Empire of Shadows

The atmosphere in the car was somewhat dull. The captain’s words made Boni realize that Lance’s goal was definitely not just the group of them, but also the Perez family behind them.

If Fran were to go and negotiate with Lance, he didn’t know how much they would have to pay to resolve this matter.

Or, if Fran didn’t negotiate with Lance, and tried to resolve this crisis through other means, how much would that cost?

He didn’t know, but it certainly wasn’t a small amount.

Boni felt somewhat angry. Every time they clashed with the Lance Family, he didn’t gain any advantage. On the contrary, they lost quite a bit.

Whether it was interests, or family members, or face, Lance and the Lance Family were like someone sent by God specifically to deal with them, which gave him a headache.

He suddenly had this thought. He first felt it was absurd. They were the Perez family!

In all these years of development, challengers had appeared more than once, but what was the result?

He didn’t know where those challengers had gone, but the Perez family still stood firm here.

But gradually, he became less confident in this thought.Just as he was pondering how the family should respond next, and the atmosphere in the entire car was heavy because he hadn’t spoken, a blinding light shot directly through the car window.

He subconsciously squinted his eyes and looked towards the source of the light. And in that instant, he felt as if his scalp was about to explode, and he was covered in cold sweat.

”Fu...” He couldn’t even finish the curse. His body instinctively prepared for the collision, but the force of the impact was too great!

The violent force made him almost fly up before slamming heavily into the lawyer, who was sitting on the side of the impact. At that moment, his mind went blank.

He only knew that the car had been hit. Everything else, he no longer knew.

Then came another heavy crash, accompanied by the sound of the car body being squeezed and deformed. Everything erupted in a few seconds, and then quickly subsided into silence.

And his consciousness was deeply submerged into the darkness.

All this happened too fast, so fast that no one could react. Even using words to describe it couldn’t capture one percent of the tragedy!

For those who didn’t witness all this, they probably only heard two almost consecutive crashes, and then it was over.

Two seconds, or three seconds.

Everyone in the police station stood up in astonishment. They looked at each other, and it wasn’t until more than ten seconds later that some officers, holding handguns, left the ground floor lobby and saw the collapsed courtyard wall.

And the van that was deformed and stuck on the cement pillar, and the large truck behind it.

Upstairs, the Police Chief, who was just lying in bed with a pillow and had somewhat drowsily fallen asleep, was also awakened by the two consecutive loud crashes.

He suddenly raised his head, his heart racing.

Whenever he was just falling asleep, or hadn’t slept well, and was awakened by someone, he would have this uncomfortable feeling of a racing heart.

The doctor had said that he had some minor issues with his cardiac nerves. It wasn’t fatal, but there was a risk, and he needed to pay attention to rest.

But as a Police Chief, how could he possibly have a stable sleep schedule?

He held his chest and stood up, pursing his lips tightly, as if this could counteract the uncomfortable heart racing.

After a while, he slowly got up and walked to the window, pulled back the curtain, and looked outside.

He only saw a large truck, its headlights continuously flashing, pushing a small car into the collapsed pillar at the entrance of the police station. Although he didn’t see the moment of impact, he could imagine how astonishing the scene of the collision was.

The swaying truck driver jumped down from the cab, bent over, seemingly coughing violently. He even vomited something.

The officers had already detained the driver. They tried to rescue the people in the van, but the entire car was deformed. The worst part was that the cement pillar had almost broken the car in half.

It was like a knife, deeply embedded, so much so that the doors, the windows, were all deformed.

The Police Chief’s forehead started to sweat. That was Boni’s car.

His fists clenched tightly. He didn’t know if it was because his heart was racing so badly, or because of Boni’s misfortune.

Ambulances and fire trucks soon arrived at the scene. With their cooperation, the people in the car were all rescued.

The lawyer died instantly. He was unlucky. He was at the primary point of impact, and at the same time, under the immense force, Boni had hit his body like a cannonball.

He had acted as a human cushion, absorbing all the force for Boni.

The doctor briefly checked and said that his ribs were almost all broken. These broken ribs had pierced his lungs, and he also had severe brain damage.

Let alone the fact that he was already dead. Even if he hadn’t died, and had been saved, there was a high probability that he would only be able to lie in bed for the rest of his life.

The driver and the person in the passenger seat, as well as the other two passengers, were also in bad shape. Three out of four were dead, and the one who hadn’t died had a broken thoracic spine. Even if he survived, he would only be able to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

Boni was severely injured, in a coma. Many bones in his body were broken. He was very dangerous and was immediately sent for emergency treatment.

As for whether he could be saved, no one knew.

