The Omniscient

Chapter 46: Dogs Tearing at Each Other

Cao Jing’s back was soaked in sweat, his face drained of all color.

“Who... who the f*** said that?!” he roared.

The lackeys exchanged helpless looks before replying, “Boss, it was you who said it!”

“???” Cao Jing felt his blood pressure spike.

Furious, he kicked over one of them and shouted, “Are you all deaf? I told you to run with the money! What the hell made you think you should throw it downstairs to someone else?!”

Huang Mao quickly chimed in, “Boss, think back. That’s what you said at the start, but later, when Old Ma’s people arrived, you told us to toss the money down. That was the new plan for transporting it…”

Watching Huang Mao earnestly try to help him “remember,” Cao Jing nearly passed out from rage.

At first, someone maliciously cutting the power seemed like just a disruption to their business, an attempt to stir up trouble. But losing the money? That was no accident—it was clearly a setup! Someone had used the chaos to swallow up 8 million yuan. The realization made Cao Jing’s scalp tingle.

“I need you to teach me? I never said that! Do you understand? Who the hell spread this nonsense? You said someone told you to throw the money—who was it?!” Cao Jing pressed.

The group looked at one another in confusion. Who was it? In the dim light, none of them had seen clearly. They assumed it was just one of their own.

Now that Cao Jing was denying having given the order, they began to understand the gravity of the situation.

Huang Mao turned to the others and declared, “We have a traitor among us!”

“Who was it?! Speak up!” Cao Jing growled, his bloodshot eyes scanning the group.

“It was Ah Lu! I recognized his voice!” a scar-faced man suddenly claimed.

Cao Jing’s gaze snapped to Ah Lu, full of murderous intent.

Ah Lu froze, then shouted, “Bullsh*t! It wasn’t me!”

Seeing Cao Jing’s glare, he hastily added, “It’s definitely Scarface! He’s framing me because he’s the real traitor!”

“You lying piece of trash! Admit it—did you and some outsider steal the money?!”

“Faking orders in the boss’s name and tricking us into throwing the cash downstairs? 8 million! You’ve got some nerve!”

Cao Jing’s eyes darted back to Scarface.

“Boss, you know my loyalty!” Scarface protested desperately.

Cao Jing’s voice turned icy. “I just want to know where the money is. Return it, and I’ll let it slide…”

Scarface panicked, exclaiming, “It wasn’t me, Boss! Everyone heard that voice—it was clearly Ah Lu’s!”

A man with hair styled like a coiled pastry chimed in, “The voice sounded a bit like Ah Lu’s, but it wasn’t him. I was standing next to Ah Lu the whole time. Even though it was dark, my phone’s light was on. The person giving orders was across from me.”

Ah Lu sighed in relief. “Exactly! This scumbag tried to frame me. He must be the traitor!”

Pastry-Head shook his head again. “But the voice didn’t sound like Scarface’s either.”

“Could they have been disguising their voice?” someone suggested.

Wu San stepped forward and added, “First of all, it wasn’t me or Pastry-Head. That guy pointed a flashlight at us and called us by name.”

The group nodded, and another person remarked, “So that rules out Ah Lu too. The traitor has to be among the rest of us… And I know it’s not me.”

He glanced around at the remaining suspects.

“Xiao Yang, could it be you? Why haven’t you said anything?”

Xiao Yang, seeing Cao Jing’s gaze land on him, panicked and stammered, “It couldn’t be me, Boss! You know I’m an orphan. What would I do with that much money?”

“Who knows? That’s 8 million,” Huang Mao muttered.

“Bullsh*t! I see money as trash!” Xiao Yang snapped angrily. “Wait, I know—it’s you, isn’t it? You’re the greediest one here!”

Huang Mao jumped to his feet. “Nonsense! Boss, I may love money, but I don’t have the guts for something like this! Besides, this had to be premeditated. I didn’t even know there was money hidden in that room.”

That struck a chord with the group.

“Yeah, I didn’t know there was money there either.”

“Me neither.”

Hearing this, Cao Jing turned his attention to Wu San.

Among them, only Wu San and Ah Lei had known about the cash.

Ah Lei, who had been with Cao Jing since childhood, was completely trusted. He had been busy handling the stash of drugs at the time and wasn’t in the private room, leaving Wu San as the prime suspect.

Wu San, sensing the shift, quickly defended himself. “Boss, the guy called my name! How could it have been me?”

“Hah! Who’s to say you didn’t call your own name?” someone accused.

“Impossible! I was standing with Wu San at the time!” Pastry-Head interjected.

Another person exclaimed, “I’ve got it! There were two traitors!”

The group erupted into chaos, bickering incessantly, until Cao Jing roared, “Shut up!”

Silence fell as everyone turned to him.

“Did the guy giving orders have any distinguishing features?” he demanded.

“Oh!” Huang Mao blurted out, “The flashlight!”

“…That’s it? A flashlight?!” Cao Jing was incredulous.

“He had a flashlight. It was bright, so we couldn’t see his face,” Huang Mao explained sheepishly.

