Chapter 817 - 689: Someone Wants to Harm Godfather, Must Kill! (2)

Chapter 817: Chapter 689: Someone Wants to Harm Godfather, Must Kill! (2)

Liu Yi and Song Ping’an moved quickly and silently as they finished placing the last block of explosives, taping it firmly to a load‑bearing pillar in the villa’s living room.

The explosive block looked utterly ordinary, even a bit crude, like some kind of putty mixed with unknown granules and kneaded into shape, but the destructive power inside it was enough to make the palms of the two men who installed it break out in a sweat.

"They’re all stuck in the right spots, yeah? Position, angle, no deviations?"

Liu Yi lowered his voice, repeatedly confirming with Song Ping’an beside him.

Song Ping’an didn’t answer right away. He held his breath, gripping the somewhat crumpled villa construction blueprint in his right hand, lifting the flashlight in his left, the beam sweeping back and forth between the dense red marks on the blueprint and the actual structure of the villa before him.

The blueprint was something they had "borrowed" from Li Hanyu, on which every critical point that needed explosives was clearly marked by a certain "professional"—including load‑bearing walls, main beams, pillars, and other vital spots.

Song Ping’an carefully swept his gaze over the charges on the walls, the ceiling, and under certain floorboards that had been cleverly pried open to create gaps for placement.

These explosive packets were staggered with deliberate elegance, laid out with remarkable method, giving a sense of exquisite mathematical beauty in this chaotic space.

A few seconds later, Song Ping’an finally let out a slow breath, nodded affirmatively, and replied in an equally low voice:

"Relax, we followed the blueprint to the letter. Not a single mistake.

According to him, once it goes off, it’ll blow this villa from foundation to rooftop into nothing but rubble."

To be honest, Liu Yi and Song Ping’an were, at bottom, just two ordinary Prison Guards. When it came to sophisticated, cutting‑edge "professional skills" like demolition, they were completely clueless.

But that didn’t matter—this is how wonderfully strange the world is.

Precisely because they were Prison Guards, finding people with "professional skill sets" was ridiculously easy.

Within the high walls of the Second Prison, you could truly say it was "a den of hidden dragons and crouching tigers," gathering top "professionals" from every line of work across Zone 9.

From lock‑picking and roof‑hopping, to murder and robbery, then on to arson and demolition, document forgery... you name it, they had it. There was nothing you could imagine that you couldn’t find inside.

Moreover, every one of these "experts" had real gold content—their skills had all been "combat‑tested." No need to worry about running into any phony "watered‑down" amateurs.

It was the complete opposite of applying for jobs on the outside. Anyone who managed to get into the Second Prison to "further their studies" had already passed layer upon layer of "rigorous skill certification assessments" from the Patrol Office and the courts. Their criminal record was their best "work experience."

Even better, unlike people outside who can’t help exaggerating and inflating their résumés, these experts in the Second Prison were all excessively "modest" when explaining their own "professional skills."

They did everything they could to underreport and downplay their "professional ability," terrified that the more they said, the longer their "employment contract" would end up being.

Yet even so, many of them still demonstrated jaw‑dropping mastery in their familiar "professional Domains."

Back in the Second Prison, Liu Yi only had to run a quick filter through the special‑skills records in the serious‑offenders database to easily "interview" a genuine "demolition master."

The kind whose level was at least a few floors high.

Yes, in the literal sense of having blown up several floors, creating an extremely "significant" impact on society.

Now they were only asking him to design the demolition of a single detached villa—truly using an ox‑cleaver to slaughter a chicken, a complete waste of talent.

When Liu Yi went to him, he didn’t resort to threats; he merely proposed a plan to help him "earn merit and reduce his sentence," and the expert immediately showed a remarkable degree of cooperation and enthusiasm.

He not only produced a flawless demolition plan in short order, but even marked out clearly the approximate explosive mix, the placement of each charge, and the firing sequence.

Honestly, in the past, given Liu Yi’s temperament and way of doing things, he’d never have spoken so nicely to a prisoner, let alone discuss "earning merit for sentence reduction."

