Hong Kong variety show: The mastermind behind the scenes is emerging.

Another village, villas halfway up the mountain, the night is deep.

The living room lights weren't on; only the flickering flames in the fireplace illuminated several young faces. A steaming pot of Chaoshan beef hot pot was bubbling away, the thinly sliced ​​beef tenderloin bobbing up and down in the boiling broth, changing color instantly.

"Getting your hair permed makes you look old."

Lu Chen picked up a slice of beef, dipped it in satay sauce, put it in his mouth, and a look of contentment appeared on his face.

Xin Yi and Chen Luojun, sitting opposite him, didn't have such good appetites. Xin Yi twirled his chopsticks in his hand, his brows furrowed; Chen Luojun, on the other hand, stared blankly at the beef in the pot with a serious expression.

"What? The big boss isn't dead yet, and you've already lost your appetite?" Lu Chen teased with a smile.

"Chen, it's not that I have no appetite, it's that I'm worried." Xin sighed and slammed his chopsticks on the table. "The situation is starting to tilt in the boss's favor. Just last night, Wang Jiu's two gambling dens in Kwun Tong were raided. That mad dog Wang Jiu is now completely disoriented."

"Something doesn't feel right." Chen Luojun scratched his head, puzzled. "Logically speaking, Wang Jiu is so skilled and has some tough opponents, he shouldn't have been defeated so quickly."

"Because of money." Lu Chen put down his chopsticks, took a napkin to wipe his mouth, and his eyes gradually deepened. "Wang Jiu is ruthless, but he's like a tree without roots. His money mainly comes from those two boxing gyms and protection money. Now the gyms have been disrupted and have no business, his territory has been swept away, and his underlings also need to eat. Without money to pay resettlement allowances, morale has collapsed..."

Lu Chen gazed at the rising steam from the hot pot, his fingers lightly tapping the table, producing a dull sound: "If Wang Jiu falls now, the big boss will be free to act, and the situation will be back to square one. The stronghold will only have three to five years of stability at most, but I want a permanent solution, so... we must make this fire burn even brighter, preferably enough to cripple the big boss, at least making them evenly matched on the surface."

"What should we do then?" Xin asked anxiously. "How about I take a few brothers and secretly help Wang Jiu get revenge?"

"Of course we'll help, but we shouldn't get involved ourselves," Lu Chen stood up and walked to the huge Kowloon map. His gaze swept over the bustling Yau Tsim Mong district and finally settled on an inconspicuous little bay near Sai Kung in the New Territories.

In the movie "Kowloon Walled City", the boss of the noodle shop may appear to be doing shady business, but he actually made his fortune by selling drugs.

Lu Chen hates drugs the most.

This is his bottom line, both in his past life and in this life.

"The boss has a batch of goods coming in soon," Lu Chen suddenly asked.

Xin paused for a moment, then asked, "Goods? What goods? Cigarettes or watches?"

"Cocaine." Lu Chen uttered two words, his eyes instantly turning icy cold. "That's the big boss's real cash cow. The reason he has the money to hire people to suppress Wang Jiu is actually to use this route to recoup his losses. As long as this major artery is cut off, the big boss will be in excruciating pain, while Wang Jiu... will get a chance to catch his breath."

"Drugs?!" Chen Luojun clenched his fist tightly, his knuckles cracking. "That bastard, he actually did this kind of business that will wipe out his lineage!"

"Xin Yi," Lu Chen pointed to the small, abandoned dock called "Baisha Bay" on the map, "According to my intelligence, the big boss has a secret factory here. On the surface, it's an abandoned fish sauce factory, but in reality, it's his core base for repackaging and transshipping drugs. Tonight, a large shipment should be arriving from the Golden Triangle."

"Baisha Bay Fish Sauce Factory..." Xin Yi stared intently at the location, a ruthless glint in his eyes. "Brother Lu, I'll go scout it out right now."

"Remember, just watch and don't move."

"Understood!" Without saying a word, Xin Yi picked up the car keys on the table, turned around and left with Chen Luojun.

……

Twenty-four hours later.

Shinichi returned to the attic covered in night dew, his expression a mixture of shock and admiration.

"Brother Lu, this is incredible! Absolutely incredible!" Xin Yi took a big gulp of water and said breathlessly, "Luo Jun and I staked out there for a whole day and night! Something's really fishy! That place stinks, nobody goes there. But last night, in the middle of the night, two speedboats sneaked ashore and unloaded dozens of boxes! And the guards around there all looked like Vietnamese gangsters, and they were all armed!"

