Chapter 81: Chapter 81: Each Harboring Their Own Schemes
Norris and Bradford, these two men who used to call the shots within the Alliance and in Revival City, had utterly lost their composure.
“Damn that Mondok! Insisting on taking a hard line! He sent himself to his doom without due consideration, and now what are we to do? We’ve lost our army, and the city is under siege. We are all fish on the chopping block now!” Bradford, disheveled, looked both frenzied and panicked.
Yet, within his ranting, he kept stealing glances at Norris across from him.
Despite hearing Bradford’s words, the aged Norris did not speak. Under his thick white hair and beard, the expression formed by his eyebrows and lips was one of deep gloom.
Bradford, grinding his teeth, continued to complain, “What are we supposed to do now? Nothing we do is going to work, is that it? Have you seen the photos? Have you seen the videos? That Gu Hang! He was flying through the sky! He publicly executed Mondok! Damn it, why did we never know before that Gu Hang was actually a powerful wielder of Spiritual Energy?!”
After he finished, he looked at Norris again.
The old man was still not speaking.
Bradford went on to speak, “Those star warriors! Battle Nuns! Weren’t they supposed to be fake?! They slaughter fully-armed soldiers as easily as if they were chickens, and they destroy our tanks as if opening a can was nothing! How could we dare to wage war against such enemies? That brute Mondok misled us and doomed us all!”
“And those soldiers! How dare they? Each month, each year, so much money from the treasury was spent on those soldiers, allowing them to live lives they could never have dreamed of when they were beasts of burden, granting them higher status and positions. But how did they repay us? When we needed them most, they lacked the courage to fight to the death and instead surrendered! Gu Hang claims he is the ruler, that he is the commander of the army, nonsense! Why can’t those soldiers use their heads for once and think, has Gu Hang ever paid them a single penny?”
Bradford, the business magnate, abandoned all decorum, cursing left and right, first Mondok, then Gu Hang, and returning to ranting about both Mondok and the common soldiers.
He finally succeeded in annoying Norris.
“Enough, put aside that insane facade, and stop posturing in front of me,” Norris said, “You want to ask me, want to know what I’m going to do next? I can tell you, no problem, now that Revival City has become our prison, what’s wrong with dead men talking? But even if I tell you, do you really dare to join me in whatever comes next?”
Bradford immediately abandoned his previous crumbling demeanor, and with a different face, he said, “Why wouldn’t I? The Legion is done for, Mondok is dead, and now in the entire city, only you, Lord Norris, are a true power player. You have the people, and with access to the armory, you have guns and cannons. Anyone in the city who doesn’t want to return to the Governor’s rule will rally around you!”
“Hmph,” Norris snorted coldly.
After Mondok’s death and the Alliance Legion’s surrender, the political nature within Revival City had changed.
Any clear-sighted person could see that the Alliance had changed rulers, right?
If in the past it was possible to confront the Governor by relying on the Alliance Legion and the military potential represented by Revival City’s numerous population, now that had become utterly impossible.
With all four gates sealed and the army’s defection, not even leaving the city was possible, let alone overturning the situation.
And what remained was the question of how to survive.
Their fate was now solely at the discretion of His Excellency the Governor.
According to their thinking, although the Governor had not yet entered the city, waiting until he did to make decisions might be too late.
At this moment, the choices they could make were indeed limited.
It boiled down to flee or kneel.
But wanting to flee Revival City now was no simple task; as for kneeling before the Governor, if the posture wasn’t right, one might still not live to tell the tale.
Friends who used to work together now inevitably mistrusted and sabotaged each other.
For instance, right now, Norris could tell that Bradford, pretending to be distraught in front of him and flattering him, definitely had no good intentions. That guy seemed to be riling him up, wanting to arm the industrial workers to resist to the very end, but if he really did so, he feared that the first one to sell him out would be this very man in front of him.
Of course, his claims of having a way and knowing what to do were equally false.
He would arm the workers, he would turn the factories into military strongholds. But this wasn’t for resistance; rather, it was to concentrate as much of the actual power within the city into his own hands, to increase his bargaining chips so that when the time came to kneel before the Governor, he could kneel with more weight.
The organized population, weapons and equipment, the means of production within the factories—all of these belonged to me, Norris. The Governor kept me around for a reason; I must be of great use in the future!
As for the current Bradford?
A man who, in the past, made his living through connections and trafficking, had better fend for himself.
…
After finishing the brief conversation with old Norris, Bradford’s expression was extremely grim.
He felt that Norris had seen through his intentions and hadn’t fallen for them.
Damn it! Without a conspicuous fellow to hold and attract the Governor’s attention in the city, how could he make his escape?
That’s right, Bradford wanted to flee.
Bradford did not want to stay and be a dog—he didn’t have the assets to be a dog like Norris did.
On the contrary, the extensive network he had built over the years as a channel merchant meant that he had many other places to go after leaving Revival City. Even if life wasn’t as good as before, it was still better than staying.
As long as he could get out.
There was no hope in counting on Norris. He didn’t believe Norris’s words; he didn’t believe that man would truly confront the Governor.
Instead, he felt that Norris was looking for a way to make himself more valuable in surrendering to Gu Hang, potentially even using him as part of the bargain to add weight to his own situation.
But to him, such thoughts were not worth mentioning.
If you’re not going to survive, the Governor will already have struck with thunderous force, and no matter how beautifully you kneel, it can’t compare to being a dead man.
To clear the space, to sweep the upper echelons clean, the Governor needed a blank slate to begin his new work.
And even if one did survive, the one whose words would count in this city in the future would be the Governor; the Alliance Council was unlikely to retain the power it once had, and whether it would exist at all was another matter.
Old Norris was certainly done for, but the infuriating thing was, if you’re going to be finished, why not do it in a more spectacular fashion and give me a better chance to escape?
After much deliberation, Bradford gritted his teeth and decided he couldn’t wait any longer.
If he waited any longer, the Governor might enter the city at any time; the big purge could start at any moment. If he waited any longer, his chances of escaping would only diminish.
He made up his mind.