Chapter 3: Grey Work

Chapter 3: Grey Work

Bai Ge was finally discharged from the hospital. As long as he insisted, the hospital couldn’t force him to stay.

He felt perfectly fine, as if there was nothing wrong with his body at all.

It was precisely this state that made him believe he could live for a long time yet. He wanted to make as much money as possible while in this good condition.

In the past, thinking he could earn a million yuan in a short time would have been sheer fantasy.

But now, knowing he had a terminal illness, his mind instead became unnervingly clear, and he became reckless.

Bai Ge loved his sister deeply. If he truly was going to die, he absolutely had to leave her prepared with a sum of money.

To achieve that, he could afford to… lower his bottom line a little…

“Mr. Chen, about that job you mentioned last time…” Bai Ge walked down the street, making a phone call.

The voice on the other end spoke, “Xiao Bai? Didn’t you turn me down?”

“Yeah, I’ve thought it over. I’ll take it,” Bai Ge said.

“Good. I’ll transfer you ten thousand immediately. Same as discussed last time, go to Tongwen Street to get the equipment. Someone will meet you there.” Mr. Chen said bluntly before hanging up.

Bai Ge put away his phone, touched the golden rooster pendant hanging on his neck, stopped hesitating, and resolutely headed for Tongwen Street.

En route, he received the SMS notification: an extra ten thousand yuan had been deposited into his account.

He knew he had already taken that step. He’d taken the money; now he had to get the job done.

Even if this task wasn’t strictly… legal.

Regarding Bai Ge’s profession, charitably speaking, he was a private detective; more bluntly, he did whatever people paid him to do.

Mr. Chen was paying twenty thousand yuan total, ten thousand as a down payment, for Bai Ge to install tiny cameras and wiretaps in a certain wealthy businessman’s home and to… incidentally… retrieve a specific document. It was illegal work, but paid quick.

In the past, he’d obeyed the law. Now… he needed money!

Previously, he’d only taken small jobs: tail someone’s wife, catch them cheating, snap some photos. Or find a person in hiding for a client, or supply information to an employer…

The best jobs, of course, involved cooperating with the police, helping them track down fugitives for a bounty.

But such windfalls were rare. A small city didn’t see many major crimes; when they happened, they were often crimes of passion that the police wrapped up quickly. There weren’t many sophisticated pre-meditated criminals needing outside help.

So when work was truly scarce, Bai Ge had even helped people stir up trouble, lending muscle for pay.

Gradually, he’d degraded from a private detective to a “jack-of-all-trades for hire”, straying far from his original profession.

He’d even taken jobs where high schoolers offered him a few hundred bucks to intimidate someone…

But of course, there were many things he wouldn’t do. His father had been a police captain. Bai Ge himself had studied at the police academy. Though he’d dropped out and never became an officer, he still tried to avoid committing actual crimes—minor violations were about his limit.

After his father died in the line of duty, he’d managed to keep his sister studying abroad on survivor benefits, income from renting out a family property, along with money he earned after dropping out.

Yet, breaking his back every month, he barely scraped together twenty thousand yuan at best; sometimes less than ten. He could get by personally, but his sister’s tuition and living expenses were the real problem.

Private detective work just wasn’t a highly lucrative profession.

But he was stuck. His expertise lay entirely in criminal investigation, the skills to catch criminals. If he couldn’t be a cop, what else could he do?

Fortunately, he had no competition in this line of work within the third-tier city; otherwise, he’d earn even less.

Now, with that enormous shadow in his brain, Bai Ge maintained a cool exterior, but internally felt a pressing urgency. He desperately needed to make money—fast money.

Trespassing and installing surveillance equipment was merely illegal. But taking a critical business document was a crime.

The specifics, and the potential prison sentence, depended on the extent of financial damage his actions caused.

Bai Ge was fully aware of this.

He was motivated solely by the fact that the payment for this one job equaled his entire previous month’s income!

He no longer had the luxury of time to earn money slowly.

…

Tongwen Street was a hodgepodge collection of shops in Xiangfan City, where you could buy all kinds of odds and ends, including pinhole cameras.

At a specialized electronics store, Bai Ge picked up a package of gear and left.

This shop, owned by a friend of Mr. Chen’s, had everything ready for him. The rest was his responsibility.

Bai Ge first bought two braised pork knuckles from a street vendor, then hailed a taxi straight to the city’s Huangjia Garden.

The property values here were sky-high, the security impeccable, inhabited only by the wealthy and influential. Outsiders like Bai Ge generally couldn’t get in.

But that didn’t matter… because Mr. Chen lived here too!

Mr. Chen had already alerted the guards. Bai Ge merely signed in and entered.

Officially, he was visiting Mr. Chen. But in reality, as he passed beneath a security camera, he abruptly pivoted, stepped onto a flower bed, and, seizing a moment when no one was looking, darted towards a different villa.

He knew the camera’s field of view intimately; just a glance at its model and height told him exactly where to walk to stay out of sight.

After more than half a year as a private detective, places like Huangjia Garden weren’t new to him. He was acutely aware of every vulnerability in the community’s security setup.

He also had the target details for this mission memorized. Though he hadn’t initially planned to accept the job, that didn’t mean he hadn’t conducted his own investigation.

Sometimes, he proactively sought work. If he unearthed something interesting through stealthy inquiries, he might approach these tycoons directly, presenting himself and turning them into clients.

Mr. Chen was just one such client Bai Ge had developed, a long-term employer who knew Bai Ge’s capabilities well. Hence why Mr. Chen dared to assign him such shady tasks.

