Liu Jianmin started to get annoyed by the girl’s dismissive treatment. He decided to teach this insolent little girl a lesson!
With this in mind, Liu Jianmin suddenly rushed toward the girl, his hand ready to strike and knock her out.
But...
Slap...
The girl suddenly deflected his hand, slapping it away as if his attack were no different from a child’s strike.
Then...
A sharp pain shot through his chin.
Bam!
In the blink of an eye, it felt as though a hammer had slammed into his chin. His body was sent flying into the air as the world spun around him.
Then his consciousness faded to black.
Liu Jianmin was knocked out cold by a single punch to the chin.
As for Mo Xingyao, she simply snorted before deciding to continue her little bit of edutainment.
However, the sound of the scuffle had alerted the people inside.
"Yaoyao! If you continue watching, I’ll bring you in to join us!" Wei Chen called from inside.
Hearing this, Mo Xingyao quickly closed the door and ran away.
She didn’t mind joining them, but at least for her first time, she wanted it to be special. She didn’t want to become a side dish in an orgy like this.
As for Wei Chen, he looked toward the hallway where Liu Jianmin lay unconscious.
Of course, he had sensed Liu Jianmin, the intruder. However, since Liu Jianmin was merely a martial arts master and not a cultivator, his physical abilities were only somewhat beyond those of an ordinary human.
Therefore, Wei Chen had not considered him a threat.
To cultivators like them, Liu Jianmin posed absolutely no danger.
And besides, the man had just been knocked out cold by Mo Xingyao.
— Noon of the Second days —
James Stanton now felt like he was going to have an aneurysm.
The cause?
It was the mysterious intruder they had caught last night after Mo Xingyao, one of their VIP guests, had knocked him out cold, allowing James and his team to easily capture the old man.
The leader of the VIP guests had agreed to let him deal with the situation since this was the US, his homeland. It had to be said that the VIP guest was surprisingly agreeable and cooperative, unlike the information they had initially gathered from the expedition team regarding the behavior of the "cultivators" as a whole.
But the VIP guests aside...
The mysterious intruder they had captured was currently stewing in the interrogation room, with his hands and feet bound using special titanium-alloy restraints. They had to use something this strong because anything less, such as standard police handcuffs, could be easily broken by the intruder.
They had learned that the hard way last night.
The moment the old man regained consciousness, he had broken the restraints like twigs and attempted to escape.
The person who knocked him out again and helped them restrain him was one of the VIP guests’ wives, Dream Butterfly.
That had been extremely humiliating for them.
It was the first time CIA operatives had experienced something like this.
The worst part was that when his people investigated the mysterious man, they discovered that the guy did not have any registered fingerprints from when he had entered the country.
The closest lead they had discovered was that the old man must have entered the country alongside the Chinese diplomatic delegation through the Chinese embassy’s diplomatic channel.
There was a record showing that the diplomatic delegation had arrived roughly two hours before they detected the old man.
And the airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, was relatively close to the safehouse. The travel time from the airport to this location was roughly within that two-hour timeframe.
It was entirely possible that the old man had come from that airport.
Further investigation revealed something even more troubling.
The immigration officer on duty at that time, whom they had already invited for a cup of coffee in an isolated and discreet location owned by the CIA, had received a call from his superior instructing him to be unusually lax when checking the delegation.
Further investigation showed that the call had come from the Port Director.
And from what they had discovered, this Port Director had conveniently turned up dead when James’s people went to pay him a visit.
The result?
Five gunshot wounds to the back, followed by a double tap to the head to make absolutely sure he was dead.
Only two things had been stolen from the man’s home: his phone and his wallet.
Everything else of value had remained untouched.
The reconstruction of the crime scene by the police indicated that the Port Director himself had been the one who opened the door and allowed the murderer to enter his home.
His top-of-the-line alarm system had also not been active.
This could only mean that whoever the murderer was, the Port Director knew him well enough to recognize him as a friendly face, or at least as an acquaintance he was comfortable enough to welcome into his home.
He did not seem to know that he was going to be murdered.
Judging from the reconstruction of the scene, the Port Director had apparently tried to run before being shot in the back.
This presented James with two very troublesome problems.
First!
There was a leak of national secrets.
Dealing with sleeper agents was already difficult enough, but this incident had shown the CIA that the infiltration was far deeper than they had initially thought.
This was making the current CIA director, James’s boss, unable to sit still. It was like having a bonfire constantly licking his ass.
No amount of explanation could excuse this level of counterintelligence failure on their part.
The second problem was that there appeared to be deep infiltration, or at the very least, serious compromises among their government personnel.
The Port Director was one example.
Unfortunately, the man was already dead by the time James’s people arrived, and both his phone and wallet had disappeared.
That made the assumption of robbery and murder highly doubtful.
There were simply too many coincidences.
It was far too suspicious.
They had also uncovered another piece of evidence.
The old man had a photograph with China’s Chairman, Wang Zhenhua.
This placed China very high on their list of suspects.
However, there was no evidence indicating that China was the one who had instigated this operation.
James had encountered plenty of conspiracies throughout his career, and he knew better than to jump to conclusions without evidence.
For now, the most likely suspect was simply the closest thing they had to the truth.
Right now, neither he nor his director knew for sure how many people within their government had been compromised.
This made the situation far more damaging than simply having a group of operatives infiltrate their secret facility. These compromised government personnel could cause damage far more terrifying and devastating to the country.
He did not know whether they would need to launch a full internal investigation across the entire government after this. But...
He was sure that officials in important positions, such as ministers or the Port Director, would certainly be subjected to internal investigations.
Wait...
There were also a third and fourth problem!
The fact that this old man was connected to the Chinese Embassy was extremely sensitive. They, the CIA, could not simply raid the Chinese Embassy.
That would require another round of scrutiny, and the evidence they had was nowhere near enough to justify a search.
No...
Even if it was enough, his people could not simply search the embassy.
Doing so would almost certainly cause an international conflict.
An outright war might not happen, but a trade war or sanctions would definitely invite another round of chaos.
Especially when they had to import a large amount of machinery and electronic components from China.
James rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on.
He looked at the interrogation report. So far, the old man had not said a single word. He had given them the silent treatment, even after they had kept him in the interrogation room for more than twelve hours.
The only reaction they had gotten from the old man was when they mentioned Chairman Wang Zhenhua. As for everything else, the old man had not responded at all.
For now, all they could do was keep the old man stew in one of their secret detention facilities and hope that he was important enough for the Chairman to mention him during some kind of secret negotiation.
For now, they needed to focus on their current task.
They needed to escort the guests to a secret meeting place they had prepared so that the guests could negotiate with the President.
He also needed to prepare a last-minute analysis of the guests so that the President would not suddenly step on some stupid landmine during the negotiation.
Things like who the guests were, how they viewed this world, their behavior, and their sense of morality.
All of this information could prove useful during tomorrow’s negotiation.