Chapter 765

Fran slowly put down the phone. He looked at the few old brothers in the room. At first, there were still some smiles on their faces.

After all, watching Fran lose face was actually a very interesting thing.

This didn't mean they hoped Fran would lose face, but rather that they placed themselves in a higher position.

Just like gentlemen occasionally wearing ordinary clothes to shuttle through the streets and alleys, finding a small restaurant they would never sit down in in their lifetime, then wiping those shiny, oily tabletops, ordering a dish they would absolutely never eat normally, and eating it with relish.

They saw this as a kind of contrast experience in life, hiding their identities and showing themselves in a low-key way—it meant roughly the same thing.

After so many years, except for a few people who could make Fran lose face, others simply couldn't do it, but Lanse did.

This made everyone feel it was very funny.

But as they laughed, they couldn't laugh anymore, because Fran's face was very long.

He was willing to lower his posture to talk to Lanse personally and even proposed a solution he thought was perfect, but Lanse didn't appreciate it and even gave him "a punch."

Those gentlemen wearing ordinary clothes were willing to eat cheap food at roadside stalls, but that didn't mean they could tolerate the shopkeeper serving them a basin of shit!

Under Fran's gaze, everyone remained serious.

"I heard Lanse also has some industries in Jincheng?" He was truly angry; he had already respected Lanse enough.

Calling personally was a manifestation of respect. If it were anyone else, even the five great families of Jincheng in the past, unless necessary, he wouldn't talk to their leaders personally.

But what did his respect get in return?

It was humiliation, it was contempt!

He looked at a young man in the corner, a family member with the Perez surname, twenty-three years old, just married, Fran's fourth child.

His hair was slick and shiny against his scalp, and his attire also looked very exquisite.

When he was born, the Perez family's status and power had long been very stable, and he hadn't experienced any arduous battles since he was a child.

Because he didn't have good learning ability, he entered the family's gang to do things.

Like Fran's eldest son, who was now a successful lawyer and had married a girl from a political family, and was working hard toward the political arena.

Some of his other children worked in family businesses; when they were in college, they studied knowledge related to business management.

There was also one doing research work, fanatically loving those magical phenomena.

From an educational perspective, this "fourth child" was actually the most useless among the siblings, compared to the abilities and achievements of others.

But he was also Fran's favorite, because he had been by Fran's side since he was in high school.

Sometimes ability or something was not important at all for a successor; what was important was who the person who decided who the successor was liked.

The fourth child was also a smart kid. He stood up immediately—handsome, tall, and straight. Fran was very satisfied with the state of his children. "Robin, leave this matter to you."

Robin nodded. "Leave it to me!"

Fran let out a heavy sigh. Moving against the Lanse family wouldn't yield results in a short time, after all, their influence hadn't covered the Lanse family's side yet.

So even if they really wanted to solve it through force, they wouldn't arrange for people to go over and take action immediately; doing so wouldn't have any meaningful ending other than sending heads.

He would first pull out Lanse's industries here, make Lanse suffer heavy losses, and then force them to take the initiative, creating a "pocket" to pack them all up at once.

He wasn't the kind of young person who didn't understand anything. He knew very well that if he rushed to take people to Laizhou to open fire with Lanse, it would be equivalent to hitting a speeding train head-on.

The territorial advantage was too great!

Just like in the city where the Perez family was located, on his territory, even if Lanse's strength was very strong, he wouldn't be his opponent.

Because the police, procuratorate, and court all had his connections and contacts. Even if he didn't move himself, letting the police move, finding any reason could disperse these people and lock them up.

Then dealing with them would be much simpler!

When Lanse's side couldn't help it and wanted to come over to take action, what would greet them would be destruction.

As for them not taking action?

That just happened to fulfill Fran's wish. He got rid of Lanse's industries, and Lanse didn't even dare to let out a fart. Who was strong and who was weak was already clear at a glance.

And the joint meeting was coming up soon. At the joint meeting, he would tell those people what he had done, it was just that the Lanse family didn't dare to respond, so this round, they won.

As for hitting over there...

From beginning to end, he never had such an idea. Clearly, in a situation where he had the absolute advantage, he still deliberately wanted to take the initiative to enter the other party's home court; he wasn't that stupid.

After the meeting ended, Fran gave Robin a few more instructions and let him leave.

Robin had his own men, and soon he left with people and assigned the tasks.

Investigating clearly the industries of the Lanse family in Jincheng or other places wasn't too difficult a thing.

Because there were government agencies helping, governments everywhere would help them check, and soon they figured it out: Lanse already had more than thirty movie theaters in Jincheng.

There were also some in other places; Lanse had been acquiring these movie theaters, as long as the price was right, he would spend money to buy them.

Robin, while letting people go to investigate other movie theaters, came to one of the movie theaters in the city where they were located.

