At 2:30 pm on September 3, Bandar Seri Begawan.
Gordon Gardner sat in the mayor's office at City Hall listening to one report after another, rarely taking a break. But in fact, the busyness at this moment is simply incomparable to the chaotic scene last night. Even if Gordon has the power "Law" to aid his thinking, and the power "Whisper" to directly transmit orders to individuals without communication tools, he almost can't bear it. .
Without it, there are just too many things to do. Although Gordon had done a lot of preparation work before the incident to adapt to the situation as much as possible, he still seemed unable to do what he wanted. In particular, the black swan incident of Kraken disrupted many of Gordon's follow-up plans and took away most of his manpower. If it were not for Palmer and Lionel to share a batch of affairs, Gordon would not be able to do this. Don't even think about settling the matter of succeeding as the lord of Southeast Asia for the whole day.
But then again, the current busyness represents the transfer of power. Joseph Chapman's rule in Southeast Asia has become a thing of the past. Compared with his ending, this rush is not a happy trouble. ?
All the dignitaries of the Palme d'Or Hotel turned to the dark side one after another under Gordon's half-coaxing, half-intimidating negotiation skills. Gordon also knew the principle of having a stick in one hand and a carrot in the other. He generously used the confiscated Chapman family's huge assets as cabbage. The price was sold to merchants; as for politicians, after eliminating the Chapman family's cronies in the politics of the two Southeast Asian counties, a large number of political gaps were left that they urgently need to fill. In this way, the political power within Southeast Asia was integrated by Gordon for his use.
A successful coup requires four supporting forces, namely politics, business, military and civilians. Gordon has obtained three of them: Politically, the political forces who spoke for the Chapman family were used by Gordon's hidden soldiers. Lei (dark) and thunder (killing) methods were used to settle the situation; the forces under Baoxiang County Governor Raymond fell into a leaderless situation after his death. What awaits this group of people will be ruthless suppression, exclusion and differentiation; as for Wandao The forces represented by County Governor Palmer... stop making trouble, they are on the same side as Gordon Gardner.
Commercially, although the Chapman family has a lot of assets, it cannot withstand the division of the spoils. Fortunately, Gordon himself is an invisible super rich man. Over the years, he didn't know the exact amount of money he made by using his "Law" power. Selling some of his family property would be enough to feed those businessmen who only pursue profit.
Militaryly...Gordon did not obtain military power, and Palmer's qualifications and status were only enough to command a limited number of federal troops. But it doesn't matter, Gordon controls a mercenary group with nearly ten thousand people, and has a huge amount of money to throw at it, so it is quite well armed and has enough fighting power to be on the table. Even if this private soldier is ineffective, Gordon can still carry out the crazy weapon of Mad Lord. It will be difficult to find a rival in Southeast Asia and even the world. The military has no threat to him.
The importance of public opinion was directly ignored by Gordon. It was not that he did not understand the principle that water can carry a boat and capsize it, but that Gordon's original purpose was not to seal the territory and become a local emperor. What Gordon wants to do is just use the convenience of his status as the lord of Southeast Asia to squeeze out all the value here to the greatest extent, so as to prepare for the "candidate game" in the near future. Therefore, the long-term peace and stability of Southeast Asia has nothing to do with him. In fact, Gordon planned to usurp the interests of this area and leave, leaving the position of lord to Palmer Bartholomew, who was relatively more qualified. This was the condition that Gordon offered to cooperate closely with Palmer. Of course, outsiders who didn't know the inside story would never guess that Gordon would give up the position of lord that he had worked so hard to obtain.
"Oh?" Gordon, who was reading documents at his desk, suddenly laughed inexplicably: "Kraken has been taken care of." Apparently, this was what the crazy Lord from Lubang Island sent back to Gordon through "whispering" information.
"Crazy Lord is so reliable," Palmer said with emotion: "He single-handedly defeated the legendary behemoth that neither the two dragons nor the bomber squadron could kill."
As a ghost-level ability user, Lionel has a deeper understanding of Crazy Lord's success: "Moreover, he is only at the peak of dragon level, but he can surpass the level and kill Kraken, who is targeted as a human core-level ability user. In the past forty years, Very few people in history have been able to do that.”
