Shadow Empire

Chapter 176 Workers Club and First Day of Registration

"Hey, Johnny!"

Johnny sat on the sofa, feeling depressed. He had been out of the hospital for some time, but had not gone to work at the dock.

On the one hand, his broken arm prevents him from doing his previous job, so he has to continue to rest.

Moreover, he registered his work card in Lance's office, and now he had someone working for him, paying him sixteen dollars a month.

This was also one of the conditions Erwin gave him when he asked him to shut up. Someone would work for him until he recovered from his illness.

Secondly, his arm was broken by Lance in front of many people. Now when he returns to the dock, he doesn’t know how many people will laugh at him.

During this time, he was able to stay at home because of some "greetings" brought by Alvin, but it couldn't last too long.

Just like now, a few workers smashed the door of his house. These workers working at the docks basically live in the port area - after coming out of the docks and ports, there are also large coastal blocks and houses.

Continuing west is the industrial area, so the Port District and the Imperial District are where the most poor people live, and they are filled with the bottom of society.

Johnny's house is not too far from the pier, which makes it convenient for him to commute to get off work.

He walked over to the door and opened it, "Hey, my door!"

His co-worker was wearing thick clothes and looked excited. "Can you still sit still?"

"Hurry up and get dressed, we're going to the club together."

Johnny stood at the door and had no intention of letting his friend in, because the house was messy and dirty.

Secondly, he actually wanted to go out for a walk, "What happened to the club?"

His friend said loudly, "Lance has contracted the club. Today is the first day of opening. It is said that there will be affordable drinks!" He spoke the last sentence in a low voice.

This made Johnny feel excited. The price of alcohol was too damn expensive now. A beer bomb was already thirty cents, and it had increased by another five cents. Those damn vampires wanted to suck every penny out of them.

He hadn't been to the bar for two days, which was unbelievable to him, but when he thought about the sharp drop in income, he had no choice but to do so.

But now, when he heard about alcohol, his mouth began to secrete saliva uncontrollably. He licked his lips, glanced into the room, picked up the clothes on the hanger by the door, and shouted, "I'm going to go out for a walk." Without waiting for his family to answer, he put on his clothes and went out.

As they walked along the road, they discovered that many people were walking towards the dock, and almost all of them were workers from other departments. When they met, they greeted each other warmly.

Of course, there were also people who teased Johnny and asked him how his arm was recovering.

It looked like they cared about Johnny, but if their laughter wasn't so cheesy, maybe that concern was real!

In "Fuck", Johnny gradually regained some spirit, and a dozen people walked towards the port with their necks shrunk.

It was snowing heavily and the weather was freezing cold, but it couldn't stop the men's desire for alcohol.

In fact, from a certain perspective, this "social experiment" by the upper echelons of society was successful. They successfully curbed people's desires through legislation.

And it has indeed effectively improved the production of industrialized production, which is their core purpose——

Stifle the desires of the lower classes and increase production capacity.

If they could get more data, perhaps they would start to consider not treating the lower classes of society as human beings.

Stifling their desires and depriving them of more rights is to make them stay on the assembly line longer and provide more economic value to the factory.

But it cannot be considered a success, as it is still in the early stages of the experiment. After the desire is suppressed, it is released more violently, just like a spring!

The harder you press it, the higher it bounces!

You can't feel these clearly now because it is still accumulating power. When it finishes accumulating power and starts to rebound, those gentlemen who made these rules will realize that they have failed.

But now, they are celebrating!

The two-kilometer road could not stop people's desire for alcohol and stress relief. Many people came to the dock. When Johnny came to the club, which was obviously much larger, he saw Lance and his people at the door.

Lance was explaining the work to several family members. There were too many workers coming today, so they were a little short of manpower.

These workers are not all honest people. They might suddenly cause violence, which would definitely be a bad thing for a newly opened club.

Johnny saw Lance, and Lance saw Johnny. After they looked at each other for a moment, Lance took the initiative to walk over and said, "If you're here to play, you're welcome."

"But if you're here to cause trouble, then you're going to regret ever coming here tonight."

Johnny was a little nervous, "I understand. I... came here with my friends and planned to have a few drinks."

Lance is actually not as strong or tall as him, but in front of Lance, he seems to be the skinny one!
Until now, the image of Lance raising the bat that day is still deeply engraved in his mind, and his broken arm inexplicably began to hurt again.

The two men looked at each other. The huge pressure made Johnny a little breathless. After a few seconds, he tore his collar and looked away. When he was about to go back, Lance smiled.

The tense and heavy atmosphere, which had made Johnny's friends afraid to breathe, suddenly eased.

Lance punched Johnny in the chest, not hard, and said, "I'm buying you and your friend a drink today. Go ask the bartender for the biggest drink!"

