, things can change.”

“So what do you think is appropriate?”

“This… you discuss among yourselves and give us a price.”

Huo Zheng wanted to say something more, but Zhu Yifei rushed forward, snatched the phone, and hung up, trembling with rage. He no longer doubted that Zhou Rong was behind this.

“Brother Fei, he’s telling us to set our own price—that means he knows for certain we no longer have a complete set of chime bells.”

Zhu Yifei clenched his teeth tightly.

“Brother Fei, after making that call, I’m worried the police will track the location. We need to change accommodations tonight.”

Zhu Yifei nodded helplessly.

“San Jiang Kou is too dangerous. We should leave here tomorrow.” “Just leave San Jiang Kou like that?” Zhu Yifei said coldly. “Zhou Rong beat me to the ground, and I’m supposed to walk away without a word? Do I not want my face anymore! There’s no such way of doing business in this world! I’ll show that Zhou surname who the real triad is! Go get some guns—I’m going to kill Zhou Rong no matter what!”