Chapter 264

When the iron gate of No. 27 Zhaokou Road was smashed open by the hydraulic door ram in the hands of the criminal investigators, a pungent stench of the sea surged into the room!

Luo Fei’s stomach churned from the stench, nearly making him vomit.

Outside, thirty meters away, the dock was bathed in bright lights; several container trucks were loading cargo, and the orange-clad workers, upon seeing the police burst in, instantly dropped their wooden crates and scattered in panic.

“Secure all exits!” Luo Fei pressed his radio, and the team advanced in tactical formation.

Xia Xue followed the technical unit across the chaotic floor, her high-intensity flashlight illuminating a pile of pink wigs stacked in the warehouse corner—identical to those worn by the victims in the livestream videos.

“Team Leader Luo!” a forensic technician waved from in front of No. 2 cold storage, “There’s a hidden compartment here!”

Luo Fei rushed over and saw a row of steel shelves concealing an electronic lock; Xia Xue pulled out the metal plaque seized from Mao Wei. The instant the plaque labeled “17” slid into the slot, the wall flipped open, revealing a hidden room of about twenty square meters.

Inside the room, seven computers still ran, their screens cycling through hundreds of surveillance feeds—three of which showed hotel rooms in Southeast Asian style.

“Team Leader Luo, this is live surveillance,” said Chief Wang of the technical unit, fingers flying over the keyboard. Moments later, a backend interface appeared, a map covered in flashing red dots spanning the entire Pacific coast. “They have transit hubs in the Philippines and Cambodia!” Chief Wang stared at Luo Fei in shock.

Xia Xue leaned in to review the surveillance replay and suddenly paused it with the spacebar. The image froze on a cargo hold of a freighter: six iron cages held unconscious girls curled up inside; faint Cantonese dialogue echoed in the background: “...arrive in Da Nang tomorrow morning... pay after inspection...”

“Container number CTNU,” she quickly noted the spray-painted code on the side, “This is a COSCO container—it left port last night.” As Xia Xue turned, she accidentally knocked over a hanging notice board; dozens of shipping manifests fluttered to the floor. The top one, labeled “Frozen Grouper,” bore a prominent stamp: “Jin Hai Foods.”

Suddenly, a screeching brake echoed outside the warehouse.

Through the air vent, Xia Xue saw an unusual signal of flashing lights on the dock—three long, two short. The truck driver being escorted suddenly broke free, pulled a remote from behind his waist, and pressed it.

“Bomb!” she screamed into the radio the instant flames erupted from the chassis of the refrigerated truck.

———

The blast wave shattered every window in the warehouse; Xia Xue was thrown back onto piles of livestreaming equipment. Amid ringing ears, she saw Luo Fei gesturing through the smoke: six minutes left.

“Refrigerant leak!” someone shouted, pointing at the refrigerated truck spewing white mist. Liquid nitrogen at minus thirty degrees mixed with gasoline spread across the floor; the technician’s laptop sparked with electrical arcs.

Xia Xue tore off her gas mask and charged into the fog, her flashlight sweeping over scattered shipping documents. She halted before a toppled filing cabinet—the ship’s logbook, frozen solid to the floor by liquid nitrogen—its latest entry showed it would dock at Kaohsiung Port in fourteen hours.

“Chief Wang!” she hurled the waterproof bag containing the logbook, “Decode page seventeen’s markings immediately!”

Liquid nitrogen had reached her ankles; the cold cracked the soles of her sneakers. Xia Xue groped her way to the refrigerated truck’s cab and found the GPS had been modified—seven overseas coordinates appeared in the navigation history. As she yanked out the storage card from the central control panel, a faint tapping came from the trunk.

“Step back!” The SWAT team smashed the padlock with a demolition axe. As the cold air dissipated, twelve girls huddled inside a custom compartment, their wrists bound with metal bands engraved with rose patterns. One girl with glasses weakly raised her phone—the screen displayed a red countdown: 03:17.

“It’s a self-destruct program!” Chief Wang’s voice crackled over the radio, “Once the tracking chips inside them leave the signal-shielded zone, they’ll...”

Xia Xue had already pulled back the girl’s collar and found a tiny protrusion beneath her collarbone. She wrapped the chip in a magnetic shielding pouch from her first-aid kit—the countdown froze at 00:29. The girl with glasses suddenly grabbed Xia Xue’s wrist and scratched three letters into her palm with her nails: SGP.

“It’s Singapore’s container code,” Xia Xue spun around, “Team Leader Luo! Order customs to intercept every container marked SGP today...”

Another explosion cut her off; a towering column of water erupted from the dock. Two speedboats shot toward the high seas, their hulls painted with vivid crimson roses clearly visible under the searchlights.

———

At 2 a.m., the evidence room of Qinghe Branch was as bright as day. Xia Xue pressed a wound patch over her collarbone injury as the technical unit projected evidence onto a 3D sandbox. The restored logbook floated in midair, seventeen red-starred locations forming a route spanning six countries.

“This is a classic trafficking route for organs,” Luo Fei circled a point in the Strait of Malacca with his laser pointer, “But their stop in Kaohsiung lasts only two hours—enough to...”

“Enough to swap container IDs,” Xia Xue pulled up customs database records, pointing at the dynamic ship map on screen. “The Evergreen 777 now shows a cargo weight twenty tons less than when it departed.”

The technical room door suddenly opened; the rescued girl with glasses stood in the doorway wrapped in a blanket. In her open palm, written in lipstick on her skin, was a formula: CTNU=13°17'0"N 144°47'0"E.

“That’s the real coordinates of that freighter!” an officer from the geospatial unit leapt up. “Latitude 13 degrees 17 minutes north, longitude 144 degrees 47 minutes east—near the U.S. military base on Guam!”

Xia Xue reached for the satellite phone, then paused, turning to look at Luo Fei. The wall clock read 3:17 a.m.; beyond the window, the horizon began to lighten.

“Interpol just sent word,” Luo Fei pushed an encrypted tablet over. “Philippine police intercepted a container in Subic Bay and found this.”

The moment the photo loaded, Xia Xue felt her wound begin to bleed again. Fifty vials labeled “Rose Queen” floated in nutrient solution, each connected to an EEG monitor; above the console, a screen played live footage from the warehouse on Zhaokou Road...