Johnny's face first showed an expression of disbelief, but then he was surprised, and even a little... touched!
"Mr. Lance, I..." He didn't know how to express his emotions at the moment.

Lance patted his arm, "Go have fun, enjoy your night!"

Johnny and his friends said goodbye to Lance and followed the crowd into the huge club.

The club has been expanded, connected to a large warehouse, and completely remodeled, and the atmosphere inside is great, especially...

"Look, look up!" His friend poked his waist with his arm, and the two of them looked up. There were many steel pillars here, which were originally used to support the warehouse structure.

Now, a circular platform with a diameter of about 1.5 meters has been welded on the upper part of these steel pillars, and some dancers are performing hard on it.

Pole striptease, the colorful lights constantly flowing from their bodies make everyone who looks at them feel a desire flowing in their hearts!

There are more than a dozen such performers here, and they can already feel the atmosphere heating up.

They soon followed the crowd to the first bar, where several super large cans were connected to an interface, and they saw many people getting beer here.

"We want... uh, Mr. Lance said, let us have two of the biggest drinks." Johnny was a little embarrassed, but he said it anyway.

The young man who was pouring the beer changed two large cups, then pushed a lever, and soon beer flowed out of the spout.

Two large cups, each containing at least 1.25 liters of beer were placed in front of them. The two men's faces were filled with joy as they picked up the glasses.

His friend still asked, "How much is a glass of wine like this?"

The young man who was serving the drinks shrugged, "Fifteen cents."

"Fifteen points?!"

Both of them burst into exclamations, "Isn't this too cheap?"

The two looked at each other and wanted to say something, but they were pushed by the person behind them, "Don't fucking block the way, is your mother's ass there?"

"Get out of there with your drinks, it's our turn now!"

The two of them left quickly. In the face of alcohol, what is the difference between co-workers and not co-workers?
If they keep blocking the way for a while longer, someone might try to drag them into a corner.

The two of them came over with their beer and took a sip. After just one sip, they immediately had an indescribable feeling, as if... their whole body felt comfortable.

"It's still this!" They all felt it was worth it just to drink such cheap beer! The two of them continued to walk inside with the crowd. There were more and more entertainment facilities around them, and even some rings.

Slapping competitions, arm wrestling competitions, sledgehammer tamping competitions, wrestling competitions, screw-tightening competitions, tying and knotting competitions…

Except for a few competitions that they have never been involved in, such as the slapping competition, most of the others are related to their professional skills.

Both of them specialize in tightening screws on the dock, so it was natural for them to come to the playing field where they are best.

There are four arenas here, with screws and nuts commonly seen on docks, and the host introduces the rules of the competition.

Each arena only supports two people to compete. A and B first tighten their three screws and nuts, and then loosen the other party's screws and nuts.

Whoever removes all the other party's screws and nuts first wins.

There is no punishment for the loser, and the winner has two choices: continue the challenge or go for a drink!
If you continue to challenge, as long as you defeat three opponents in total, you will advance to the next round.

Lance has already negotiated with the dock workers' union, and every month he will hold a "Workers Skills Competition" here, which includes slapping and the like.

The participants are the workers who have won three times in a row, and they will proceed to the next round of eliminations until the champion is finally produced.

The champion will receive a cash reward of 300 yuan, the runner-up will receive 200 yuan, and as for the third place?
Sorry, there is no such thing as third place in this era.

and!

The Dockworkers' Union will award the champion and runner-up a certificate to prove that they are "technical winners"!
It may seem like just a small honor, but in this era, skilled workers will never have trouble finding jobs!
Johnny and his friends felt their blood boiling when they heard this, regardless of the fact that they were showing off in front of tens of thousands of working brothers.

Whether it was for the two or three hundred yuan bonus, or for the certificate that represented special honor that ordinary people would never have the chance to touch in their entire lives, they were all tempted.

Soon there were participants on the ring. Johnny knew them. The people below the stage were all workers who specialized in screwing screws. Some of them cheered, some shouted and cursed, amid the noise and laughter.

Maybe it was because the alcohol content of the beer here was a little high, Johnny's face soon turned red. He waved his hairy arms and cursed the dirtiest words to create a more lively atmosphere.

So much so that the worker who was lagging behind in the game suddenly threw the monkey wrench on the ground and yelled at Johnny, "Why don't you stand here if you are so fucking capable?"

"If I hadn't seen you, I would have thought it was some whore who ran out with her mouth full of Dick's essence. Next time you go out on the street, wash your fucking mouth first, or I'll beat you to death..."

One of the two men was on the stage, and the other was yelling and cursing below the stage.

One said, if you come up I will beat you to death.

