Descent of the Demon Master-Chapter 1325. On Standby (5)

Lee Hyeon-Su curiously asked, “This diner doesn’t look like a tourist haunt, though?”

“And that’s what makes it a genuine gourmet’s paradise,” the NIS agent replied.

“Are you saying the food here is delicious?”

“Nope. The food here actually sucks ass.”

“...”

A vein subtly bulged on Lee Hyeon-Su’s forehead.

No matter how he looked, the person sitting across the table from him was a local. Yet fluent Korean came out of such a person’s mouth!

“Then why did you bring us here?”

“Eiii~, it seems my guests can’t seem to figure out the situation yet. We didn’t come here to enjoy food, now did we? We’re here because it’s out of the way and quiet enough for us to talk.”

The agent had a point. This shabby diner didn’t have any customers, but it still had private rooms. There shouldn’t be a better place than this one in the vicinity for a secretive meeting.

“Also, the owner of the place is hard-of-hearing, so the chances of him eavesdropping are pretty low, too. And he doesn’t know a lick of Korean. We can talk freely here.”

Lee Hyeon-Su cocked an eyebrow. “Sounds like you’ve been here many times before.”

“Yes, sir. It’s the basics of all basics to secure a few places while working the Beijing field office, after all.”

While listening, confusion continued to dominate Lee Hyeon-Su’s expression.

Something about this agent didn’t feel quite right. His appearance differed way too much from the image of a spy in Lee Hyeon-Su’s mind. An agent of NIS, someone who got dispatched to China no less, should be one of the top elites in South Korea, but the appearance of this agent was... Well...

“Am I too different from what you’ve imagined?”

“Well... Mm.”

When Lee Hyeon-Su didn’t reply right away, the NIS agent grinned brightly.

“No, it’s fine. Most people react like you, after all. Koreans have this weird idea of intelligence operatives, though. Spies that walk around in trendy black suits and stylish trench coats? Wearing sunglasses and carrying around briefcases?”

“...”

“Such an eye-catching get-up makes no sense, you know? It’s not like I’m James Bond or something, anyway. Folks in movies can dress up like that because they can shoot their way out of tricky situations. But not me. I’ll die if I get stuck in a tricky situation. Hence my current appearance.”

The agent smirked triumphantly, displaying his yellowed teeth.

Lee Hyeon-Su blinked his eyes. “Hang on... Then, what about your teeth?”

“Oh, this? Yes, I had them dyed yellow.”

“...”

That was when Lee Hyeon-Su grew desperately curious about something. He had to wonder if his question would be seen as rude, though. In the end, however, he failed to win against his curiosity and decided to find out.

“By any chance, are you married?”

“...!”

The NIS agent clamped his mouth shut, his head slowly faltering.

Lee Hyeon-Su urgently squeezed his own thigh painfully. “T-then, how... uh, old are you?”

“I’m forty this year.”

Even if missions assigned by the country were important, to think one would have to get something akin to plastic surgery and even dye their teeth, all in an effort to look older than they really were...!

As it turned out, the life of a secret agent hiding in a foreign country was far worse than what Lee Hyeon-Su had imagined!

“Hold on, hold on! Why do you have to go this far?!”

“Trust me, you’ll do anything in order to survive. Besides, I had to do it.”

“Why? You could’ve said no, that you’re not willing to do all this. It’s not like they’ll kill you for saying no in this day and age.”

“If I don’t do it, someone else will.”

“...”

What the NIS agent said off-handedly stabbed directly into Lee Hyeon-Su’s chest. No other words could have shaken him up at this very moment.

“Besides...”

The NIS agent arched his index finger and joined it with his thumb to create a circle.

“I get paid a lot, you see?”

“...”

“I can always fix my looks again later. As for my teeth, yank them out and put in implants. That will be all. As long as I can go back home in one piece, I’ll become rich, mister. And then, I won’t go anywhere near NIS for the rest of my freaking life.”

As it turned out, this agent was surprisingly pragmatic. Lee Hyeon-Su scowled while thinking, Gimme back the awe I felt just now!

“Okay, so...” Kang Jin-Ho finally butted in to stop the two men’s banter. “What are you supposed to tell us?”

The agent’s expression instantly transformed into something much more serious. “The target has entered the country via Beijing’s airport.”

Lee Hyeon-Su narrowed his eyes to slits. “Hang on? Are you saying the target has enough influence to enter the country so openly and brazenly? And that the North Korean regime can’t even stop him?”

