Empire of Shadows

Capital and gangs are no different in some aspects.

For example, in how they treat someone who is trying to take money out of their own pockets.

It’s just that the behavior and style of a gang will be more brutal, while capital is more secretive.

But the goal they want to achieve is the same, and that is to let those who are trying to take money from their pockets and put it into their own pockets go and see God!

A series of “accidents” had caused the popularity of the grape bricks, which had just started to become popular in Likalai State, to drop at once. Although they were still being sold on the market, it was impossible for the rules to be prohibited, and for no one to really take the risk.

There were many things that the law did not allow ordinary people to do. Regardless of whether it was something that could make people rich, or something that could quickly change their own class, the law did not allow ordinary people to do it.

So, do ordinary people really not do it?

No!

Some people still do it, so these people are called criminals, and their behavior is called crime.

Lance’s rules are not the law. No matter from which aspect, they are not as good as the law.There are people who openly disobey the law. Naturally, Lance’s rules are not something that everyone will abide by.

The appearance of the grape brick was a trend of the times. Those who couldn’t afford to drink but wanted to drink had more choices.

Although there were very few large-scale grape bricks appearing, in Likalai State, there were still some small-scale grape bricks being sold.

But the scale was always very small, because once the scale was large, Lance would make a move.

On the contrary, in other states, the grape bricks began to flood rapidly. They lacked effective countermeasures. Not all gangs had the courage and ability like Lance to strike hard at all those who reached out randomly.

So much so that some gangs were also selling grape bricks themselves. They wanted to grab the lower-end customers as well.

For the matter of “making money,” it’s not about the specific price, but about the rate of return.

As long as its profit met the gang’s demand for interests, they themselves could also become the vanguards who destroyed a part of their own business.

This also led to a shock in the liquor market of the entire Federation. The price of low-alcohol liquor had begun to drop significantly.

Some gangs, while cursing the sons of bitches who made the grape bricks, also began to actively produce and sell them to grab the market. The complexity of human nature was vividly demonstrated at this moment!

The cheapness of the grape brick had given the public more choices. This might be the first piece of good news since the implementation of Prohibition—

An era where everyone is willing to drink, and can afford to drink, has arrived!

Perhaps the gentlemen of Congress, those gentlemen who advocated that “prohibition can make society progress faster,” had never dreamed of it.

Not only had they not been able to make this society leave its dependence on alcohol, but on the contrary, they had cultivated more alcoholics.

If they had known from the beginning that this would be the outcome, would they have insisted on pushing for Prohibition?

The answer is: they would.

Because this is not just a policy, a social experiment, but a conspiracy of power and capital!

So even if they knew the result, they would continue to promote the implementation of the Prohibition.

However, these things did not have a great impact on Lance. What he mainly sold was still high-alcohol liquor.

High-alcohol liquor is the real money-maker.

A brewing cost of seventy or eighty dollars can be sold for five or six hundred, or even higher, in the hands of the terminal sales. With a huge shipment volume, even if Lance now only had a small portion of retail, and was mainly wholesale, he could still earn a large amount of wealth!

Just as the factory manager who had died in the factory’s duty room had said, they were not producing commodities at all. They were just printing banknotes!

After solving this matter, Lance turned his attention to the movie “Surprise Attack on Golden Port.” With the massive resources and investment, its shooting plan was much better than Lance had imagined, which also made him devote more energy to this matter.

Just as the male and female protagonists began to formally appear, and the gears of the plot began to turn, George also arrived at his “destined battlefield.”

For George, this was an unprecedented experience. He was wearing a bulletproof vest, a helmet, and looked a lot more bloated.

He was carrying a camera and a video camera on his back, and also a large pile of film rolls.

Riding in a swaying infantry fighting vehicle, he looked at the spring outside the small window, his nostrils filled with the smell of gunpowder left over from the end of the war.

The sky at this moment was clearly bright, but his mood was gray.

He had thought that after he came here, he could randomly shoot what he wanted to shoot, but as a result, he was told that he could only be with the other members of the press corps.

To conduct limited interviews in a designated place, at a designated time.

And all the manuscripts and telegrams that were sent back to the country had to be censored by the military before they could be sent out.

He had thought that the other reporters would protest, would be dissatisfied, but what he had not expected was that everyone had remained silent.

In this situation, he also remained silent, and this matter made him realize that the real situation on the battlefield was definitely not as good as it was reported in the country.

The driver of the infantry fighting vehicle, because of his limited observation, had not noticed a shell crater. The vehicle first sank sharply, and then “jumped” up.

George’s head hit the top of the infantry fighting vehicle hard, but he was wearing a helmet, so it didn’t hurt him.

The other reporters seemed to have gotten used to this terrible situation. They returned to their own seats and continued to remain quiet.

