Empire of Shadows

Three soldiers lay hidden in the dense jungle. They had smeared their bodies with oily mud and rubbed on local herbs, but the mosquitoes and

Three soldiers lay hidden in the dense jungle. They had smeared their bodies with oily mud and rubbed on local herbs, but the mosquitoes and insects still constantly tried to touch them.

These past few days had been hell. These mosquitoes were more annoying than the bullets flying all over the battlefield.

One of the soldiers waved his hand, shooing away some of the mosquitoes near his face, and asked in a muffled voice, “Is this guy really that formidable?”

The person lying prone next to him nodded. “Don’t talk.”

The third person, however, said with a chuckle, “I hear he’s very capable, earns tens of thousands of Federation Sols every day.”

The other two couldn’t help but show some shock. The guy holding the rifle couldn’t help but exclaim, “How many supplies can that buy?”

The three of them were from the Empire’s resistance army and were Mador’s comrades-in-arms. Their relationship was quite good.

As the Empire’s emperor regained control of the situation, the days of the resistance army were getting worse and worse. Now, they were on the verge of collapse.

Once the resistance army was completely wiped out, the royal family would surely carry out a major purge in the country.The great nobles who could decide the direction of this matter had already reached a new agreement on the distribution of interests with the royal family through this uprising that had almost really overturned the royal rule. They had reconciled.

Then, the remaining tools, like them, were clearly no longer necessary.

Lacking supplies, lacking funds, lacking food, lacking everything. Almost all the resistance forces could hardly sustain themselves. Most of them were hiding in the mountains.

Their coming out this time actually had a purpose. Mador was said to be doing well on the Federation side, having brought his family over, which was not a small sum of money.

They planned to use Luigi’s head as a greeting gift to see if they could find some connections through Mador.

To get some money or supplies to go back and continue to fight against the emperor’s tyranny.

So this mission was very important to them. They had to complete it perfectly.

As the three were discussing what Mador’s wonderful life in the Federation was like, someone suddenly told them to shut up. “The target has appeared.”

In a building at the foot of the hill, Luigi came to the edge of the second-floor terrace.

This was the only place where there was a chance to take out Luigi. If they went any further down, they would run into Luigi’s patrol team.

The labor in the Aldra Republic was not valuable. For a few Federation Sols, you could hire an adult male to work for you for a month, with no rest days, and you didn’t even have to give them food. They would eat bananas to fill their stomachs.

For his own safety, Luigi had hired a lot of men. They would patrol every ten minutes or so, and all of them carried guns.

Once discovered, the three of them couldn’t be sure if they could escape alive.

Luigi had too many men, and also cars, while they had nothing.

So they could only wait, wait patiently.

Finally, Luigi appeared again. He stood at the edge of the terrace, holding a phone in his hand. The long phone cord was connected to the phone base next to a lounge chair.

“Paul is dead?”

“Fucking hell!”

“I was counting on him to help me contact Lance to solve our little problem. How could he die?”

He was a bit exasperated. He didn’t even dare to smuggle liquor into Golden Port now. Who the fuck could stand losing hundreds of thousands each time?

But smuggling to other places was not very profitable either. With the Coast Guard starting to use armed boats and gunboats, the risks of smuggling were increasing, but the profits hadn’t increased much.

He still wanted to send the goods to Golden Port, but now that Paul was dead, he had no chance to reconcile with Lance. He had to find another way.

“Alright, alright, I know, hanging up,” he handed the phone to his butler beside him and turned to walk to the corner of the terrace.

And this, happened to expose him to the sight of the people on the hillside.

He threw his cigar into the jungle, replaced it with a cigarette, feeling very annoyed.

If it doesn’t work out… a fierce glint flashed in his eyes, then he’ll just have Lance killed.

As long as it’s a person, they will die. No one can withstand a bullet, not even the Federation President.

He didn’t believe that Lance was so formidable that he could withstand a bullet.

The Yalan region was dirt poor. The most worthless thing was human life.

In the Federation, it might cost two or three thousand to hire a killer, but in Yalan, some people were willing to kill for fifty dollars.

“Son of a bitch, if you block my path to wealth, don’t blame me for getting rid of you!” He took a drag of his cigarette, one hand on his hip, and looked out at the mountain forest with his upper body puffed out.

The dense mountain forest gave him a very pleasant feeling. He liked to see the small animals that occasionally appeared in the forest.

A gang leader who likes small animals doesn’t seem to be an incredible thing.

Just as he was looking to see if he could spot any of those beautiful large parrots, he suddenly saw a few leaves tremble, and then the next second, it was as if someone had punched him.