"Hundreds of kilograms..." Lu Chen narrowed his eyes. If this batch of goods were to be distributed, who knows how many families would be ruined and destroyed.

"Brother Lu, when are we going to make our move?" Xin Yi rubbed his hands together, eager to get started.

"Why would we need to resort to violence? I already said we're not going to get involved ourselves." Lu Chen glanced at Xin Yi speechlessly. This kid, after hanging out with Chen Luojun for so long, is becoming increasingly unwilling to use his brain.

"What's wrong, Chen? Why keep this harmful thing for the New Year?"

"Don't worry, I definitely won't let him get away with this," Lu Chen shook his head, a playful and cunning smile curving his lips. "But we're civilized people, legitimate businessmen. How can we do something like this, involving violence?"

Xin Yi and Chen Luojun exchanged bewildered glances. A civilized man? A respectable businessman? Brother Lu, you didn't say that when you were robbing the vault and buying stolen guns.

"Let's do it, but not right now." Lu Chen pulled a brown paper bag from his pocket and tossed it to Xin Yi. "There's 200,000 yuan in cash here. Go find someone for me."

"Who should I look for?"

"Wang Jiu has a henchman named 'Rotten Tooth Koi'," Lu Chen said, clearly having done his homework and knowing Wang Jiu's personnel structure inside and out. "This guy is greedy, lecherous, and disloyal. I heard he's recently racked up a huge gambling debt and is being chased by loan sharks. Give him the money and let him go talk to Wang Jiu..."

Lu Chen leaned closer to Xin Yi and whispered something in his ear.

As he listened, Shin-il's eyes widened, and finally he couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"Brother Lu...you're being too cruel! This is worse than killing him!"

"Go ahead." Lu Chen waved his hand. "Remember to be quick, I'm afraid Wang Jiu won't last more than a few days..."

……

A few nights later, in an underground clinic in Mong Kok.

Wang Jiu was shirtless, having a doctor treat a knife wound on his back—a gift from the big boss. His signature sunglasses were still on, betel nut dangling from his lips, his eyes as sinister as a venomous snake.

"Ninth Brother, have a cigarette..." Rotten Tooth Koi carefully offered him a cigarette.

"Eat my ass!" Wang Jiu slapped Lan Yaju's hand away, the movement causing him to wince in pain from his wound. "That old bastard boss is really going to kill me this time! Almost all the brothers have run away!"

"Ninth Brother... this can't go on." Rotten Tooth Koi glanced around and lowered his voice, "If we keep dragging this out, we'll really be all alone. Perhaps..."

"Speak your mind, or shut up!"

"I have a girlfriend from Kwun Tong. She said the big boss has a drug factory there, and he just got a huge shipment of drugs, worth tens of millions." Rotten Tooth Koi's eyes darted around as he started to bluff, following the script Xin Yi had given him. "Ninth Brother, do you think... if this shipment is lost, won't the big boss be heartbroken?"

"Nonsense! That's tens of millions! Anyone would be heartbroken!" Wang Jiu said, then suddenly froze.

His frantic brain began to work at breakneck speed.

"You mean...we're going to rob his goods?" Wang Jiu's eyes lit up. "No way, they'll definitely be heavily guarding that area. We don't have enough manpower to deliver the goods."

"Ninth Brother, let's not rob them," Rotten Tooth Colt grinned sinisterly. "Let the cops do it."

"Call the police?!" Wang Jiu whirled around, his sunglasses nearly falling off. "Are you crazy?! That's a cardinal sin in the underworld! Do you want me to be hunted down by the entire island of Hong Kong from now on?"

"Ninth Brother! We're about to die, who cares about underworld taboos?" Rotten Tooth Koi cried out anxiously. "Besides, we won't show up! We'll find a 'scapegoat' to call the police. We'll say it was... an accidental discovery. Then the cops will raid the goods, the big boss will suffer huge losses, and he'll be busy dealing with the lawsuits. He won't have time to bother with us! This is a diversionary tactic, Ninth Brother!"

Wang Jiu fell silent.

The only sound in the room was the hum of the electric fan.

After a long while, Wang Jiu suddenly let out a strange, neurotic laugh.

"Hehehe... Hahahaha! Interesting! This is fucking interesting!" Wang Jiu laughed until his wound reopened and blood seeped out, but he didn't care at all. "Big boss, if you're ruthless, don't blame me for being ruthless too! You want to kill me? I'll send you to jail first!"

"Go! Find a complete stranger. Someone who's not quite right in the head, or a drug addict who'd risk his life for money. Give him some money and have him act in a play!"

