Love Grows Over Time

What did the establishment of Green Alliance Bank mean? Everyone on the Shanghai Bund knew exactly what it represented. The major shareholders listed in the newspapers were all notorious gangsters of the Shanghai Bund. From then on, there were only two Green Gang factions on the Shanghai Bund: one that had thrown in with the Japanese, and one called Green Alliance. Wang Yan's already considerable status soared overnight. Even at the height of Du Yong's power, his influence on the Shanghai Bund had not been much greater than Wang Yan's now.

Wang Yan's goal, naturally, was to marginalize those men and directly take control of their power. But on the surface, he could not openly interfere in other people's internal affairs. That was a bottom line, and provoking it lightly would bring trouble.

It was not that Wang Yan feared those people. He feared the Japanese. Just as he had reported to Chongqing, the workers could be led again. Countless past battles had proven that the Red Party was highly capable of mobilizing workers and peasants. From Wuhan to Hunan, Jiangxi, Shanghai, and elsewhere, the Red Party had displayed tremendous vitality, and the worker-peasant armies it mobilized had demonstrated real combat strength.

It did not matter that Wang Yan himself could arm a regiment. Although that already placed him at the pinnacle of private armed forces on the Shanghai Bund, terrifying merchants and gangsters alike, the Japanese would not take it seriously at all. They could wipe him out overnight. Besides, Wang Yan had never organized that many people to do anything. At most, it merely looked as though he had seven or eight hundred men under him.

But if Wang Yan truly united all the Green Gang members who had not joined the Japanese, things would be different. Especially