Now, Bai Ge moved with practiced ease, navigating through surveillance blind spots imperceptible to ordinary people, arriving beside the perimeter wall of his target villa.

He couldn’t use the front door — electronic eyes guarded it.

He silenced his phone and checked the time: 5:20 PM.

“If Hu Hanlong isn’t home, he usually doesn’t return before ten in the evening. His wife typically gets back around six. That gives me forty minutes.”

Bai Ge scanned his surroundings, then with a sudden leap, scaled the wall effortlessly in a few swift moves.

The villa’s perimeter wall was purely decorative; even an average person could climb over. But Bai Ge’s movements were cleaner, leaving not even a footprint on the wall’s surface.

He was already wearing gloves. As soon as he entered the villa courtyard, his eyes shot towards a dog kennel.

Beside the garage sat a large kennel housing a dark, vicious dog.

The waist-high beast bolted upright upon hearing Bai Ge’s intrusion and lunged directly at him.

“Grrrowl! Woof! Woof!”

Ferocious barking erupted. The snarling dog, clearly some kind of Tibetan Mastiff mix though not purebred, charged with such vicious intent it would have paralyzed a normal person with fright.

Bai Ge was prepared. Calmly, he pulled out the braised pork knuckles he’d bought earlier and tossed them.

After all, it was a pet. Hu Hanlong, the wealthy businessman, hadn’t actively trained its wild instincts. Tempted by Bai Ge’s offering, the dog stopped barking, sniffed the large piece of meat, then grabbed it, drooling, and scurried back into its kennel.

“Hah.”

Ignoring the dog, Bai Ge skirted the front cameras, scaling the side wall to reach a second-floor window.

Most windows of the villa were open; he avoided the need to pick any locks.

Timing it perfectly, Bai Ge slipped inside just as an oblivious patrol guard rounded a corner.

Residents of such high-end neighborhoods, especially those who kept a vicious dog in the yard, didn’t maintain a constant state of high vigilance. More importantly, the house was occupied.

Today was exceptionally nice, so opening windows for fresh air was normal. Seizing this advantage — calculated effort against unsuspecting complacency — Bai Ge bypassed the main security effort entirely and entered.

Glancing into the living room, he saw a maid lounging on the sofa watching TV like she owned the place.

Bai Ge smirked, not disturbing her. The vicious dog’s earlier outburst hadn’t even drawn her attention; clearly, responsibility wasn’t her forte.

Next came the routine installation of devices. He discreetly placed cameras in every bedroom, the study, and even the bathroom.

Within twenty minutes, he had hidden a total of forty cameras and twelve listening devices throughout the villa.

His placements were masterfully concealed. Bai Ge was confident they wouldn’t be discovered unless the place underwent a top-to-bottom deep clean.

The whole process was utterly silent. The maid in the first-floor living room remained oblivious to the stranger moving about the house, installing surveillance gear.

Even inside the sofa where she lay, he tucked a listening device without a sound.

“The document should be in the study safe.”

Bai Ge rummaged briefly in the study and found the safe as expected. It required both a code and a physical key.

Bai Ge wasn’t deterred. He simply lifted the safe away from the desk corner. He wasn’t going to attempt a violent breach – breaking this non-standard safe was impractical.

Instead, he pulled a box from his messenger bag. Inside was the thermite he’d specifically asked the Tongwen Street shop to prepare.

Thermite could reach nearly 3,000 degrees Celsius instantly. The safe’s back panel was mere cold-rolled steel plate, vulnerable as paper against thermite, melting straight into molten metal.

Bai Ge had conducted numerous tests. He knew the precise small amount needed to melt a hole without fully penetrating the steel and destroying its contents.

He placed a minuscule portion of thermite on the safe’s back, topped it with cotton wool saturated in oxidizer, then struck a magnesium strip. A sharp crack sounded, sparks flew, and intense molten steel bloomed against the metal plate.

Bai Ge, protected by his precautions, remained unscathed.

As the reaction subsided, the small amount prevented full penetration. Seizing the moment, Bai Ge inserted a cold chisel and forcefully jabbed it through the weakened, superheated back plate, punching a small hole.

Carefully widening the opening, he peered inside and stiffened.

“So much money…”

Bai Ge gave a bitter laugh. His initial estimate put it at a minimum of three hundred thousand yuan in cash.

But he steadied himself, focusing solely on the item wrapped in plastic: a legal agreement.

Even now, desperate for money, his bottom line remained “earning” it, not outright theft.

Though taking the agreement still constituted theft, he could justify it to himself as completing the “task”, fulfilling the job he was paid for.

“If I just wanted to take the money, I should become a professional thief, not a hired hand…” he thought. He knew intellectually it made no legal difference; it was merely hypocritical self-justification.

His expression grave, he took a sticky bamboo skewer, carefully rolled the plastic-wrapped agreement around it, and maneuvered it out through the hole.

Upon reading the contents listed on the agreement, cold sweat beaded down Bai Ge’s back.

He knew it was an Equity Holding Agreement, but hadn’t grasped its staggering value.

“Forty percent shareholding in Shanhe Group? That’s worth tens of millions at least! And he just kept it at home?” Bai Ge didn’t fully comprehend the intricacies of secret nominee agreements, but based on criminal law, inflicting this scale of financial damage meant he’d likely face at least seven years in prison if caught.

Superficially, risking jail for twenty grand to steal an item worth tens of millions and giving it to someone else seemed monumentally stupid.

But Bai Ge knew better. Embezzling this document would be suicidal. He wouldn’t stoop that low; it would be a betrayal of his own ethics — unethical as they now were.

“Ha… well, I’m dying anyway…”

“But I absolutely must make enough money to secure my sister’s safety.”