“The regime can’t touch him because the invitation has come from China itself, at least on the surface. I’m sure the folks in the North must be racking their brains right about now. They don’t have the confidence of winning even if they attack. And they know they can’t handle the aftermath even if they win.”

“That’s why getting rid of him in another country is the best?”

“Saying it’s the best is a stretch, wouldn’t you say? It’s the only way,” said the agent with a helpless shrug. “The target is accompanied by around twenty people. And thirty more have joined the entourage at the airport. However, we don’t know the exact number as they are guarding the target from some distance away, too.

“We’re sure about the first twenty, but the other thirty... Let’s just say we can’t tell you how many more will join the party as time goes on.”

There would be more than thirty additional guards...?

“And they say crazy things happen often in China, too,” Lee Hyeon-Su muttered quietly.

Assigning over fifty guards to a person moving around in Beijing was no mean feat. Especially more so when considering each and every one of those guards was a walking, talking killing machine disguised as a human being!

“How many of them are martial artists?”

“We have no way of finding that out,” the agent replied with a rueful sigh. “We don’t know how much they know. If they know about the Martial Assembly’s involvement, then we can safely assume that most of the guards will be martial artists. If not, that assumption will have to change.”

“In other words, we don’t have a choice but to confirm with our own eyes,” said Lee Hyeon-Su with a casual shrug.

Kang Jin-Ho cocked an eyebrow. “Really? Are you going to do that?”

“No, sir. You will. I won’t be able to tell anything, after all.”

The eyes of Kang Jin-Ho and the NIS agent narrowed to slits. However, Lee Hyeon-Su remained unfazed, and he sat up tall in his chair.

“It’s not my fault that I’m weak, sir.”

“...”

A groan automatically escaped Kang Jin-Ho’s lips.

The NIS agent shook his head. “In any case... That’s the current situation. The target arrived this morning and moved to his hotel. Of course, we can’t say for sure if that will be where he’ll stay for the duration of his visit. All the high-ranking North Korean officials visiting China change their lodging every day, after all.

“Some choose to hide within the safe houses managed by the Chinese government, while others brazenly switch between hotels near large roads. For now, the target seems to have chosen the latter option, but no one knows when he’ll switch. Maybe we should move as quickly as possible to...”

Kang Jin-Ho abruptly muttered, “It’ll be better for us if the target hides in a safe house, though?”

Lee Hyeon-Su nodded along. “Yes, for sure.”

The agent grew stupefied before quickly recovering and alternating his gaze between the two men.

“It sounds like you don’t understand what that means, gentlemen. The target will be hiding in a safe house operated by the Chinese Communist Party. In other words, its security will be watertight! Civilians can’t even go anywhere near it.”

“Isn’t that why it’s better for us?”

“Huh?”

Lee Hyeon-Su shrugged casually as if he couldn’t understand the NIS agent’s fluster. “You said it yourself. Civilians can’t go near such a place.”

“Yes, that I did.”

“Doesn’t that mean we don’t have to worry about eyewitnesses now? We’re more scared of ordinary folks spotting us, rather than cops or soldiers, so...”

“...”

That was when the agent realized there was an unbreachable wall standing between martial artists and ordinary people like him. That was because he couldn’t understand this type of mindset.

“There is also the possibility of the target staying put in one hotel,” said the agent.

“Hmm...”

Kang Jin-Ho leisurely pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, only to freeze up.

The agent shook his head. “It’s fine to smoke in here, sir. We’re in China, after all.”

Well, at least that was one nice thing about this country. Kang Jin-Ho mouthed a cigarette, prompting Lee Hyeon-Su to light it up with the speed of a lightning bolt. After dragging in a deep puff, Kang Jin-Ho leisurely exhaled the smoke.

The agent continued with his briefing. “The target is staying in the Prime Millennium Luxury Beijing.”

Kang Jin-Ho frowned slightly. “Prime... what?”

“The Prime Millennium Luxury Beijing.”

“...”

“The naming sense of hotels in China can get a bit cringe like that. Well, it sounds rather expensive on first listen, doesn’t it?”

Nope, Kang Jin-Ho couldn’t tell. Even though he thought he was familiar with how the Chinese people thought and acted, things weren’t as conspicuous in the ancient...

No, hold on. Things were conspicuously over the top back then, too.

For instance, the imperial palace. Going overboard at every chance it had was a given for the imperial court. It’d never try to be inconspicuous. Didn’t it slather its interior, including the bathrooms, in gold back then?

