Reborn in 1878: America's Number One Bandit

Chapter 105 Multi-front Operations
The masked leader took the document and carefully examined each signature and seal.

"very good."

He nodded in satisfaction and put the document away.

Solly Ross collapsed to the ground like an empty shell with its internal organs drained.

"I've already signed. When will you release my family?"

The masked leader smiled slightly.

"Release them? Mr. Ross, are you mistaken?"

"You...you still don't keep your promises!"

"No, sir."

The leader waved his hand: "Of course we keep our word. We are the most trustworthy businessmen. I'm just saying that these few pieces of paper are worthless right now."

"You signed, and I signed. But the city hall hasn't signed it yet. Without being filed with the clerk, these documents are legally worthless. You can turn around and call the police, saying we coerced you, can't you?"

Solly Ross's mind has stopped working.

"You're taking me to City Hall? Now?"

"To City Hall?"

The leader's smile deepened: "Mr. Ross, you're quite impatient. Why should we go to that cold, remote, godforsaken place?"

He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

This time, the person who walked into the office turned Solly Ross's last bit of luck into dust.

The man who entered was tall and thin, dressed in a smart black suit and wearing gold-rimmed glasses.

He had a thick "Municipal Property Registration Book" tucked under his arm.

He looked as if he had just stepped out of the city hall office—calm and composed.

Good evening, Mr. Ross.

The bespectacled clerk bowed politely.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late. My name is Clark, and I’m the Assistant Clerk. I’ve been granted temporary authorization from San Francisco City Hall to handle this urgent asset transfer.”

Solly Ross's mouth was open, but he couldn't utter a single word.

Tonight's event was a legitimate asset stripping orchestrated by a vast force he could not even imagine!

These people are not gangsters at all; in fact, they are a thousand times more terrifying than gangsters.

"Mr. Ross?"

Clerk Clark tapped the table with his pen: "Please sign here. This is a copy of the city hall's records."

Clark opened the thick register and found the form that had already been filled out.

"Oh, right."

He thoughtfully reminded me, "You see, I noticed that you signed the agreement a bit hastily. To ensure the legality and legitimacy of this transaction, I have moved the registration date forward to 6:00 PM tonight."

"Six o'clock tonight?"

Solly Ross murmured, repeating himself.

At six o'clock tonight, before he makes his deal with the Irishman, before his guards are still alive.

These devils not only want to take everything from him, but they also want to rewrite his entire history!
Solly Ross gave a desperate, bitter smile. What was the point of struggling?

I no longer need to go to the city hall; this clerk and this register are the mobile city hall.

Even if he dies, Clark will find enough witnesses to corroborate his story—

It has been confirmed that Mr. Solly Ross, at 6 p.m. tonight, voluntarily, and possibly even happily, transferred all of his assets out of concern for the safety of San Francisco and out of boundless trust in White Tiger Holdings.

There are even eyewitnesses who swear in court that they saw Mr. Soli Ross happily shake hands with the other party after signing the documents and announce that he was going to Germany to start his new life.

A flawless legal loop.

"Sign it, Mr. Ross," the clerk said, remaining as gentle as ever.

Solly Ross stopped resisting and, like a puppet, numbly signed his name in the register.

Clark blew on the ink with satisfaction, closed the register, and bowed again: "It was a pleasure working with you, Mr. Ross. The legal team will handle all the formalities. Have a pleasant journey."

He put on his top hat and quickly left the office.

“You did a very good job, Mr. Ross.”

The leader walked up to Soli and patted him on the shoulder.

“We are people of integrity. You saved your family’s lives, and you also saved your own, well, temporarily.”

"Now," the leader tilted his head, "you can go and reunite with your family."

Solly Ross didn't know how he got downstairs.

The Ross Precision factory workshop was in a mess.

All twelve of his guards are here.

Some were leaning against the lathe, their throats slit by sharp blades; others lay in the aisle, black crossbow bolts lodged in their chests.

Without exception, they were all killed instantly, without even having time to retaliate or struggle.

This was a one-sided massacre.

Solly Ross, holding his sleeping youngest son David, numbly stepped over the corpses of his men.

He once thought he was a wolf in San Francisco, but now he realizes that in front of a real hunter, he's not even a barking dog.

