320: Chapter 320 Silent Replacement, The Prince Replaced by a Civet Cat

"Target sleeping, status stable. Two internal guards, positions fixed. Two medical staff in the outer room, in a semi-awake shift state. Corridor guards just completed a cross-patrol; next round in 7 minutes." The information from the Thai medical assistant Death Soldier was transmitted directly into Erica's consciousness via an encrypted neural link.

"Received. Point A, prepare." Erica issued the command in her mind.

They moved silently to the preset entry point directly above the ward. There was a disguised maintenance panel here; the internal latches had already been handled during the day by a supporting Death Soldier under the guise of "checking the air conditioning filters." One Death Soldier used a magnetic tool to silently remove the four-corner latches, while another used a suction device to steadily catch the slowly descending metal plate without making the slightest clink.

Below was the ceiling of the ward's bathroom. This was the relatively weak point in the suite's surveillance and the closest hidden entrance to the King of Thailand's bed.

Four "shadows" slid down one by one like liquid, landing lightly. There was no surveillance inside the bathroom. Erica quickly confirmed the situation outside the door—judging by the extremely faint light changes under the door gap and audio sensors that no one was approaching the bathroom for the time being.

She made a gesture. A Death Soldier took a pen-sized device from a compact equipment box he carried, with a very thin flexible tube at the tip. He carefully poked the tube out slightly from the gap at the bottom of the door and then pressed the button on the device.

A colorless, odorless aerosol was slowly and evenly released into the air of the outer room by a micro-pump at extremely low pressure. This was "Silent Dust," a potent neural slow-release anesthetic produced by the system. After being absorbed through mucous membranes or skin, it could plunge a person into deep sleep within 30 seconds. The effect lasted for 4-6 hours, and upon waking, they would only feel unusually tired, making it difficult to detect anything abnormal. Its diffusion characteristics were precisely calculated to prioritize gathering in personnel's breathing zones and avoid diluting too quickly.

Time passed second by second.

The thermal imaging on Erica's eyepiece showed that the two human heat sources originally sitting in the outer room gradually relaxed their postures and then slowly slumped over. Almost simultaneously, the two standing heat sources by the inner door also swayed slightly before sliding down to sit against the wall.

"Targets down. The internal guards' slumped positions might trigger abnormal movement alarms on the vital signs monitors," the Death Soldier in charge of technology warned through the link. Both the King of Thailand and his personal guards were connected to wireless vital signs monitors.

"Activate the 'Vega' sub-node interference protocol. Cover the wireless signals in this area for 3 seconds to simulate a momentary communication failure," Erica ordered calmly.

Inside an equipment van disguised as a communication maintenance vehicle outside the hospital, a Death Soldier operator pressed a button. A directional, precise electromagnetic pulse instantly enveloped the special care ward and its surrounding few meters. All wireless signals, including the monitor's wireless transmission and the guards' portable communicators, experienced brief static and data packet loss. On the screens in the hospital's monitoring center, the monitoring data for the corresponding area would show a momentary "signal lost" prompt but would recover immediately. This kind of glitch occasionally happened in large medical institutions and usually wouldn't immediately trigger a maximum-level alarm.

Within those precious 2.5 seconds, Erica and another Death Soldier darted out of the bathroom like cheetahs and rushed into the inner room! Their speed was so fast that they left only blurred afterimages in the dim light.

The eyes of the two internal guards slumped on the ground had already begun to glaze over, but their muscles still retained a hint of instinctive reaction. Erica and her companion's hand-chops precisely struck specific nerve plexuses on the sides of their necks, ensuring they completely lost consciousness while preventing any possible early awakening. Then, they quickly checked the King of Thailand's condition—he was under deep anesthesia. Erica took out a special syringe and injected a long-acting but reversible deep sedative into the King of Thailand's vein. This medication could keep him in a "vegetative state" with stable vital signs for up to 72 hours, facilitating long-distance secret transport.

"Target controlled. Commencing cleanup and transfer," Erica reported.

The two Death Soldiers from the outer room quickly entered. They lifted the unconscious royal doctor and nurse into chairs, posing them as if they were taking a nap at the table. Meanwhile, they dragged the two internal guards to a visual blind spot in the ward, quickly putting on imitation replacement clothes over their original uniforms and posing them in a "resting against the wall" position. The entire process took no more than two minutes. From the outside, everything seemed to be in a normal state for the dead of night.

Meanwhile, on the third basement level of the hospital, next to an old boiler room that had been abandoned for many years, a dusty entrance to a masonry secret passage—unknown even to most of the hospital's veteran staff—was quietly opened. This passage was one of the emergency routes connecting the royal residence of the time with the Grand Palace, built during the early Rattanakosin Dynasty. It was vaguely marked on the ancient royal architectural drawings provided by Lin Xiao and was later confirmed to be structurally sound after a secret survey by the "Shadow Blade" reconnaissance team.

Inside the secret passage, the light was dim. Six Death Soldiers, dressed in imitation Royal Guard uniforms but with cold temperaments, guarded a "figure" sitting in a wheelchair, waiting quietly. The person in the wheelchair was wearing hospital pajamas identical to those of the King of Thailand in the hospital, covered with a thin blanket, with his head lowered, his face obscured. However, his exposed hand skin, hairstyle, and even subtle body posture were strikingly consistent with the real King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

This was exactly the "Shadow King"—code-named "Rama"—that Zhang Cheng had spent a massive amount of points to customize. His customization parameters were precise down to the millimeter and micro-expression habits. He had previously undergone several days of intensive "training" at a secret base, watching a massive amount of recent footage of the King of Thailand to mimic his tone, catchphrases, and basic behavioral patterns. Although he couldn't master all of the King of Thailand's memories and complex interpersonal relationships in a short time, he was sufficient for limited occasions during the "initial stage of recovery," supplemented by prompts and guidance from internal Death Soldiers.

Erica's voice came through the encrypted channel: "'Genuine article' packaged. About to be sent out via the 'clean pipe.' The 'counterfeit' can enter the 'display case' now."

"Understood. 'Counterfeit' channel clear. Commencing transfer," the Death Soldier commander in the secret passage responded.

Soon, a seemingly ordinary medical ambulance quietly drove out of the hospital's underground garage, merging into Bangkok's sparse nighttime traffic. Inside the vehicle, the King of Thailand, in a state of deep sedation, along with two "internal guards" disguised as "needing transfer due to sudden illness," was sent to a secret dock at the Port of Bangkok. There, they would transfer to an AIP-powered submarine disguised as a fishing boat and be transported directly to a heavily guarded secret island base in Myanmar in the Andaman Sea, which would become the starting point of his long house arrest.

Meanwhile, at the top floor of the hospital, the secret passage entrance opened, and the "Shadow King" was carefully transported to the special care ward floor via a dedicated medical elevator. Through an internal staff passage, he entered directly into the ward where the "replacement" had just occurred.