Chapter 1220: Closing In

When Christopher arrived at the entrance of the bar, a large crowd of onlookers had already gathered, along with many reporters.

Several people in handcuffs were standing behind the "stolen goods," accepting photos with their heads hung low.

Christopher did not approach; he simply sat in his car, watching the events unfolding across the street.

This was the largest and most luxurious bar in the local area.

He had invested at least two million into this bar. It featured five of the most advanced stages on the market, a spring-loaded dance floor, and all sorts of lighting and sound equipment—the best that could be bought at the time.

It had become the best bar in this city, bar none.

It also ranked among the top luxury bars in the entire state.

Every day, this place brought Christopher tens of thousands in profit; it was one of his biggest cash cows.

Previously, some local socialites had intended to partner with him, planning to invest some money and take a cut of the bar's daily windfall, but he had refused them.

Later, both sides even had a shootout over this matter, and in the end, the superior professional caliber of the Sumuli gunmen allowed Christopher to have the last laugh.

Unfortunately, this time, he could not have the last laugh as he had before.

Without a doubt, this bar would be sealed, and there was a high probability that everything inside would be hauled away.

He slammed his fist hard against the car door. "Leave this place."

What those reporters didn't notice was that the owner of this bar had just been right behind them; their attention was entirely captured by the alcohol and illicit cash being seized.

Over a hundred thousand in cash, plus various types of alcohol worth five hundred thousand—this was already an extremely rare major case in the local area.

The enthusiastic smiles on the faces of the prohibition agents could not be dispelled even by the cold wind. For them, this was a solid achievement, an achievement that would allow them to climb higher or secure better treatment.

The police were also very happy; having cracked such a big case, bonuses and vacations would be guaranteed.

The reporters were even happier; they had already thought of what to write in tomorrow's newspaper.

Everyone was happy, except for those guys in handcuffs, and except for Christopher.

After returning to his office, Christopher immediately called the police chief. This time, he didn't call while sitting; he called while standing.

The moment the call was connected, he roared through gritted teeth, "What the hell are you trying to do?"

The police chief on the other end of the receiver paused for a moment, then coughed twice. The sound on the other end vanished for a moment, and after a while, following the sound of a door closing, someone finally began to speak.

"I am very sorry about what happened today." His tone didn't carry much of a sense of genuine apology; it was purely perfunctory, and Christopher could tell.

Christopher wasn't buying it at all. He pounded his hand on the tabletop with a thud. "If you sounded a bit more sincere, I might believe you actually felt guilty."

"Why didn't you give me a call before the operation?"

"Or find a way to notify my people?"

"Is that why I give you so much money every month, for you to treat me like this?"

To handle the police and keep them from actively causing trouble, Christopher would take out about thirty to forty thousand every month to bribe these police officers. The police chief alone took two thousand a month, and then the sergeants and others below him each got a cut from it.

Besides the police, there were prosecutors, judges, and everyone who could be linked to the bar business; he had fed them all.

He had heard before that Lansi's monthly expenses were huge. At the time, he didn't believe it; he saw it as a means Lansi used to brag or for other purposes.

Now that he was managing a city himself, he knew that the expenses were truly massive.

For this city, there were many people who could make him uncomfortable: there were over a dozen municipal councilors, the police chief, the Hazardous Materials Bureau, and the mayor.

Even the mayor's aides, the councilors' assistants, and their relatives all had ways to make him uncomfortable. He not only had to weave a network but also ensure these people wouldn't cause him trouble.

Doing this was actually not easy.

Even Lansi needed to spend a massive amount of money in this regard, let alone Christopher, whose foundation wasn't as good as Lansi's.

Only by feeding all these people would they not cause him trouble.

Their cooperation had always been very pleasant; he paid on time, and these people would tip him off in advance, telling him about any operations or the like.

The coordination between the two sides was very tacit and pleasant, until now.

Now, everything had been ruined by the police chief. Christopher was extremely furious. This anger wasn't directed entirely at the police chief; it was also directed at Lansi.

It was just that Lansi wasn't in front of him, and of course, even if he were, he might not dare to vent his anger at Lansi, so he could only vent the fire in his heart on this police chief.

Facing such accusations from Christopher, the police chief didn't back down either. "Listen, friend, I'm sorry this matter wasn't notified to you, because I couldn't notify you."

"This was supervised by the mayor. If you have any problems, grievances, anger, or anything else, you can go talk to the mayor, not me."

"You are willing to give me money because I am the police chief. If I weren't the police chief, you wouldn't give me money anymore, so you don't need to teach me who to listen to, understand?"

"By the way, you can stop giving me money, starting this month. That is your freedom; you can try it."