Three carriages with their windows completely covered were parked in the shadows near the dock.

"Sarah!"

When Soli was pushed onto the second carriage, he finally found his wife.

Sarah Rose was huddled in a corner of the carriage, tightly embracing her seven-year-old daughter, Rebecca.

"Soli! Oh God! Solly!" Sarah rushed over as soon as she saw him. "What happened? Your hand! Oh my God, your hand!"

"Stop asking."

Soli tucked David into his wife's arms and leaned against the other side.

Don't ask anything.

He closed his eyes: "We're just moving."

"Moving?" Sarah still couldn't understand. "Where are we going? Who are those people? They..."

"Go to Germany. Go back to Hamburg. Everything will be alright."

The carriage jerked suddenly, and its wheels began to roll on the stone pavement.

Sarah stared at her husband's ashen face and his bloodied right hand, finally realizing that nothing would ever be alright.

She could only hold her two children tightly, suppressing her cries amidst the fearful jolting.

Several horse-drawn carriages sped along a secluded seaside road and eventually stopped at an abandoned private dock.

There is only one small steam transport boat, moored alone at the end of the pier.

"Get on board, Mr. Ross."

The masked men herded the family of four, along with two cheap leather suitcases containing changes of clothes, onto a small boat.

There was only one captain on the ship, wearing a hat that almost completely covered his face.

"you……"

Solly wanted to ask one last question.

"boom!"

The carriage door slammed shut, and the sound of horses' hooves quickly faded into the distance.

The steamboat sounded its horn.

The captain remained silent and pulled the control lever.

The small boat trembled as it left the pier and sailed into the vast Kinmen Bay.

……

Inside the cabin, the kerosene lamp swayed precariously.

Rebecca and David, exhausted and terrified, had fallen into a deep sleep in Sarah's arms.

"Soli".

Sarah finally couldn't hold back her tears and said, "Are we really going to Germany? What about your business, everything we have? Are we just going to give it all up?"

Solly Ross remained silent for a long time.

"Yes, Sarah. We're going to Germany."

"They took everything from San Francisco, but they don't even know what my business in Hamburg is all about!" "Germany! The whole of Europe is experiencing a crop failure this year! The wheat I stockpiled there is now worth more than gold; we're making money off the Germans!"

He looked at his wife, and a glimmer of hope rekindled within him.

“We’ll be alright, Sarah. Everything will be fine, we’ll be richer than ever! Richer!”

He was comforting his wife, but it was more like he was hypnotizing himself.

"As for San Francisco."

He lowered his voice, his teeth grinding together: "I will be back. I swear, one day I will be back, find out who they are, hire the world's toughest bastards at the highest price, and take back everything they took from me today, their skin and bones!"

Sarah nodded, seemingly understanding, but her husband's promise offered her a sliver of comfort.

About half an hour later, Sarah looked up and asked, "Soli, why do I feel like the boat has slowed down?"

Solly noticed it too.

The roaring sound became intermittent, and finally stopped abruptly.

"What's going on?" Solly frowned. "Have we arrived at the Auckland docks?"

He didn't remember it happening so fast.

The ship just stopped there.

Instead of docking at the shore, it died in the middle of the water, a scene of utter stillness.

An ominous premonition enveloped him once again, a hundred times stronger than when he was in the office.

"Sarah, stay inside and lock the door!"

Solly's heart pounded, and a strong sense of crisis surged through him.

He pushed open the cabin door and rushed onto the deck.

"Captain, what the hell are you doing? Why did you stop the ship?"

The deck was empty, and the cockpit was empty.

The captain, dressed in an oilcloth coat, simply vanished.

The steering wheel is slowly and meaninglessly rotating due to inertia.

Solly Ross rushed to the ship's side, where he was met with an endless expanse of black seawater.

They couldn't find their way, nor could they find any light other than their own.

They are right in the middle of the bay now.

A bone-chilling cold suddenly exploded from his tailbone.

He is not going back to Germany.

From the very beginning, their family was destined for hell!

"These bastards are still fucking untrustworthy!"

Solly Ross rushed back to the cockpit like a madman, trying to restart the steam engine.

Just then, he kicked something.

