Shadow Empire

Chapter 339: Choosing to Confront God
Philip was a little nervous, and his palms were sweaty.

He had been hearing rumors about a relationship with Lance since the first day he arrived in Golden Harbor City.

People like to talk about things related to Lance. Not only the imperial immigrants talk about Lance, but even other minorities and federal people themselves often talk about Lance.

Because Lance was also a person who climbed up from the bottom. It only took him one year to go from an exploited person working in an ordinary bakery to the head of a family.

It seems a little unbelievable, but the federal people don’t think so, because they have seen too many miracles!

Like a self-made entrepreneur who came to a big city from his hometown with a sack of potatoes and in three years became worth hundreds of millions and became the largest shareholder of a listed company.

A high school graduate who couldn't speak fluently suddenly became a star salesperson and a senior partner of the company after self-salvation and enlightenment, earning countless wealth every day.

Even more exaggerated are those legends related to finance, such as the story of a 14-year-old who entered the stock market with 100 yuan, made his first million in less than two years, and made his first 10 million in five years...

There are too many stories like this!
There were so many of them that people almost subconsciously thought, "I might be the next person to realize the alliance." So it was actually very simple for a poor boy to become the head of a family in just one year and own an entire territory of his own in Jingang City.

Well, it is indeed very simple. Compared with those federal dreams that are publicized so much, Lance's is at most a beautiful dream, and it is a beautiful dream that people can live in.

Everything about him seems to be replicable, for example, he has a few good brothers who are not afraid of death, dare to fight and kill, and then they start to fight for territory and eventually become gangster tycoons?
When Philip first arrived and slept in the culvert while listening to the rumors about Lance, he put himself into Lance's stories more than once, which made it easy for him to fall asleep quickly in that terrible place.

Now that he had met the real Lance, and Lance was going to fulfill one of his wishes, he suddenly knew what to say.

And he was very nervous, the kind of nervousness that comes when facing his idol.

He hesitated for a long time and couldn't say anything. Lance didn't urge him, but took the initiative to make some suggestions, "You can join the Lance family and become a part of our big family."

"If you don't like the exciting family life, you can also take some money from me and open a shop in the city if you have your own skills."

"I can also introduce you to other stores as an apprentice. Once you have learned the skills, I will support you in opening a store."

"Even if you just want some money to solve your current predicament, that's fine, Philip."

"These things have helped me a lot. You don't have to feel uneasy about them because you deserve them!"

Phillip thought back and forth between the options provided by Lance. He quickly glanced at Erwin and said, "I want to join the family, Mr. Lance."

"Why?", Lance asked, "I'm not saying I don't want you to join, I'm just curious because I offer other options that seem better."

"It's safe, respectable, and will have a bright future. Why did you choose the most dangerous one?"

Philip let out a small smile, "Because you gave me a job, Mr. Lance."

"My mother told me that if someone does me a favor, I must repay the favor."

Lance smiled after hearing this. "Your mother must be a great mother!" He paused and said, "No problem. From now on, you are a member of the family."

"I'll have someone arrange a training plan for you. Once you're done with the training, you can start working for the family."

"This may take a while. Do you need to say goodbye to your friends for a while?"

Philip nodded. "That would be great, Mr. Lance."

"We are a family now, call me Lance, not Mr. Lance!" He sorted out the notebooks on the desk, "Also, don't reveal these things to anyone."

"At least don't tell anyone before I allow you to do so!"

Philip seemed a little excited, "I promise, Lance..." He wanted to add "sir", but gave up.

He would listen to Lance!

Lance signaled to Erwin to take the people out first, and then his eyes fell on these notebooks.

The handle of the Bay Area.

This is why Beesam and Booker committed suicide. They had the upper hand over the Bay Area and the weakness of these people. But unfortunately, Booker, the fool, and the people above him, including Heller, the leader of the Camilla Gang.

They have never thought about how valuable these things are. They just provide all kinds of perverted services to the gentlemen in the Bay Area to gain some support from them.

They are like dogs with broken spines, unable to stand up again. Even if a knife is put in their hands, what they do with this sharp knife is not to hurt the enemy, but to peel apples for the enemy.

However, there is something that makes Lance curious. Sam is obviously the mayor's man, so why does he keep these important things in his own hands instead of giving them to the mayor?

If the mayor had mastered these things now, there would be no confrontation or counterattack at all!

With his abilities, he can easily control the entire Bay Area. In this case, it is hard to say who is a “local”!
He couldn't figure it out, and in the end he could only blame it all on Sam's greed or caution. He obviously wanted to get more, so he hid these things, and in the end it benefited him.