"I have other work; I don't have time to chat with you. If you have any problems, we'll talk later."

The police chief hung up the phone directly, which made Christopher even more furious. "Motherfucker, dog-shit-like lowlife!"

He was told to call the mayor and then accuse the mayor?

Although he was indeed arrogant at times, he wasn't arrogant to that extent.

He put down the phone, walked over to the chair, and sat down. His entire spirit seemed to have become listless.

He hadn't even met Lansi yet, hadn't even met anyone from the Lansi family, and his business had already suffered such a heavy blow, leaving him with a sense of dullness for a moment.

It was as if he had built a very beautiful castle on the beach, vivid and lifelike, with everyone saying it was the perfect masterpiece, and then a wave struck.

You could see the wave pushing forward, but you couldn't stop the wave from covering the castle, even if you stood in front of the castle, the wave would still destroy the entire sandcastle!

He leaned back in the chair, staring at the ceiling, his mind chaotic and yet blank at the same time.

After a while, he asked, "What do you think... we will face next?" He sat up straight again and looked at his brother-in-law sitting across the table.

The latter frowned and thought for a while. He glanced at Christopher and said somewhat uncertainly, "I'm not too sure. I don't know much about Lansi, but his methods are indeed a bit..."

"I don't know how to say it. We are a gang; he should use gang methods to fight us, not these despicable means."

Perhaps in the eyes of many gang members, conflicts between gangs, or simplified to conflicts between people, should be resolved using gang methods: shootouts, duels, or other methods.

Not by utilizing official power; that would be mocked by people.

Yet, Lansi used such methods for only a few days, and he beat them to the point where they couldn't even fight back.

Perhaps the reason gangs disdain using official means isn't entirely because they disdain letting the government participate in gang conflicts; more importantly, they can't wield this "sharp blade."

This is like a "strategic weapon" in the underground world. All gangs avoid this issue; they won't admit they fear the federal government in this regard, but they also don't want others to be able to use such means against them, so they established such conventional rules.

Shootouts should be between gangs; don't drag the federal government into it.

Many people feel that doing so is correct, and some even feel that even if the government is dragged in, it won't change anything. These people have a high probability of not being able to feel this sensation, but Christopher felt it.

Despair.

These officials, the chief, said they would deal with him, and they dealt with him. He didn't even have any temper or way to deal with it; he could only watch helplessly as they seized his goods and took down his most profitable bar. They were destroying everything he had bit by bit!

"Fuck!" He couldn't help but curse again. The telephone on the table rang suddenly. The ringing sound made Christopher shudder.

He was a bit nervous and also a bit panicked as he looked at the phone. "Fuck, I don't want to answer it. You answer it."

His brother-in-law sitting across from him bit the bullet and picked up the phone. "This is..."

His expression went through many changes in a very short time. About twenty seconds later, he didn't hang up the phone but put down the receiver and looked at Christopher.

"There's a guy refusing to pay the final payment."

Selling alcohol was their main work, and wholesaling was also their main work. They couldn't personally sell alcohol to dozens of cities and towns across the state.

Except for having their own retail outlets in two or three cities, they basically did wholesale business elsewhere.

They left a certain profit margin for those gangs and then sold them the alcohol at wholesale prices. The benefit of doing this was that the payment was very fast, and there were no operating costs.

His cooperation with the gangs here had always been quite good. The other side would pay a portion of the deposit, about half of the payment.

Then they would arrange for people to deliver the goods and collect the other half of the payment.

Just now, the person in charge of delivering goods to other cities called back. The goods had been delivered, but the other side refused to pay the remaining payment.

Originally, this money should have been paid a few days ago, but the other side kept finding excuses, saying they didn't have that much money on hand, and asked their people to wait.

This wait lasted until now, and they still had the same excuse. Obviously, these people didn't intend to give them the money.

Christopher's head hurt as if it were exploding. Something was about to crawl out of his brain, and his entire skull was about to crack!

"I can't deal with those people, but I can't even deal with a gang?!" He pounded the table hard. "Call everyone up, give them a taste of what's coming!"

His brother-in-law didn't respond to him immediately but looked at him with a thoughtful, slightly worried expression. "Could this be... another trap?"

Christopher scratched his scalp hard; his scalp was a bit itchy, and his mood became even more irritable.

"If I don't take action now... then we can only flee back."

"More people will do this, taking our goods and not giving us money."

"Even if this is Lansi's little trick, we must let others know that perhaps it's not easy for us to deal with Lansi, but dealing with them is very simple!"

He knocked on the table twice. "Tell the brothers, cheer up, let's vent our anger!"