The ticket seller yawned; the afternoon was always sleepy. Seeing these gentlemen dressed decently coming over, the ticket seller also forced himself to sit up straight.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. Today we are showing '...' and '...', the ticket price is forty cents each."

The ticket seller looked at the gentlemen at the door who didn't seem to pay immediately, and added, "These movies are regular movies, the duration is over an hour, and they are very good to watch, definitely won't be a loss!"

A few years ago, when the movie industry hadn't fully developed, many movies removed the time for dialogue, and the real film length was often only seven or eight minutes, ten minutes or so.

Plus the display of dialogue, it could be stretched to half an hour.

How wonderful could a seven or eight-minute, ten-minute plot be?

Some were just recordings of circus performances, and then recording what the host said, what the performers said, what the audience said, and then playing it once.

Although the ticket price was only five cents, many people felt it wasn't worth it, because the money was spent, and nothing was understood.

This also led to a period of time when people watching movies would ask for the real film length, rather than the film length with dialogue.

Robin smiled after listening, took out two dollars, paid for everyone's tickets, and asked, "I see there doesn't seem to be anyone here..."

The ticket seller explained while tearing the tickets, "Today is Tuesday, it's normal for there to be few people."

"When it gets to Thursday, people will start to increase, and on weekends, our tickets aren't enough to sell."

He tore the tickets neatly and handed them to Robin. "The movie just started, it's still in time to go in now. There are your sessions on it. I suggest you choose one to watch first, and then go to the other side after it's finished, so one ticket can watch two movies."

When there were few people, they would use this method to attract moviegoers, ensuring it wouldn't be empty on non-weekends.

Robin smiled and took people into the movie theater. There were two big screens here, and they found a side to sit down casually.

Just watching for a little while, he felt very bored.

The movie told a story of a rich man falling into trouble; he couldn't find the slightest sense of substitution, maybe he hadn't fallen into trouble.

After simply walking around the movie theater, the group of people left soon.

In the evening, after finishing dinner, Robin got up from the dining table, walked to his wife sitting on the ground, and kissed her cheek. "I have some things to go out, I'll be back later."

"If I can come back before ten o'clock sharp, I will definitely come back."

"If I can't come back, I'll go to my father's side to spend the night, don't wait for me."

His wife responded to him, then he walked to the door to put on his clothes, and after saying goodbye to his wife again, he left the room.

Outside the door, his subordinates had already arrived in advance, waiting for him.

Just as he approached the pickup truck they were working on tonight, he smelled a strong smell of gasoline.

"How much did you load?"

"Forty gallons."

Robin, sitting in the car, whistled. "Enough to burn them all!"

After dinner in the evening was the peak period for movie theaters. People finished eating, watched an hour of movies, and then went home before nine o'clock.

This was one of the cheapest forms of entertainment for ordinary people, ranked alongside "having a drink" as a poor man's treasure!

Because today was Tuesday, even though it was the peak period for upper-class people, there weren't many people at the entrance of the movie theater.

Several pickup trucks stopped on the street next to the movie theater. Robin sat in the passenger seat. He looked at his subordinates in the back row through the rearview mirror, who were already prepared, and then nodded slightly. "Do it."

His subordinates immediately pushed open the car doors and walked toward the movie theater carrying "suitcases." It wasn't the first time the Perez family had done similar things; they would also do things like bullying the market.

Unlike other small gangs wanting to use these for extortion, their purpose in bullying the market was for monopoly.

Their suitcases were specially customized. They looked like suitcases, but inside was actually a gasoline drum, which could hold about four gallons of gasoline.

Although the ticket seller was very strange as to why a group of guys who looked like elite people were carrying suitcases to watch a movie, based on the idea of selling one more ticket and earning one more profit, he sold the tickets to these people.

After these people entered the movie theaters on both sides, they started splashing gasoline directly from the very back—because the seats in the movie theater were stepped downwards, so they only needed to find a suitable angle to pour the gasoline.

The young male of a young couple hugging each other to watch the movie suddenly raised his head and sniffed. "Honey, did you smell a gasoline smell?"

The girl nodded slightly. "Yes, I smelled it too."

They looked back at the few people standing in the back row, and the young man couldn't help but ask, "Hey, what are you doing?"

One of the black shadows took out a lighter, lit a cigarette, and then threw it on the ground.

Amidst the screams of the man and woman, the fire almost exploded and quickly ignited more than half of the movie theater. In an instant, the two were swallowed by the flames. They screamed and ran toward the outside, and there were other moviegoers!

When a guy who was on fire ran out from the gate of the movie theater amidst people's screams, people realized that something terrible had happened here!

The fire truck came very quickly; after all, this was Jincheng, and it arrived at the scene in less than fifteen minutes, but the fire in the movie theater could no longer be extinguished.