A wooden barrel.

An inconspicuous wooden barrel nailed under the cockpit seat.

Several neat black wires were sticking out from the wooden barrel.

electric wire?

Solly Ross's pupils dilated instantly, and his blood turned ice-cold.

"No!"

……

at the same time.

Several miles away, in San Francisco's Chinatown.

On the rooftop terrace of a teahouse, Qingshan stood facing the wind, gazing towards the bay.

Standing behind him was Mai Ling, the woman he had already won over.

Mai Ling was wearing a mink coat and holding a cup of hot tea.

She didn't understand why her new master was standing there enjoying the sea breeze at 11 p.m.

"boss."

She spoke softly, "It's foggy, and the wind is strong, you..."

Aoyama did not respond to her, but simply glanced at his Swiss pocket watch.

He slowly uttered a syllable.

"Boom."

……

The moment the syllable fell, deep within the bay.

Solly Ross had just rushed to the cabin door, ready to pull his wife away.

A white light, more dazzling than the sun, engulfed his vision.

Immediately following was a destructive force.

A deafening roar, capable of tearing the heavens and earth apart, exploded over San Francisco Bay.

The small steam transport boat, along with the hundreds of pounds of high explosives stored inside, was detonated instantly.

A huge, rolling, orange-red fireball shot into the sky, hundreds of feet high, even tearing through the thick sea fog.

All of Solly Ross's fantasies of revenge, along with their flesh and blood, were vaporized in that moment.

The terrifying flames illuminated the entire sea area as if it were daytime.

Countless burning fragments whistled into the sky, then crashed back into the sea with a crackling sound.

The scene was truly spectacular.

The enormous fireball burned for nearly ten seconds before slowly extinguishing.

Everything returned to darkness.

The rooftop terrace of the Green Mountain Club in Chinatown.

For Solly Ross, it was all over.

But for San Francisco, the city of sin, an even grander feast has only just begun.

On Lawson's chessboard, there is never a single line of action.

Just as the trusted assassins descended upon Ross Engineering, physically and legally erasing Solly Ross and his empire, another net was quietly cast, enveloping the city's dirtiest and most chaotic heart—North Beach and Barbary Coast.

Lawson had already located the three beasts there.

Dutchmen Van Kerk, Finnigan Quinn O'Malley, and Luigi Sforza.

These three, along with Solly Ross who was just blown into the air, are the four pillars of San Francisco's underworld.

Tonight, what Lawson is going to do is break all four pillars, and his power will become the new pillar!
Tonight's operation is still led by the gang that Lawson has been secretly working for in San Francisco.

But this army, composed of English and Russian suicide soldiers, was only responsible for clearing out the enemy.

Three entirely new forces have truly taken over.

Lawson had already considered this. What would happen if he allowed those British and Russians from Chongtong to take over Irish territory, or if he allowed the Green Hills Society to get involved in the Latin Quarter's business?
That's like throwing a match into a barrel of dynamite.

Chinatown is the best example.

When the Green Mountain Society replaced the three major tribal groups, the Chinese merchants and laborers who had been oppressed by these groups for decades not only did not resist, but some even secretly applauded.

Because in their view, this is just Chinese fighting Chinese, a change of power on the city walls.

But what if the one who storms into Lung Chi Tong and slits Lung Ye's throat is a blond, blue-eyed Irish thug, or an Italian who keeps spouting "Mamma Mia"...?

Lawson could almost imagine that the entire Chinatown would erupt into chaos within an hour, and that 40,000 Chinese people would instantly unite, using their most primal anger and fear to tear the invaders to shreds!
The same is true.

Only the Dutch can replace the Dutch.

Only the Irish can take over the Celtic fist.

Only a Latino can become the new king of the Latin Quarter.

What Lawson wanted was not a hysterical race war, but a precise and covert surgical operation.

He wants to replace the brains of these ethnic groups, implant his own will, and then use these ready-made bodies to continuously siphon more people and resources from their countries and their communities!
What he wants is control, complete ownership!

The hands of the pocket watch finally trembled as they approached zero.

PS: 12,000 words delivered. 30,000 words updated today. Please vote with your monthly tickets, brothers!

(End of this chapter)