Christopher's men quickly moved. The place they were going to wasn't in this city but in the neighboring city. One way, it might be a seven or eight-hour drive, and for a round trip, one day was enough.

Now they had to strike; they couldn't always be on the defensive. Once the news spread, the morale of these men would only be lower!

These men must be made to realize that they weren't soft tomatoes that anyone could come and squeeze!

The Sumuli people didn't have such a tradition; they advocated blood for blood, tooth for tooth, eye for eye!

Only by being fierce and biting back was the reason they could gain a foothold in various countries during the great Sumuli immigration period, not by admitting defeat.

Christopher didn't want to return to the main island, so he had to struggle some more. As long as there was such a possibility, he would resolutely not go back!

He didn't like that place. On Sumuli Island, he had no chance of getting ahead.

The four great families and the high-level political circles firmly controlled everything on the island. Someone like him could only slowly rot on the island, becoming nutrients for the Bianqi family's growth, just like all those others who had already disappeared.

Christopher took a large number of men and left. He had to ensure that even if this was Lansi's trick, a trap, they could still pull their feet out after stepping into it.

They brought a lot of heavy weapons, even some explosives. Using explosives in a shootout in the Federation would blow things up, but now he couldn't care about that anymore.

When Christopher's motorcade left, an old man sitting at a round table by the roadside, drinking hot coffee from a small cup and wearing a duckbill cap, threw his cigarette on the ground. He put his hands into his pockets. "I'm going to make a call."

The old men around him all smiled and agreed to his request to leave. Such people were very common in this residential area dominated by Sumuli people.

They wore woolen coats, sat by the roadside around a small round table, basking in the sun. On the table was a coffee pot that could boil fire, constantly emitting hot steam.

In their hands, they held those coffee cups that looked only the size of a ping-pong ball cut in half. Each time, they would pour a small cup of boiling hot coffee, then blow on it while drinking it little by little.

In this process, they would chat, might play cards, or eat something. This was the social activity Sumuli old men liked the most.

You didn't need to know them all; you might just be a passerby, but as long as you were a Sumuli person, then sitting down, you could chat with them. They would also be happy to treat you to their coffee, although it might not be ground from any expensive coffee beans.

Every region, every ethnic group, had its own way of life, just like this moment.

The old man in the duckbill cap came to a telephone booth not far away. He took out two coins, inserted them into the coin slot of the phone, and then took out a slip of paper from his pocket and dialed the number on it.

The phone was connected almost immediately. After hearing the response from the other side, he said, "They have already left."

"Hmm... many cars. I don't know how many people are left here, but many people have definitely left."

"Good... I know."

After saying this, he put down the phone, returned to the table, and continued to drink the hot coffee in small sips. "Where were you talking to?"

Another old man said with a laugh, "We were talking about how much longer those damn vampires on the island can hold on, and I heard that someone is resisting their 'tyranny'. They started some kind of resistance organization or something; I'm not too sure."

The old men around were all attracted by this news, and some also spoke out some news they knew to exchange. Everyone enthusiastically threw themselves into such limited time.

The warm sunshine shone on their bodies, the hurried footsteps of pedestrians on the roadside and their slow-paced life, mixed with the coffee fragrance constantly gushing out of the coffee pot, the taste of life was all in it.

Two hours later, three cars arrived outside Christopher's manor. The car in the front honked its horn twice.

The guard who was reading a trashy magazine in the guard booth at the entrance looked outside. It wasn't a familiar car. He walked to the door, observed for a while, and then walked out through the small door.

"Who are you?"

He bent over, looking through the car window at the people sitting inside. The guy in the passenger seat was wearing a soft felt hat, and he had very three-dimensional facial features; he looked just like a Sumuli person.

"Boss asked us to come back to get something."

The guard glanced at the people in the two cars behind. His gaze returned to the Sumuli person in the passenger seat in front. The other side had a clear Sumuli accent; this was something outsiders couldn't learn.

"I don't know you." The guard was very dutiful. "At least while I'm working, I haven't seen you in the manor."

"If Boss asked you to come, you'd better give him a call and let me confirm."

The guy sitting in the passenger seat had a smile on his face. He seemed to have thought of something. "Right, he gave me something when he asked me to come, saying that as long as you take a look, you'll know."

The guard was a bit curious and bent over a bit more, getting closer to the car window. "What?"

The next second, the guy in the passenger seat suddenly hooked his neck and dragged him into the car. This sudden change made the guard start struggling in terror, but soon, he stopped moving.

Inside the car, the guy in the passenger seat had already cut the guard's throat with a dagger, and blood flowed all over him with a pitter-patter. ===== CHAPTER 1221 =====