There were too many flammable materials inside, and the entire interior of the movie theater was burning fiercely.

The officer in charge of directing the fire extinguishing at the scene could only ensure that the fire didn't spread to other buildings. As for saving the fire?

The best way was to wait for it to burn out by itself; there was nothing left to burn, and it would naturally go out.

It wasn't just this one movie theater; four movie theaters were ignited in one night. Soon, the professional manager responsible for the operation work over there called Lanse overnight.

"... I don't know the situation of other movie theaters now, but I know there are four."

"Our ticket seller said he saw many people carrying suitcases entering the movie theater, it should be them, and some people smelled a strong gasoline smell in the movie theater!"

Lanse's brows tightened after listening. "Are there casualties?"

The theater chain manager's tone was somewhat low. "Nineteen died."

"Nineteen?"

Although Lanse had already prepared himself mentally, he was still shocked by this number. "Why did so many die?"

"The emergency escape route of one movie theater was blocked."

At this time, the mainstream movie theaters in the Federation, or all regular movie theaters, were big screens with stepped seating.

Entering from the back of the movie theater, that is, entering from a high place, and then walking toward a low place.

There would be an emergency escape route at the low place, and through a gentle slope that could be run, one could rush out.

However, this gentle slope was basically not used, and some places would stack some sundries here, and one of the four was like this.

They stacked a large amount of sundries in the escape route, making it very difficult to pass. Only a few people escaped, and others were trapped there in the pushing and shoving.

Lanse knew their purpose in doing this. People died, whether it was arson or not, that was a matter for the future.

Now they needed to solve the situation of these dead and injured, and this kind of arson with a clear purpose would make other people watching movies have a natural fear of the Wanli theater chain's movie theaters!

The nerves of the Federation people were very fragile. They could cry to the point of suicide because of a small matter, and they were also very sensitive, and would have various stress reactions at every turn.

Honestly, even the cat with the most fragile psychological endurance wasn't as easy to have stress reactions as the Federation people!

Although the movie theater wasn't Lanse's main business, this also represented the face of the Lanse family.

He had already made some arrangements. He thought these opponents would drive thousands of miles like those idiots in the past to send themselves to death, but he didn't expect them to do this.

This also made Lanse realize that this time the opponents were different from those bottom-level gangs who hadn't received much education, had no political resources, and didn't understand how to truly deal with trouble!

They were more treacherous, more cunning, and more vicious!

"Temporarily close all other movie theaters, the reason is to check for fire prevention problems, then call the police, notify the newspaper office, someone committed arson."

The manager originally wanted to say something, he even made a sound, but was interrupted forcefully by Lanse, not letting him speak.

"Listen to me first."

"I will deposit a sum of money into the company's account, contact those injured people, take reporters with you, and tell them that no matter how much their treatment costs, we will pay for it all."

"For the dead, pay them a pension according to the federal pension standard, don't be stingy with money, it must be in front of the reporters."

"Then gather them together, tell them the truth, turn them into a force, and let them go hold up signs."

"I will contact some people in the movie industry here, and they will also support you. This matter is indeed very troublesome, but if operated well, it may not necessarily be trouble for us!"

He took a deep breath. "Now you can speak."

The manager opened his mouth, he didn't know what to say. Lanse handled the matter cleanly in the simplest way, and also gave a method of counter-control.

After his brain was blank for a few seconds, he asked, "Are we not fighting back?"

Lanse lit a cigarette. "This is my job, your job is to take good care of my movie theaters."

"See how much money it takes to demolish those movie theaters and build a new, safe, reliable, and fireproof one."

"It's best if you can hype this matter up, operate it, don't be stupidly just picking up the house, understand what I mean?"

The manager nodded, although Lanse couldn't see it. "I understand what you mean, Mr. Lanse."

"Then I'll go do things now?"

"Hmm, do as I say."

After he hung up the phone, the phone rang, it was Tang Mu's call. "Your phone is really hard to get through, it took several minutes to get through."

"Did you offend someone, why were your movie theaters burned down?"

He could only think of this possibility: Lanse had a dispute with others, and then those people burned his movie theaters.

He added another sentence, "Is it those people from the Death Angels?"

"No!" Lanse decisively denied this wrong answer. "It's people from the Perez family."

"What the hell... how did you get into a conflict with them too?"

Lanse briefly explained the matter, and Tang Mu was also somewhat troubled. "I don't know what to say, you both seem to be not wrong..."

"No, they are wrong. They shouldn't have transported the wine in without notifying me. They offended me first, and still wanted me to admit my mistake. Tang Mu, figure out the situation!"

Tang Mu smiled bitterly twice. "Okay, okay, I know, then what do you plan to do now?"

Lanse hissed and inhaled a cigarette. "Not only is he a gang, I am too!"

(End of chapter)