"Haha, his strength is really reassuring." Gordon praised. "By the way, where are Elliot and the others?"
Gordon's whisper ability has not yet grown to the point where he can add unlimited contacts. At the same time, if there are too many people communicating, the line will be "busy", so Gordon generally will not activate the ability for things that are not too important.
"I just arrived at the airport and are on the way to the city hall in the car. Elliot, Maehara Douyang, Wade, Mendelson, and the escort officer Baker who was released by the Renaissance organization are traveling together." Lionel hesitated After a while, he gritted his teeth and added the whereabouts of another person: "Jin Valariello, he stayed in Manila, saying he wanted to thoroughly investigate the disappearance of Catherine Alice."
Gordon didn't comment too much on Kim's escape, even though he had known about it for a long time: "Okay, even if he turns the city of Manila upside down, I still have to find out whether Kevin is alive or dead. .”
"By the way, by the way, leave the cleanup work of Manila Bay to him. Well No. 5 was completely destroyed by the renaissance organization and Kraken, but the wreckage of the fortress, Sumeru, and the Second Fleet are still piled in the bay. .”
"yes!"
In addition to Manila, Gordon also had to follow up on the current situation in Kuala Lumpur: "How is Reginald doing in Kuala Lumpur? Have those escort officers been chased back?"
"Yes, Colonel Sanchez has done a great job. He has arrested all the security officers who originally belonged to Joseph Chapman this morning. They are currently under house arrest in Joseph's mansion."
"Leon, look at your use of words," Gordon reminded: "They are not criminals. They will all become your comrades and colleagues in the future."
"Sorry, I was too careless."
The God's Favorite waved his hand: "Okay, I'm not lecturing you, no need to apologize. So, where is Reginald free now? How about Leon, I'll give you an address, and you ask him to go there in person. , there’s no need to do anything more, just stay there and it’s safe.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Lionel "heard" the voice from the bottom of his heart. After writing down the address, he didn't dare to delay for a moment: "Yes, I'll do it right away."
"Palmer."
"What?" Compared to Lionel, Palmer was much more comfortable in front of Gordon. After all, he was not the latter's subordinate.
Gordon asked nonchalantly: "Where is he?"
How could Palmer be so smart, how could he not know who Gordon was thinking about: "Joseph Chapman is still under house arrest in the top floor room of the Palme d'Or Hotel, under the supervision of my trusted subordinates 24 hours a day." Keep strict guard."
"You haven't told him anything about what happened in the outside world, right?"
"How can it be."
"Okay, then let me tell him personally." Gordon put down the pen and paper and stood up: "Prepare the car, Palme d'Or Hotel."
Leon on the side had just given Reginald a new task. After receiving the instruction, he immediately changed roles: "Yes, sir, please come with me." It seemed that he was preparing to act as the driver himself.
"Are you going now?" Palmer was a little surprised.
"Yes, if the Kraken incident hadn't popped up and added a lot of workload to me, the meeting with Joseph should have started a few hours ago."
“So what about the finishing touches to the coup?”
By the time he was talking, Gordon had already walked to the door: "Leave it to you. You said it's the finishing work. Your level of government affairs is more than enough to deal with it."
Palmer opened his mouth and finally squeezed out a sentence through his teeth: "Okay."
Seeing that he was hesitant to speak, Gordon simply turned back and asked, "What do you want to say?"
"...That address is the place you asked Reginald to guard." This was a rare opportunity, and Palmer was very concerned about it, and didn't care whether he would overstep his bounds by saying this: "What's there?"
"Ha, you're talking about that laboratory." Gordon's expression remained unchanged: "Soul Seaker."
"What?" Palmer didn't understand.
"Soul-drainer." Gordon repeated meaninglessly: "It is indeed a very interesting gadget. In a certain aspect, it will even enrich or even change human beings' superficial understanding of supernatural powers and divine mist. Cognition.”
"But I have no plans to study it yet. Let it just sit in the laboratory. At present, I won't be able to use it in the short term."