The Police Chief quickly got dressed and went downstairs. He glanced at the driver, who was reeking of alcohol. He certainly didn’t think this was an isolated incident. The shadow of that man vaguely stood behind it.

Lance White.

This also made the Police Chief somewhat hate. Lance and his Lance Family were really too unruly.

He didn’t like this kind of unruly gang. Such a gang would only destroy social order and cause social instability, which was not in line with the federal government’s purpose of condoning gangs.

He tried to get some intelligence from the driver, but the driver was too drunk. His entire person was in a state of intoxication, and they could only wait until he was sober to try to dig something out of him.

From the results of the on-site investigation, the truck driver had slammed on the gas and had rammed into them. There wasn’t a single trace of braking. To say this wasn’t intentional, he was the first to not believe it.

This might be the first time the New Golden City Police Department had its wall crashed because of a gang firefight since its establishment. At the same time, this was also like a slap to the Police Chief’s face.

He was a little confused about why Lance was so arrogant.

But soon, he became somewhat dejected, because Lance indeed had the qualifications to be arrogant.

At this time, Senator Cleveland was still working. To say he was working wasn’t entirely correct; it was just a small meeting after the main one.

But Senator Cleveland was very angry. In the previous routine meeting, he had argued with another group of people. The intensity was almost no different from outright cursing.

Not everyone in Congress could maintain consistency on certain issues.

If the Senate and the House of Representatives were a single entity, then that would be the worst thing in the world.

And as it happens, they are not a single entity, and they all have their own interests, like an unstable thing, changing shape from time to time. This is when the Federation is a beautiful Federation.

The congressmen in Congress now have many labels on them, so complex that each person might have a dozen, or even dozens, of them.

But overall, they are divided into three major camps, two ideologies, and countless factions.

The three major camps naturally refer to the Liberal Party, the Socialist Party, and the Federal Party, as well as the Worker’s Party, which has been established but hasn’t secured a single Senate seat. So only the three major camps are counted here.

The countless factions refer to the interest groups formed by different individuals, for example, the faction of Senator Cleveland.

When Senator Cleveland is with the President of the Senate and others, they form another faction. This aspect is complex, with you in me and me in you.

Even the gentlemen of Congress themselves don’t know how many factions there are, and which one, or how many, of the dozens of factions each person belongs to.

What they were arguing about here was ideology.

Some people’s ideology was relatively radical, so they became the radical faction, for example, Senator Cleveland and these relatively young senators.

Their age is not considered old for a top politician, so their ideas are often very ”new and sharp.”

This always draws dissatisfaction from some of the older, more stable senators. They believe that being new, being radical, means sometimes messing things up. So this group of people forms the conservative faction.

This ideology is not entirely stable. When faced with different issues, the members of the radical and conservative factions will shift accordingly.

In the end, it still boils down to personal interests. When some people believe that being radical is beneficial to them, they will stand on the side of the radicals.

But if being conservative is beneficial to them, then they will become staunchly conservative congressmen.

Recently, the group that was ”anti-war” had started to parade and protest again. They had linked the war with human self-destruction, claiming that the Federation’s current actions were pushing all of humanity into the abyss.

The war had been going on for so long that anti-war parades would break out several times a year. These people could always find reasons for being anti-war. For example, when the war had just broken out, their reason for being anti-war was ”children shouldn’t be sent to the battlefield.”

They believed that the federal government sending young federal people to the battlefield to be killed by the enemy was a blatant criminal act.

But with the economic boom brought by the war and the increase in income, people were no longer opposed to this reason, because the beneficiaries were, in the end, the majority.

Then they had brought up the reason that ”war violates morality and the Bible,” attacking the act of plundering the lives of others in war from a moral and religious perspective, saying they would go to hell.

The federal government had the Cardinal Archbishop publicly state that ”ancient soldiers who were loyal to their monarch would go to heaven, and so it is now,” which had resolved these anti-war arguments.

Now, they had proposed that ”humanity will self-destruct because of the war.” They could always find a reason.

Did the few congressmen in Congress who supported the anti-war stance not really understand the benefits that the war brought to the Federation?

Of course not. They certainly knew that the war could actually bring huge benefits to all sectors of society.

If they couldn’t even understand such simple principles, they weren’t fit to hold important Senate positions in Congress.

But why, even though they clearly knew this was a good thing, did they still oppose it?

To put it plainly, because being anti-war could bring them more benefits, they stood on the side of the anti-war.

For example, the international financial groups that had been identified as having Dantra financial backing. They sponsored these senators to actively submit all kinds of anti-war proposals.

Even though the senators knew they wouldn’t pass, they would submit them, and then would take the initiative to publicly disclose these proposals to society, to provoke public discussion, as a bargaining chip for the anti-war stance.

