Homo Sapiens

Jing Hu and Wude quickly spent half an hour communicating with their backers before reaching an agreement with Liu Zhifan.

The two sides agreed to a three-way split of the Hongsawaddy market, but Qingye Group would occupy 50% of the territory.

Jing Hu and Wude had no objections. On paper, Qingye Group’s sales territory looked enormous, but it was mostly comprised of places like the Golden Triangle, Old Street, and Kokang—regions that were practically worthless.

Nobody would touch those areas.

After all, selling cola in the Golden Triangle? You’d have to be out of your mind.

Therefore, in the division of territory, all Wude and Jing Hu needed was to secure the core Central River Valley Plain and River Delta Plain. This region was the true prize of Hongsawaddy.

Liu Zhifan signed the contract with a faint smile, thinking to himself, ’You might think you’ve struck gold, but I’m definitely not taking a loss. After all, it doesn’t matter how much money they make. Once their backers fall under Qingye Group’s control, all that money will naturally become ours. For now, I’m just letting them hold it for a while.’

His true objective was to support Yang Mengjiao’s infiltration plan by luring the core members of the rival factions onto his home turf. As long as he could successfully create an opening, the powers behind Wude and Jing Hu would fall right into Qingye Group’s hands.

Seeing how accommodating Liu Zhifan and Qingye Group were, Wude and Jing Hu promised to persuade their backers.

From their perspective, since the other side had already conceded such enormous benefits, there was no reason for a three-way alliance to fail.

After all, when the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo had previously squeezed the market, their backers had joined forces and still only managed to cling to about 20% of the market share.

Before Coca-Cola and Pepsi arrived, drinks from Venus and Shashi had controlled nearly 60% of the market. How could they be expected to just swallow a loss like that?

As for the invitation for their backers to visit Deline Province for a while, they figured it was just a gesture to deepen the relationship between their factions.

Neither of them ever considered the possibility that Qingye Group might make a hostile move. Doing so would mean tearing away all pretenses, and from that point on, it would be a fight to the death. They deemed such a possibility unlikely.

Just as Wude and Jing Hu were hurrying back to Yangon...

...

Meanwhile, another group of people had been in Tuwah Port for over a month.

The Seaview Hotel in Tuwah Port was one of the few high-end hotels in the area.

Inside a private room in the hotel’s Seaview Restaurant, five guests of East Asian descent were having a meal.

The leader, a middle-aged man with slicked-back hair wearing a plain white t-shirt, took a drag from the cigar clenched between his teeth. "HUFF... Ah Fei, is the target still at that manor?"

The young man called Ah Fei, who had long hair and a roguish air about him, nodded. "I’ve been tailing him for over two weeks. The guy is either at that manor or working at the Qingye Group headquarters."

Another man, a hulk standing well over six feet tall, took a bite of his rare steak. "Boss, should we use our Old Street contacts to plant a few hundred pounds of TNT on the road? Even a bulletproof Benz wouldn’t survive that."

Before the slick-haired leader could respond, Ah Fei rolled his eyes.

"You don’t actually think he’s unprotected, do you? The guy has an unusually close relationship with the local warlord. There are three companies of soldiers stationed in the area. Besides, I’ve found security checks around Tuwah Port to be incredibly strict. A few hundred pounds of TNT? You might as well suggest we just level the place with a few hundred rockets."

Another man in glasses, responsible for terrain reconnaissance, added a grim reminder.

"Forget the main roads and sea routes around Tuwah. The local patrols are too frequent. If we’re discovered, we might not make it out of here. As for the mountain trails, we don’t know the lay of the land, and our contacts from Old Street are too far away to help."

The slick-haired leader exhaled another cloud of smoke. "HUFF... Is there any way to work with the local gangs?"

"Heh heh... The biggest gang around here is run by that warlord’s brother-in-law..." the last member of the group, a one-eyed old man, replied with a dry chuckle.