The journey was very dull. He didn’t see any wild animals on the Tanfit continent, which was rich in species according to the reports. It was as if these small things had all migrated to a farther place because of the war.

He felt a little tightness in his chest, largely psychological. He was a little short of breath.

After about forty more minutes, there were some sounds around, the sounds of humans.

“We need a doctor here…”

“Can anyone help me?”

“Nurse?”

“I need a shot!”

These noisy sounds immediately relieved a lot of the stuffiness in the infantry fighting vehicle. George, who was tearing at his collar, also put down his hand. He looked out through the small window and could only see some blurry scenes.

On the grass, on the mud, everywhere you could see, wounded soldiers were lying everywhere. The number of doctors and nurses was obviously not enough.

He slowly opened his mouth wide, looking at so many wounded soldiers. It was very difficult for him to use his imagination to imagine the situation on the battlefield.

The infantry fighting vehicle gradually came to a steady stop. The military officer who was responsible for picking them up and dropping them off once again reiterated the rules for interviewing here. Letters that had not been censored could not be sent, and telegrams that had not been censored could not be sent either.

You are only allowed to send what they let you send, not anything you want.

“Alright, get off!”

George jumped down from the infantry fighting vehicle with his backpack. He stood there, looking at the wounded soldiers all over the place. His mind was a little overwhelmed.

But soon, he took out his camera. This place was full of material!

He could already imagine himself winning the “Golden Newspaper Award” again and giving a speech on the podium!

He aimed at a doctor who was cutting the thigh of a soldier and pressed the shutter.

The doctor’s white coat was covered in fresh red blood. It should have been a sacred profession of saving the dying and helping the wounded, but at this moment he was like a demon!

He had a straight face, and the expression on his face looked particularly strange, twisted.

He was pressing a soldier’s thigh with one hand, and holding a steel saw in the other. The muscles on his face twitched and spasmed as he pulled the steel saw back and forth.

The soldier, who had only been given a local anesthetic, had his eyes red from crying. He was half-lying and watching the doctor saw off his right leg, but he was powerless to do anything!

Two male nurses were holding him down tightly. He was constantly begging the doctor to stop. He wanted to keep his leg…

This scene was too impactful!

He pressed the shutter once, dialed the film box, and then pressed the shutter again.

This time, he had captured the one he wanted. When the doctor pulled the steel saw towards his own direction, the fresh blood splattered on his body, and even on his face. He was like a demon!

At this moment, George had even thought of a title—”An Angel Like a Devil.”

He turned his head to look at other places. A soldier was lying on the ground, panting slightly. Next to him was a metal tray-like thing. There was a hole in his stomach, and his intestines had already flowed out.

A nurse was helping him clean the dirt and stains on his intestines. From his狰狞 and pained expression, it could be felt that the anesthetic had really not worked much!

George almost threw up.

He retched violently, nauseous, and trying his best to hold back the discomfort, he took a few pictures.

He kept repeating “my God” in his mouth, while walking in what was like a purgatory on earth, the rear of the battlefield, which was full of seriously injured soldiers. Everyone seemed to be struggling on the line between life and death.

Some had had their legs blown off, some had had their arms blown off, and some had been shot several times.

There was also an unlucky but lucky guy whose jawbone had been completely blown off, but his life seemed to have been saved.

The doctor was suturing his blood vessels and wounds. He looked terribly injured, but he had surprisingly survived.

On the contrary, a guy who seemed to have only been shot once, but had been coughing up blood, had died not long after in the process of preparing for surgery.

The smell here was terrible. The smell of blood, accompanied by the rising temperature, was full of flies.

It could be foreseen that many people would die of infection.

He had photographed some of the terrible environment, hoping that when these reports were published, they could bring some changes here.

“Are there no lightly wounded soldiers here?” he gave a pack of cigarettes to a nurse who was resting and asked casually.

The male nurse glanced at him sideways. “The lightly wounded are all on the front line continuing to fight. Only those who can’t fight will be sent here.”

George was a little shocked, and also a little shaken. “The dead… where are they?”

The nurse pointed outside the camp. George looked back. There were a lot of pieces of wood, piled up.

He had noticed it when he came in, but he didn’t know what it was.

It wasn’t until he got closer that he discovered that under the pile of wood were layers of corpses.

A layer of corpses, a layer of wood. He turned his head and looked at other places in a daze. There were many, many such pyres…

They were stacked together like white pigs slaughtered in a slaughterhouse, particularly conspicuous in the dark-colored wood.

They also had no dignity of the dead, no dignity of a soldier who had died on the battlefield.

They had nothing. It was just as the old saying goes.

Naked you come, and naked you go. This made him feel angry!

These people who had come to this land far away from the Federation and their families to fight for the interests of the country should be respected!

He was a little horrified.

Because until now, the country had not reported the specific casualties on the front line. It had not been said that for victory, so many people would die.