……

2 a.m., Yau Ma Tei Police Station.

The duty room was dimly lit, and several uniformed police officers were dozing off at the table, while a late-night drama was playing on the television.

Just then, the door was pushed open.

A thin man with dyed yellow hair, rotten teeth, and a panicked expression rushed in. He was wearing an ill-fitting floral shirt and clutching a black plastic bag tightly in his hand.

"Officer! Help! I need to call the police! I want to turn myself in!"

The young man shouted as he rushed to the duty desk and slammed the black plastic bag onto the table.

The officer on duty was startled, instantly snapping back to reality. His hand instinctively went to his holster: "What are you doing! Back off! Hands over your head!"

"Don't shoot! Sir, I'm a law-abiding citizen... oh no, I'm a thief! But I'm a thief with a conscience!" The young man began his performance with great emotion, following the lines taught to him by Rotten Tooth Koi.

"My name is Rat Qiang. I originally intended to steal some scrap metal from that abandoned fish sauce factory in Baisha Bay to sell for money..." Rat Qiang's face was full of "righteous indignation," and his acting skills, boosted by the promise of money, instantly soared to Oscar-worthy level. "I figured there would be no one there, but who knew that as soon as I pried open the door, I saw it was piled high with boxes!"

"A box?" the sheriff frowned. "What box?"

"The box that sells drugs, sir!" Rat Qiang gestured exaggeratedly, "I saw it, it's definitely it! The smell is so strong it gives me a headache! I may be a thief, but I have my principles! I only steal money, I don't kill! That kind of infertile stuff makes me furious just looking at it! I thought to myself, this can't be tolerated, I'm Chinese, I hate drugs the most! Back then, Lin Zexu destroyed opium at Humen..."

"Stop, stop, stop! Get to the point!" the officer interrupted impatiently. "Where did you see it?"

"It's right there at Pier 3 of the fish sauce factory, the one with the blue paint on the outside!" Rat Qiang pointed to the plastic bag on the table. "I grabbed a bag when I came out, officers, look, this is the evidence! I swear I'm not lying! Go and arrest them! They'll get away if you're too late!"

The officer suspiciously opened the plastic bag, rubbed a little white powder on his fingers, and then smelled it.

The officer's expression changed drastically the next second.

"Emergency assembly! Notify the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau (OCTB)! Notify the Narcotics Bureau! Quickly!"

The piercing alarm instantly resounded throughout the entire police station.

……

Abandoned fish sauce factory in Baisha Bay.

Night fell, and waves crashed against the rocks. Inside the factory, dozens of Vietnamese gang henchmen were busily repackaging the newly arrived "Double Lion Earth Brand" heroin. The boss had been spending money like crazy these past few days and desperately needed this shipment to recoup his losses.

Suddenly, the piercing sound of a police siren broke the tranquility of the night sky.

"Oh no! There are cops!"

"Run! Take the waterway!"

However, it was all too late.

Several armored vehicles smashed through the rusty iron gate like steel monsters, and a large number of fully armed blue-hatted officers and O-Team agents descended from the sky.

"Don't move! Police!"

"Drop your weapons! Lie down!"

Gunshots, shouts, and the sound of shattering glass filled the air.

On a hill several hundred meters away from the factory, Lu Chen was watching the spectacle with great interest through binoculars. Xin Yi and Chen Luojun squatted beside him, each holding a can of beer, watching with rapt attention.

"Tsk tsk, Brother Lu, look at those Vietnamese guys, they run faster than rabbits." Xin Yi pointed down gleefully, "That one, the one who jumped into the sea, they got pulled out. Serves him right!"

Lu Chen didn't speak, he just watched quietly. Suddenly, a familiar figure appeared in his camera's view.

He was a young inspector dressed in plainclothes, without a bulletproof vest. He was extremely handsome, his face was practically a carbon copy of Takeshi Kaneshiro's, and he had long, somewhat melancholic hair.

But at this moment, this handsome guy's behavior is somewhat... indescribable.

In the midst of the chaotic arrest scene, this handsome young man didn't shout like the other police officers. Instead, he held a half-eaten can of pineapple in his hand, calmly directing a drug dealer who was trying to escape to trip him, while also managing to pop a piece of pineapple into his mouth in between.

"Deng Yingjun..." Lu Chen's lips curled up slightly as he murmured the name.

From Inspector Pierre in the movie "Modern Detective". That detective with extraordinary skills, but always with a bit of absurdity and melancholy.