He even wanted to raise his hand to touch his cheek, but he couldn’t do it at all.

As he was pushed down by a huge force, he heard a gunshot…

At this moment, only one thought was in his mind—

Shit, it’s over!

But fortunately, he didn’t feel any pain. In just a few seconds, he completely lost consciousness and sank into eternal darkness.

The three gunmen packed up and quickly ran along their planned escape route, completely disappearing into the jungle in a very short time.

What awaited them would be a new beginning.

“…Yes, of course, I have great admiration for Senator Cleveland. Their ideas are indeed a bit excessive… Okay, I will cooperate well.”

Lance hung up the phone. He had relayed the Federation of Labor’s idea of expanding the conflict to Tom.

With Tom’s personal ability to follow the senator around, even if he might have some minor flaws in his personality, his work would definitely not be too bad.

And the facts were indeed so. After Tom learned of this news, he immediately reported it to Senator Cleveland, who raised his eyebrows after hearing it.

“Are those Lance’s exact words?” he looked at Tom.

Relaying a message is a very skillful thing, because no matter how well you imitate, it’s very difficult to replicate the original words one hundred percent.

Tom confirmed again and again, “Those are Lance’s exact words. He said the Federation of Labor is planning to use this opportunity to push for the implementation of the rating system.”

Senator Cleveland couldn’t help but laugh out loud after hearing this. “They really picked a good time. These guys are really damnable. They don’t care at all about the grim situation we are facing now.”

“But fortunately, Golden Port is on our side.”

He pondered for a moment. Lance telling him this news had raised Lance’s importance in his mind by another level.

Now his job was just to get the docks to find a middle ground that both sides could accept as soon as possible, and then stabilize this matter as soon as possible.

“Go and reveal to the dock management company that someone is planning to sue them for monopolistic practices in Golden Port.”

Tom was stared at by him for two or three seconds before he lowered his head, avoiding the other’s gaze, because he already understood the meaning Senator Cleveland wanted to convey.

“I will go and find a few companies we know.”

Having enterprises submit a monopoly protest to the judiciary is much better than a simple hint.

Senator Cleveland was very satisfied. “I remember the state attorney general also came?”

“Find something for him to do!”

Behind every senator is an interest network that may involve multiple states, and each node in this interest network has its own extensive network of connections.

For example, the supporters behind Senator Cleveland were the financial consortiums of his electoral state, and this consortium had certain connections with financial consortiums and enterprises in other places.

As long as these enterprises were involved in import and export trade, or needed some overseas resources, then they would definitely have to deal with Golden Port more or less, or simply establish a branch here.

Tom quickly found a few companies, gave them a hint, and then brought them to the Attorney General’s door and knocked.

“Come in!”

The Attorney General was very polite, and even more so when he saw it was Tom. After a simple exchange of pleasantries, he looked at the people behind Tom.

Tom briefly introduced him, “These are friends from Corinthia State. They’ve encountered some legal problems here and don’t know who to turn to.”

“To be honest, I don’t know much about the law. I didn’t graduate from law school, so I thought of you, Mr. Attorney General.”

The Attorney General had actually already gotten a taste of what was going on. He smiled and looked at these people. “What’s the problem? I can tell you, or I can find someone to help you.”

The men immediately began to talk about some of the practices of the Golden Port dock management company, including the use of unfair competition methods to implement monopolistic behavior.

Actually, this was a bit of a stretch, but whether it was a stretch or not depended on who was stretching it.

If it were a boatman or a dockworker standing in front of him, then it would definitely be a stretch.

But the ultimate reason these people were here was definitely Senator Cleveland, so it wasn’t a stretch at all.

“I understand. Please leave your phone numbers. I will have someone investigate these matters.”

“If it is true, I will handle it as soon as possible and give you an explanation.”

Tom felt that this state attorney general should have understood his meaning, so he stood up with a smile. “It’s really embarrassing to have to trouble you with matters outside of your work.”

“No trouble, no trouble at all. This is our job.”

He himself didn’t believe this sentence, and Tom certainly didn’t believe it, nor did the people behind him.

But this is politics.

They soon left. The Attorney General glanced at the phone numbers they had left, which were probably unreachable.

The state government’s system had more or less a relationship of interest transfer with Golden Port. He would not really treat this as a matter that needed to be taken seriously.

If he really needed to crack down hard on this case, it would be Senator Cleveland calling him personally.

So he believed that this was a form of pressure. He hesitated for a moment and dialed the local prosecutor’s number.

“Come to my room, now!”

(End of chapter)