Shadow Empire

Chapter 1214 Swift Handling

The apartment manager was looking down at an adult magazine under the counter. The girls in the magazines were so poor they couldn't afford clothes, yet they persisted in their dreams of dancing and modeling, which almost brought tears to one's eyes.

His attention was completely drawn to those sweltering bodies, and he didn't look up until the footsteps were almost upon the workbench.

Then, pausing for a moment, somewhat surprised, she asked, "Why are you here?"

"Did something happen at home?"

His father stood at the counter, looking at his somewhat unfamiliar son, "I've never heard of you having any connections with gangs or anything like that."

His son showed a brief moment of panic, but quickly recovered. Just as he was about to say something, he noticed some figures moving around outside the apartment.

His heart leaped into his throat again. "What happened?"

The old man pursed his lips. "They came to my house and said you were involved in this. I never imagined you would have any connection with the gang."

"Although I sometimes call you stupid, I still think you're pretty smart. I've never thought you were really stupid!"

What good can come of having connections with gangs?

If you're lucky, like in this case, it won't be discovered, and you won't gain anything from it.

If you're unlucky, it might happen like this time—you get discovered and people come knocking on your door.

He was grateful that the Lance family was a reasonable gang, otherwise they would have been in big trouble!
But this kind of thing won't happen again. If his son gets into trouble with the gang again because of his dealings with them, he can't guarantee that the gang will be so polite next time they come knocking!
The apartment manager opened his mouth, unsure how to explain. He had met those people at a bar; they got along well, and he was often treated to drinks by them.

Over time, they became what we call friends.

His friend simply told him that a friend of a friend had had a minor accident and needed help hiding, and he agreed.

At the time, he didn't think too much about it. Besides, they were all young people. When others treated him as a friend and invited him to eat, drink, and have fun, he didn't refuse. But now, when they ask him for help with something, he refuses. This makes him lose face.

Even if he regrets it after agreeing, he still has to grit his teeth and keep going.

At this moment, his father came over, and his previously calm demeanor began to crumble. "How did you find your way here?" he interrupted his father, his tone somewhat harsh.

The old man glanced back at the swaying figure in the mist above the apartment door before turning back to look at him. "The Lance family is here. Why do you think I'm here?"

"They know you did it, and they promised me they'd let me talk to you first. If you can explain things clearly, they won't make things difficult for you..."

"I haven't asked you to do anything, but you have to do as I say on this!"

Outside the door, Erwin had no idea how the conversation inside was going; his cigarette was already half-lit.

The wind was a bit chilly. Seeing that he only had two puffs left, he took two more puffs, threw the cigarette butt on the ground, turned around, and pushed open the door to walk into the first floor of the apartment building.

The people behind him followed him into the apartment, a large group that almost filled the lobby on the first floor.

“It seems your conversation didn’t go very well,” Erwin said, walking over to the workbench and glancing back and forth between the old man and the administrator.

Both of them had flushed slightly, and when they saw Erwin, the younger man's eyes showed some timidity, shrinking back, and fear.

Many people are like this: they are very tough at home, and at home, they are emperors and kings!
No one can ask them to do anything; they are the ones who ask others to do things.

But once he steps outside, it's as if he enters another world. Anyone can come up and slap him twice, but he doesn't dare to fight back. People spit on him, and he just smiles and wipes the spit off his body.

Because they have a strong sense of security in their families, they know that nothing unexpected will happen, so they are very domineering.

But outside, no one will cater to his emotions, so they become cowards.

Young people may not be exactly like that, but they are pretty much the same.

The old man quickly said, "We had a good talk, and he was willing to tell us the locations of those people."

He kept giving his son meaningful glances, and the latter began to waver. He looked at Erwin and the men who looked rather intimidating, and finally sighed, "They're in the attic, right here in this building."

Irwin nodded slightly. "You saved your own life." Then he glanced at the others and tilted his head. They immediately drew their pistols and took the elevator upstairs.

Meanwhile, others used the stairs to ensure that these people didn't happen to miss them.

Erwin wasn't idle either; he stood by the workbench and asked, "Do you know whose people they are?"

After a moment of silence, the young man shook his head. "I don't know. A friend of mine introduced them. He said these people are from Sumuli, and we should help our own people. He asked me to help hide them."

"They will leave on their own after a while, and they promised to give them a thousand dollars for that."

"I didn't think about it too much."

"Are they from Sumuli?"