In the scene, Deng Yingjun seemed to choke on a pineapple, pounded his chest, and then casually grabbed a clothesline pole next to him. Like a circus act, he knocked down two Vietnamese men who rushed at him with knives. His movements were extremely graceful. If you didn't see that there was still sugar water on his lips, he would have been a perfect hero saving the day.

"Who's that cop?" Shinichi noticed him too. "He's pretty handsome, and quite skilled, but he seems a bit off his game. Eating canned food while catching a thief?"

"An interesting man." Lu Chen put down his binoculars. "Inspector Deng Yingjun, remember this: if you run into him on the street in the future, try not to fight him. This guy looks unreliable, but he's actually a master."

……

The next day, at the boss's private residence.

"ah--!!!"

The boss snatched the newspaper and tore it to shreds, simply because the front-page headline was too sarcastic: "Clumsy Thief Breaks into Drug Den, Has a Plea for Justice and Calls the Police—Police Crack Major Drug Manufacturing Case, Thief Says, 'I'm a Chinese with a conscience?'"

The boss's face was contorted in a ferocious grimace, his chest heaving violently, and his eyes bloodshot. The cigar in his hand had been crushed to pieces, with tobacco shreds scattered all over the floor.

"Gone...all gone..."

The boss's voice sounded like a demon crawling out of hell, "That shipment was worth fifty million! And the factory! And those dozens of brothers! They're all gone!"

The confidants standing below trembled with fear, not daring to even raise their heads.

"Investigate! Investigate!" The boss grabbed one of his men by the collar, spitting in his face. "How did the police know about such a hidden place? Who was the thief who went to report it? Who ordered him?!"

"Boss...boss..." The subordinate tremblingly handed over a file, "We...we bribed someone inside the police station. The thief has been 'brought out' by our people. After some 'interrogation' just now, he confessed..."

"Who?"

"It's...it's Rotten Tooth Koi." The subordinate swallowed hard. "He's the lead horseman next to Wang Jiu. The thief said Rotten Tooth Koi gave him 20,000 yuan to act in this play. Sang Bo also gave him a detailed address and directions, and told him how to make the police believe him..."

"Rotten Tooth Cop..." The boss released his grip, his eyes instantly turning icy cold, a look that truly betrayed his murderous intent.

Rotten Tooth is Wang Jiu's dog, and whatever Rotten Tooth does is the same thing Wang Jiu does.

"Fine... fine, you Wang Jiu!"

The boss was so angry that he laughed, a laugh that sent chills down one's spine.

"I was originally planning to spare your life and slowly torture you to death. I never expected you to dare break the rules of the underworld and collude with the cops to cut off my source of income!"

This is also the most despicable behavior in the underworld. Gang fights can be fought however they want, even wiping out entire families is considered a matter of underworld grudges. But if someone actively calls the police and uses the police to clean up the mess, that's being a "traitor," an enemy of everyone.

"Wang Jiu..." The big boss gritted his teeth and squeezed out a few words, "If you're ruthless, don't blame me for being unjust."

He turned around, looked at the decorative samurai sword on the wall, and suddenly drew it from its sheath.

With a flash of cold light, the corner of the solid wood table in front of them was neatly cut off.

"Pass on my order." The boss's voice regained its composure, but it was the calm before a storm. "Summon all the men. Bring out your most prized possessions. Even if it means turning Kowloon upside down, I will find Wang Jiu. I will tear him to pieces, skin him alive!"

"Also, tell my friends in the underworld. Anyone who dares to help Wang Jiu is going against me. Anyone who can bring me Wang Jiu's head will receive a reward of... 500,000!"

"Yes!" the men replied in unison, retreating with murderous intent.

The villa fell silent again.

The boss stood by the window, knife in hand, looking at the gloomy sky outside.

What he didn't know was that the mastermind behind all of this, the real "helpful citizen," was sitting in his warm villa, listening to soothing music, waiting to see him meet his demise.

"Wang Jiu, that chess piece, has been used up almost completely."

Lu Chen was in his study, looking at the headline in the newspaper about "police busting a major drug case," a faint smile on his lips.

"The big boss must have gone mad by now. When someone goes mad, they'll reveal their true colors."

He picked up the phone and dialed Xiao Zhuang's number.

"Hello, it's me."

"Get ready. The time is almost here."

On the other end of the phone, Xiao Zhuang's calm and cold voice came through: "Received. Gun polished."

After hanging up the phone, Lu Chen looked out the window.

In Kowloon's game of chess, the move to checkmate has finally come to an end.