154 Target: 1.5 Tons of Gold!

Mom!!!!!
What are you screaming and yelling about, for heaven's sake?! You're going to scare me into a heart attack!
Niu Erya, grumbling and griping, was holding a bowl of soup when Li Jie's shout startled her so badly that Tu Zhi, who was busy setting the bowls and chopsticks, immediately gave Li Jie a solid slap.
Where is my braised pork ball in brown sauce?!
Why are you in such a rush?! Didn't you say you wanted to suck down a plate of tiger-skin chicken paws first?
By this time, Li Jie had already finished off a plate of fermented black bean tiger-skin chicken paws, thoroughly enjoying the meal. There was also a plate of stir-fried rice cakes prepared using a pan-fry-then-stir-fry method, which contained plenty of yellow chives, garlic shoots, and other ingredients, making it quite different from the Korean stir-fried rice cakes.
Here, your pork ball, before you choke to death on it.
Glaring at Li Jie, Niu Erya put down the soup and hurried to fetch the pork ball out of the kitchen.
Since Li Jie was leaving for Wa shortly, several of the older mothers had come over to cook a hearty, delicious meal for him.
They had also fried a batch of radish meatballs for him to snack on along the way.
I won't see you off later. Yaoyao needs someone to wait on her tonight.
I offered to find a nanny to give you a hand, but you refused. Tell me, is there something wrong with your head?
Without hesitation, Niu Erya began mocking the old motherly routine, but Mother Niu refused to lower herself to the level of this scoundrel. Considering he gave her a grandson who carried her surname, spoiling the grandson instead of the son was always the right choice.
Little Ruan is helping out, you know.
She's a bodyguard, professionally paid to take bullets. I'm paying a bodyguard's salary, and I should hire a nanny on top of that?
Are you feeling proud of yourself now? Wasn't that person invited by Yuandai from her maternal family? Since when did you pay for it?
Niu Erya scolded him while dishing out a bowl of soup for Li Jie. It was stewed since this morning, so don't waste it.
Who is Little Ruan?
Jin Momo, who was also busy devouring tiger-skin chicken paws, suddenly asked with curiosity.
She's Yaoyao's personal bodyguard, always keeping a low profile. You wouldn't even notice her if she stood in the middle of a crowd.
Boss Li nodded in praise as he said this. Now that's the quality a professional bodyguard should have, ten streets ahead of Wanqiu.
...
Jing Wanqiu was utterly speechless, though she still defended herself: Security types like her and me are completely different. I need to match the young mistress's public appearances; her shifts don't require coordinating exposure levels.
Then why haven't I ever seen other big celebrities hire a tanned hot-girl as a bodyguard? Admit it, you're just not professional enough.
I...
Wanting to retort, Jing Wanqiu ultimately closed her mouth. There was nothing worth saying to this kind of person; she might as well just sniff the air around him and leave it at that.
Boss Li's appetite opened up completely. He easily shoved four fist-sized pork balls into his mouth while shoveling sliced beef tendon dipped in soup directly into his mouth.
Still feeling unsatisfied, he stood up, walked into the kitchen, picked a random cucumber, washed it, and began stuffing it into his mouth.
Eating as he spoke, he smiled at Niu Erya and asked, Mother Niu, do you remember Niu Lei from Niu Market Street?
Is that the one who got into college and then went to serve in the military for two years? You used to bully them all the time when you were little, stealing cucumbers, tomatoes, and sweet sorghum from their yard.
Thinking of this, Niu Erya shook her head helplessly. The young Li Jie had given them plenty of reasons to go around apologizing and making amends.
Still, credit where credit is due—they were just minor mischiefs, harmless enough.
He had a tough childhood, too, but he made it through.
Niu Erya seemed to recall something as she asked Li Jie, Niu Lei, and what's-his-name from Qingchun's side? And those others—do they know you're their benefactor?
Hehe, they only know there's an Uncle Li. I even used to write Study hard and make progress every day to them.
