Enlightenment: Attaining the Dao at Age 8

Chapter 121: Chapter 102: It Takes a Villain to Grind a Villain

For the people of Taiping State, this was destined to be a wild night.

The gunfire started at two in the morning and didn’t let up. The city was filled with a cacophony of chaotic roars. Anyone who didn’t know better would have thought some gang had collectively lost their minds during a turf war, beating each other’s brains out in a frenzy.

The braver citizens crept out of their beds to capture photos and videos from every possible angle, which they then uploaded to Night City’s local network.

In no time, photos and videos of the NCPD and the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team in street-to-street combat with the Voodoo Gang, arresting members left and right, went viral on the local net.

The gunfire didn’t completely stop until after six the next morning.

The moment the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team and the NCPD units withdrew, the people of Taiping State, who had stayed up all night, rushed to the site of the previous day’s most ferocious fighting.

After a night of intense combat, the battlefield had been practically leveled by all kinds of weaponry.

Voodoo Gang members lay strewn all over the ground, with severed limbs scattered everywhere.

Because there were so many dead, the NCPD officers in charge of body disposal didn’t even bother wasting time. After a simple check of the gang members’ IDs and personal belongings, they just piled the bodies together and set them on fire.

The sight caused many of Taiping State’s residents to stare wide-eyed in disbelief.

They were, of course, no strangers to the Voodoo Gang.

Ordinarily, its members were all shady and cryptic. This was because they frequently used their brain-computer interfaces to jack into the Net, where they stole corporate assets and mined for deep web treasures.

Many of their members looked more like ghouls than humans. Besides other street thugs, ordinary people barely dared to interact with them, terrified of being swindled or worse.

But regardless of the Voodoo Gang’s reputation, they were still one of the most notorious major gangs in all of Night City.

For so many Voodoo Gang members to die in a single night… It was enough to gut the entire gang. ’Could they really have been wiped out in one fell swoop by the combined forces of the NCPD and the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team?’

As news of the incident spread, it caused an uproar across Night City’s net.

The major news media outlets swarmed in like hounds on a scent, starting a nonstop series of reports on the shootout.

However, before the dust had even settled on the Voodoo Gang incident, the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team was on the move again the very next night. Without a moment’s rest, they completely wiped out the largest stronghold belonging to the Cleaner Fish.

The gunfire didn’t last as long this time.

This was because the Cleaner Fish weren’t as formidable in combat as the Voodoo Gang. This crew of lowlifes, known for extortion, kidnapping, and trafficking body parts, were the very definition of Non-stream.

They might have been able to play cat and mouse with the NCPD, but against the highly trained Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team—a force leagues above them in strength—it was nothing short of a one-sided slaughter.

The very next day, a member of the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team put the Cleaner Fish leader’s head up for auction on the net.

In just two days, two of the city’s most infamous gangs had been dealt a devastating blow.

Now, all eyes in Night City were watching. The vast majority of ordinary citizens cheered online; after all, to them, both the Cleaner Fish and the Voodoo Gang were a privileged class that had always used any means necessary to bleed them dry.

Of course, plenty of people were also calling the members of the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team lunatics.

These people were mostly affiliated with the gangs, or were gang members themselves. Li Chang’an’s reckless campaign to purge the gangs had shattered the delicate, de facto balance between Night City’s major corporations.

This was making the relationships between all parties increasingly tense and hostile.

But whether they were praised or condemned on the net, the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team’s armed helicopters still flew out from their base every day like clockwork.

They continued their scorched-earth campaign against the numerous gang members, showing no mercy.

…

A month flew by. Online, the news surrounding the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team and Li Chang’an had spiraled to an absurd degree.

In that month, faced with the purge by the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team, the major gangs—normally consumed by infighting—had even taken the rare step of sitting down for peace talks on several occasions.

They even formed a joint task force, composed of top enforcers from the major gangs as well as mercenaries. Armed with the most advanced, high-tech weaponry they could get their hands on, they hoped to launch a major counteroffensive and teach the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team a lesson it would never forget.

It would also show that lunatic Little Charles that the gangs were not to be trifled with.

But the combat prowess of the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team’s members far surpassed their imagination. The gangs had gathered their elite personnel and most advanced armaments, yet not only did they fail to inflict any significant casualties on the team, they themselves were all but annihilated.

To outside observers, it couldn’t even be called a counteroffensive. It was more like they were just lining up to be slaughtered by the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team.

It could be said that this was the most grueling month in the lives of countless gang members.

By the end of the month, gang members were living in a constant state of terror. To avoid being lined up and executed by the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team, they would break down in tears. With nowhere left to run, some even went to NCPD precincts to turn themselves in voluntarily.

The spectacle left the entire world stunned.

Before these events, no one in Night City could have ever dreamed it was possible. The thought that these arrogant, domineering gang members—men who stopped at nothing—would one day be under so much pressure that they would voluntarily surrender to the NCPD was simply unimaginable.