Capture

After successfully completing his mission, Li Jinglan was reporting on the company's situation to Li Qingye.

"Thanks for all your hard work, Jinglan. It'd be too much trouble for you to go back to Hong Kong for the New Year. Why not bring your family here and spend the holiday traveling around Luzon? The company will cover the expenses."

Li Jinglan considered the suggestion, then agreed.

Li Qingye turned to Chen Jianxiong, Fang Xin Cheng, Kang Nan, and the others. "The same goes for everyone else. If your family lives overseas, bring them here for the New Year. If they're in the country, you'll get a bigger bonus."

"Thank you, boss!"

They were naturally delighted to hear about the bonuses.

After the annual meeting ended,

Chen Jianxiong gave him a private report on the various gangs in Luzon. Judging by the huge stack of documents, he had clearly put in a great deal of effort.

After commending him, Li Qingye sent Chen Jianxiong off to bring his family over.

The next day, around noon,

Li Qingye went with more than a dozen bodyguards, Kang Nan, and several employees who knew how to operate forklifts to a warehouse in Zone D of the Research Base.

Ten large cabinets stood inside the warehouse. Each was two meters long, one meter wide, and one meter high, and each had a combination lock as well as a mechanical lock.

He calmly instructed Kang Nan, "Take these cabinets to Warehouse No. 3 at Darte Port. They're for transporting lab animals, so be careful."

"Understood." Kang Nan had no suspicions.

After all, the company had a bright future. At least until another company developed low-cost artificial eel fry, the Homo sapiens Company would be making a fortune.

As one of Darte Port's biggest taxpayers, Li Jinglan would be representing the company in calling on local officials and making the necessary arrangements over the New Year.

At a time like this, the local authorities certainly wouldn't go looking for trouble.

After all, this was a tech company, not a mining operation or an agricultural processing business. If the Homo sapiens Company got angry, the two sides could simply part ways. That would be a huge loss for Darte Port.

Before long, Kang Nan and his men had safely delivered the ten large cabinets to Warehouse No. 3 at Darte Port.

Li Qingye, who had come along, gave the bodyguards a week off, then stayed at the office building in Darte Port.

Once everything was ready,

under cover of night, he grabbed his backpack, climbed into a small truck, and drove toward a town west of Darte Port.

About three hours later, he reached the town.

It was an ordinary town where agriculture was the main industry. The roads were full of potholes, and the locals mainly grew bananas and mangosteens.

He parked in front of an inn and rented a room.

He rested for the night.

The next morning, he left the inn with his backpack and used hacking techniques to pinpoint his target's phone.

He went to a small hill, pulled on a camouflage cloak, and watched a nearby plantation through binoculars.

The targets were the remnants of a small gang. There were only seven of them, and they had been hiding here for more than half a year. If they hadn't succumbed to greed and secretly looked for customers online, Li Qingye would never have set his sights on them.

Drug dealers like these were perfect candidates for soldier experiments. They were scum who deserved to die, so Li Qingye felt no guilt about using them.

Watching through the binoculars, he saw all seven targets inside the plantation.

He took out a small box and opened the lid. Inside was a row of plastic compartments, each holding a frozen block. He took out five of the blocks, then quickly shut the box.

The blocks melted quickly. Each contained ten mosquitoes, and before long, the mosquitoes had awakened from their frozen state.

The mosquitoes circled Li Qingye once. As if sensing an unpleasant scent, they quickly flew off toward the plantation's few one-story houses.

A little over ten minutes later,

he picked up an infrared camera and watched the buildings. Through gaps around some of the doors and windows, he saw that someone was already lying on the floor inside.

But Li Qingye didn't act recklessly. The poison mosquitoes had their limitations. If the target was asleep and under a mosquito net, he might not have been bitten.

To make absolutely sure, he released another batch of poison mosquitoes.

At the same time, he threw several Glass Bottles over.

The Glass Bottles smashed against the stone and cement walls with a distinctly loud crash, but the houses across the plantation remained silent.

Now he was fairly certain. Li Qingye quickly left the hill, returned to the inn, and drove off in the small truck.

He drove straight to the plantation entrance, used an oxyacetylene torch to cut through the Iron Door, then opened the gate and drove inside.

A man was lying in the little gatehouse, with several dead mosquitoes still visible on his body.

He tied the man up, then injected him with a specially prepared anesthetic to ensure he wouldn't wake for twelve hours.

Soon he had captured the other six people in the plantation, giving each of them an additional dose of anesthetic.

He gathered up the dead mosquitoes, destroyed the drug-making equipment and raw materials, then drove away.

To deal with these men, Li Qingye had specially bred a kind of mosquito called [Gu Insect—Coma Poison Mosquito].

These mosquitoes were still immature. They attacked every human nearby indiscriminately, then died soon afterward. Li Qingye could avoid their attacks because he had sprayed himself with cilantro extract.

He had inserted a gene sequence into the mosquitoes' genes that made them hate cilantro, so they naturally stayed away from anything sprayed with cilantro extract.

The mosquitoes could quickly detect the Pheromones of nearby humans, allowing them to target people precisely without attacking other animals.

The design that caused them to die immediately after attacking was meant to prevent them from spreading into the wild.

Although Li Qingye had used Gene Modification to destroy the mosquitoes' ability to reproduce, insects weren't like mammals. They reproduced extremely quickly and mutated with ease.

If genetically modified mosquitoes entered the wild, sterilizing them still wouldn't make it safe.

Brazil had done something similar, releasing genetically modified sterile mosquitoes into the wild in the hope that they would wipe out wild mosquitoes.

At first, the number of wild mosquitoes had indeed dropped sharply. But before long, they began to mutate, and their population quickly recovered.

Clearly, insects that reproduced so quickly could overcome certain genetic defects through relentless natural selection.

To avoid inviting trouble, Li Qingye simply made the poison mosquitoes disposable. After injecting their neurotoxin, they died automatically, reducing the chance of contact with wild mosquitoes.

After capturing the seven targets, Li Qingye quickly drove the small truck back to Darte Port.

He went to Warehouse No. 3.

He sent the two warehouse workers to the office building to fetch something, then cut the internal surveillance feed and swiftly put the seven targets into the large cabinets he had prepared earlier.

The cabinets could secure a person's body and contained Oxygen Tanks, as well as a canister of anesthetic gas that could mix the gas into the oxygen supply, ensuring the people inside wouldn't wake during transport.

Once everything was ready, he contacted Kang Nan and had him bring people over to send seven of the cabinets back to the Research Base.

Everything had been done without a sound. Kang Nan, who was in charge of the transport, thought the cabinets contained lab animals and had no idea there were seven people inside.

On top of that, the seven men had kept a very low profile in town to avoid attention and had no friends or family there. Even if they went missing, it was highly unlikely anyone would report it to the police.