Chapter 309: Haa… I’m Finished.

Director Santiago simply could not understand what was happening.

The moment Saho slipped out of Cha Jiham’s arms, the cat immediately raced deeper into the cave and stared at the ground.

Yet Cha Jiham was utterly convinced that Saho had found the gold bars.

Even more incomprehensible was the fact that everyone present, with the sole exceptions of Santiago himself and Defense Minister Fernando, blindly believed the young man’s words.

Unable to ignore it, Director Santiago cautiously asked,

“Leader Cha, did Saho really find the gold bars?”

“I’m not particularly fond of gambling, but if Director Santiago wants to make a bet, I’ll gladly accept.”

“But Saho just ran straight into the cave, didn’t he?”

“When we captured Carlos’s gang, Saho entered this cave three times.”

“Are you saying he noticed where the gold was hidden even back then?”

“I believe the probability is extremely high.”

At that moment, Director Griffin cut into the conversation without hesitation, as though he had something to add.

“Director Santiago, you know the saying, ‘Seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times,’ don’t you?”

“Of course. Team Leader Daniel, let’s check whether there really is gold down there.”

“Yes, understood.”

After answering briefly, Team Leader Daniel gave his subordinates a small nod.

The NBI agents immediately began digging at the spot Saho had indicated with shovels and pickaxes.

We stepped aside and watched them work.

After some time, one of the NBI agents drove his pickaxe hard into the ground.

Clang!

A sharp metallic sound rang out, as though the tip had struck something solid.

Realizing there was something underground, the agents tossed aside their pickaxes and shovels.

They dropped to their knees and began clearing away the dirt and soil with their bare hands.

Not long afterward, Team Leader Daniel shouted excitedly,

“Director, we found a door handle!”

Director Santiago immediately jumped down into the hole the agents had dug.

After carefully examining the handle, he hopped up and came down hard on the same spot.

Boom!

A dull sound echoed beneath his feet, clearly indicating that the space below was hollow.

With complete certainty on his face, he turned to Daniel.

“So there’s a hidden room directly beneath us?”

“That was my thought as well, Director.”

“Phew. Good. Clear away the dirt quickly.”

At Santiago’s order, the NBI agents once again took up their shovels and pickaxes and began removing the layer of soil covering the hatch.

About fifteen minutes passed.

A metal door measuring roughly one meter by one and a half meters was finally revealed.

Team Leader Daniel ordered his subordinates out of the pit, then pulled on the handle.

Grrr!

With a heavy grinding sound, the iron door began to give way.

As though he had been waiting for that exact moment, Director Santiago shone a flashlight through the opening.

“We found it!!”

Director Santiago’s excited shout echoed throughout the cave.

Soon, the NBI agents completely lifted the heavy door aside.

They quickly jumped down into the hidden chamber and began hauling out gold bars.

Watching them, Director Santiago turned toward me and expressed his gratitude.

“If it hadn’t been for Leader Cha, we never would have found the gold Carlos hid.”

“Director Santiago, I wasn’t the one who found the hidden room. Saho did.”

“But it was Leader Cha who suspected Carlos might have hidden the gold inside the cave.”

“Ha-ha-ha. Was it?”

While I laughed awkwardly, NIS Director Om Giyeon unexpectedly joined the conversation.

“Director Santiago, you’re not planning to... stop at mere praise, are you?”

“How could I? I’ll give President Gonzalez a detailed report on everyone’s contribution, including Leader Cha’s.”

“We’re counting on you, Director Santiago.”

As we exchanged warm words, time passed before we knew it. The NBI agents removed all the gold from the hidden chamber and neatly stacked it against one wall of the cave.

Team Leader Daniel approached Director Santiago with his report.

“Director, each bar weighs ten kilograms. We found a total of five hundred.”

“So that’s five tons. How much is all of that worth?”

“I just checked the current global gold price on my phone. It’s around eight hundred eighty thousand dollars per kilogram.”

“So five tons of gold would be worth approximately 4.4 billion dollars.”

To help Director Santiago grasp the scale more quickly, I joined in.

“Wow! That’s an enormous amount of money.”

“Director Santiago, it’s still too early to celebrate.”

“What do you mean?”

“We still have to verify whether the gold is genuine.”

“You’re not saying it could be fake, are you?”

“Anything is possible. It never hurts to be cautious.”

“If Leader Cha says so, then I can hardly argue.”

“Still, verifying the authenticity of the gold bars isn’t the most urgent matter.”

At current prices, the gold bars hidden by Carlos were worth an astonishing 4.4 billion dollars. Because of that, Director Santiago naturally believed that verifying their authenticity should be the top priority.

However, Cha Jiham was hinting that there was something even more urgent.

Catching the implication, Santiago cautiously asked,

“We haven’t even begun interrogating Carlos yet.”

“That’s right! I completely forgot about that bastard.”

“Shall we head back and interrogate him?”

***

“Are you serious?!”

Vice Chairman Chen Zhihui understood perfectly well why Carlos was so furious.

Carlos had been relentlessly pestering him with questions about what he and Vice Chairman Wei Chen had discussed.

Afraid of retaliation if he answered truthfully, Chen Zhihui made up some nonsense on the spot.

“I only told that bastard Wei Chen that the Philippine government was tracking your hidden assets, Mr. Carlos.”

“That wasn’t all you told him.”

Chen Zhihui had no choice but to take drastic measures.

“Fine. If you don’t believe me, then tell me yourself. What could I possibly have told him?”

“Vice Chairman Chen, you understand the situation we’re in.”

Chen Zhihui immediately understood the hidden meaning behind Carlos’s answer.

