Zhou Quan slowly leaned back in his office chair, his eyes gradually closing as he sank into thought.
On a macro level, drug trafficking involved nothing more than two sides.
A buyer and a seller.
But broken down in greater detail, on a micro level, it involved many stages.
Sourcing, transportation, storage, manufacturing, and so on.
The intelligence Zhou Quan currently possessed—or indeed, everything the entire Police Force knew about this emerging Drug Lord—was extremely scarce and limited.
All they knew was that the drugs newly flowing into Hong Kong Island were heroin, the same kind Wong Po and the Nai Family had sold.
And it was Number Four with a purity of ninety-eight percent, made from the oldest drug of all: opium.
Worldwide, opium essentially came from three regions: the Golden Triangle, the Golden Crescent, and South America.
The Golden Triangle needed little explanation: a triangular region along the borders of Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos.
It was the world's largest drug-producing region, primarily supplying Drug Lords in Asia.
The Golden Crescent lay at the junction of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.
Its drug production was slightly smaller than the Golden Triangle's, and it primarily supplied Europe.
South America's drug production rivaled the Golden Crescent's and primarily supplied the Americas.
Under normal circumstances, the heroin circulating within Hong Kong Island would essentially all have come from the Golden Triangle.
But drug trafficking was, in practice, a form of trade.
As market prices fluctuated, the source of the goods would inevitably change as well.
After all, prices could not be exactly the same in every producing region.
Thus, even now, Zhou Quan could not determine which region the drugs newly flowing into Hong Kong Island had actually come from.
For the moment, he had only roughly established how that Drug Lord conducted