...
Niu Erya was utterly dumbfounded. Li Dabao, you really are... I honestly don't know what to say to you anymore...
He always had to take advantage of everyone no matter what he did.
I'm being quite decent already!
With a righteous expression, Li Dabao took a fierce bite of the cucumber. I stole a few tomatoes from their yard, and they actually had the nerve to ask me for money?! I didn't even make them call me Daddy Li—that just shows how magnanimous I am.
Do you even qualify as a human being?
Tu Zhi raised her hand and delivered another slap, then placed a bowl of prepared dipping sauce in front of Li Jie.
She sat down to the side and explained to the young women, Don't let Li Dabao's low character fool you—well, his character really is low, but he's actually a good person at heart. He has consistently sponsored children from financially struggling families. He earned quite a bit of money back then from singing and songwriting, so he has helped out many kids around the neighborhood who genuinely struggled to afford their education.
Our Little Red Star has its own charitable foundation. The projects aren't many and the scale isn't large, but it really has helped a lot of people.
At this point, Niu Erya sighed with emotion, If Dabao hadn't been genuinely brilliant back then, making money through singing, songwriting, and television appearances, Little Red Star wouldn't have survived until today. Getting through all these years has certainly not been easy.
Who's saying it has? Take that loudmouthed councilman from the Pingjiang Council who used to bark all day long, what was his name...
The two older women instantly entered the nagging state of recalling past bitterness and tasting present sweetness. By the time Hu Wenjing and She Qingchun arrived, the entire nagging battle group instantly expanded.
Li Jie's ears were practically calloused from listening, but Ji Shengnan, Jing Wanqiu, and the others listened with rapt attention.
After all, who would have ever expected Li Jie to have this kind of side to him?
You really can't judge a book by its cover.
Then came the Q&A session, where the girls asked questions with curiosity and the older women answered with delight, filled with a strange, shared desire to gossip.
Keeping secrets was such a difficult task after all.
Especially when it came to making these old mothers keep a secret.
The main topic of conversation during the entire dinner was the episode titled The Sudden Emergence of Li Dabao and How Little Red Star Escaped Disaster.
Back then, Li Dabao had stepped on fiery wind-wheels, wielded a red-tasseled spear, landed before the battle array holding a magical treasure known as the Greater Heavenly Realm of Three Lifetimes and Three Worlds: Great Heaven, and taunted the tigers, leopards, jackals, and wolves from all directions: Those who wish to obtain this treasure must assist me in fighting the bandits.
The Pingjiang City Television Station in Sanjiang Province beamed with joy, led its troops, and happily went along.
During this period, there were various underhanded dealings between the Pingjiang City TV Station and the provincial TV station that were not fit to be shared with outsiders, but it was nonetheless a story of battling wits and courage, leaving the young girls repeatedly exclaiming how thrilling it was.
After all, during the height of those struggles, the older women were also in their prime fighting years, while an eight-year-old Li Dabao officially served as the big boss of Red Star.
The organization needed him!
A decade passed in the blink of an eye, and this Little Red Star suddenly transformed into The Gleaming Red Star. The collapse of the nebula gave birth to a brand-new star.
Quite reasonable.
Boss Li remained entirely calm; these were all standard operations. As a transmigrator armed with a plagiarism-based literary career, he was bound to stir up some kind of commotion.
The only minor flaw was that he hadn't been into idol worship before transmigrating.
Dinner lasted until past eight o'clock, after which Li Jie got up to pack his things, grabbed a large suitcase, and prepared to leave.
I won't see you off then.
The older women weren't worried about anything happening to Li Jie himself; they were just terrified the airplane might blow up.
However, the Antenna Trio specifically came to send him off. Fairy Wang had no other request except for Li Jie to thoroughly give her a fierce round inside the car.
Jing Wanqiu kept a deadpan expression in the driver's seat the entire time, while Jin Momo calmly played mobile games, having spent the last few days in a duo queue with Gan Xingnu playing King's Alliance, which she found immensely entertaining.
