Chapter 190: Ridiculously Filthy Rich

As the members of the logistics team left one after another, Zhao Dasheng flung himself at Chang Yu’s thigh with immense gratitude, weeping and wailing with snot and tears streaming down his face.

"Big Brother Chang Yu! I owe everything to you today; otherwise, I surely would have been dragged away by them."

"I truly dare not imagine what those lunatic cult zealots would have done to me if they had captured me."

"What if those maniacs dismembered me and sold my organs all over the world? How... how could I possibly go on living?!"

Chang Yu curled his lips in speechless silence, feeling that Zhao Dasheng's nerves were perhaps a bit too sensitive.

It was just being hunted down by someone—what was there to make such a huge fuss about?

Yet, on second thought, if he were to put himself in Zhao Dasheng's shoes, he would undoubtedly become just as paranoid.

"What are you afraid of? I'm right here," Chang Yu could only offer words of comfort.

To his surprise, Chang Yu's remark had the exact opposite effect.

Zhao Dasheng began to wail even louder and more sorrowfully.

"But you're already injured so severely—can you still protect me?"

Zhao Dasheng cast pitiful glances back and forth at Chang Yu's shoulder, his eyes filled with unmistakable doubt.

"Damn it..." Chang Yu grew angry, feeling that his personal integrity had been insulted.

"Don't look at me like this just because I'm injured. My strength is still intact. Even if an attack of that scale came hundreds or thousands of times over, it wouldn't shake your big brother in the slightest."

There was admittedly a bit of boasting in those words, but facing Zhao Dasheng's skepticism, Chang Yu had no choice but to bite the bullet and bluff.

"The point is... we also have this!"

Chang Yu grabbed the two handguns resting on the coffee table. The characteristic cold feel of the metal made his palms tingle slightly.

"Weren't these two handguns brought by those two thugs earlier? Didn't your colleagues take them away as evidence?" Zhao Dasheng was momentarily stunned when he saw the weapons in Chang Yu's hands.

"By the rules, they should have been confiscated, but they didn't do that." Chang Yu gently stroked the two handguns, making no attempt to hide his affection for them.

"Little Li knew I was injured and needed firearms to protect myself, so before leaving, he intentionally pretended not to see these two pistols."

"He knew that I actually know how to use guns, and that I'm quite good at it. It's just that due to orders from above, I've never had a standard-issue weapon of my own."

"With these things on us, even if we can't beat that mob, we won't have to be afraid. If we really can't defeat them, we can just open fire directly."

The model of these two handguns was the Type 54, a style Chang Yu had seen before in the underground shooting range.

It was a replica of the former Soviet TT1930/33 pistol and was still in military service. It was the most widely produced and issued handgun in the country, with astonishing lethality.

Chang Yu was very familiar with the structure of this pistol. With nimble fingers, he expertly removed the magazine from the gun in a single fluid motion.

Counting the rounds inside, there were seven bullets in each pistol, making fourteen in total.

The ammunition was ample, and Chang Yu was quite satisfied with that.

Carefully tucking the two handguns into the back of his waistband, Chang Yu did not dare to disengage the safety, terrified that the weapons might accidentally discharge and shoot him in the rear.

He didn't want to end up wounding himself instead of the enemy.

As for why he tucked the guns into the back of his waistband... well, you would have to ask Katerina about that!

Chang Yu declared that this was simply the fine tradition of the Disaster Coordination Bureau, and he couldn't forget his roots—he had learned it all from Katerina.

"Actually, there is one thing that's been bothering me." Chang Yu had acquired the handguns he always wanted, but his mood was far from joyful.

"Ours is a country with extremely strict control over firearms and ammunition. Where on earth did they find such well-crafted handguns?" Chang Yu asked, striking at the heart of the matter.

At this moment, Chang Yu's habit of pondering the deeper meaning of life whenever he had a spare moment finally showed its worth.

"The Type 54 is a military-issue pistol with high lethality and exceptional precision. Even regular police officers aren't qualified to use them. So the question is, where did they get these guns?"

"Maybe they were smuggled from abroad," Zhao Dasheng casually suggested.

"That's impossible. If they were smuggled from abroad, they should be using foreign-made firearms. How could they possibly use weapons manufactured in our own country, unless..." Chang Yu furrowed his brows in deep thought.

"Unless these guns originally came through military channels!" Zhao Dasheng slammed his hand down, hitting upon this terrifying possibility.

.........

"Counting this time, we have already lost three people in a row!"

There are no impenetrable walls in this world. When the news of what transpired at Chang Yu's place reached the ears of the cult leader, he was instantly consumed by fury.

"What on earth is Zhao Dasheng's background? Didn't you tell me he was just an ordinary person?"

Faced with the leader's interrogation, the core cult members lowered their heads in shame.

