Searching for someone in northern Myanmar, and you call that earning tuition fees?

The core command center of the underground base.

Commander "Venom" was leisurely wiping the wine glass in his hand with a silk handkerchief. He was dressed in a well-tailored suit, and if it weren't for the menacing centipede tattoo on his neck, no one would think he was a mercenary leader wanted by multiple countries.

"Is the kitchen still not ready?" Venom put down his knife and fork, glancing at the Patek Philippe on his wrist. "It's already ten minutes past lunchtime. Tell Fatty that if the braised pork isn't tender enough today, I'll chop him up and feed him to the pigs."

The adjutant next to him, "Sanpao," immediately stood up straight and nervously pushed up his glasses: "Reporting to the boss, Fatty said he's reducing the sauce, that's the crucial step, we can't rush it."

Sanpao was originally a tech geek, but later switched careers to become a mercenary. His daily routine consisted of maintaining the base's network and flattering his boss.

"Soul?" Venomous Fang sneered, picking up his wine glass.

"In this rainforest, the only soul is..."

boom--!!!

Before he could finish speaking, a loud bang came from deep underground, and the entire mountain forest trembled.

On the outskirts of the jungle, Ling Qiao and her two companions, who were on high alert, were startled by the sudden tremor beneath their feet and stumbled.

"Holy crap! An earthquake?" Wang Hu's face turned pale.

Liu Jianjun grabbed his tactical vest, his eyes burning with fervor as he stared intently at the mountain from which the tremors were coming: "Earthquake my ass! This is Mr. Su serving us an appetizer! Understand? An appetizer!"

Ling Qiao's hands trembled as she held the binoculars, muttering to herself, "He...he said he was going in to check the kitchen pipes..."

Inside the core command room of the underground base, the shaking also occurred violently.

The glass of red wine in Venomous Fang's hand was splashed directly onto his expensive Italian-made handmade suit. The scarlet wine dripped down his white shirt, as if he had just been gutted.

The overhead lights swayed wildly, and computer screens on the desks clattered and fell to the floor. The alarm blared shrilly throughout the entire base.

"Enemy attack!" Venomous Fang abruptly overturned the table, drawing his pistol with lightning speed. "Was it a mortar? Or a bunker-buster missile? Where was it hit? The ammunition depot?"

Sanpao, huddled under the table, clutching his head and holding a tablet computer, his face deathly pale, cried out, "Boss... Boss! The epicenter should be right below us!"

"Directly below?" Venom's expression changed drastically. "Did these lunatics dig a tunnel and plant explosives under our foundation? Impossible! This area is all granite!"

The vibration stopped after a few seconds.

But this is only the beginning.

Immediately afterwards, a large amount of white dust was sprayed out of the ventilation duct, mixed with a strong smell of burning, oil fumes, and a... strange braised smell.

Poison Fang coughed violently from the choking, wiped his face, and found his hands covered in white powder, instantly turning him into a theatrical performer.

"Report!"

The communicator crackled with the guard squad's heart-wrenching screams, accompanied by a chorus of wails and the crackling of electrical current.

"Speak! Has the main gate been breached?" Venomous Fang roared.

"No...not the main entrance!" The guard's voice was filled with the terror of someone who had seen aliens. "It's...it's the kitchen! The kitchen exploded!"

"What?" Fang was stunned, thinking he was hallucinating. "Fuck, say that again, you bastard!"

"A violent explosion occurred in the kitchen! The shockwave destroyed the entire logistics area, and even the adjacent power room had one wall blown down! Fatty... Fatty is nowhere to be found, he's probably already..." The guard swallowed hard, "...turned into mincemeat hanging on the wall."

Venomous Fang stiffly turned his head to look at Sanpao, who crawled out from under the table, his eyes killing: "You just said he was reducing the sauce?"

Before Sanpao could reply, a glaring red alert popped up on his tablet.

"Boss!" Sanpao's face was deathly pale, his voice trembling. "'Rat'! The bait we sent out, his life signal disappeared more than ten minutes ago! His last location... was in the flower field outside the kitchen vent!"

The bait is gone...

The kitchen exploded...

Exhaust duct...

In an instant, all the clues connected in Venom's mind, sending chills down his spine.

That wasn't an accident! "Rat" was there to lure the Dragon Kingdom team! But the bait was taken out silently, and instead of falling into the trap, the enemy crawled in through the damn exhaust pipe!

Venom's face went from astonishment to ashen, and finally turned purple with rage.

He had roamed the South American jungles for twenty years, blowing up enemy dams, ambushing special forces, and even drinking blood with cannibal tribes. He had envisioned countless attack methods for Chinese special agents: special forces assaults, drone strikes, viral invasions…

But he never dreamed of it.

They started their attack from his mother's kitchen!

What kind of fighting style is this? They flipped my table and smashed the pot while they were at it!

……

In the ruins of the kitchen.

This place has been turned into a giant oven.

The stainless steel cutting board was twisted into a pretzel, half of the ceiling collapsed, and fragments of dozens of pressure cookers were embedded in the surrounding walls like shrapnel. As for the fat head chef, he was lucky enough to survive because he was lying in a blind spot of the explosion, but he was knocked unconscious and buried under a pile of rotten cabbages.

"Click".

In the corner, the heavy metal door of the cold storage slowly opened.

A surge of cold white air rushed out, colliding with the heat wave outside and making a sizzling sound.

Su Ming came out.

He took off his gas mask, patted the ice crystals off his body, looked at the mess in front of him, and nodded in satisfaction.

"It seems the flour ratio is perfect."

He stepped over the slick oil flowing on the ground, picked up the cast-iron meat mallet that had been blown to the doorway, and weighed it in his hand.

"This thing is of good quality. Good steel should be used where it's most needed. I'll borrow it for a bit."

He raised his hand and glanced at the time on his tactical watch.

"One hour and forty minutes left. If the 200 million reward doesn't include overtime pay, we need to hurry."

Su Ming walked to the remains of the ventilation duct. Although the explosion was violent, the cold storage, as the most robust unit, withstood the main impact, and its interior remained completely undamaged.

The shockwave from the explosion dislodged the hinges of the heavy blast-proof door leading to the core area.

Through the crack in the door, you could see flashing red lights and running mercenaries inside.

"The reduction of sauce in braised pork belly is the most challenging part, requiring precise control of the heat," Su Ming murmured to himself.

"This chef clearly didn't master it."