Zhang Yi finalized the plan: wait, watch, and be ready. Someone would make a move soon — either out of fear or greed — and when they did, he wanted to be unassailable.
He checked his kit. The police helmet and bulletproof vest sat where he kept them, solid and reassuring, but his legs were exposed. "No bulletproof pants," he muttered. A weak point. He wasn't going to be caught bleeding from a shot to the femoral artery.
From spatial storage he pulled another vest and handed it to Zhou Ke'er. "Rip the seams," he said.
She sighed, then set to work. The material was stubborn — impact-resistant and dense — but she tore it into two curved panels. Zhang Yi wrapped the panels around his thighs, fastening them as best he could. They didn't look graceful, but they covered the arteries. He flexed his knees once and grinned. "Now I'm fully protected."
Next came the public work. He stirred anxiety into the building group chat with surgical precision: "Attention. Other buildings are planning to attack us to steal food. If we don't defend what we have, they'll take everything." The chat instantly ignited. Voices demanded action; fear spread like wildfire.
Some hesitated. "We're only thirty or forty people — how do we stand against a thousand?" one message read.
He pressed the point home: "Choose: keep the food and fight, or starve. The choice is yours." Starvation isn't a choice when fear is immediate. The response coalesced into a roar: "We'll fight!"
He picked his instruments. "Li Chengbin, Jiang Lei — take the men to Building 26. Finish off the Tianhe Gang. Make it count. Revenge and deterrence." He sounded tired and stayed home, playing the exhausted commander.
An hour later the report blinked across his phone: "We lost eight men, killed three of theirs." Zhang Yi allowed himself a slow, satisfied smile. Blood had been paid, but the message had been delivered. The Tianhe Gang was crippled; his cannon fodder had proved its worth — and its expendability.
Authority, he knew, was rarely earned with speeches. It was forged with violence and rationed rewards. Let others fight, let others bleed; make them believe their survival depended on you. That belief, once planted, would be harder than any alloy door to break.