He broke up the notebooks and placed them in more than a dozen different brown paper bags, which were stored separately to ensure that if someone found anything, they would not have all the evidence at once.

Things that are very valuable to the mayor are now a bit hot to his hands, because as long as these things leak out, he will be attacked by the entire Bay Area forces.

Even Paul couldn't speak for him this time!

But this also gave him a new trump card. When everything was over, who would be the master of this city seemed to become a little unpredictable again!

There was still a party on Saturday morning, and now there were more people coming from outside the Cathedral of Saint-Naire because of the Imperial Chamber of Commerce.

As long as Lance can keep making money with everyone, these people will always be his most devout believers!
When the priest saw Lance, he smiled as if he had seen his Lord. He also joined the Imperial Chamber of Commerce, and the funds that God asked him to keep for safekeeping were also invested in the plan of purchasing medicines.

Warehouses are already filled with drugs, and they are already starting to make a profit.

The amount of profit is not high, only about 2 or 3 thousandths, but its price rises slightly every day compared to the previous day!
This is a good thing, although the money is not much, but it is stable, and Lance talked about this during the meeting with them.

The war has not yet broken out completely, so a lot of supplies are still in circulation. As the world's largest continent, Tanfit is also very rich in resources!

Once a war breaks out, there will be problems with the mining and transportation of these resources. Given the shortage of supplies, there will be no need to consider the war, and the prices of these medicines will skyrocket!
Not to mention that because of the war, people's fear of death will begin to magnify and the price of medicines will increase accordingly.

Some members of the Imperial Chamber of Commerce discussed privately that they felt the final price of these drugs might be more than five million!

Every time the priest heard this number, he couldn't help laughing out loud. Sometimes he felt that God was not as cute as Lance!

Although God saved him from poverty, it was still Lance who really made him rich!

"It looks like a lot of people came today." Lance looked around and saw people everywhere!
The priest was bending over slightly, but he himself was not aware of it. It was just an instinctive, subconscious action and not something he did intentionally.

"More and more people are coming here now. I'm worried that our yard may not be able to accommodate so many people in the future!"

Lance looked around. There were open spaces and roads surrounding the Cathedral of St. Nanye. Broadly speaking, the God believed in by the Imperials and the Federals should be the same thing.

But many old imperial people firmly believe that the Empire’s God is not the Federation’s God, and is even more advanced than the Federation’s God.

So they would only go to the three churches within the Empire area and not to churches in other areas.

From today's perspective, the area of ​​these churches is indeed a little small.

"How much does it cost to rebuild a church?" The priest didn't respond. "If it's just for repairs, about two thousand dollars would be enough."

"We can repaint the exterior and buy some new stained glass from the Empire!" He looked around and gave Lance a "don't tell anyone" look. "I shouldn't say this, but God actually likes new things, too!"

Lance couldn't help but laugh, "How did he tell you?"

"He told me that in a dream!" What the priest said sounded just like the truth!
Lance put his hand on his shoulder, "I mean, I plan to fund the reconstruction of St. Naye's Cathedral. Now it looks so shabby and small!"

"Let's buy the surrounding land and build a bigger one, a bigger lawn, a bigger church, and a bigger God for you!"

"Oh my God!" The priest finally understood what Lance said. He nervously took off his hat, revealing his head which still had some hair left but was overall shiny!

He is bald!

He usually stands on a high platform, so people won’t notice that he is actually bald!

If it's just baldness, it's actually not too scary.

What’s scary is that Lance also saw some spots on his bald head, which might be age spots, but these are symbols of “uncleanliness” in the Bible!

If it happens to an ordinary person... they will say that the ordinary person is not a true believer, but nothing else will happen.

But what happened to the priest, a minister serving God, was that he was unclean, and some fanatical believers would drive him out from here!
However, in the face of huge investments, he no longer cares about exposing these small problems of his!

“How much money do you plan to invest?”

"It depends on how much it would cost to rebuild a bigger church and buy the surrounding land. Ask someone to make a budget. If it's not too outrageous, I'll pay for it."

He dropped his hand from the priest's shoulder, "I'm going to go talk to someone else, your time is over!"

As soon as the priest left, Roger (the old man from the Chamber of Commerce) came over with some core members of the Imperial Chamber of Commerce.

Although Lance did not make a more detailed class division of the Imperial Chamber of Commerce, because they are not yet a stable and cohesive entity, a hasty division of classes would make people feel somewhat dissatisfied.