He’d have gone straight in with the stun baton.

But after spending so long at Feng Mu’s side, being influenced day in and day out, Liu Yi had gradually learned Minister Feng’s advanced work philosophy: "Treat people sincerely, persuade with reason, seek mutual benefit and win‑win."

The results spoke for themselves!

The demolition expert’s enthusiasm for the job soared to unprecedented heights. From designing the demolition diagrams and marking the key points, to "hand‑crafting" explosives of sufficient power from limited materials, he practically handled every technical step alone. And he did it with extremely high efficiency in a very short time.

All Liu Yi needed to provide were some seemingly ordinary raw materials and basic chemistry lab equipment.

Including but not limited to large quantities of laundry detergent, toilet cleaner, various Neutralizing Agents, several sturdy flat‑bottomed pans, test tubes, beakers, along with batteries, wires, and simple timers, and so on...

Purchased in the name of the Second Prison, none of this would attract any attention.

"Detonate?" With everything ready, Song Ping’an made one last check.

Liu Yi took a deep breath, setting up the simple detonator that linked all the explosives as he spoke in a low voice:

"Yeah. The sooner it blows, the sooner we can get back to the Second Prison. Such an honorable thing as driving the car for the Minister—leaving that to a newbie like Tian Xiaohai, I still don’t feel safe."

The two exchanged a glance, nodded in tacit agreement, and without further hesitation started moving again, as silent as when they had arrived.

They swiftly gathered up all the tools and traces, then, like two agile civet cats, slipped out through the rear window whose latch they had pried open.

Their figures quickly vanished into the dense ornamental grove, bodies lowered, almost crawling as they moved outward.

They inched carefully all the way to the base of the outer wall of the villa compound, then turned their heads warily to scan in every direction, making sure no one was near or far.

"Go!"

The two pushed off at the same time, scrambling up the wall using both hands and feet. With a flicker of movement, they landed steadily on the ground outside the wall and disappeared at once.

Almost at the very moment they touched down, Li Shang’s left foot stepped into Jade Garden.

A string of rapid, violent, overlapping explosions thundered through the air, and smoke thick with firelight billowed up in a single column.

Li Shang and Chang Erbing behind him, along with several constables from the Patrol Office, were all shaken by the sudden deafening roar, their eardrums buzzing, their faces changing dramatically.

"An explosion?! The special envoy’s villa?"

Li Shang’s heart lurched violently. He jerked his head up to look toward the rising column of smoke—at that location... his pupils tightened sharply!

He didn’t have time to think it through. He let out a roar and sprinted flat‑out toward the site of the blast.

Chang Erbing and the others followed close behind, each with their heart in their throat.

After a wild rush, when Li Shang’s group finally reached the scene, they froze in place as if hit by an immobilization spell.

What met their eyes was a field of rubble and debris belching thick, rolling smoke and a harsh stench.

Broken walls and shattered beams were twisted in piles, shards of glass and some unidentifiable construction fragments had been blasted in every direction, flames were still burning stubbornly, crackling as they ate away.

Amid the rumbling blasts, the villa that had stood there moments ago had collapsed with a roar, becoming nothing but a wasteland of wreckage.

The good news: the building blown up was not the villa where the special envoy was staying.

The bad news: what had been pulverized was the villa directly adjacent to the special envoy’s... another villa.

"This... this..."

Li Shang felt like his brain had been slammed with a heavy hammer, ringing loudly, his thoughts a complete chaotic mess.

He really couldn’t make sense of it.

If this were the killer making a return visit, blowing up the special envoy’s villa to destroy carelessly left‑behind clues once and for all, that he could understand.

Even if the target had been Li Hanyu’s villa—given Member of Parliament Wang Xinfa’s current situation, someone might want to kick him while he’s down or stir up even greater chaos—that line of thinking he could just barely follow.

But why blow up the villa between those two?!!

The Patrol Office had done a basic inspection of this villa as well. There wasn’t even anyone living in it yet; the interior wasn’t fully renovated, it was basically an empty shell.

What was the point in blowing it up?

Was this bomber the same person as the one next door?

Or was it...