After two years of effort, Yu Xiaoru has made some progress in her investigation of this matter, but she has not yet obtained any concrete evidence.
In fact, Huang Lianshu was well aware of Yu Xiaoru's purpose, but he didn't care at all. All the real and effective evidence that could truly threaten him had already been destroyed. No matter what Yu Xiaoru did, it wouldn't be able to harm him. Otherwise, why would he allow Yu Xiaoru to cause trouble in his company? Moreover, even if Yu Xiaoru could dig up some evidence that was detrimental to him, Huang Lianshu wasn't afraid at all. After this period of cultivation, Huang Lianshu's network of connections had expanded considerably, and he had even made contact with a high-ranking official in Beijing.
Nowadays, his backing isn't just his father-in-law anymore. Even if Yu Xiaoru has evidence, so what? In Zhongdu City, Huang Lianshu's influence is unparalleled. Yu Xiaoru certainly shouldn't expect to bring Huang Lianshu down here.
If Yu Xiaoru wanted to file a complaint with the provincial government, her father-in-law, the vice governor, was not someone to be trifled with.
If Yu Xiaoru wanted to go to the capital to file a complaint... let alone whether Huang Lianshu would allow such a weak woman like Yu Xiaoru to walk to the capital alive, even if Yu Xiaoru really went, with Huang Lianshu's newly connected big shot simply informing him, probably no one would accept Yu Xiaoru's appeal.
Fortunately, apart from her persistent investigation of the case, Yu Xiaoru did not do anything to harm Yunzhong International's interests. In fact, she made quite a few mistakes in her job duties. Otherwise, she probably would have fallen victim to Huang Lianshu's poison long ago.
After Zhou Ziwei learned of Yu Xiaoru's true purpose, he naturally wouldn't let her do it again. He solemnly told Yu Xiaoru that once Yang Hongtao was reborn, he would personally settle this old score with Huang Lianshu.
As for resolving this matter through official channels... that was naturally not within Zhou Ziwei's consideration. Even if he could overturn that case from back then, so what? What threat would it pose to Huang Lianshu? At worst, he could just spend more money to find someone else to take the blame.
Even if Yu Xiaoru did possess irrefutable evidence to bring down Huang Lianshu, what then? At most, Huang Lianshu would only be sentenced to a few years in prison, and such a punishment would hardly quell Zhou Ziwei's hatred. Therefore, to resolve the feud between him and Huang Lianshu, Zhou Ziwei had to take matters into his own hands; he had to make Huang Lianshu taste what it felt like to be driven to the brink of despair…
Yu Xiaoru no longer needs to go to work, but she is worried that Yang's parents will be concerned if they find out that she is unemployed. So, Yu Xiaoru still goes out at the same time as usual every day and then goes to the hotel where Zhou Ziwei is staying to take over from Zhou Ziwei to take care of Xiaomei.
Xiao Mei's condition improved a lot after that night. Although she was still dazed and silent, after being hungry for two days, she finally started eating out of instinct.
This made Zhou Ziwei breathe a sigh of relief; as long as he could eat, he wouldn't starve to death.
As for her wounded soul, Zhou Ziwei will always find a way to heal her.
Zhou Ziwei had some idea of how to treat this, and he still planned to focus on using the soul beads refined from living souls.
Despite the previous experiment failing, the soul power contained within the Soul Pearl immediately shattered the Sea of Souls that had been swallowed.
However, Zhou Ziwei pondered that this was mainly because the capacity of an ordinary person's soul sea was limited, while the soul power contained in a soul bead was equivalent to the total soul energy of an ordinary person.
For an ordinary person, replenishing too much at once would naturally cause their soul to burst.
However, if Zhou Ziwei could split a soul bead in half and only take a small portion for someone to absorb, the danger would be much less.
However, after several attempts, Zhou Ziwei was unable to effectively separate a complete soul bead.
This doesn't mean the Soul Bead is hard and unbreakable; it's just that if Zhou Ziwei uses too much force and breaks the Soul Bead, the entire broken Soul Bead will instantly vanish into nothingness with a "poof," and all the soul power that makes up the Soul Bead will completely dissipate without a trace in an instant.
However, Zhou Ziwei did not give up. He felt that his approach was correct, but he just hadn't found an effective solution yet.
This matter cannot be rushed. As long as Xiao Mei can maintain her current state, Zhou Ziwei will have time to slowly figure out how to unlock the secret of the Soul Pearl.
Five days later, Zhou Ziwei finally received another message from Wu Di, but this message gave Zhou Ziwei a real headache.
This message was naturally about Zhou Ziwei's last target on this trip: the black market assassin network.
As the world's largest and most mysterious assassin mission platform, Black Market Assassin Network is difficult to detect because its organization does not train its own assassins, but rather operates in cooperation with assassins and mercenaries around the world.
