Empire of Shadows

“Forty minutes ago, the gate was still open.”

A large contingent of police officers disembarked from their patrol cars. Hunter offered a simple explanation.

In truth, he didn’t need to explain, but he did anyway. It was all because of the damn judicial process. He had overlooked the option of having Director Dale help him obtain the legal documents, instead thinking of applying for them himself through the justice department.

He should have stayed here.

Even if he was unwilling to admit it, at this moment he had to concede that sometimes he was indeed not as good as Charlie, at least when it came to “getting things done beautifully.”

“So what do we do now?” his subordinate asked.

Hunter tilted his head up. “Pry the gate open. We have a search warrant.”

The gate of such a dilapidated factory was no match for police officers equipped with professional breaching tools. Soon, with a crack, the iron gate’s bolt broke, and the officers drew their weapons and rushed in.

In just a few minutes, those who had drawn their weapons all put them away. The place was already empty.

Hunter walked to the furnace and threw half a cup of water into it. A sizzling sound instantly erupted, accompanied by a plume of steam.“They probably haven’t been gone for long. Should we pursue?”

Hunter hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. Since they had already left, chasing them would be of little use.

You didn’t know which direction they went, how long they had been gone, what mode of transportation they used, or where their destination was.

They couldn’t possibly intercept every pedestrian and every car they saw and subject them to an inspection. That would only spread the trouble.

“Let’s search the area…”

Soon, they found some liquor bottles in the warehouse that hadn’t been transported yet, almost all of them Golden Lion brand.

The moment he held these empty bottles, some images flashed through Hunter’s mind—

It, along with this box, would be loaded onto a dilapidated truck by workers. When the entire truck was full of boxes, it would speed towards the outskirts of the city. In the darkness of the night, it would be transported to the side of the warehouse at the abandoned farm.

Then, the same group of workers would unload them from the truck. During the unloading process, they might find that some bottles were broken during transport.

So those broken bottles would be thrown to the side, casually discarded in the wilderness far from the warehouse.

This was done not only to prevent the workers here from getting accidentally injured but also to effectively deter some animals from approaching at will.

The intact bottle would be sent into the warehouse and placed on the outermost shelf.

After some lights on and lights off, it would be picked up by a worker, along with the box it was in, and sent to the bottling area of the warehouse.

A rubber hose would be inserted into it, and then strong whiskey would be injected into its body until it was full.

A label would be applied to its body, the gold-stamped Golden Lion logo glistening under the lights. Then it would be placed in a capping machine.

Under the calm, indifferent, yet fierce gaze of a worker, its mouth would be sealed.

It would be placed back into a wooden box and then sent back onto the truck.

The truck would sway as it left the farm, heading straight for the distant, neon-lit city.

It would be delivered to a bar and eventually appear on the liquor cabinet, waiting for a drunkard who could afford it.

Its cap would be twisted off, the whiskey inside poured out, and the bottle casually placed under the bar by the bartender.

Until not a single drop was left, it would be casually placed back into the wooden box.

It might be reused, or it might be thrown away directly. This was its “life.”

“Chief Hunter?”

Hunter felt someone gently shaking him. He came back to his senses, his eyes refocusing. “What?”

“We…”

Hunter was silent for a few seconds. “Go ask around the neighborhood. See if there are any clues about this factory’s manager, workers, and its behind-the-scenes boss.”

Although he knew it was unlikely, he still wanted to try. What if someone knew something?

He himself went up to the second-floor office. It was clear that the manager here was smart when he left; he hadn’t taken many things with him.

He casually picked up a file folder, opened it, and looked inside. It recorded the business situation of a certain year and month, and occasionally there were some technical things.

It had no value. He threw the folder on the desk and was about to leave when the office phone suddenly rang, startlingly loud.

Hunter was startled. He cursed under his breath, staring at the shrilly ringing phone. After it had rung several times and his subordinates had come up the stairs, he finally walked to the desk and picked it up.

“Hey, Hunter,” the voice in the receiver let Hunter know instantly who was on the other end.

He gently gritted his teeth. “Lance.”

“Are you calling me now to ridicule and mock me?”

“Mock you?” Lance’s laughter in the receiver made Hunter’s teeth itch.

“No, no, I’m not calling to mock you. It’s just that you…”

He seemed to be choosing his words, waiting for two seconds. “…you were chasing too closely. You were close, you know?”

