Chapter 574

After Deputy Director Duke left the Koda family manor, he immediately made a call to Director Chief Bulu, "I've come out; is just doing this enough?"

"Hmm, this is enough. You might have to run a few more times in the next few days; things will be over soon."

"Alright, just let me know when the time comes."

"I'm going to get busy with other things."

The great purge was nearing its end, but it hadn't completely finished yet, and he still had a lot of work to do.

He was actually quite curious, but he also knew that one should ask questions that can be asked and not ask questions that he shouldn't know, as that would only bring trouble upon himself.

After Director Chief Bulu hung up the phone, he looked at Lanse, "I don't quite understand..."

Actually, he was also very confused; what was the point of doing this?

Using these cases that once existed to threaten and intimidate Bandi?

It seemed there was no practical meaning in doing so, because the executor was Shi Dong; even if he said these were all done at Bandi's instigation, it couldn't directly convict Bandi.

He would hire a lawyer, the lawyer would help him think of every possible way to clear his name, and for cases that had passed so long ago, there might be quite a bit of evidence already lost.

Trying to send him in through these cases had a very high difficulty.

Lanse shook his head slightly, "I just want to make him panic. Fear and panic make people lose control and lose the ability to think calmly. Only when he is panicked enough will he constantly make mistakes."

"We don't have much time!", Lanse emphasized his tone, "Simply following the procedure is too slow; we can only force him to make mistakes and then quickly resolve him."

"Shi Dong started getting involved in family affairs before he even graduated from high school, and he started taking charge of some work after he was in his twenties. It's been over ten years; how much criminal fact and evidence do you think he has mastered about the Koda family?"

"They will definitely try every possible way to finish off Shi Dong."

"The more he knows and the more that gets out, the more Bandi wants to finish him off as soon as possible."

"Shi Dong hasn't fully cooperated with us without reservation yet; we need him to take another step forward, but this step cannot be us pushing him; it must be someone else pushing him."

"Just once is enough to push him far enough!"

Director Chief Bulu listened earnestly, analyzing, and ultimately agreed very much with Lanse's view.

After more than ten years, who knows if they left behind any evidence?

And as more and more content is exposed by Shi Dong, perhaps in some case, there is a possibility of sending himself in.

They won't wait forever; the more they wait, the more passive they become. They must take the initiative to attack.

"Then what do I need to do?"

In this kind of "great tide," if he didn't do something, he would feel incomplete.

Without that heavy sense of historical participation, there wouldn't be that feeling that he was also one of the creators of history.

Once a person has power and no worries, they think a lot and start to become slightly philosophical.

This all comes from a comfortable life and work; he wouldn't have considered these things before, but now he does.

"Just act according to the plan."

That afternoon, some newspapers began to report these old cases, and the "Tide News" even used a very sensational headline—

"One Hundred Kills in Ten Years, Exposing the Bloody and Cruel Internal Strife of a Certain Family"

This kind of headline was fully qualified to be put on the "Federal Daily." The content of the report was only a part, introducing the unexplained disappearance of about several important management members of the Koda family in the past.

Some of these people were their employees, and some were also surnamed Koda, being family members, but they all eventually disappeared.

The report used some vague vocabulary to narrate the speculation of the whole process, although none of the endings explicitly pointed the finger at anyone.

But anyone who finished reading the report could taste a special flavor from it; they were talking about the Koda family.

Coupled with the series of recent events targeting the Koda family, the entire Jin Gang Cheng and even the surrounding areas began to heatedly discuss these matters.

The more they discussed, the more bizarre the information people spread became.

Even though Lanse hadn't produced evidence that they had killed a hundred of their own people in ten years, just overnight, twisted rumors began to appear.

Such as "Bandi is actually not a member of the Koda family; he is an outsider impersonating them, and his goal is to clear out the Koda family's bloodline."

Or something like "They have actually killed tens of thousands of people, but no one has ever dared to report these."

Although it was so outrageous that it looked fake at a glance, people were clearly more interested in these outrageous news stories and trusted them more.

The pressure formed by public opinion didn't actually press directly on Bandi at first; those mud-legged people outside had been discussing the Koda family for how many years, so why would he care about the discussions of these people?

But as Director Chief Bulu indicated that some citizens hoped the federal government could give the public the truth, they hoped to restart these investigations.

And Director Chief Bulu also decided to restart the investigation of these missing person cases, while calling on the entire society that if anyone knows anything or has any evidence, they can submit it to them.

They can ensure that the people providing evidence will not be exposed to the Koda family's sight, and they also set up special mailboxes and phone lines.

Media reporters used reports like "Almost every minute someone calls in to tell some news that might be related to the Koda family's crimes" to give people a feeling that "everyone is working together to tear down the wall of the Koda family."

Including Bandi himself, he also became very restless. He really couldn't remember every time he silenced someone, nor could he guarantee that every silencing was clean.