Video games were truly fantastic.
Once a match of King's Alliance ended, things were wrapped up hastily, and they got out of the car and walked away immediately, completely ignoring Fairy Wang, who was still shivering with lingering passion in the backseat.
Everyone assumed Boss Li was taking a plane; instead, Boss Li opened his suitcase, pulled out a foldable electric scooter, put on a helmet, and cared for no one...
With a whoosh, he sped off like the wind, heading straight for the Yangtze River Pier.
By this time, the coach and security teams were already in place aboard the Heavenly Crab.
Lin Chong, Zhang Qing, and the others were also seeing Han Zitong and Li Fazhu for the first time. The Coach Lin felt that Zhao Baojiao and Qian Guipi were exceptionally mysterious bodyguards, giving off an indescribable vibe.
In truth, Li Fazhu did not particularly like his new identity as Qian Guipi, but upon seeing that the boss's assistant was named Chen Pi and Chen Pi's subordinate was named Dong Sharen, he suddenly felt it was passable enough.
Mainly because it had a certain flavor to it.
Upon boarding the ship, Li Jie immediately fetched a fishing rod and prepared to do some night fishing, figuring that heading into the East China Sea to hang a lamp and catch some squid would be nice as well.
Boss, are we going to rob the Hronong Pawnshop in Osaka Harbor first?
Han Zitong pointed at the map projection. This is the Small Bean Island Route Berth, about three minutes away from the Osaka Import and Export Administration. Right here, separated only by the Front Town Line, is the underground banking stronghold of the Hronong Pawnshop—a front-store, back-courtyard structure with 24-hour surveillance and a three-shift, fifteen-man security detail. Outside, there's usually another squad of locals, typically idle gang members, numbering between five to twelve depending on whether they're daily wage workers or long-term hires.
It's separated by a single street, and yet the Yang family is still this arrogant.
Boss Li was quite surprised by this.
Li Fazhu, who was now following Boss Li, offered an explanation: Generally speaking, regional-level pawnshops like this share the same property management. So while they look like different neighborhoods, in reality, a third or even half of the district might belong to a single major family. They also cultivate local proxies, such as the Sanshang Financial Group in Kansai, Wa, which is jointly backed by the Yang and Li families. The outer squad of locals Lao Ba just mentioned usually consists of members from the Oni Head Association and Peach Vegetable Syndicate associated with the Sanshang Financial Group, who send a portion of their members to moonlight as part-time workers, basically serving as security muscle.
So do you have any suggestions?
My suggestion is to rob the Hronong Pawnshop as well. There is 1.5 tons of gold stored here, with a regular quarterly rotation of 0.5 tons moving back and forth between Second Palace Island and Tsukushi Island. Both places have dealings with British banks, handling money laundering operations. But our target is crystal clear—just focus directly on the gold, and we can't go wrong.
What about the firepower?
There are internal intelligent defense robots, but they're all tracked models. The power distribution room is on the first basement level, and the UPS equipment is down there too. As long as we can pull off a demolition within two minutes, the internal power supply for both warehouses will fail. Fixed fire points and defense measures will all go silent. That leaves at most fifteen men plus two tracked intelligent defense robots.
How powerful is the robot's firepower?
Twin machine guns with two thousand rounds of ammunition. Indoor firepower is definitely fierce, and it carries a single micro-missile with one kilogram of high-explosive charge, but it won't be able to breach our equipment.
Without anti-materiel gear, they were absolute clowns.
Boss Li planned to scout the location first, and then drive from Edo to Osaka Prefecture during the tournament, though he needed to exercise caution in Shizuoka and Aichi because they required clearance documents.
There was no help for it; this wretched place was jointly administered by four powers, requiring dealings with the International Joint Administration Bureau.
However, the only reason he needed to exercise caution was that Boss Li had no intention whatsoever of showing his passport.