Lead them to make money first and make them dependent on the Chamber of Commerce, rather than doing this when the Chamber of Commerce cannot do without them. The resistance will be much smaller.

However, they themselves have made a distinction based on the funds they have invested.

The 10% that invested the most is the core. I don’t know who first brought it up. Roger also invested a lot of money, although not the most, but he is more familiar with Lance, so he is more of a representative of the others.

After a brief greeting, Roger talked about old Mr. Hampton. "He kept shouting that he wanted to thank you in person for your help. They couldn't afford the money. If it weren't for you, he said that he and his family would meet again in the cemetery through the tombstone, not on the hospital bed."

The news had already spread throughout the Empire, and after it spread, Lance didn't want to bring it up anymore. Others said it was a recognition of him, but he himself kept talking about it, which made him look like he was showing off.

"The most important thing is to let him recover from his injury. Don't worry about other things." He paused and looked at Roger. "Do you have anything else to say?"

Roger looked at the people around him and said, "We plan to take out some money to set up something like... a civilian security team."

"Nominally they are under the banner of the Chamber of Commerce, and they are the Chamber of Commerce's security team, but the main job of those young people is the same as some of the young people in the Lance family, patrolling the streets."

"There are a lot of middle-aged and elderly people here. If they encounter young criminals, they don't have much resistance, especially when those criminals are armed."

"So we want to arrange some people to patrol the streets constantly, so as to reduce some emergencies, and the recent public security is really too bad!"

Thieves, robbers, and other crimes, even vicious crimes, can now be frequently seen on the outskirts of the Empire District, and the public security of the entire city is rapidly collapsing.

The police don't care, the mayor doesn't care, and Councilman Williams and the Bay Area don't care about leaving. Everyone's demands are inexplicably and strangely coming to the same point!
Lance nodded after listening to it. "I think it's okay. This is a good thing. People can protect ourselves spontaneously. This is much more effective than relying on others to protect us. I will support it!"

Roger breathed a sigh of relief. He was afraid that Lance would misunderstand that they were doing this to fight against the Lance family, so he made his words very clear.

"We can disband it when public security improves. It's just for emergencies now!"

Lance had a different opinion. "No, you can stay after the public security improves. On the one hand, we can solve some people's employment problems. On the other hand, as I said just now, we will protect our own people more wholeheartedly than the federal government will protect us."

"You can even ask if there is anyone willing to join the police department. I can arrange some!"

Roger and the people around him were delighted after hearing this, "That's even better!"

After they left, other imperial immigrants began to come over, shake hands with Lance, and say a few simple words.

People were very civilized, abiding by certain established rules. They all lined up in an orderly manner. No one cut in line, and no one fought for things. Civilization seemed to have enveloped the entire world at this moment.

But if you think this is real, you are wrong
People's compliance with the rules does not mean that their quality has improved, but simply because they are about to face Lance, that's all!

The party didn't end until around one o'clock in the afternoon. Alvin came over and told Lance that Johnny had been released from the hospital.

But now he is sitting in a wheelchair with his arm in a cast, and his family and some close friends pushed him to the dock.

They plan to seek compensation and medical expenses from the management company.

"Have our people been arranged?" Lance asked as he got into the car.

Erwin nodded, "Everything has been arranged, and a few security guards have been bribed."

Lance is always relieved and satisfied with what he does.

Sometimes both parties in a conflict don’t realize how the conflict escalates, and this is the reason - not only are they watching each other, but a third party is also watching them!

The moment Johnny's family, some relatives and co-workers appeared on the dock, suddenly many people began to join their team.

At first there were three or five people, then seven or eight, and later a dozen or even more.

Some people in the crowd also held up signs that they had prepared in advance, saying things like "Give us back the stolen wages" or "No more silence from today on." In short, the signs were able to evoke strong emotions in people.

His family was confused, but Johnny could vaguely feel that these things were related to Lance, but he didn't say it out loud.

After lying in the hospital for two days, he suddenly had some ideas about acting. He was worried that his family would not perform well, so he has not told anyone until now. This is just a "performance."

Seeing a large number of workers crowding outside the dock management company building, the dock management company quickly mobilized a large number of security guards and began to actively contact Vaughn.

Since they couldn't contact Scott, they had to contact Vaughn.

At times like this, the dock workers' union usually appears. The capitalists need the union to appease these troublemaking workers and get them back to work!

It's just that Vaughn isn't here right now, and it'll be a while before he comes back.

The terminal management company can only choose to ignore the situation at present, and not show up or respond.

But the workers who were confronting the security guards began to become agitated for unknown reasons...

(End of this chapter)