During this period, Wu Di had used almost all the connections and resources he could, but he had only managed to uncover a tiny fraction of the truth.
This organization is clearly led by some very skilled hackers, and it is said to be led by the world's most powerful hackers, codenamed Wireless.
Therefore, the network security of this website is almost impenetrable. The website's IP address changes countless times every second, so even the most elite hackers from various countries cannot trace the origin of this website through the network.
This has already been proven, so it is virtually impossible to crack or attack this website using hacking techniques.
However, Wu Di also discovered a loophole in this black market assassin network during his full investigation. On the surface, the website published every commissioned task on a globally unified platform, allowing assassins from all over the world to accept tasks here.
However, this is not actually the case. Many truly important or sensitive missions are only available to VIP members of the black market assassin network.
For example, if a commission to assassinate a country's president or a high-ranking official were openly posted on a public website, it would probably have caused panic among governments around the world.
If the black market assassin network truly becomes a public enemy that all countries in the world must eliminate, then with the combined efforts of official forces worldwide, even if they are deeply hidden, they will have already been exposed.
According to Wu Di's investigation, becoming a VIP member of the Black Market Assassin Network is extremely difficult. First, one must be an already outstanding assassin who can attract the attention of the Black Market Assassin Network before they will be invited to join the VIP membership assessment.
Furthermore, one must undergo multiple tests by the Black Market Killer Network before obtaining this qualification.
Wu Di wasn't very familiar with the specific assessment process for this VIP member-level assassin, but he was certain that the assessments wouldn't be conducted solely online. The assassins and members of the black market assassin network would likely have face-to-face contact.
Therefore... if Zhou Ziwei wants to completely wipe out the entire black market assassin network, this might be the only way he can actually succeed...
In other words, if Zhou Ziwei wants to achieve his goal, he must first become an assassin, and a very good one at that. Only in this way can he attract the attention of the black market assassin network, and then take the opportunity to unveil the mystery of this organization during the black market assassin network's assessment...
To Zhou Ziwei, this was truly a bit of a joke. In order to destroy this online assassin platform, he actually had to first become an excellent assassin himself... With Zhou Ziwei's abilities, becoming an assassin probably wouldn't be a problem at all. If he were to carry out assassinations, he would definitely become a nightmare for all his targets.
The problem is... doing this would definitely waste a lot of time, and it's unlikely to be completed in a short period of time. After all, there are countless assassin and mercenary organizations around the world, and to attract the attention of the black market assassin network, one must successfully complete many high-difficulty missions.
But... does Zhou Ziwei have that much time?
Volume 1: The Rebirth of a Prodigy, Chapter 251: The Storm Mercenary Group
At a large airport in Vietnam, a medium-sized passenger plane slowly landed. The cabin door opened, and Zhou Ziwei disembarked among a group of passengers of all kinds.
At this moment, Zhou Ziwei had completely transformed into a different person. He was wearing a sharp suit, brand-name shoes that were polished to a shine, his hair was neatly combed, and he wore gold-rimmed glasses. He looked like a Japanese man, and his passport indeed showed that he was a Japanese businessman named Inoue Sōyō.
Zhou Ziwei came here alone. He had left Xiaomei in Zhongdu long ago and asked Yu Xiaoru to take care of her for the time being.
There had been no movement from Huang Lianshu. Zhou Ziwei believed that this guy was both smart and afraid of death, so even if Huang Lianshu wanted to take revenge, he would definitely concentrate his efforts on taking revenge directly on Zhou Ziwei. If he couldn't find Zhou Ziwei at all, then he definitely wouldn't lay a finger on Yu Xiaoru and the others.
They even had to do their best to protect their safety, otherwise Huang Lianshu would probably worry that if some blind thief or pervert hurt Yu Xiaoru or Yang's parents, Zhou Ziwei would hold him responsible.
This is the seventh day since Zhou Ziwei left Zhongdu. In these seven days, he has flown to almost every country in Southeast Asia and completed a total of eleven assassination missions.
On the very day he received Wu Di's message, Zhou Ziwei immediately registered an ID called "Reincarnation" on the black market assassin website and began frantically accepting assassination bounty requests from countries in Southeast Asia and nearby regions.
To accept a mission on the Black Market Assassin Network, you must first pay a certain amount of deposit into the account provided by the Black Market Assassin Network. Only after the website confirms your acceptance can you officially carry out the assassination mission.
Otherwise, even if you kill everyone on the bounty list on the black market assassin website, you won't get a single penny of reward.
Once an assassin has accepted a mission, no one else can accept it unless the assassin who accepted the mission dies or the mission time limit expires, in which case the mission will become available to other assassins again.
The time limit for this mission is generally determined by the difficulty of the assassination, and it can be long or short, with specific and precise regulations.