The administrator nodded. "We are all from Sumuli."

Erwin nodded noncommittally and made a note of it.

After a while, several gunshots rang out from upstairs, but they quickly subsided. A few minutes later, people came downstairs, dragging a body wrapped in a bed sheet.

"One of them resisted, but he's already been beaten to death." The person dragging the sheet lifted a corner of it, revealing the dead man inside.

The father and son's hearts raced and their breathing quickened after just one glance.

The living and the dead can be distinguished at a glance. Even if the wounds are not on their faces, people can tell at a glance whether a person is dead or alive.

From a purely materialistic perspective, this is actually unlikely, because death does not cause obvious material changes in a short period of time, especially for someone who has just died.

But people can tell from the lifeless, unfocused eyes of the corpse, and from the visible death aura emanating from it, that it is just a corpse, and nothing else.

Erwin tapped his hand on the workbench, pointed at the young man, and then left with the corpse and the man.

The arrest went smoothly; some people raised their hands as soon as they saw each other, while others resisted fiercely and ended up as corpses.

Soon the people on the street dispersed, as if their appearance was just an illusion. The governor also called Lance to ask if the people had been caught.

After receiving a positive response, the governor breathed a sigh of relief.

At least Lance won't hold a grudge against any other person or organization because of his assassination, and the city can remain peaceful.

He didn't disturb Lance, wished him a speedy recovery, and then hung up. Soon after, many people knew that order had been restored in the city.

Twenty minutes later, Lance saw three people and a dead man.

"Take care of it," he said, glancing at the dead man before losing interest.

The three of them quickly understood what Lance meant by "take care of it".

They watched as their comrade was thrown into a gasoline drum and then filled with concrete.

If nothing unexpected happens, he will likely remain in eternal slumber somewhere in the water.

Although they knew their comrade was dead, watching the concrete gradually engulf his body still gave these people an indescribable sense of fear and suffocation.

Lance sat opposite them, his gaze fixed on the gray-haired man. "I remember, it was you who fired the shot."

The gray-haired man remained silent; he was the kind who surrendered without resistance. Who would choose to die when they could live?

Lance beckoned to Erwin beside him, who then placed a pistol in his hand.

He stood up, and before the gray-haired man could even finish pleading, he pulled the trigger, his gaze filled with disbelief.

After a gunshot, a bullet hole appeared in the gray-haired man's forehead. He didn't die immediately; instead, he tried to turn around and run away.

But after running two steps, he fell heavily to the ground. Lance walked over, stood in front of him, lowered his pistol, and kept pulling the trigger.

The bullet was ejected from the ejector, tumbled through the air, and landed on the ground next to the gray-haired man.

Small holes kept appearing on his face, cheeks, and near his ears.

The area around the small hole was whitish, while the inside was reddish-black.

You have to wait a while before a little blood seeps out.

After the magazine was completely empty, making a click, he tossed the pistol to Erwin and sat back down in his chair.

"I feel much better now!" He had a bright, sunny smile on his face, and it was this smile that made the other two people tremble slightly.

Lance and Mador talked about this before. Will they feel fear?
Madol told Lance that he was very scared at first on the battlefield, especially the first time he went to the battlefield, and he always felt that he was going to die.

But as he participated in more battles, he gradually began to adapt to some things on the battlefield, such as a collective emotion.

Under the influence of collective emotions, many people can quickly forget about life and death, and their minds are filled only with orders and killing the enemy!
This is essentially a result of collective emotional brainwashing. Once the battle is over and the collective emotions stop affecting them, they will begin to feel fear.

So after arriving in the Federation and starting work, they also felt fear when faced with danger.

Unless it's a large-scale operation that allows them to completely disregard their personal life and death, they will still feel fear. This is a basic human emotion that is difficult to artificially suppress.

Just like the two soldiers in front of us, when they were on the battlefield facing machine gun fire from the enemy, who were hiding somewhere and would shoot them from time to time, they were never this afraid!

But at this moment, they were so scared that their bodies trembled slightly, especially the driver, whose head and face were covered in sweat and whose body was also trembling slightly.

Gray-haired, the leader of their small team, died right before their eyes.

The harsh conditions of the battlefield had not taken his life, but here, he died.

The driver's fear was spreading rapidly, and he was on the verge of losing control of his mind and emotions.

The guy in the team who was in charge of thinking things through wasn't having an easy time either. He forced himself to calm down, but it was hard for him to do so.

"Now, let's talk about it."