Some things that weren't actually done by them but were falsely attributed to them by rumors, he himself couldn't distinguish clearly, and some he hadn't even heard of.

It was precisely because of this that he became increasingly uneasy.

You can ignore the malice of one or two people, but when the malice of a hundred thousand or a million people gathers into a sea, no one can withstand it.

Besides this matter, there was another thing that made him feel very bad, which was that Shi Dong was really not dead and was still with Lanse's people.

Someone saw him sitting in a car, and then the family members started looking everywhere for information about him, and they really found it.

They discovered that Shi Dong was currently living in a villa in the New Bay area, a place right next to the Imperial District, almost stuck to Lanse's territory.

Letting him live there was definitely Lanse's arrangement and decision; besides hiding him, it was also convenient to manage him.

Bandi didn't tell Gao Li about these things; he was afraid Gao Li would be distracted and directly send someone to deal with Shi Dong.

He had already said enough content that shouldn't have been said; he should shut his mouth!

During these few days, Shi Dong was controlled in this villa. Lanse didn't even stop him from contacting the outside world, as long as Lanse's people were watching by his side when he made calls.

But even so, he didn't contact the outside world because he didn't know how to face those people from the past and how to face his family.

He sold a lot of information to Lanse; he felt he couldn't be blamed for this, after all, he had already died twice.

But to say he didn't feel guilty or embarrassed at all was actually not true.

He felt very guilty; sometimes he would also hate himself for not having the courage to choose suicide. In fact, if he wanted to commit suicide now, he could completely do it.

But he just didn't have the courage to do so; he didn't know how to describe his current feelings.

Sometimes he would even think that if everyone who knew him were dead, perhaps he could achieve true liberation.

But soon he would deny these thoughts himself; he felt he was going crazy.

Just in this short moment, he started to stare blankly, then came back to his senses, and focused his attention back on the newspaper.

The newspaper mentioned that the federal government held a relatively professional expert discussion meeting. The experts discussed and believed that the core reason for the current economic depression lay in the unreasonable distribution of social resources.

A large amount of capital is stored in the accounts of those wealthy people and does not participate in social circulation, so people originally didn't have much money in their pockets, and in order to improve their ability to resist risks, they could only continue to save money.

This led to money becoming waste paper in a sense after one or two simple circulations.

Without consumption, the efficiency of shops decreases, factories cannot get final payments, and they cannot pay wages to workers.

And workers who cannot get wages or cannot get full wages dare not spend money recklessly, which forms a terrible vicious cycle.

Experts have always believed that this society is very wealthy, but it is only because funds cannot circulate that the current depression was caused.

For example, those wealthy people, the big capitalists.

They are willing to spend money and like to spend money, but they ultimately only occupy a very small minority of the whole society.

Their consumption cannot drive the economy of the entire country at all; only when all ordinary people consume together can it work.

To solve this method is very simple: readjust the resource distribution method, let the capitalists release some profits, and let the public become wealthier. Once people have money, they will have the desire to consume, goods and wealth will begin to circulate in all links, and everyone will gain a portion of benefits because of the circulation of wealth; this is the healthy way of operation.

However, wanting to persuade capitalists to raise wages for workers by relying on this method is basically an impossible thing.

They would rather everyone go bankrupt together than return the value that originally belonged to the workers' labor to them.

Looking at these reports, Shi Dong felt very bored; he didn't understand these things; he had never worried about money since he was born.

He flipped backward, there was no exciting content, he threw the newspaper on the coffee table, and then walked to the window.

Outside the window, the sun was bright, a scene full of vitality. He suddenly had an impulse to go out for a walk, but the impulse was just an impulse after all, because he knew Lanse wouldn't allow it.

He stood by the window, his mind started to wander again, and suddenly he heard a "tong" sound, followed by a second sound, and a third sound.

On the floor-to-ceiling window in front of him, an egg-sized white layer-upon-layer crack suddenly appeared, followed by a second one, and a third one.

It was the trace left by bullets!

He reacted, looked at the more traces on the glass wall, cursed, and fled into the room.

When he realized that if it weren't for that bulletproof glass, he might have already died, he couldn't help but tremble uncontrollably.

Do not miss a single word of the content while reading!

Lanse had killed him twice, giving him an indescribable, deep, bone-deep, and soul-deep fear and trembling toward death!

He sat in the room, locked the door, and picked up the phone, but the phone line had already been cut.

He could only pray, pray that the people Lanse arranged were slightly useful.

Outside the house, a rifleman with a gloomy face prepared to put away his weapon. He didn't understand how much the owner of that house was afraid of death, to the point that he actually used bulletproof glass everywhere, causing this silencing plan to fail.

The person behind him walked over, "No need to put it away, we'll storm in."

The rifleman looked at him sideways, as if asking "Are you sure?", the other party nodded, "Bandi requires us to resolve Shi Dong as soon as possible; we can't let him keep talking nonsense."