In order to attract the attention of the black market assassin network, Zhou Ziwei was completing the missions he accepted at an absolutely insane speed, and the assassination missions he chose were undoubtedly those with relatively high rewards and difficulties.
The names of the eleven assassination targets he successfully carried out had been listed on the black market assassin website for at least six months.
Since these names have been listed for more than half a year, and the bounties offered by the employers are very high, it is impossible that no assassins would accept these missions during such a long period of time. However, no one has been able to complete the missions, and those names are still listed on the black market assassin website, which is enough to prove the difficulty of the missions.
Zhou Ziwei wanted this kind of challenging task. However, while these challenges might be insurmountable for others, they were as easy as taking candy from a baby for Zhou Ziwei.
What he feared most was not being able to find the target's location. As long as he obtained detailed information about the target and their exact location, no matter how tight their protection measures were or how well they were hidden, it would be useless.
Zhou Ziwei didn't even need to take action himself; he could easily kill the target and complete the mission by sending out ladybugs, and his identity would never be exposed.
The ladybug is extremely intelligent. Zhou Ziwei no longer needs to use his soul connection to direct it in everything. As long as the ladybug reads the various materials about the target people with him and recognizes their photos, Zhou Ziwei can basically just stay in the hotel and take a nap, and the ladybug will have already completed its mission and flown back.
The fact that eleven bounties exceeding six months' worth of bounties were swiftly completed within seven days immediately shook assassins worldwide, as well as various forces and organizations.
The assassin codenamed Reincarnation suddenly became a rising star, a prominent figure in the assassin world.
At the same time, Zhou Ziwei's anonymous account at a Swiss bank saw a staggering increase in funds, totaling a massive $130 million.
Although Zhou Ziwei always thought that making money with his own abilities shouldn't be difficult, he was still taken aback by the speed at which he had been making money like crazy these past few days.
One hundred and thirty million... That's roughly equivalent to one billion RMB. No wonder so many people are eager to become assassins; the money comes too quickly and too easily...
A billion... If he were just running a legitimate business, who knows how long it would take him to earn a billion? But he's an assassin, and he's earned so much in just a few days. Of course... it's not that being an assassin is easy. You know, many assassins or mercenary organizations had taken on these eleven missions before, but they all failed, and the only price for failure was probably death.
However, Zhou Ziwei did not feel any danger from beginning to end. The money was as if he had found it for free. It was precisely because of this that Zhou Ziwei almost lost himself in the temptation of money under such great stimulation, and even began to doubt whether his idea of reorganizing the Zhou Group was wise.
It's important to know that, based on market pricing alone, the entire Zhou Group isn't even worth a billion yuan now. However, Zhou Ziwei was only slightly confused for a moment before he came to his senses. Being an assassin is a fast way to make money, but even though the account in the Swiss bank is an anonymous account, such a huge sum of money requires considerable caution when used. He doesn't dare to withdraw too much money at once, otherwise, if it attracts the attention of Interpol, he'll be in trouble.
No matter how much money you earn, you don't dare to withdraw it to spend... This is undoubtedly a fatal torment for a nouveau riche who becomes rich overnight.
Fortunately, Zhou Ziwei is not too short of money right now, so he has no plans to use that money yet. He will wait until he has nothing to do in the future, and then slowly transfer a few million at a time abroad. After that, he will throw it overseas and launder it before he can spend it with peace of mind.
This money is easy to make, but too troublesome to spend. Zhou Ziwei probably doesn't have the patience to make his fortune this way.
Moreover... it's not easy to make money as an assassin. Although Zhou Ziwei has earned so much in just one week, it's mainly because the eleven missions he took on were all relatively high-paying. Now that he has swept up all the high-paying missions in the countries around Southeast Asia, there's not much left to be made in this area.
Zhou Ziwei had absolutely no desire to continue with the remaining miscellaneous tasks.
Moreover, Zhou Ziwei didn't want to live a life of secrecy from now on. So after his initial wavering, he decided to get rid of the black market assassin network as soon as possible, then quit this high-risk profession and go back to his own business in peace!
What's troubling Zhou Ziwei is that, despite his assassin ID, Reincarnation, having generated considerable buzz in the industry—with nearly 80% of the posts on the Black Market Assassin Network forum discussing him these past few days—he still hasn't received an invitation to take the VIP membership assessment from within the Black Market Assassin Network.
He didn't know if it was because he hadn't done well enough to attract the attention of the higher-ups at the Black Market Assassin Network, or if he had already aroused their suspicion long ago.
During this time, Zhou Ziwei also tried to use his hacking skills to infiltrate the Black Market Killer Network, but the result was naturally fruitless. This Black Market Killer Network was like an invisible warship, seemingly omnipresent, but upon careful searching, it was nowhere to be found, making Zhou Ziwei feel like vomiting blood.
