Chapter 690: Dismemberment

From the perspectives of Lanse and Mayor Williams, the changes occurring in the plaza were visible at a single glance.

"There's another group," Lanse said, seeing those dressed in police uniforms also attacking the protesters using the same methods.

Mayor Williams picked up his wine glass and took a sip. "Clumsy tricks!"

Lanse walked to the table and picked up the phone. "Some rats have mixed into our game; pay attention to identifying them."

As he spoke, he put the phone down, then returned to the window, watching the chaos unfolding in the plaza.

The number of people in the two groups was small, yet they were able to chase and drive away a large crowd; clearly, they should have been a single entity, but now they were failing to exert the power of a unified whole.

At this moment, the principle that people lacking a leader are like loose sand was being demonstrated to the fullest!

It wasn't just Lanse and Mayor Williams observing what was happening in the plaza; behind many windows of the City Hall building, many people were watching this scene.

From the perspective of "history," these Slader people who had just arrived in the Federation were gradually clenching their fists; they were forming a force, a force capable of shaking society.

But their demands were too rigid, and their "leaders" were too greedy, so much so that before they had truly formed a force, they were betrayed and scattered.

And once scattered this time, it would be very difficult for them to gather again into a force.

This would be the last display of the Slader people's power; after today, they would be like poor wretches with their spines broken, finding it hard to unify their thoughts, twist into a rope, and become a force!

They would be split into many groups, and each group would have its own political agenda; they would fall into a vicious cycle—

Each group would want to gain the recognition of the federal mainstream, and to achieve this, they would have to propose theories and standpoints favorable to federal society, while suppressing the other groups as much as possible.

Only by gaining the recognition of mainstream federal society could they obtain various forms of help from it.

Financial, political, or help in other aspects.

The more they relied on this funding, the more they would deviate from their original ideas, and subsequently, each idealistic group would turn into an interest group, a paradise for opportunists.

In order to obtain more benefits and achieve more success, they would have to sell out the Slader refugees behind them even more vigorously.

They would fall into long-term internal strife, unable to pose a threat to the rulers here anymore.

Can't the Slader people see this clearly?

No, they can see it clearly, but they cannot change it; in fact, they themselves are a part of the entire plan.

To become someone above others, to live a wealthy and extravagant life, one must hold bargaining chips.

And the people are the best bargaining chips.

They will be tamed by multiple forces into the most docile lambs.

"The development of New Jincheng requires a large population; if we can absorb all these people, it will be very beneficial for subsequent development."

"Urban expansion will take several years; these cheap laborers are the best consumables. I think we can relax the refugee entry system."

"Didn't they say you were too conservative?"

"Then you can completely try relaxing the policy as if out of 'spite'."

The people below were already in an uproar, fighting in a mess, while Lanse and Mayor Williams were discussing the city's subsequent development and some policy changes regarding the Slader refugees.

Mayor Williams agreed quite a bit. "However, getting them to settle here completely is not an easy matter."

Lanse laughed twice. "This is the Federation, full of everything free and beautiful; they will hope to live on here."

"Just like us."

Who could refuse to live in such a prosperous and developed country and city?

The attraction of the metropolis to the poor is unparalleled; many people sell all their assets in the countryside to come to the metropolis to live; this is their ultimate dream.

It is the same for the refugees; the harder and more painful their lives are, the more they yearn to become a part of this place.

Look at those early immigrants!

Take Enio's father, for example; even though his life is a mess, he still tries his best to gain a foothold in this city, wanting to obtain the most basic decency!

To be able to achieve this, they can pay anything they can pay!

Just like Karl, who is charging and killing in the crowd at this very moment; he also wants to pursue a happy life and obtain the qualifications to live decently in the Federation.

So even if what he is doing now is something he had never thought of before, and he still has some resistance in his heart, he will bite the bullet and continue doing it.

He is panting, exhaling a puff of white mist with every breath; the knife handle in his hand is a bit freezing, but his body is burning hot.

He kicks the guy in front of him hard, then slashes with his knife, telling him to "get lost," and then searches for the next target.

He doesn't have much guilt, and he doesn't intend to kill anyone; he just wants to drive these people away so they appear to have serious external injuries.

At this moment, he feels his body is full of power; clearly, a crowd ten times, dozens, or even hundreds of times larger than their group is being driven around by them.

At this very moment, he is looking at everything happening here from another perspective.

Weak!

Because of being weak, one gets bullied, and all this happens, just like his past self.

But now, he is no longer weak; he has mastered power.

In the future, he doesn't want to be a weak person either; he wants to make himself strong so he won't be easily bullied by others again.

Just as he raises the weapon in his hand, he freezes.