"Whose people are you?"

"Who sent you here to assassinate me?"

He held up one finger, saying, "I only need one person to answer my question..."

Before the driver could react, the brains of his team, who were responsible for coming up with ideas, immediately replied, "We are Leonard Bianchi's men."

The driver next to him stared at his comrade with his mouth agape, seemingly unable to understand why his good brother would speak so quickly at this moment.

Shouldn't he have remained silent like himself and said something like, "We'll talk if you let us go," using the information the other side wanted to save their lives?

He saw apology in the other person's eyes, as well as a hint of ruthless decisiveness.

Has things gotten that bad?
The next second, the driver's forehead suddenly split open from the inside out, and blood, brain matter, and bone fragments sprayed out together.

The gunshots around him were a bit noisy. He collapsed to the ground with a thud. His brain shut down, causing his body to convulse. It wanted to know what had happened, but unfortunately, it was highly likely that it would never find out.

The team's strategist looked at his fallen comrade with a hint of reluctance in his eyes, but he quickly put that aside and looked at Lance. "Leonardo told us to come over here and follow the orders of a man named Christopher."

"He showed us some information about you, then had us sent over. You know what happened next."

Lance listened and nodded, then looked at Erwin and said, "It's pretty much what I was thinking after I heard some information. I was originally planning to wait until the weather got warmer before I could deal with this problem."

"I never expected him to attack me first."

"That bastard has gotten much bolder since leaving Golden Harbor City!"

He wore a smile, but that smile concealed a murderous aura, a rising desire to kill.

He turned to look at the very decisive man and said, "Tell me where in that city he lives now."

The man in front of him revealed everything he knew without any concealment, including details of their first meeting.

After saying all that, he looked at Lance with a hint of expectation in his eyes.

Lance also noticed this.

However, the next second, this guy, who was willing to use his brain and often did, paused slightly, because he noticed that Lance's gaze suddenly shifted from his face to his back.

In an instant, he felt a chill run down his spine; every hair on his body stood up suddenly!

He almost instinctively turned around to look behind him, but in that instant, he felt someone hit him hard on the head.

The bullet pierced his head, similar to the driver's case, but the cut was above his ear, and the area of ​​the cut was larger and the opening was more pronounced.

After the gunshot rang out, he turned around slightly, glanced at the person who had fired the shot behind him, and then collapsed to the ground with a thud.

As he lay dying, he strained to look at Lance, but only saw half of him, roughly to the level of Lance's calf, before he died completely.

Lance stood up, cracking his neck. "You fucking idiot! I said I only wanted one person, I didn't say I'd let you go!"

"Get rid of them all! These damn bastards have dirtied my lawn!"

"Find someone to clean up all these lawns."

Someone asked, "Does the lawn need to be replaced?"

Lance shook his head. "Why replace them? With this blood and nutrients, they'll grow better than the others. I just don't like these idiots dirtying my lawn. I can just have someone clean it up."

Back in the hall, Erwin sat not far from Lance. "Should we retaliate now?"

Lance nodded. "I remember we have people over there. Let them go and investigate, find out Christopher's situation, and then wait for our move."

Irwin then asked, "What about that Leonardo guy?"

Lance considered for a moment, "He likes to send gunmen to shoot at me, so why don't we greet him in the same way?"

Meanwhile, Christopher, far away in Indenor, also learned of the outcome of the assassination attempt on Lance.

This event had a very significant impact, and since Lance was a frequent figure in serious political news, newspapers across the country quickly purchased the rights to the reports from those news organizations and began reprinting them.

In no time, the entire Federation knew that a guy named "Lance White" had been shot, but he was lucky; he only suffered a scratch.

Christopher also saw the contents of the newspaper, and after reading it, he couldn't help but curse.

These sons of bitches were all people Leonard found for him. They put on quite a show, acting as if they could easily handle Lance, which gave Christopher the illusion that they were capable!

As it turns out, what works is what works, and what doesn't work is what doesn't work, no matter how much you pretend!
He was disappointed with these people's performance, but he hadn't expected that the gunmen had already been caught and had said everything they should and shouldn't have said.

He called Leonardo and briefly explained what had happened, but Leonardo didn't have any good solutions.

After hanging up the phone, Christopher sat on the sofa and thought that if he wanted to succeed, he would have to rely on his own people.

Sumuli is a small place after all, and these people have never seen or experienced any big events.

I still have to do it myself!

(End of this chapter)