Zhou Ziwei simply couldn't wait any longer. After browsing the public bounty list on the black market assassin website once again, he suddenly made a crazy and daring decision... He decided to accept the bounty mission to annihilate the Storm Legion.
The Storm Legion is a well-known mercenary organization in Vietnam and even Southeast Asia. It is said that the organization was originally an armed force of a drug production base near the Golden Triangle. Later, when the Golden Triangle was besieged by a joint operation of three countries, the organization withdrew from the Golden Triangle and fled to the southern mountains of Vietnam, where it changed its name and became the Storm Legion.
The Storm Legion is about two hundred people in size. Its members are based on soldiers who were once under a major drug lord. Over the years, it has also recruited some retired special forces soldiers, murderers, and so on. The organization basically takes on any job that can make money, whether it is protecting merchants and goods or killing and arson. As long as someone pays to hire them, they will accept without hesitation. It can be said that every member has blood on their hands.
About two years ago, the Storm Legion accepted a mission to assassinate a wealthy family. To complete this mission, the Storm Legion acted simultaneously on several fronts. In order to kill the wealthy man's youngest son, they planted a bomb in the school where the child attended. As a result, more than 30 elementary school students in the school were blown up and their bodies were never found.
This action thoroughly enraged the wealthy man who had narrowly escaped death but was severely injured and felt he was about to die. The wealthy man did not know who was targeting him and had driven him to this point, but he knew that the people responsible for hunting him down were the Storm Legion. So he took out all the wealth he could use and poured it into the black market assassin network, offering a bounty on the heads of all the members of the Storm Legion.
Then the wealthy man chose to commit suicide...
In fact, although the tycoon had a lot of money, most of what he owned were fixed assets. In a rush, these assets were naturally difficult to liquidate immediately, so he could only come up with 27 million US dollars.
This amount of money is quite a lot for a regular assassination bounty, but the problem is that this person must have lost their mind to think of using this money to offer a bounty on the heads of all the members of the Stormtroopers at once.
Those are over two hundred desperate criminals. To wipe out such a large mercenary organization, one or two individual assassins would be nothing more than cats to feed. Even if ordinary assassin organizations have a lot of people, they are generally not good at this kind of large-scale coordinated operation, so they would never take on such a mission.
Only a large mercenary organization, even larger than the Storm Legion, would have the power to completely wipe out the Storm Legion.
However, with a mere twenty million US dollars, it was completely impossible to hire a large international mercenary organization. That's why the mission remained listed on the black market assassin website for two years without anyone taking on the job.
Zhou Ziwei accepted this seemingly unprofitable mission not only because it was difficult and likely to attract the attention of the Black Market Assassin Network, but more importantly... he knew that the Storm Mercenary Group's headquarters was located in a desolate mountain range completely isolated from the outside world. Therefore... once he completed the mission and submitted it online, the Black Market Assassin Network would definitely need to send people to verify the completion of the mission.
In the past, Zhou Ziwei's assassination missions mostly targeted people living in cities. As for verifying the deaths of these people, the black market assassin network could do so completely undetected, whether by sending manpower to verify on-site, obtaining evidence through news reports, or infiltrating official internal networks.
Even if Zhou Ziwei were to monitor the situation with all his might, it would be impossible for him to know which person was the investigator commissioned by the black market assassin network.
However, this time the Storm Mercenary Group was located in a secluded deep mountain forest. As long as Zhou Ziwei was careful and prevented any member of the group from leaving the mountains alive, the Vietnamese authorities would not receive any information about the annihilation of the Storm Mercenary Group.
When Zhou Ziwei hands over the mission to the Black Market Assassin Network online, the Black Market Assassin Network will have no choice but to send people to verify it on-site... In this way, Zhou Ziwei will only need to wait and wait, and he will no longer have to worry about not being able to find the people from the Black Market Assassin Network.
This is definitely an opportunity for Zhou Ziwei...
After leaving the airport, Zhou Ziwei stayed at a hotel in a nearby city for the night. He first gathered some clues and information related to the Storm Mercenary Group through various channels. The next day, after leaving the hotel, he completely changed his appearance and became a genuine Vietnamese local.
Zhou Ziwei then rented an off-road jeep from a nearby car dealership and drove headed without hesitation into the mountains where the Storm Mercenary Group was located...
It's a mystery how the members of the Storm Mercenary Group always manage to get in and out. After driving for almost a whole day, Zhou Ziwei found himself at a dead end. He had no choice but to hide his jeep in a secluded spot and then begin hiking into the mountains.
According to the information that Zhou Ziwei spent a lot of money to collect locally, the location of the Storm Mercenary Group would normally take a whole day to walk to. However, with Zhou Ziwei's speed, he only took about three or four hours to gradually approach Storm Valley, where the Storm Mercenary Group was located.