“You were so close you almost gave me a headache. But in the end, you were just a little bit short!”

Hunter interrupted him. “If you’re calling to show off to me, then fine, you’ve achieved your goal. I’m hanging up. I don’t want to hear your boring voice anymore.”

“I’m not trying to show off anything, Hunter. I’m just saying, the game has begun.”

The receiver then filled with the dial tone of a disconnected call. Hunter was momentarily dazed, but he quickly realized.

The “game” Lance was talking about was not an ordinary game, but a game of life and death.

Fuck!

He cursed again under his breath, walking back and forth in the room with a headache.

His identity limited his freedom, and his ambition had tied him to a chariot he shouldn’t be on.

The faster the chariot ran, the greater the damage from a crash.

The most crucial thing was, once you got on, you couldn’t get off.

He began to worry. After ordering his men to continue searching for evidence, he returned to the police station and immediately made a call to Charlie.

“Lance just spoke with me over there.”

Charlie didn’t react at first. “You caught someone?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“But he called the factory office over there. He threatened me, said ‘the game has begun’.”

Charlie was silent for a while. “Be careful for a while. Arrange for your family to be somewhere else. You know what I mean.”

“We have a bottom line, but gangsters don’t. And Lance is a man with a flexible bottom line. Don’t give him any opportunities he can exploit.”

Hunter agreed. “I plan to send my family to the state capital, and I’ll just live at the police station.”

His tone was somewhat dejected.

For a police chief to be pushed to this point was indeed a bit shameful, but he was also genuinely afraid of dying.

Charlie didn’t have any solutions either. “In any case, be careful.”

“I’ve spoken with Gorry. They’ll be taking some action in the next few days. At that time, you can provide some convenience. Someone will talk to you about it later.”

News of the attack on the Kodak Family’s finance companies had spread quickly. Many people who owed them money felt a surge of delight.

Because the person spreading the news had said that they had burned all the loan documents, and a small number of collateral items had also been taken away.

This meant that the bold ones could try to extort a sum from the Kodak Family.

Of course, the vast majority of people wouldn’t dare to do that, but they would dare to default on their debts.

You say I owe you money? No problem, show me the IOU.

Having suffered such a huge loss, the Kodak Family couldn’t possibly remain silent. They had already formulated a plan to attack Lance’s bars.

Last time was an accident. This time, they had figured out the locations of several bars. They would attack these bars at night—

The reason for choosing the night was so they could know if these bars were in operation. If they weren’t, it might be a trap.

If they were, then destroy them.

After Hunter hung up, he took two deep breaths, then picked up the phone to tell his family to go on a trip to the state capital for a while…

At 8 o’clock in the evening, the nightlife of Golden Port began.

The Starlight and Port Districts did not decline due to the clashes between the city’s factions. Instead, they became even more lively with the continuous increase in population.

Especially the Port District, its liveliness could already be considered the first in Golden Port.

A large number of refugee women stood on the streets, striking poses. If the most hated behavior of the local men was price gouging, then the appearance of these refugee women directly pushed the prices down to rock bottom.

One or two dollars, or even fifty cents. The attitude of “as long as you pay” brought a lot of people here every night.

After men enjoyed an undiscounted service for a cheap price, they could still use the remaining money to have a drink and eat some late-night snacks. There was nothing more delightful than this.

A man who seemed a little out of place with his surroundings came out of a bar, reeking of alcohol. He walked into a nearby phone booth and dialed a number.

“The bar at 900 Phoenix Road in the Port District is still in normal operation…”

On the other end, Stone, who had received the call, looked at a young man in his office. “Remember what I said. Don’t worry about the lives of those poor people.”

“The more chaotic it is, the more people die, the more unlucky he will be.”

If someone lost their life by being caught in a gang firefight while drinking, first, regardless of who fired the shot, Lance’s bar would definitely have to bear a great deal of responsibility. Moreover, they had also arranged for the police to seal the scene immediately after the firefight to pin the responsibility firmly on the Lance Family.

It could be said that in order to strike at Lance, they had become even more shameless.

The young man stood up from the sofa, nodding. “Wait for my good news!”

With that, he took his hat from the coat rack, said goodbye to the others, put it on his head, and left the room.

Four cars drove out from a back alley, heading quickly towards the Port District.

The dark night sky was like a gaping mouth, swallowing all things that drove into the darkness…

(End of a Chapter)