The others nodded in agreement. When they tried to recall the person, all they could remember was the beam of light from the flashlight—it dominated their memories.

“A flashlight? Are you all idiots? That’s all you remember?!” Cao Jing was on the verge of despair.

How could this happen? Who was it?

Grinding his teeth, he growled, “If the traitor is among you, don’t blame me for taking extreme measures.”

Ah Lei, who had been listening quietly, stepped forward and said, “Boss, they all seem to be grasping at straws. I don’t think the traitor is one of them. Otherwise, why would they come back?”

Cao Jing nodded—it made sense. But he was out of options and could only push them for answers.

Ah Lei continued, “Boss, you were there at the start, right? The problem must have occurred after you left. What happened then?”

Cao Jing thought back and explained the sequence of events.

“What? The cash box was stolen? That’s not right. One of the guys brought it to the office and put it on the desk. I saw it there before the blackout,” Ah Lei pointed out.

He added, “Oh, and the cash box disappeared during the blackout!”

The realization hit Cao Jing like a truck. Someone must have pretended the cash box was stolen to blend in.

“You’re saying… I mistook an outsider for one of us and had them help carry the money?” Cao Jing asked, dumbfounded.

Huang Mao gasped. “What? The guys at the door weren’t ours? There were three people who went into the private room with me!”

“What?! Three?” Cao Jing was stunned.

“Yeah!” Huang Mao exclaimed.

Ah Lei froze, recalling the two men standing guard at the door earlier. “I remember now! Two guys were stationed at the door. Boss, during the blackout, you called them in to move the money, didn’t you?”

Cao Jing’s mind crumbled. He had invited outsiders in himself!

“Who were they? Why were they guarding the door?” he yelled.

Ah Lei, furious, punched the wall as a realization struck him.

Confidently, he turned to Cao Jing. “Boss, I know who did it!”

“Oh? Who?” Cao Jing asked, his spirits lifting. Ah Lei was his most trusted man, after all.

Ah Lei smirked and asked, “Boss, remember who came to make the deal with us? He was there right before the power outage.”

“You mean Wang Siwen?” Cao Jing realized—the suited man.

Ah Lei nodded. “The two guarding the door were his men! Remember how he accused you of pocketing his money earlier? He caused a huge scene. Looking back, it’s all too suspicious.”

As Ah Lei laid out his theory, Cao Jing’s face turned blood-red with rage, his eyes blazing.

“It’s possible that Wang Siwen really did lose money the first time and mistakenly thought you took it. Holding a grudge, he came back with more men and orchestrated this setup,” Ah Lei suggested.

“Or it could be that Wu San accidentally leaked information, which led Wang Siwen to target you. He might have purposely failed the first deal, using it as an excuse to scope out the area and familiarize himself with the private room’s layout.”

“After all, we had to stash everything at this KTV on short notice when the cops checked our original location. Wang Siwen could’ve figured that out, too. He stationed his men at the door, had someone cut the power, and orchestrated the cash grab. When the alarm went off, he pretended to cancel the deal and chased after the money, giving his men the perfect opportunity to slip in and blend with our people. You were completely played, Brother Jing!”

Hearing this analysis, Cao Jing trembled with fury, his veins bulging.

“Well done, Wang Siwen. You’ve got guts to pull something like this on me.”

“Let’s go! We’re going to find him!”

Determined to recover the money, Cao Jing gathered his men and headed to the parking lot behind the building.

But as soon as they arrived, they saw that Wang Siwen and his crew were already there.

Wang Siwen had stripped off his suit jacket and now stood in just a shirt, flanked by dozens of men, all armed. His face was flushed with anger, and in a fit of rage, he hurled a box onto the ground.

The box burst open, revealing nothing but bricks and rags.

Wang Siwen pointed at the box, seething with rage. “Cao Jing! I knew it was you who took the money! Explain this!”

The box had been snatched from "Cao Jing’s people," but when Wang Siwen opened it, he found it had been switched—its contents replaced with worthless junk. The discovery had nearly driven him mad.

“You’ve got the nerve to come here? I told you—I didn’t touch your money! But you! Pulling this kind of stunt is too much! Who taught you to send that text? Speak!” Cao Jing shot back, his focus shifting to the incriminating message that had been the root of his troubles.

“I’m too much? You think I’m too much?”

Wang Siwen’s anger reached a boiling point, his head practically steaming.

He pointed to himself and said, “You screwed me over once, and that wasn’t enough? You had to do it twice?”

“You didn’t touch my money? Hah! Do you take me for a f***ing idiot?”

Without another word, Wang Siwen suddenly drew a baseball bat from behind him and swung it hard at Cao Jing’s head.

The once-composed and suited Wang Siwen now looked like a feral beast.

“I’ve had it with you, Cao Jing! I’ve put up with your crap for long enough!”

As Cao Jing crumpled to the ground from the blow, Wang Siwen leaned on the bat, his other hand shaking as he pointed at him. The sheer venom in his gaze made it clear how deep his hatred ran.

Through gritted teeth, his voice trembling with rage, Wang Siwen spat, “You’ve pushed me too far!”

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