The agent grew a little tense. “I’ll be honest, I’m just a grunt who follows orders from the above. Even then, I gotta tell ya, assassinating the target is impossible in the current set-up unless we’re sniping him from afar. Someone capable of breaking through such a security detail to get to the target should be capable of taking out any target in the world.”

Kang Jin-Ho silently listened while puffing away at his cigarette. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

“And that’s why we’re planning to target him while he’s in transit. The security detail’s focus should be scattered while the target is on the move, after all. So, we must hit while...”

“No can do,” Lee Hyeon-Su abruptly cut the agent off. “It’s impossible to create a scene of the target dying of natural causes while he’s moving. Dying from a car accident is meaningless. Imagine what would happen if the party responsible for causing the fatal crash disappears from the scene. Who would look at that and think the death was accidental?”

“But, realistically speaking...!”

“Realistic, you say...?” Lee Hyeon-Su grinned brightly. “It’ll be fine. Our side can be rather fantastical at times, you see?”

Kang Jin-Ho sighed at Lee Hyeon-Su. “Don’t boast like you’ll be the one doing this.”

“Let me enjoy this moment, sir. Please! If it’s not now, when will I get another chance to show off!”

The agent stared at the two men before his eyes in pure flabbergast. Were these men not nervous at all? It was as if Kang Jin-Ho and Lee Hyeon-Su had no awareness of the monumental challenge waiting for them.

That had to be it, otherwise how could they be this relaxed?

The agent cautiously asked, “What will you do?”

Kang Jin-Ho sucked in a deep puff of his cigarette before lazily asking a rhetorical question. “So. The condition was to make it look like death from a natural cause, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.”

Kang Jin-Ho shifted his gaze to the agent. “When should we start?”

“...”

The agent gave up on figuring out these two men. Now that he thought about it, wasn’t there a clause in his order that said, “Let them do what they want, but do not force our opinion down their throats!”

“If we are to pinpoint the best timing, it should be in two days. People’s vigilance tends to go up right after their arrival. And they would become vigilant once more as the departure date looms closer. In two days, the target should have concluded his meeting with the members of the Politburo Standing Committee. Which means he’s more likely to lower his guard.”

“Two days from now...?”

Kang Jin-Ho contemplatively nodded.

“If you’re not sure, we’ll secure a safe escape route. To prevent any information leak, we’ll only inform you of the route one hour before the operation commences.”

“If it comes to that,” Kang Jin-Ho replied with a smirk. “For now, I got it. Your job is to figure out where the target will be in two days.”

“Sir... May I offer a piece of advice?”

Kang Jin-Ho stared at the agent in silence, prompting the latter to gulp his saliva nervously.

“I might sound like an idiot who doesn’t know his place, but... Please do not take this situation lightly. China’s strength is unimaginably vast, sir. Especially in this field, it’s not an exaggeration to say China is the number one in the world. The high-ranking officers of the Party have been in constant warfare against the threat of assassinations, after all. When it comes to protecting their target, no other country is as meticulous as China.”

“...”

“You must assume the worst during this mission, sir. Please don’t forget that it’s not just our lives, but the fate of our country hangs in the balance. If anything goes wrong...!”

Kang Jin-Ho replied disinterestedly. “I didn’t know the success or failure of this mission depended on my resolve.”

“...”

“No need to fret. We’ll perfectly handle this mission.”

Kang Jin-Ho got up as if he had said everything he wanted to say.

Lee Hyeon-Su also got up and smiled brightly at the NIS agent. “Thanks for worrying about us, but it seems you lack the qualities of a good intelligence operative.”

Just before the NIS agent could argue back, Lee Hyeon-Su pushed him down with his follow-up.

“Analyzing your opponent is only half the job done. To become an even better operative, you should also learn how to analyze your ally’s strength. What you said just now was incredibly insolent, after all.”

Despite the smile on his face, Lee Hyeon-Su’s glare was indescribably icy.

The agent was nearly crushed by that glare and couldn’t even squeak out a word.

Lee Hyeon-Su glanced at the table. “You’re working so hard in a foreign country, so at the very least, you should eat to your heart’s content, no? Please, enjoy all the beef noodles we’ve ordered.”

That was when Kang Jin-Ho visibly flinched.

“...?” Lee Hyeon-Su dazedly stared at his boss. “Sir... Were you thinking of eating the noodles, as well?”

“...”

“Do you want us to stay?”

“...”

The Chinese food he hadn’t had in a while surprisingly tasted good to Kang Jin-Ho’s palate for some reason today.