
February 22, 2024
9:00 AM.
After a recent shake-up, Rameses Real Estate was once again in turmoil.
The man, smoking a cigar, walked with a confident stride and swung open the door to the company’s boardroom.
Despite having not slept all night, he felt unusually energized this morning.
His steps were steady and purposeful, each one radiating confidence and decisiveness.
As he looked at the anxious directors waiting for him, he couldn’t help but smile.
His name was Rommel Miguerro, the owner of Magna Paradise Nightclub.
In a sense, he was also the third-in-command of Rameses Real Estate, which, in its earlier days, had been a gang organization. Magna Paradise Nightclub had been Rameses’s main business before it was “legitimized,” and not just anyone could be in charge.
However, due to internal struggles, he had gradually become a nominal third-in-command, spending most of his time at Magna Paradise Nightclub, smoking cigars and living a hedonistic life.
But now, things were different.
The leader had died, and the newly appointed second-in-command was eliminated.
Rommel swiftly took action, securing resources and connections, transforming from a sidelined third-in-command to the true leader of Rameses.
Looking at the uneasy directors, Rommel smiled.
This day had been a long time coming.
...
After a meeting to go over some details of his new role, Rommel sat alone in the boardroom, reflecting on the events of the previous night.
The situation was simple.
A powerful figure had stormed in, taking out the two bodyguards of the second-in-command and forcibly taking him away.
Compared to the complex, drawn-out infighting, this was a direct and efficient strike—almost like a downgrade of power, leaving everyone unsure of who had gang ties anymore.
But it had worked in Rommel’s favor.
As the third-in-command, he had longed to return to the center of power at Rameses, a company worth over 10 billion, with hidden assets to boot.
But the deceased first-in-command had sidelined him, and the newly appointed second-in-command had continued to push him out. In the end, he had been relegated to overseeing Magna Paradise Nightclub, with no role in Rameses’s main real estate operations.
Rommel felt bitterness. After all, he had fought his way up during the gang days and had never accepted being pushed out of the center of power.
He had considered taking drastic measures, but there had never been the right moment.
Until that night.
Bound and helpless, Rommel watched as the second-in-command was taken away by the very woman he had offended.
He knew then that the second-in-command was done for.
No one understood the power of that monstrous woman more than Rommel.
When the heavy wooden table was overturned and narrowly missed him, Rommel saw the woman’s calm, indifferent gaze.
That gaze was the kind one gives to insects.
Rommel had never encountered such a look, but he understood: it was filled with disdain, as if the woman saw herself as superior to everything around her.
And as Rommel had suspected, the second-in-command was indeed dead soon after.
As he was untied and contemplating his next move, Rommel received a call from the second-in-command, who had been killed by that very woman. The woman ordered Rommel to handle the body and aftermath. Without hesitation, he agreed.
If he had refused, he would likely be the next one dead.
Rommel knew this without a doubt.
Yet, he also realized that this was an opportunity.
It was a chance to take control of Rameses while the new power players were still unaware, to quickly consolidate power and resources from the second-in-command and leverage his former position as third-in-command to rise to the top.
He only had to deal with the body and ensure the second-in-command’s death was swept under the rug.
Why not take the opportunity?
In addition, Rommel saw this as a rare chance to build rapport with the woman who had orchestrated everything.
The woman had given him the task of handling the aftermath, perhaps hoping for future cooperation.
Rommel hadn’t been subservient out of weakness. It wasn’t a matter of obsession. But when he saw the charred half-headless corpse of the second-in-command in the car, he realized the true horror of the woman.
The brutality of the death made him shudder.
Rommel didn’t expect to gain anything from the woman, but he hoped to maintain some contact, just in case.
If he didn’t, he felt that his rapid rise could be easily undone, and his life could end just as suddenly.
Thinking about this, Rommel shivered.
He wasn’t exaggerating when he said he felt his life was fragile. He knew the woman could end it at any moment.
After reflecting on the events, he understood just how terrifying the entire world really was.
It wasn’t just the woman's lethal combat skills.
What really unsettled Rommel was that, despite all his surveillance at Magna Paradise Nightclub and its surroundings, he couldn’t find any trace of the woman.
She appeared out of nowhere and vanished without a trace.
There was no evidence, no hint of her presence. It was as if she was a ghost, able to move unseen and unheard.
This level of stealth, combined with her combat skills, marked her as among the world's finest assassins.
Before, Rommel had never believed such people existed outside of movies, but now he was a believer. The movie portrayals, he thought, didn’t even begin to capture the reality.
In the meeting earlier, Rommel had raised the issue of restoring the underground asset management business. He feared that the woman might one day come for him in the night, and he would end up like the second-in-command—decapitated and forgotten.
Just thinking about it made him shiver.
Sitting in the empty boardroom, Rommel felt conflicted.
On one hand, he longed for the woman to contact him, to give him tasks that would secure his position as the leader of Rameses. On the other hand, he feared that his rise to power would be used against him.