Boni appears in front of him, supporting a woman; their gazes meet in the air and stick together, but not in a romantic way.

They stare at each other, and at this moment, this minute, this second, time seems to have played a joke on him, freezing at this moment!

He thinks of the times they stared at each other when they were children; children from poor families huddled together for warmth, and from a young age, they knew that as long as everyone stayed together, they wouldn't be bullied.

Boni was the one with the most ideas among this group, and many of his peers listened to him; he had his own opinions, ideas, and united everyone so they wouldn't be bullied.

Many people admired him; after all, for children who were poor and bullied from a young age, their fathers might not necessarily protect them, but Boni could.

From that time on, their small group took Boni as their boss, and they were addicted to the grand ideals Boni spoke of, unable to extricate themselves.

Only now does Karl understand that he actually didn't want to be a great person; he just wanted to be someone above others, someone respected by others.

As if crossing time, his younger self looked at Boni with admiring eyes, and his current self, looking at Boni with more rational eyes, he is overlapping with his past self, replacing his past self!

He doesn't know who bumped into him from behind, causing him to stagger; it was this stagger that allowed his time to recover.

He glances at Boni again, then turns and leaves toward another place; although they have embarked on different paths, they were at least friends once.

After all, the time they spent together was too long, longer than the time relatives spent with him; this is also a kind of bond.

He doesn't want to go and cause trouble for Boni, but Boni takes the initiative to come and cause trouble for him; he lets that woman go to a safe place, then runs over in pursuit. "You're crazy!"

"Why are you doing this!" He grabs Karl's arm, his eyes turning red!

Karl doesn't want to talk to him, breaks free from his entanglement, and just as he takes two steps, he is grabbed again.

Someone looks over toward him; as the "boss" of this group, he has encountered trouble, and his subordinates are all asking with their eyes if he needs help.

These people also know Boni; some of them were in their current "company" before, and at that time, Boni was the boss.

"Don't make it difficult for me!" Those gazes staring at him make Karl feel a bit uncomfortable; he pries Boni's hand open and pushes him away. "This is the last time; don't go looking for trouble for yourself!"

After saying this, he turns and walks toward the nearest few people with big strides.

But Boni still chases after him; he reaches out to grab Karl, and Karl is finally provoked; he turns and gives Boni a hit, watching the blood drip down from Boni's head; he freezes for a moment, his eyelids blinking uncontrollably, and then he turns and leaves.

He doesn't want to return to that oppressive life of the past, where no matter what he did, he had to be careful, bending his waist and lowering his head, guessing other people's emotions.

He has bent his waist for too long in this life; he wants to straighten his back and stretch his body. Whoever helps him is his friend.

Whoever stops him from straightening his back, pressing his head down to make him continue lowering it, is his enemy.

No matter who that person is, someone he knows, someone he doesn't know, or... Boni!

He has spent this period of time very fully and very happily.

Countless wealth filled the inner void he didn't even know he had; he gained happiness and a sense of achievement he had never experienced before.

Friends?

Brothers?

No, he doesn't need them!

All he needs is to keep moving forward!

Boni holds the wound on his head, watching Karl walk away; he finally realizes that it's not just as simple as having different ideas from Karl; they have embarked on two completely opposite paths!

Perhaps it was the conflict with Boni just now that made Karl a bit distracted; he was tugged several times before he came back to his senses.

"What's wrong?"

His subordinate beside him says, "Time is up."

!

He raises his wrist to look at the gold watch he bought from an antique shop for 350 dollars; it is indeed the agreed-upon time.

He waves his hand, and he, along with some key members, begins to retreat.

In the original script, a small portion of people were to be caught; although this was a "performance," it couldn't be too fake.

It's impossible for not a single one to escape; some people will definitely escape, but some people will definitely be caught.

After Karl and these key members leave, there are still some people who continue to drive away the refugees who are gathering; they are the people who will be caught later, and in front of many people, their identities will be exposed!

This is very important!

About a minute after Karl and the others retreat, suddenly, the wailing of police sirens instantly resounds throughout the entire plaza.

A large number of police cars and police officers swarm out from alleys in all directions, instantly surrounding the plaza so tightly that not even water could leak through.

According to the Federation's police regulations, when a vicious case occurs, the siren must be sounded; its purpose is not to warn the criminals that "the police are coming," but to let the criminals know the police are coming, thereby interrupting the crime and reducing the losses and casualties caused by the criminal behavior to the victims.

Logically speaking, they should have sounded the sirens from far away, and these fake police officers should have been able to hear them early on.

But the moment the siren sounded, the police appeared; this clearly seemed a bit wrong; they were too fast!

But before they could react, the police officers formed a formation and raised the weapons in their hands; the demand for everyone to put down their weapons and kneel to surrender came from the loudspeakers.