Coupled with the fact that they weren’t making as much profit as others from the war, they firmly stood on the side of the anti-war.

By the end of the year, not only was the federal government busy, but Congress was also getting busy. A routine meeting was held in the afternoon.

At the meeting, the anti-war people had once again submitted anti-war proposals. They claimed that the war should be ended as soon as possible through negotiations and other means, to avoid a pile of problems from arising.

Originally, everyone was just treating these things as a formality and didn’t plan to go into them deeply, but as they talked, they brought up the matter of Yalan.

They believed that the Federation was now transforming from a ”police of world peace” to a ”world aggressor full of ambition.”

The three northern countries had, because of the change in the Federation’s international image, already sealed their borders, and had deployed troops on the border.

Once a military friction occurs and escalates, it is very likely that a homeland war will break out, which is one of the reasons for their anti-war stance of ”war will bring destruction.”

Since Yalan was mentioned, they certainly had to mention Senator Cleveland, who had been supporting and promoting this matter behind the scenes. The two sides had first, through some arguments in Congress, escalated their stance, and then had begun to accuse each other.

They accused Senator Cleveland and the President of being warmongers, who, for their own self-interest, had launched an inhumane war of aggression, violating the equality, freedom, and fairness advocated in the Federal Constitution.

Senator Cleveland accused them of taking black money from abroad, acting as spokespeople for the Federation’s hostile forces. This was blatant treason and betrayal. He had asked the President of the Senate to form an investigation team and to severely investigate the backgrounds of these people.

Whose background could withstand an investigation?

Not even the President!

Although everyone knew that Senator Cleveland’s words were just an equivalent of a verbal tic like ”fuck,” its deterrent power was real.

If it weren’t for the fact that everyone was still a decent person, and the President of the Senate was maintaining order, it was likely that the two groups would have fought today!

The conflict between the congressmen who supported the war and the ones who opposed it and advocated for peace had existed for more than two years. It wasn’t something that had happened overnight, so the constant escalation was not surprising.

The two groups had argued until the meeting was over and they had left. The Senator, in the small meeting after the main one, was still accusing these traitors of the stupid things they had done.

He was very angry today. In the past, these people had never so openly and without any concealment pointed their fingers at him.

So he had, at the first opportunity, launched a swift counter-attack that, to an ordinary person, seemed like... a farce.

”Those sons of bitches must be planning some damn thing. Have someone investigate them!”

After cursing for a while, and after being appeased by his friends, he finally ”calmed down.”

In fact, his performance in Congress, including his subsequent anger and loss of composure, was, for the most part, also part of a performance.

The others certainly wouldn’t object. Now, appeasing him was the most important thing.

Then they prepared to get to work. His chief aide walked over to his side and whispered a few words in his ear. He turned his head and glanced at his chief aide, then stood up. ”I have to take a call. You all carry on.”

He independently left to take the call, but his aide and his secretary remained here. This was to prevent anything he didn’t want to see from happening while he was away.

Speaking of which, there was a very interesting story.

Politicians in this period, if they got cancer, it was often bladder cancer and bowel cancer. The reason was that they often held in their urine and feces for long periods of time.

There weren’t yet any good materials that could be used to make beautiful, functional, and odorless adult diapers, and most people were also embarrassed to pee or shit in front of everyone, even though they were still wearing pants.

Holding in urine and feces for a long time would constantly increase the risk of bladder cancer and bowel cancer. Then why did they hold it in?

In fact, there was a small story behind this. The early structure of any government is often immature. Some places might have too many people arranged, and some might have too few.

Later, in order to make these unreasonable situations more reasonable, these departments would be reorganized.

There were originally six supervisors. Now only five were needed. There was one extra. What to do?

The Federation liked to hold votes. So they would have them vote. The six of them all had a good relationship with each other. No one was willing to vote for someone else, and even less for themselves. It had fallen into a stalemate.

At this time, one of the supervisors suddenly had to go to the toilet. He told the other five that he was going to the toilet.

He thought that the matter, which had been at a stalemate, would not be resolved just because he went to the toilet, so he didn’t have any psychological burden or any sense of crisis.

He patted his ass and went to the toilet. But the remaining five supervisors looked at each other. One of the supervisors suddenly said, ”I think... (the guy who went to the toilet) is not very proactive in his work. I’ll vote for him.”

The others immediately realized that this was a good opportunity that wouldn’t harm their own interests and could unify their opinions. They immediately followed suit.

When this guy came back from the toilet, he found that he had been ”optimized.”

So most politicians would not easily leave a meeting that could decide the development of certain things.

But after all, there are always some things that they can’t avoid, so they will leave some people behind to represent their interests.