Excited yet terrified, Rommel’s emotions were anything but simple.
...
At 11:15 on a quiet noon, soft music played in Zoe’s home.
Zoe was calmly preparing a snake meat dish, carefully tasting it to assess improvements and areas that needed adjustment. She had returned early that morning.
After casually removing her disguise and setting aside the cardboard box she brought back, she leisurely followed her short-term plan.
She had attempted to train her heat vision using snake soup, but it hadn’t worked. Early in the morning, she had accidentally vaporized a man’s head with a minor movement of her heat vision, so it had cooled down by now.
Therefore, she had her cold snake soup for breakfast, followed by a muscle tremor exercise that lasted until exhaustion, continuing for two more hours.
By 11 a.m., she began leisurely cooking again.
She had quickly completed a raid on an organization that was once part of a gang last night and early this morning. It didn’t affect her mood.
To be honest, it felt no more difficult than going downstairs to buy groceries.
Would an ordinary person be deeply affected by a typical grocery run?
Clearly not.
Such things were mundane.
Zoe’s mindset was the same. The raid last night was more like brushing off the dust on her clothes.
There was no need to dwell on it.
With her transparent world perception and her excellent physical strength and speed, she could easily carry out her actions without leaving a trace. No one could find her.
In comparison, Zoe found controlling the gas stove to cook the snake meat dish to be more important and challenging.
The gas valve couldn’t be precisely adjusted, and it was difficult to find the perfect heat level.
This wasn’t due to any flaw in Zoe’s control; it was simply the limitation of the gas valve’s precision.
Zoe felt that these subtle differences in heat impacted the taste of her dishes.
She had documented every detail of her cooking process in her memory palace and could make judgments based on various sample cases.
Moreover, the dishes cooked on the gas stove inevitably had a slight gas taste, which made her consider replacing the cookware.
After some thought, Zoe quickly prepared a snake meat soup, tasted it, and recorded improvement suggestions in her mind. Then, she continued her work.
At 2 p.m., Zoe was about to knock on the door of Benny when she noticed something unusual.
In her perception, Benny was not calmly enjoying his usual artistic routine. Instead, he was on the phone, sounding shocked and confused.
Benny had made several calls that morning and yesterday regarding the changes in a real estate company, but this was the first time he seemed so perplexed.
Benny was using a special phone he had modified. It could alter the voice and had signal tracking functions.
It was clear this phone was for dealing with his grey-area activities, and only people from that world could contact him.
Zoe overheard a conversation between Benny and a source who was informing him that the leader of the real estate company had died suddenly, and they were now resuming operations.
Benny seemed stunned by this news.
His contacts hadn’t even begun to take action, yet the situation had changed.
He asked the source if they knew anything more, but the reply was that there was no concrete evidence—only rumors that the former leader had possibly died suddenly.
In the silence, Benny was lost in thought.
Just then, Zoe’s familiar knock interrupted the quiet. Benny immediately recognized it and opened the door with a smile.
“Zoe, seems like something’s wrong with the real estate company. The old leader’s dead, and I guess I don’t need to continue with the revenge plan…”
But as Benny trailed off, he stared at the cardboard box in Zoe’s hands. It looked familiar.
He looked at the box, then at Zoe’s calm face, then back at the box, and repeated this a few times, trying to confirm something.
Finally, he realized that the box Zoe was holding contained items from the storage business of the real estate company.
In that moment, countless thoughts flooded Benny’s mind.
He couldn’t help but ask, “Did you… last night…”
He wanted to ask if Zoe had raided such a large organization, but it seemed too absurd.
Even without weapons, surely a raid would require dealing with a group of underlings?
But before he could finish, Zoe spoke first.
“Now you can teach me signal modulation and demodulation, right?”
Her expression remained calm, as if filled with a genuine curiosity to learn.
In fact, Zoe was genuinely interested in understanding the electromagnetic waves that moved through her Transparent World.
It wasn’t because she had a voyeuristic desire to spy on the signals, but because the information they carried was nagging at her mind, making her feel uneasy not to investigate further.
When Benny heard this, he understood.
The way Zoe deflected the conversation was not so much a denial as an indirect acknowledgment, signaling that she didn’t want to discuss it further.
Benny couldn’t help but give Zoe a long look, feeling as though he was seeing this seemingly ordinary woman in a new light.
The bond between them was unspoken, and Benny valued that mystery.
As a cautious person who had escaped capture for years, he had long sensed something strange about Zoe.
But just like how Zoe never asked him questions, Benny never probed into her life.
With a soft laugh, Benny finally said, “Well then, let’s get to learning.”
Hoping that she will have interactions with law enforcement sometime soon.
What if Zoe decided to carnapp a Tesla spaceship, accidentally set the GPS to "sun" instead of "moon," and now she's out there arguing with Siri about why it’s so hot?
TFTC
Benny is a true bro
TFTC