"What did you say?"
Li Mo's roar exploded in the closed conference room. His muscular body bulged with anger, veins popping on his neck, and he strode up to Qin Xiao. The oppressive aura, mixed with the smell of sweat and gunpowder, was overwhelming, and his spittle almost landed on Qin Xiao's face.
"Cancel the operation? Are you kidding me! Our Snow Wolf Squad has been preparing for this mission for three months! We even sacrificed three brothers to get this clue! And you just cancel it with a single word? Who do you think you are!"
"Li Mo! Step back!" Leng Nan's reprimand followed closely behind, but this time, her voice carried an uncontrollable tremor.
The air in the conference room seemed to freeze. Geng Yu and Ling Changning shrank back in their chairs, their hearts pounding in their throats. Their legs trembled uncontrollably as they watched the terrifying killing intent emanating from the soldier named Li Mo. "Brother Xiao... seems to have gone a little too far?"
"Captain! I can't back down!" Li Mo's eyes were bloodshot, and he almost poked Qin Xiao's nose with one finger. "This guy is definitely suspicious! He knows 'Ghost,' he knows the details of our operation, and now he suddenly wants to cancel the arrest! I strongly suspect that he is 'Ghost's' accomplice! He has been using us from the very beginning!"
"Whoosh!"
A slight metallic scraping sound.
It wasn't Li Mo, it was Leng Nan.
She drew the pistol from her waist with such speed that it left only a blur. Without the slightest hesitation, the dark muzzle of the gun was pointed steadily at Qin Xiao's forehead.
"I also want to know why."
Her voice was colder than the metal of a gun barrel, each word seemingly squeezed out from between her teeth. Her hand gripping the gun was as steady as if cast in mid-air, but her beautiful eyes churned with a turbulent storm. Trust, established in an instant, crumbled completely. From heaven to hell, all it took was a single word from Qin Xiao.
"Very good, now that looks like a negotiation."
Qin Xiao's reaction caused everyone's brains to freeze again. His face showed no tension or fear, he didn't even blink. He extended a finger and, with a gentle, deliberate movement, pushed the gun barrel, which was less than five centimeters from his forehead, away by an inch. His composed demeanor made it seem as if he were pushing away not a deadly weapon, but a pesky toy.
"Before I answer your question, you should answer mine first." Qin Xiao's gaze went past the gun barrel and into Leng Nan's eyes. "Captain Leng, what is the ultimate goal of your military, or rather, your grandfather General Leng, in this operation?"
Leng Nan didn't answer, but just stared at him with her cold eyes.
"Is it about capturing 'Ghost'?" Qin Xiao asked himself, answering calmly, "No, capturing people is just a process, a means. Your ultimate goal is to completely eliminate the potential threat to national security posed by the codename 'Ghost.' Am I right?"
Leng Nan's pupils moved almost imperceptibly.
"So, what if I told you I have an even better way?" Qin Xiao's lips curled into a smile. "A method that can not only completely eliminate the threat, but even transform it into our own strength. Are you, or rather, the military behind you, interested in hearing about it?"
Turning a threat into one's own strength?
This thought struck like a thunderbolt, shattering the conventional thinking of Leng Nan and all the members of the Snow Wolf Squad. They were soldiers, their duty to detect, locate, and eliminate threats. As for transforming threats… that was a completely unheard-of field for them.
"What do you mean?" Li Mo was stunned and asked subconsciously.
"The meaning is very simple." Qin Xiao turned around, picked up the whiteboard marker again, and circled the red circle that represented "ghost" that he had drawn earlier with a larger blue circle.
"Capture her, that's the most foolish and worst possible strategy." His voice wasn't loud, but it carried clearly to everyone's ears. "You can't catch someone like 'Ghost.' Even if you're lucky enough to catch her, you can't imprison her. Even if you lock her in the strongest cage, you won't get any valuable information out of her. In the end, all you'll get is another corpse on your list of achievements, and a mystery that will never be solved. And the organization behind her will immediately send out new 'Ghosts,' perhaps codenamed 'Devil,' perhaps 'Rakshasa,' endlessly. Can you kill them all?"
The conference room was deathly silent. Qin Xiao's words were like a cold scalpel, precisely dissecting the facts that none of them wanted to think about, yet which objectively existed.
“The best course of action,” Qin Xiao emphasized the blue circle with the tip of his pen, “is to incorporate them into our ranks.”
"Recruit her?!" Li Mo exclaimed, as if he had heard the biggest joke in the world. "Are you crazy! She's a ruthless killer! Her hands are stained with blood! You want us to recruit her? To let her join us? This is an insult to our fallen comrades!"
"Insult?" Qin Xiao turned and glanced at him, his eyes eerily calm. "Deputy Captain Li, do you think it's better to bring your comrades to justice by letting the murderer be brought to justice, only to have ten new murderers emerge to kill even more innocent people? Or is it better to let her use that knife that once wounded people turn around and cut off all the dark forces behind her, protecting more people, to bring peace to your comrades?"
Li Mo froze. His mouth hung open, but he couldn't utter a single word in rebuttal. He felt that the beliefs he had held onto for over a decade were being shaken to the brink by a logic he had never heard of before.
Leng Nan fell into a long silence. Her hand, which had been gripping the gun, had unconsciously fallen to her side. Qin Xiao's suggestion was insane, audacious, and unconventional. But… she had to admit that his words possessed an irresistible allure.
"How confident are you?" Leng Nan finally spoke, her voice somewhat hoarse.
"I never do anything I'm not sure I can do." Qin Xiao smiled, a smile full of confidence that he was in control of everything.
"How do we do it?" Leng Nan pressed. She needed to know the plan.
“To make a hungry wolf obey, you can’t point a gun at it; you have to give it a piece of meat it can’t refuse.” Qin Xiao’s gaze swept over everyone present. “And now, I’m going to give her the first piece of meat.”
He turned to look at Fang Mengru, who had been quietly sitting in the corner, trying to process everything.
"Sister Mengru."
“Boss, I’m here.” Fang Mengru immediately stepped forward.
What Qin Xiao said next completely petrified everyone in the conference room, including Geng Yu and Ling Changning.
Geng Yu was quietly mouthing to Ling Changning, "What is Brother Xiao doing...?"
“In the name of the ‘Ning Times’ Group,” Qin Xiao’s voice was clear and powerful, “immediately transfer ten million US dollars to an anonymous account at UBS with the code name ‘Ghost’.”
Geng Yu's lips were frozen on his face, and Ling Changning's eyes almost popped out of their sockets.
Fang Mengru's professionalism prevented her from losing her composure on the spot, but she paused noticeably as she pushed up her glasses, her gaze behind the lenses filled with astonishment.
"Purpose..." Qin Xiao's gaze fell back on Leng Nan's bloodless face, and he said, word by word.
"...prepayment of deposit."
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