For this trip, the Heavenly Crab was carrying his customized Jianyuan Dark Knight Co-branded Edition. He would take the East China International Expressway from Edo, switch to Flight Mode before reaching Aichi Prefecture, fly straight into the airspace of Osaka Prefecture, and then resume street racing.
Utterly foolproof.
Learning about the Yang family's underground operations from Han Zitong and Li Fazhu, Boss Li had already figured out how to fleece Young Master Yang's family.
The Yang family's underground banking and shadow banking operations in Osaka Prefecture were centered around Kobe Port, which was also the station for the Osaka Immigration and Customs Bureaus, making it a convenient hub for laundering massive amounts of international black money.
How could he possibly not rob them?
Stealing all 1.5 tons of gold—or even if it wasn't 1.5 tons, and only 1 ton, that would still do, barely enough to make do.
As for fencing the goods...
Sigh, he, Li Mouren, participated in the World Athletics Golden League, won two hundred and fifty kilograms of gold, melted it down, and took it out to sell... That's entirely reasonable, right?
If he sold an infinitesimal amount more, nobody could blame student Li for having exceptional athletic performance.
By the way, Boss, shouldn't we really recruit a few more hands?
Li Fazhu had always found it baffling. Since they were going to stir up trouble, of course they needed a sufficient workforce.
Yet Han Zitong, this old ba, spent every day playing Victoria I at Buckingham Palace without recruiting a single legitimate underling, though there were countless little brothers coming to him to ask for advice on foot-washing manuals.
And yet Boss Li Jie didn't have a single complaint about it. Who could make any sense of that?
What's the rush? If you're really that impatient, just go out carrying a banner that says Acting on Behalf of Heaven, and I'll cover the expenses.
...
God-damned lunatic.
Li Fazhu couldn't be bothered to waste words anymore; trying to persuade a boss like this was utterly useless.
The crucial part was that he couldn't beat Li Jie. After Boss Li installed two new mechanical prosthetic limbs on him, he hadn't resisted testing his skills out, only to be brutally beaten by Li Jie bare-handed.
And he had been holding two pistols at the time.
Twenty-four rounds of ammunition, and not a single bullet had even grazed Li Jie.
Driven to autism by the beatings, Li Fazhu had once seriously considered going back to a wheelchair—at least it would make him feel lighter, both mentally and physically, to some degree.
Dammit...
What kind of monster was this!
He sold his life to the Yang family primarily due to ancestral ties, carrying a vibe somewhat similar to the Antenna Trio, except that by Li Fazhu's generation, things had fallen on hard times, reducing him to licking blood off the edge of a blade just to earn enough money for his family.
Li Jie killing thirty-some of his subordinates didn't really matter because he specialized in escorting arms shipments, with crew members changing every single month; there wasn't enough emotional attachment for that—everyone was just trying to earn a living.
But the Yang family directly cut off his wife's special-care hospital ward, and that instantly sent Li Fazhu into a red rage.
Unlike Han Zitong, who currently took the form of a playboy, Li Fazhu was a true romantic, and he only had this one wife.
Boss Li had openly and righteously used the pretext of medical sponsorship to transfer Li Fazhu's wife from the hospital in Weicheng to the Sanjiang Provincial Hospital. Treatments that Li Fazhu could never previously afford could now be taken care of for just twenty million.
Therefore...
Li Fazhu surrendered.
Never mind changing his name to Qian Guipi; he wouldn't even mind changing it to Qian Turtle Shell.
And the reason Li Jie did this wasn't to buy people's loyalty; it was simply to send a clear message to that old geezer Yang Renshou: Your old buddy still has a living witness in my hands.
The leader of the arms-smuggling escort team for the Han family isn't just alive; he's fallen right into my hands.
Are you angry?
Let me ask you, are you angry?
After fishing up a bunch of gobies, I'm seriously at my wit's end. Even though I have no interest in fishing, catching gobies two days in a row is genuinely disgusting. It seems the only thing left to do is stay up late typing chapters to wash away this gloomy mood.