Dawn was just breaking over White Fish City, and the blue-brick paving in the Heaven Patrol Office's rear courtyard still glistened with damp.
Rampage Killer's corpse lay facedown there. His blood had all but stopped flowing, congealing into a broad, dark-brown pool that spread from beneath him to the steps before the doorway.
Yi Yang stood beside the corpse without giving it another look.
His mind was on other matters.
He had laid the framework for White Fish City now, lopping off the heads of its major powers in a single night. But merely taking their heads was not enough.
Their bodies remained. The middle-ranking members scattered throughout the city numbered at least seventy or eighty: gang branch leaders, shop managers, and hired muscle kept in the shadows. They were keeping their heads down for now, afraid to surface, but sooner or later they would leap out and cause trouble.
As the saying went, only by striking while the iron was hot could one thoroughly forge it into a good blade.
After they had dealt with the leaders of the major powers, Xu Pei had already headed out with the Patrol Guards.
Before dawn, Yi Yang had ordered him to gather his men and split into three groups.
One went to inventory the storehouses at the Wei Family's former estate, another went to seize the Mo Family mansion and its assets, and the third swept through several Green Snake Gang strongholds in the East District and North District.
Now the faint rumble of wagon wheels rolling over stone paving drifted in from outside. Those were the teams returning with their haul.
Chests of silver were carried out of the various storehouses. Weapons were sorted and stacked in the open space in the Heaven Patrol Office's front courtyard, while cultivation manuals