He was very uneasy. Everyone had become a tool for the profit of the high-level of the federal government. These young people, these young lives, should not have died like this!

They had come here full of enthusiasm, but what awaited them was hell!

“Quickly, get some anesthetic over here. We’re running out of medicine.”

A nurse was shouting loudly. George was suddenly bumped and stumbled forward a few steps.

If it weren’t for the fact that the camera had a bag hanging around his neck, the camera might have already fallen to the ground.

A guy holding a box of medicine didn’t even forget to turn back and shout at him, “Don’t fucking stand in the middle of the road!”

George, who had been bumped, came back to his senses. He didn’t say sorry or the like. He just watched the nurse inject the anesthetic into a soldier’s body. His originally struggling body, in a very short period of time, had completely relaxed.

He had an impulse. He wanted to go to the real front line!

Everything here had given his fellow journalists a great shock. They had no communication, but just remained calm, faithfully recording everything that was happening here.

He didn’t know what had made these colleagues all shut up, but he felt that he had to do something.

He found the military officer who was responsible for sending them over and made this request.

“To the front line?” the officer was smoking, a little uncomprehending. “Do you know what the situation is like on the front line?”

“To be honest, the moment you step on the front line, I can’t even guarantee that you can come back alive. The enemies in front of you and the comrades behind you will all become your enemies.”

“You should have seen the things outside. If you die, and if you’re lucky enough to be picked up by us, you will also be thrown in there.”

“Maybe half a year later, or even two or three years later, your family will receive the ashes of someone unknown. Are you still sure you want to go?”

The officer looked directly into his eyes, as if he wanted to read his thoughts. He was not exaggerating. Even he could not guarantee that he could survive on the front line.

The battlefield had shown its most cruel side to people. There was no romantic love with a nurse.

The vast majority of front-line nurses were male. The probability of them punching you was much higher than that of them being gay with you.

War is not romantic either. A bullet will definitely not go around you. As long as you are in its path, it will definitely bite you!

“I want to go!” George gritted his teeth and said his decision.

Originally, he didn’t particularly want to do anything. He just wanted to report on the real situation on the front line. But now, he wanted to go to the front line and see.

To see how the federal government was deceiving the public, how they were sending the young people of the Federation to hell!

The surrounding reporters all looked at George with all kinds of eyes. They basically all knew George, the winner of the Golden Newspaper Award.

Every winner of the Golden Newspaper Award would be very famous in this industry, because every journalist would take a look at the report that had won them the award, to see what they had written that could win the favor of the judges.

So they basically all knew George, but their eyes did not have much respect, especially those reporters who had been here for a while.

They had also been hot-blooded, but in the end, they had been extinguished.

“I also want to go!” a young reporter suddenly pushed through the crowd and walked to George’s side. George glanced at him, and he smiled at George.

Then, he said to the military officer, “I also want to go to the front line and have a look.”

The military officer looked at the two of them for a while. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it hard on the ground. “I’ll go and report it.”

He straightened his attire and strode towards the mobile command post in the back.

“I know you!” The young reporter pulled George’s attention away from the military officer. He turned his head and looked at him. The young reporter continued, “I’ve read most of your reports. They are very well written.”

“It gives people a very inspiring feeling, but there are also some reports…” he pursed his lips and smiled.

His smile made George a little embarrassed, because he knew that the “some reports” that this young man was talking about were the ones he had made money from.

Mainly Lance, and some of the news customized by the capitalists of Golden Port City.

They paid the money, and he paid the news, so these reports looked a lot worse than his real level.

“Let me introduce myself, George!” George took the initiative to extend his hand and shook hands with the young man.

The young man gave his own name, a very common name, Ian.

“Why do you want to go to the front line?” Ian was very curious.

George did not hide his thoughts. “I feel that we have been deceived by the federal government. They are always reporting some news that is conducive to inciting the emotions of the public.”

“How many people we have actually lost, how much money we have already spent in this war, they never mention.”

“Originally, I just felt that the situation might be a bit bad, but it wasn’t until I saw everything that was happening here that I realized that the situation was much worse than I had imagined!”

His expression was very serious, very serious. “The people have the right to know the truth!”

The young Ian nodded in agreement. “Yes, the people have this right!”

As they were talking, the military officer had already come back from a distance. The two of them temporarily stopped their conversation.

“The command has agreed to your request, but you need to sign an agreement, a danger notification agreement.”

“We have told you that the battlefield is very dangerous, but you insist on going. If any accident happens on the battlefield, it has nothing to do with us. You will bear all the responsibility yourself.”

The more certain he was that the federal government was committing fraud, the more impossible it was for George to back down. He saw all of this as an obstacle to his path to the truth.

He took the document and casually signed his name on it. The Ian next to him did the same.

(End of a Chapter)