The slick-haired leader fell silent. The place was sealed up tight. He felt like a dog trying to bite a hedgehog—there was simply no way in.

The target himself was extremely cautious, and he had connections on both sides of the law. They were just a team of hired killers, not a regular army. A frontal assault would get them all killed.

...

In a five-story building less than 300 meters from the Seaview Hotel, rows of biological computers were linked via bio-optical fibers. Their screens displayed real-time surveillance footage from every corner of the hotel.

The Tuwah Port intelligence team had long ago blanketed the entire port with surveillance insects and wired monitoring points.

The Seaview Hotel, for instance, was one of the many businesses secretly controlled by Qingye Group.

Most visitors would need a place to stay, making hotels a basic necessity.

And all 3 hotels, 14 inns, and 36 guesthouses in Tuwah Port had been secretly fitted with wired surveillance points.

The pretext for the wiring was a fire department regulation requiring all such businesses to install smoke alarms connected directly to the fire station.

The wiring was done openly, and the so-called sensors did, in fact, function perfectly well as smoke and fire detectors.

Thus, regardless of whether the slick-haired man and his crew chose a hotel, an inn, or even a guesthouse, they could not escape being monitored.

As for off-the-books guesthouses, there were no such unlicensed operations in Tuwah Port. Legitimate owners would report them, and anyone caught operating without a license faced a ten-year prison sentence and forfeiture of their property.

With penalties that severe—comparable to the risks of drug trafficking—and with Tuwah Port’s economy booming, no sane person was willing to take the chance.

In fact, the Internal Affairs Department and the Security Department maintained extremely strict surveillance over all territories under their control.

After all, both Qingye Group and the Homo Sapiens Company possessed a great deal of sensitive technology. As time went on, an increasing number of factions would covet it.

Currently, every city with one of their factories was on high alert. Pervasive surveillance insects, a local fiber-optic intranet, numerous fixed monitoring points, and completely loyal Soldiers and administrators created a formidable defense.

It was a system capable of thwarting infiltration by spies and raids by special forces. Only a large-scale conventional army would pose a threat.

The slick-haired man and his crew had been flagged by an Internal Affairs intelligence team the moment they arrived in Tuwah Port.

They came in on tourist visas with Malaysian identities. Since Tuwah Port was hardly a tourist destination in Hongsawaddy, their cover story was a dead giveaway.

As they ate, their minds heavy with their predicament, Internal Affairs Department personnel moved in swiftly.

They drugged the entire team unconscious and transported them to a nearby island, which served as one of the Hongsawaddy branch’s secret bases.

And would their disappearance attract any attention?

Hardly. Scores of foreigners went missing in Hongsawaddy every day. The local authorities had long since become desensitized to it all. As long as the missing person wasn’t famous, no one would bat an eye.

「Meanwhile.」

Caesar and Frank, having rushed all the way from Atlanta to Southeast Asia, finally landed at Xingdao International Airport before catching a connecting flight to Yangon.

But their arrival would change nothing.

The Coca-Cola Company’s local distributor partners found their hands tied, as the backers of the Venus Company and Shashi Company were also exerting pressure.

They had used the excuse of "normal business competition" when the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo first entered Hongsawaddy, demanding that everyone respect the rules of the free market.

If they dared to pull any stunts against Qingye Group this time, then the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo could just stop selling in Hongsawaddy altogether.

Having a complete falling out over a single beverage market simply wasn’t worth it to the backers of Coca-Cola’s distributors. After all, they had interests in more than just one industry.

Since they had used the same excuse themselves, they could only accept their misfortune now that the tables were turned.

However, just because they couldn’t resort to blatant, underhanded tactics didn’t mean they would simply take this lying down.

For example, they were more than happy to help Caesar and Frank investigate Qingye Group.

However, they had underestimated Qingye Group. The company’s territory was managed like an iron fortress, making it incredibly difficult to infiltrate its core departments.

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