The rifleman set up the bolt-action rifle again, "I'll provide fire support."

Before he finished speaking, he saw several cars crash through the gate of the villa on the other side and rush in.

Close-range firefights began immediately, with gunshots everywhere, and he also provided support from time to time.

The intense gunshots resounded over the entire New Bay area in a very short time. What they didn't expect was that this itself was a trap.

Soon, a large number of police surrounded the vicinity and began to advance layer by layer; all those who resisted were shot dead.

Lanse said, it didn't matter whether these small characters lived or died.

It was too late for the rifleman and the people beside him to escape. After a standoff of a few minutes, the two finally chose to put down their weapons.

Those lowest-level family members, for the sake of the family's stability and for the orders of the upper class, tried their best to kill Shi Dong.

Yet the true beneficiaries of the family behind them put down their weapons without hesitation.

It has always been like this in this world; the ones who aren't afraid of death are always the small soldiers, while the generals are often the ones sitting at the victor's dining table as prisoners of war, enjoying a sumptuous dinner!

Ten minutes later, the door where Shi Dong was hiding was knocked on, and his body trembled slightly.

From the time the gunshots stopped until now, he didn't know what had happened outside; the unknown knocking on the door disturbed his tense nerves.

He looked at the outside of the door uneasily.

But then the voice of Lanse coming from outside the door made him heave a heavy sigh of relief.

He had never been so... full of good feelings for someone he should have hated.

And it wasn't just good feelings; Lanse's voice also brought a sense of security. He walked to the door like that and opened the complicated lock.

Lanse was standing outside the door.

"Are you hurt?"

Shi Dong shook his head, "The bulletproof glass helped me block the bullets."

He now recalled the fear when several "bullet flowers" suddenly appeared on the glass curtain wall in front of him; they really didn't intend to let him live!

Lanse looked him up and down, then let him follow him down, "We have already caught these people; perhaps you recognize them?"

"Want to see?"

After Shi Dong was silent for a while, he silently followed Lanse downstairs.

As soon as he went downstairs, he saw two people standing in the living room.

There was one he didn't recognize, who shouldn't be any powerful character, but he recognized the other person; it was his cousin.

His cousin also noticed Shi Dong standing behind Lanse, who was also the target of his operation this time.

When the two met, one had a face full of hatred, and the other had a face so calm that no emotion could be seen.

Shi Dong followed Lanse into the living room. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass window, he saw many police officers outside cleaning up the scene.

There were many corpses in the yard, and some people were using rags to wipe the bloodstains on the glass wall.

It was originally just a little bit, but the more they wiped, the more there was, yet it also became more transparent.

Originally, Shi Dong wanted to ask questions like "Why did you want to kill me," but he soon gave up.

What else could it be for?

The fact that he is still alive now is the biggest reason!

"It looks like you know each other," Lanse sat on the sofa and said with a smile.

Shi Dong stood by the sofa, looking like Lanse's subordinate. He nodded, "My cousin."

"Fuck!"

"Don't call me cousin; I feel sick, damn it!"

His cousin shouted loudly, seeming to have some guts. He looked very hateful toward Shi Dong and even said things like "I don't have a cousin like you; the moment you were caught, you should have died immediately..."

Shi Dong's expression changed constantly; there was guilt, dissatisfaction, and a trace of indescribable disgust.

Actually, Lanse could understand his mood now; it was probably similar to the feeling of "You aren't me; do you know how I've been living during this time?"

In order to let the cousins communicate better, Lanse glanced at the gang members behind the rifleman.

A young man took out a steel cable connected by two deer antlers and, while the rifleman wasn't paying attention, tightly strangled his neck.

While pulling hard, he lifted upward.

In the shocked and fearful eyes of Shi Dong's cousin, his complexion quickly began to turn red.

At first, he could still treat this matter relatively rationally; he tried to insert his fingers between his neck and the noose, so as to exert force to let himself breathe.

But as he couldn't do this, his reason began to dissipate under the strong effect of his desire to survive.

He struggled crazily, his hands tearing at the noose on his neck with force, and his neck was scratched until it was bloody and mangled.

His face, which had turned red and then blue, tilted slightly, and he looked at Shi Dong's cousin with a pair of eyes full of begging, expressing his desire to live.

He struggled constantly, an ineffective struggle, and finally, his complexion was already somewhat purple, and his eyeballs bulged outward. He slapped the person behind him hard, but in the end, his movements lost strength.

He died with fear of death in his eyes, attachment to living, resentment toward Shi Dong's cousin for not saving him, and many, many other emotions.

Until he died, he was looking at Shi Dong's cousin.

The room was very quiet; there were even police officers here, but the police officers ignored the murder happening right under their noses.

Lanse looked at Shi Dong's cousin, "Do you want to prove that you are more courageous than your cousin?"

(End of chapter)