I put you in charge of those rebellious female soldiers, how come they all became top special forces

Zong Yanhui completely ignored his murderous aura, leaned back in his chair, and placed his hands on his stomach.

"Brother Tingxuan, don't be angry. This little thing is definitely not something my clan is holding onto to harm you all. It's just to put your minds at ease."

"We're all in this together now; nobody can jump ship on their own."

"If Lanmeng's business stops, so be it. It's fine. Let the brothers take a break."

"But this relationship between our five families absolutely cannot be severed!"

"As long as the five of us stay together, even if the higher-ups want to take action, they'll have to consider whether the economic sphere of most of China can withstand it."

"They're never afraid of just one of our families, but of our inseparable whole!"

Zhao Tingxuan held the transaction slip in his hand, lost in thought.

Two full minutes passed.

He took a deep breath, forced himself to suppress his anger, and pushed the envelope back to Zong Yanhui.

Without saying a word, he turned around, slammed the door, and left.

Zong Yanhui picked up the envelope on the table, shook his head and smiled.

It was pushed back; it wasn't torn up on the spot.

This shows that the old fox chickened out and stayed obediently on the ship.

However, these family heads can turn on you faster than flipping through a book, so we still have to be on guard at all times.

After leaving the teahouse, Zong Yanhui got into the back seat of a black sedan that was waiting by the roadside.

He took out his phone, and a message from his trusted aide popped up on the screen.

"The Grand Elder has been safely returned to the main family headquarters through secret channels and is temporarily residing in an underground secret room."

"His life has been saved, and his injuries have stabilized, but he'll have to stay in bed for at least half a year."

"The mess at the Cloud Club has been cleaned up. What needed to be burned has been burned, and what needed to be buried has been buried. We're making sure there won't be a single clue."

After reading the message, Zong Yanhui turned off his phone and rubbed his temples.

His intuition told him that his biggest enemy right now was not those few powerful families.

It was Chen Zheng.

After a moment of contemplation, he suddenly opened his eyes, his gaze icy, and spoke to the driver in the passenger seat.

"Immediately use all our informants, both within the military and local authorities, to thoroughly investigate this Chen Zheng!"

The driver nodded repeatedly.

Zong Yanhui's eyes turned cold as he continued speaking.

"And that brat Yao Yao, I've assigned my best spies to keep a close watch on her!"

"The Grand Elder is crippled. That girl is the only one in the main family who has the potential to fully master the Butterfly Dream Step."

"As long as we can get the complete version of this ultimate technique, all that Blue Dream Business and the Four Great Families are utter bullshit!"

……

On the other side, the Southwest Military Region.

An Jianjun was reviewing documents in his office when he received the notification from above.

The notice was very short, just telling him to go to the provincial capital tomorrow to attend an internal meeting.

The theme can be summarized in six words: "Management of Ancient Martial Arts Families".

An Jianjun held the notice and read it over and over again three times.

These six words don't seem to belong to the normal work scope at all.

Within the Dragon Kingdom's system, ancient martial arts families have always been a gray area.

There are no clear regulations, let alone a dedicated management department.

To put it bluntly, the higher-ups turn a blind eye; as long as nothing too outrageous happens, they basically let things run their own course.

Why is a management meeting suddenly popping up?

He stuffed the notice into the drawer, leaned back in his chair, lit a cigarette, and fell into deep thought.

……

The next morning, An Jianjun changed into civilian clothes and took a car to the provincial capital.

The meeting was not held in the military compound or the government building, but in an old office building in the old city.

There wasn't even a sign at the entrance; just two young men in plainclothes standing at the bottom of the steps. They checked our identities before letting us through.

An Jianjun walked into the conference room and glanced around.

The room was small, with seven or eight people sitting on either side of the long table.

He recognized a few faces; they were the heads of the neighboring military region and local security departments.

There were also two or three people I'd never seen before, who were most likely from the capital.

He found a seat at the back and remained silent.

Less than five minutes later, the door was pushed open.

The man who came in was a middle-aged man, in his early forties, wearing a dark gray Zhongshan suit and a pair of old Beijing cloth shoes.

He had no rank insignia and was not carrying any briefcases or folders.

I only brought a notebook and a fountain pen.

He walked to the empty seat at the front of the long table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

"Hello everyone, my surname is Shen, and I'm from the capital. I'm sorry to take up a little of your time today."

The expectation was rather casual, but An Jianjun noticed that everyone present straightened their posture a little more at that moment.

The deputy commander of the neighboring military region, who usually speaks like a cannon, is now standing up straighter than he did during a military parade.

Old Zhao from the local security department quietly put his legs down, which he had been crossing.

An Jianjun silently raised the level of this middle-aged man surnamed Shen by several notches in his mind.

He's obviously not simple.

The middle-aged man surnamed Shen opened his notebook and slowly began to speak.

"Today's meeting has only one topic."

"Let's discuss how to regulate the boundaries of behavior for ancient martial arts families under the current circumstances."

Standards.

An Jianjun's ears immediately perked up.

It's not suppression, it's not banning, it's regulation.

In high-level games, every word is carefully chosen.

Suppression means confrontation, and banning means taking action.

Under the current circumstances, the higher-ups are unlikely to use these two terms.

But the regulations are different.

The meaning of "norm" is—you can exist, but you must move within the lines I draw.

If you cross this line, don't blame me for being impolite.

The attitude of those in power is actually hidden in the choice of this one word.

They genuinely didn't want the power of the aristocratic families to continue to expand.

But I don't intend to overturn the table.

"You've all heard about the Lanmeng incident," the middle-aged man surnamed Shen said, his gaze slowly sweeping across the faces of the crowd. "What are your thoughts?"

Old Zhao from the security department was the first to speak up.

"Director Shen, I think this is a good opportunity. The Zong family has irrefutable evidence this time. We can use this incident to make an example of them and send a warning to the other families, so that they will follow suit."

As soon as he finished speaking, the deputy commander of the neighboring military region shook his head.

"Old Zhao, you make it sound so easy. You know how deep the Zong family's influence is in the economic and political spheres, with multiple powerful families behind them."

"If you touch one major family, they'll unite and retaliate. Who will bear the brunt of that chain reaction?"

Old Zhao, however, was somewhat unconvinced: "So we're just going to let them run rampant and wait for them to reach a point where they can't fail?"

"I'm not saying to let it go unchecked, I'm saying the timing is wrong."

"When is the right time?"

After several rounds of debate, neither side could convince the other.

The middle-aged man surnamed Shen remained silent throughout.

He sat there quietly, his left hand supporting his chin, and occasionally scribbling a few lines in his notebook with his right hand.

He nodded slightly when he heard the key point.

If you hear something off-topic, tap the table lightly with your pen, and the speaker will immediately know to shut up.