NBI personnel had installed a surveillance camera in the upper corner of the interrogation room.

That meant they were almost certainly listening to their conversation right now.

That was precisely why Carlos could not speak openly.

Knowing this, Chen Zhihui decided to press the advantage.

“Well... I suppose so. I’ll say it again. I didn’t tell him anything important.”

“Fine, let’s say I believe you. But why haven’t those bastards come back yet?”

Vice Chairman Wei Chen, Director Santiago, and Defense Minister Fernando had left the interrogation room two hours earlier.

They were supposedly holding a meeting to figure out how to make Carlos reveal the location of the gold.

Chen Zhihui had only mentioned that Carlos had been buying gold.

Which meant it should have taken them a great deal of time to locate the actual hiding place.

“I don’t understand it either.”

Clank!

At that moment, the heavy iron door swung open, and Director Santiago and the others entered the interrogation room.

The moment Vice Chairman Chen Zhihui looked at their faces, he felt that something was wrong.

They looked far too relaxed and satisfied.

Could it be... they found where Carlos hid the gold?

While he agonized over the possibility, the newcomers took the empty chairs.

Vice Chairman Wei Chen looked at the frozen Chen Zhihui in puzzlement.

“What are you thinking about?”

There was no way he could tell the truth.

“Nothing. I’m just sitting here.”

“Thanks to the information you gave us, we found the gold...”

“What gold?! What are you talking about?!”

As though genuinely shocked, Carlos rudely interrupted Wei Chen.

Director Santiago stared at Carlos with an irritated expression for a long moment.

Then, without saying a word, he held out his hand behind him.

An NBI agent immediately placed a pistol into his palm.

Pointing the gun at Carlos, Director Santiago said,

“Try remembering what I warned you about.”

“...I’m sorry.”

Carlos answered in a faint, squeaky voice, clearly aware of what he had done wrong.

“I’m glad you understand.”

Pfft!

With that response, Director Santiago fired a bullet into Carlos’s right thigh.

“Ghaaagh!”

Carlos screamed in pain and pressed his cuffed hands against his bleeding thigh.

With a predatory grin on his face, Director Santiago said,

“If I were in a worse mood, that bullet would have gone straight into your stomach.”

“I... I don’t understand...”

Carlos deliberately trailed off, trying to probe Santiago’s intentions.

But Director Santiago was a veteran of intelligence work and intrigue. He was not someone Carlos could fool.

“I’m talking about the gold bars you hid. We found them.”

Carlos decided Director Santiago was bluffing.

At most, only three people knew the location of the hidden room.

Unless one of them talked, finding the gold should have been virtually impossible.

“I didn’t hide any gold.”

“Heh-heh-heh. Is that so?”

Santiago smiled mysteriously and pulled his phone from his pocket.

After starting a video, he shoved the screen right in front of Carlos’s face.

“Are you going to claim this video is fake too?”

At that moment, Carlos’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

The screen clearly showed footage of the cave entrance and neatly stacked piles of gold bars.

Director Santiago really had found his hidden cache.

Haa... I’m finished.

While Carlos groaned inwardly in despair, the video ended.

Santiago looked at his darkened expression with a smirk and continued,

“If Vice Chairman Chen hadn’t given us the decisive clue, we never would have found the gold.”

The instant those words left his mouth, Carlos turned a vicious glare toward Chen Zhihui.

Chen Zhihui, meanwhile, froze in horror.

All he had done was mention to Wei Chen that Carlos had been buying gold!

Yet Director Santiago had made it sound as though Chen Zhihui himself had revealed the hiding place.

If Carlos believed that, his fate was sealed.

Certain death.

“I didn’t know where Mr. Carlos had hidden the gold!”

“Then how did Director Santiago find out about it?”

“How the hell should I know?!”

At that moment, as though he had something to add, Vice Chairman Wei Chen joined the conversation.

“That bastard is telling the truth. All he told us was that you, Carlos, had been buying gold.”

“Then how did you find it?!”

“The important thing is that we found it. How we did it doesn’t matter.”

“......”

Unable to argue with Wei Chen’s reasoning, Carlos fell silent.

Wei Chen gave him a brief glance, then turned toward Chen Zhihui.

“Now, let’s continue our interrupted interrogation.”

“I’ll answer everything I know. Just ask.”

“Hmm. That’s the right attitude. Tell me the password to your laptop.”

“Why do you need it?”

“I want to check what information is stored on your computer.”

Vice Chairman Chen Zhihui knew very well how ruthless Wei Chen was.

Stubborn resistance would bring him nothing but hellish suffering.

Since things had already gone this far, he decided to focus on the one thing that mattered most—staying alive.

“WJSWM...... that’s it.”

Bzzz!

A short while later, Wei Chen’s phone, which was lying on the table, vibrated briefly.

He picked it up, read the text message, then continued questioning Chen Zhihui.

“Good. You didn’t lie. Let’s move on to the other questions.”

“Ask me anything.”

After that, Chen Zhihui obediently answered every question Wei Chen asked.

Wei Chen carefully verified each of his statements.

When he finally reached the end of his list of questions, Wei Chen simply held out his hand behind him.

A Triad member immediately handed him a suppressed pistol.

Sensing something was wrong, Chen Zhihui spoke in a trembling voice.

“P-please spare me!”

“Tsk. What an idiot. Have you ever once left someone alive after they outlived their usefulness?”

Vice Chairman Wei Chen answered coldly and pulled the trigger.

“Ghk!”

Shot directly through the heart, Vice Chairman Chen Zhihui departed this world.