This operation had been an utter and complete failure, leaving them utterly devoid of any dignity before their leader.

"Boss, that Zhao Dasheng really is just an ordinary person. We truly weren't lying to you," a core member dressed in luxurious attire hurriedly explained.

"Even if his business is massive and his pockets are deep, at most he only possesses a specialized kind of ordinary status."

"Then who among you can tell me why things turned out this way?" The leader crossed his arms, gazing at them with an ominous expression.

"With the commotion we made here, and with a live captive taken by the other side, it's impossible to keep it hidden."

"Even if we don't say anything, Lord Si Snake will surely find out what happened."

"I heard that this time, the fellow named Zhao Dasheng hired an Awakened to protect him, which is why our people failed," another cult member added.

"You know as well as that the people below us are ordinary folk. Even if they've undergone special training to become competent assassins, they remain ordinary people at their core."

"Against an Awakened, they stood no chance at all. This outcome was simply unavoidable."

"You must all have heard of it by now—Lord Si Snake's temper has never been good," the leader frowned deeply. "With such a massive blunder, how do you expect me to answer to Lord Si Snake?"

"This..."

The cult members looked at one another, completely at a loss for words.

Si Snake was a towering figure, a legitimate core member of the "Twelve Zodiacs."

Throughout the entire organization, there were only twelve such towering figures, each corresponding to one of the twelve animals of the zodiac.

As ordinary cult members, how could any of them not bow and scrape before these twelve figures, obeying their every command and arrangement?

To put it nicely, they were believers; to put it bluntly, weren't they just a bunch of errand-running lackeys?

Even if the few of them were core backbones and leaders among the believers, they were still absolute nobodies in the eyes of the true Twelve Zodiacs.

A believer was merely a believer, ultimately unfit for the grand stage.

"Boss, you have always been a favorite in Lord Si Snake's eyes. You must have a way to appease Lord Si Snake's wrath."

One cult member rubbed his hands together as he approached the leader, his face plastered with ingratiating flattery, acting precisely like a lapdog.

"That's right! Boss, you are the head of all us believers; Lord Si Snake will certainly grant you this face."

Another cult member quickly chimed in with a flurry of sycophantic praise, smoothing out the furrows in the leader's brow quite a bit.

"If we return empty-handed and having suffered such heavy losses, Lord Si Snake will certainly not forgive this mistake of ours, unless..."

"Unless what?" someone immediately asked.

"Unless we redeem ourselves by capturing Zhao Dasheng and that Awakened, dragging them both before Lord Si Snake for his personal judgment." The leader put his hands behind his back, pacing back and forth across the room.

"You mean... the few of us will personally go and capture them?" One of the cult members widened his eyes, instantly grasping the leader's intent. "But the few of us haven't soiled our hands with such dirty work in years! For all these years, it's always been the subordinates doing the dirty work!"

The leader calmly analyzed: "We all know there is an Awakened by Zhao Dasheng's side. Under these circumstances, sending more underlings is completely useless."

"Those ordinary believers are different from us. They haven't drunk the holy water, and they can't defeat those Awakened."

"In my view, we should personally go and test the Awakened by Zhao Dasheng's side to see what capabilities he truly has."

"You needn't worry about any danger either. With so many of us, even if we can't defeat him, we can at least ensure our own survival, right?"

After listening to the leader's words, the core cult members hesitated for only a moment before agreeing to the plan.

"Then let's do it!"

"You're the boss, we'll listen to you."

"Fine, I have no objections."

Seeing that all his brothers agreed with his perspective, the leader continued, "Alright, since it's settled, let's discuss how we should execute this..."

On the other side, Chang Yu and Zhao Dasheng, having experienced a night full of upheaval, were beginning to feel overwhelmingly drowsy.

"It's getting late, let's go to sleep early. Who knows, those lunatics might come looking for trouble again tomorrow," Chang Yu said as he yawned.

"If they come to pick a fight tomorrow and both of us are exhausted, how are we supposed to fight them back?"

"Someone just died in this house; it's too ominous," Zhao Dasheng offered a perfectly valid reason. "I am not sleeping in this room tonight under any circumstances. In one word: terrified!"

"Then where are we supposed to stay? In the middle of the night like this, we can't possibly go check into a hotel, can we?" Chang Yu didn't see anything wrong with staying in a house where someone had died; his tolerance for such things was simply quite large.

"In the middle of the night, there's no need to go to all that trouble." Zhao Dasheng stood up and retrieved a set of keys from the drawer beneath the coffee table. "Just follow me, and I guarantee you'll have a place to sleep."

With that, he dressed warmly and dragged Chang Yu out of the villa.

As for Chang Yu... he was hauled away by Zhao Dasheng looking utterly bewildered, completely failing to understand the deeper meaning behind Zhao Dasheng's actions.