The atmosphere in the plaza was a bit... hard to describe; twenty or thirty young people holding lethal weapons dropped the weapons in their hands and then honestly knelt on the ground.

However, in the distance, another batch of fake police officers didn't know what to do.

They were playing the role of fake police, not real police.

One fake police officer tried to deceive those police officers; he just held the steel pipe in his hand and walked a few steps toward the police; the officer he was facing directly pulled the trigger.

The sound of gunfire caused even more piercing screams to ring out in the plaza, but after the screams, there was calm.

Many of the terrified fake police officers dropped their weapons and knelt on the ground.

After the last riot, they knew that the federal police really dared to open fire!

Lanse, seeing this scene from the Mayor's office, shakes his head slightly and returns to the sofa to sit down.

Mayor Williams still had some desire to keep watching; he turns to look at Lanse. "Why aren't you watching anymore?"

Lanse picks up his wine glass and takes a sip. "The script was written long ago; it's just a qualified performance, nothing surprising."

Outside the window, those fake police officers are handcuffed; they are arranged to stand together, and suddenly someone in the crowd participating in the gathering exclaims, "Isn't that... the kid from 【Name】's family?"

"My God, I've seen that person, the fourth one from the left; he lives in the plaza right next to us!"

Accompanied by more and more people being recognized, this performance finally comes to an end.

The Slader people recognized on the spot hang their heads in shame, including some on the fake police side who were exposed; after all, they are all Slader people, and there will always be someone who knows them.

Boni, who originally wanted to accuse those thugs not wearing police uniforms of being instigated by the federal people, unexpectedly chooses to remain silent after seeing a few people on the fake police side.

Among those people, he saw some acquaintances, some acquaintances who had been in and out of Hope's house.

He is not a fool; he knows what happened and what this means.

His complexion is very ugly; he sits by the ambulance receiving on-site suturing from a doctor; he doesn't even notice that the suturing was completed without anesthesia.

Because compared to the pain brought by the wound on his head, the wound in his heart is clearly more painful.

Chief Bulu immediately launched an investigation; Karl's people confessed very smoothly that Hope hired them to do this.

Although Hope is already dead, they stated that Hope found them a while ago to hire them to do this, and even paid a deposit of 20,000 dollars.

Originally, they didn't intend to continue fulfilling this job after Hope died, but soon Hope's assistant contacted them, hoping they would continue doing it and not stop.

For the sake of that money, they decided to act according to the plan.

The interrogation work on the fake police side also went very smoothly; many people confessed that they were also people hired by Hope, with the purpose of playing the role of federal police to create opposition and hatred...

The news quickly caused an uproar in New Jincheng, and even the Secretary of State and the Deputy Governor called to ask what was going on.

Mayor Williams easily told the story according to the script; this also had to thank Mr. Charles and those people, as they also used the same tactics, making this performance more realistic.

After hearing the context of these things completely, the Deputy Governor requested him to go to Manton as soon as possible.

If it's not handled, God knows how many more things they will stir up.

The only thing worth being glad about is that this incident is an internal problem of the Slader people, not between the Federation and the Slader people.

Of course, as the Deputy Governor, he can definitely guess something, but as long as there is no evidence, they cannot admit it.

Mr. Fitz also took the opportunity to stand out; he publicized that the late Hope and those people around him created this tragedy.

They tried to use everyone to storm City Hall by creating terror and opposition, in order to profit for themselves.

In his description, Hope became an ugly clown, and everything he did was just for wealth, status, and power.

Fitz holds some true and false evidence, such as the account Hope opened at the New Jincheng Bank and the huge deposit inside.

And for example, the villa Hope had in the Bay Area was not bought by him, but was gifted to him by someone, gifted to him by the federal people.

He wasn't really seeking welfare for the Slader refugees; he was using everyone to do business!

This evidence, accompanied by the "truth" that had just broken out, made the public angry in an instant; these people at the bottom, lacking the ability to think and distinguish, are too easy to manipulate!

These people went from supporting Hope immensely to now despising him.

Even though he is already dead, there will still be people who despise him, as well as his tombstone.

The guidance of public opinion was done very successfully, and Fitz also gained huge prestige, but what he might not know is that no one will let him dominate alone.

After the matter ended, on the second day of the New Year, after Mayor Williams handled some urgent work, he went to Manton with Lanse.

In the luxurious carriage of the train, Mayor Williams was in a good mood.

"Fitz did a great job; he has already gained the support of many refugees."

Lanse nodded while giving him some advice. "You can't let Fitz become the next Hope; you have to find him some opponents of similar strength, otherwise he might get out of our control."

Mayor Williams smiled. "It's already been arranged..."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 691 =====