Chapter 5

The night wind was cold and grim, carrying that distinctly Mexican smell of dryness and decay.

Daniel walked behind Casare, his eyes locked onto the back of the man's head. There was a patch of completely unguarded flesh there.

Just half a step forward, a sharp elbow strike to the cervical spine, or simply pulling out a knife and stabbing it in—this guy would become a warm corpse without making a sound. Daniel could even feel his fingers starting to heat up slightly, the urge to kill crawling through his heart like a venomous snake.

Casare, walking ahead, suddenly shivered. He instinctively hunched his neck, feeling as if something sharp was pressed against the back of his head, his scalp tingling. It was the instinct of being targeted by a fierce predator.

He whipped around.

Daniel had his hands in his pockets, expressionless, his eyes calm as stagnant water.

"What's wrong?" Daniel asked flatly.

"N-nothing, probably just the wind." Casare swallowed hard, forcing down the panic in his chest, turned back around and continued walking quickly forward.

Daniel sneered inwardly and quietly reined in his killing intent. After all, they were almost at the prison gates, where searchlight beams swept by from time to time, and the guards in the watchtowers had a clear view. Besides, murdering a colleague who had all kinds of connections with local crime families—acting now would bring far more risk than reward.

The two said a brief goodbye at the dormitory building.

Daniel pushed open his shabby wooden door, walked in, and closed it behind him. But he didn't lock it—instead, he left a narrow crack.

He pressed himself against the door, peering out through the gap with one cold eye. Only after watching Casare's figure disappear at the end of the corridor and hearing the dull sound of a door closing did he finally "click" the door completely shut and locked.

The fifteen-square-meter room reeked of mold and sewage. Spider webs filled the corners, and aside from a creaky iron-frame bed, a broken wooden table, and a cramped bathroom, there was nothing else.

This was the treatment for bottom-tier police in Mexico—worse than a decent dog would get.

Daniel walked straight into the bathroom and turned on the rusty faucet. Cold water washed over his hands as he looked up at himself in the mirror.

The man in the mirror had a stern face, but his eyes were bloodshot, radiating an almost tangible violence. Like a thug who'd just killed his way through the streets and hadn't yet shed his animal nature.

He pulled out a cigarette from his pocket, stuck it in his mouth, and lit it. After a deep drag, he raised his hand holding the cigarette and, almost nervously, lightly tapped the "him" in the mirror.

"Nice work," he mouthed silently at the mirror.

Hodges Beld was dead. The boulder that had been pressing on his chest, threatening his life at any moment, had finally shattered. Daniel exhaled a long stream of smoke, his taut nerves completely relaxing in that moment. The days of walking on thin ice were finally over. In this man-eating prison, those malicious eyes ready to kick him when he was down would surely back off because of Hodges's death.

But he knew this was just the beginning.

Daniel lay down on the bed, staring at the mold stains on the ceiling, but his mind was spinning like precision gears.

Who was the next target?

The warden, Webster Ashburn.

But this old fox couldn't be dealt with as simply and brutally as Hodges. The warden's web of interests ran too deep, with powerful forces behind him intertwined like roots. To move against him required airtight leverage. As for retaliation from the Beld family? Daniel sneered. Chihuahua City was a million miles from Mexico City—by the time those drug lords figured it out, he'd be long gone.

To climb up within Mexico's system, he needed to hold two things: power and money.

The former required the latter to pave the way. To keep his official record "clean," he had to work behind the scenes, letting others do the dirty work—and that required massive amounts of money for bribes.

Where would the first pot of gold come from?

Drug trafficking? Too much competition, and once you touched it, it became an indelible political stain. Kidnapping? Only brainless idiots did that—low profit and easy to get messy. Human trafficking? You couldn't pull it off without a massive network.

In this world, the most profitable industries were always the same few: finance, internet, arms, drugs, smuggling.

Given the current environment, Daniel's eyes gradually lit up. Mexican gangs and drug dealers were fighting every day, and their weapon consumption was astronomical. And his trump card was precisely that "arsenal" where he could exchange points for weapons.

He immediately called up the interface in his mind.

Point balance: 2,160 points.

(300 points from killing Hodges, 900 from Mill, minus the previous grenade exchange—not a penny off.)

Daniel pulled up the weapons exchange list, his eyes quickly scanning it.

Type 1 defensive grenades... Carl Gustaf submachine gun... CZ-25 submachine gun... AK-74 assault rifle.

His mental calculator was working fast. The best value was the AK-74. With 2,160 points, he could exchange for 14 of them. On the black market, a brand-new AK with magazines could easily sell for two hundred dollars.

Fourteen guns—that's $2,800!

That money was equivalent to two years of his dead-end prison guard salary!

Daniel's breathing grew heavier, but he quickly forced himself to calm down. Arms weren't potatoes—you couldn't just sell them to anyone. He needed a "cover," a tiger's skin to use as a banner.

In Cell Block Three, he needed to find a suitable "backer" to front for him.

The plan gradually took shape in his mind. Daniel tossed and turned in bed, intense excitement and urgency intertwined, until dawn when he finally managed to catch some light sleep.

...

The next morning, prison cafeteria.

Besides the sour smell of cheap mashed potatoes, the air was filled with a strange restlessness.

"Did you hear? Hodges died last night, died at the night market!" A prison guard lowered his voice, winking at his tablemates.

"I heard. His body was separated from his head! They say his and Mill's bodies were carried overnight to Sinaloa Cartel territory, and when Boss Guzmán saw them, he threw out 150,000 pesos on the spot to buy the silence."

"150,000 pesos? That's over 70,000 US dollars! That son of a bitch Hodges died worth something at least." Someone mocked sarcastically.

Casare sat at a corner table, gripping his fork but unable to eat a bite. He listened to the whispers around him, a layer of cold sweat forming on his forehead.

Hodges was dead? Last night?

Casare's mind instantly flashed back to that moment last night when the back of his head went numb, and Daniel's terrifyingly calm face. He'd already been suspicious of Daniel's whereabouts yesterday, and now that suspicion felt like a hand choking his throat.

Suddenly, a hand slapped heavily on his shoulder.

"Smack!"

Casare jumped, nearly bouncing out of his chair. The fork clattered onto his plate.

"Good morning, buddy."

Daniel was somehow standing behind him, a casual smile on his lips. He smoothly pulled out a chair and sat down, unceremoniously picking up a piece of boiled potato with skin from Casare's plate, popping it in his mouth and chewing with relish.

Everything seemed so natural, as if the man radiating killing intent last night didn't exist at all.

Casare stared hard at Daniel, his Adam's apple rolling with difficulty, his voice somewhat dry: "Daniel... Hodges is dead. Died at the market last night."

"Oh?" Daniel's chewing paused for half a second, and he raised an eyebrow. "That's too bad. But God bless him."

His tone was as flat as if discussing the weather.

Daniel pulled out a napkin and wiped his hands, his eyes lifting slightly to look at Casare: "Listen, Casare. Paying too much attention to how a dead person died is disrespectful to the deceased and torture for the living. Understand?"

Casare didn't respond. He glanced around, making sure no one nearby was paying attention, then suddenly leaned forward, getting close to Daniel's face.

His breathing was rapid, his lowered voice carrying barely suppressed panic and accusation:

"Daniel, tell me the truth... Hodges's death—it really has nothing to do with you, does it?"

Daniel looked at Casare, so close to him.

The casual smile on his lips slowly, bit by bit, faded away until it disappeared completely. In those pitch-black eyes, there was a deathly stillness that chilled Casare to the bone.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Or rather, what answer do you want to hear?"