I Took the Ambassador's Advice and Became a Wanted Criminal in Cambodia

[Urban] [Realistic Fiction] [Adventure] [Wits and Strategy] Twenty-two-year-old medical student Chen Xi has only two goals in life: graduate and scrape together enough money for his mother's astronomically expensive targeted therapy. To that end, he takes on a million-yuan contract marked "Five-Star Danger": travel to Cambodia and find a missing engineer. He thinks it'll be a suicidal speedrun, but with medical knowledge beyond the ordinary and the cool composure of a surgeon wielding a scalpel, he figures he can just about handle it.

But the moment he sets foot in that land, where the scent of Buddhist incense mingles with gun smoke, everything spirals out of control.

The "general" running a scam compound, the "mentor" with a knife behind his smile, the "ghost" selling organs on the dark web... One by one, kingpins entrenched in the gray zone drag him into their vortex. More chilling still, every step of his investigation eerily retraces the path once taken by his father, an undercover agent who "died in the line of duty."

From the chaotic streets of Phnom Penh, to a deadly chase along the Mekong, to the "Golden Palace" hidden deep in the rainforest, Chen Xi's "side gig" keeps escalating: rescuing people, hunting down killers, destroying human farms, and severing transnational crime networks...

When a secret national security line quietly opens, and an olive branch arrives from a national defense academy, everyone is dumbfounded. "We sent you to earn money for medicine. How did you end up taking down criminal syndicates across all of Southeast Asia?" Facing the cameras, Chen Xi rubs his aching back, looking world-weary. "Don't ask. It's just a side gig. I'm really... just a medical student trying to save my mom!"