One said, if you come down I will beat you to death.

But neither of them had the idea of ​​taking the initiative. Fortunately, the host persuaded them for a while, and Johnny's friends persuaded them, so they stopped arguing.

This was just a small part of what happened in the entire club. The constant cheers and laughter coming from somewhere made the workers' club a sea of ​​joy and stress relief.

The entire club scene was like a large-scale "Pier Carnival". Lance stood on the platform on the second floor and let anyone who could use a camera take pictures of it all.

President Coaster, Vice President Vaughn, and other people were actually here too. Now as they looked at the lively scene, they just felt that Lance was a genius.

Of course, they did not have the idea of ​​replacing Lance because they did not have the most basic condition - wine.

These people saw it very clearly, those "little games" might indeed attract them, but what set the atmosphere off more was the wine that kept flowing from the spouts!
The union members discussed it and thought that this was actually a good idea. The workers relieved their stress, and the "skill competition" proposed by Lance allowed President Coaster to discover some mysterious things.

He could vaguely feel that if he could figure out the context here, he would have a great chance of joining the United Longshoremen's Union!
He needed quiet, so he quickly stood up and said goodbye, followed by other people. Although they were presidents and cadres of the workers' union, they were not workers after all. They couldn't stand the smell here and were not used to such close contact with so many workers outside of work.

However, each of them recognizes the current changes in the club, which is a positive emotional feedback!
After Lance saw them off, he stood on the second floor, holding a cigarette and looking at the densely packed heads at his feet. He slowly exhaled the cigarette.

This is power!
Some people realize this, but they don't have the means to control the power.

Some people didn't realize this, which gave him the opportunity to gain this power now.

In fact, it would be easy to make money from these people by opening some stalls and recruiting some sponsors, but he didn't plan to do that.

Because the purer the power, the better!
By one o'clock, many places here had become empty, with less than a hundred people.

They all sat at the bar drinking, the ten-cent odd-flavored beer (750 ml) was popular, as was their potato wine.

Some employees began to clean up the place, while others sat in Lance's office and tallied up the evening's revenue.

When the last nickel was dropped into the cash box, everyone looked at Sean expectantly.

After Sean took out his notebook and started writing and drawing for a while, he said, "I lost more than two hundred yuan..."

Although not many, they were not few either. They all looked at Lance. Lance shook the wine glass in his hand, his expression not serious at all. "It's much better than I thought. Let's continue tomorrow..."

Some people who didn't know that the workers' club was open learned about it from their colleagues the next day and ran over to watch the fun before leaving get off work.

Vaughan came once in the morning, and then the club closed temporarily, with business hours from 7pm to midnight.

Some workers came over to have a drink in the morning, which greatly affected the normal working order of the dock. After Lance knew about it, he also actively cooperated.

After all, the stability of the port depends on these workers.

If the docks are unstable, these workers will not be a force.

Although some people were dissatisfied, they did see strong beer at ten cents a glass and a lot of interesting equipment, which made them look forward to life after get off work more!
Meanwhile, Senior Agent Lugal is getting off the train.

They have completed the centralized training, and he thought that this training should be more about the clerical part, such as how to handle the reporting part or the process part of the case.

Who knew that their training content was mainly combat-focused, supplemented by cultural courses.

The instructors used a lot of cases to tell them what they should do in different situations and what law enforcement powers they have.

The rest of the time, they would conduct military training, such as fighting, shooting, climbing...

The gentlemen in Congress hated those who secretly sold and drank alcohol under Prohibition. It was obvious that they wanted to kill these people!

After the training, he and other students gathered in the state capital for two final days before returning to Jingang City.

The moment he got off the train, the fluttering snowflakes made him feel an unprecedented sense of comfort. The Administration of Alcohol, Tobacco and Hazardous Substances was very powerful, enough to support him in doing many things.

The first thing I did after returning was to report to my new job, which was not far from the City Hall and not too far from the city police station.

Lucard is a native of Jingang City and was recommended by the law enforcement system. Regardless of what others think, at least on the surface they are very welcoming to him.

After making an appointment to have dinner together in the evening, Lucard went to the police station and met Chief Charlie.

"Not bad, you look much more energetic. It seems those people did teach you something."

Lucard was very polite when facing Chief Charlie who took good care of him. "Yes, they taught me a lot. I have to thank you, Charlie."

"If it weren't for you, I might not have had this opportunity!"

Director Charlie smiled and said nothing. He knew very well that helping Lucard was helping himself.

"So you must have your own plan after coming back this time. Can you tell me where you plan to start?"

Lucard didn't hide his thoughts, "I heard that Lance killed the Camilla gang and took over their territory."

"So is there smuggled liquor in their territory?"

(End of this chapter)