The SWAT squad leader made a sharp hand signal, and cold gun barrels instantly trained on everyone present.
"Nobody move!"
"Hands on your heads! Squat down!"
The shouted commands cracked like thunder out of a clear sky.
Faced with the black muzzles of submachine guns, Liu Asheng and his thirty-odd men, usually so swaggering and overbearing, instantly cowered like a flock of frightened quail.
Their earlier arrogance vanished without a trace. Pale-faced and trembling, they clutched their heads and squatted on the ground, not even daring to breathe too loudly.
Li Xiang stepped briskly out of the command vehicle, jogged over to An Changlin, and gave him a crisp salute.
"Mayor An! Li Xiang, captain of the Yicheng Criminal Investigation Detachment, reporting for duty! All members of the criminal gang have been detained. Awaiting your orders!"
Mayor An?
Those words struck Liu Asheng's skull like three iron hammers weighing a ton apiece.
He jerked his head up and stared in disbelief at the middle-aged man in the plain jacket, who had barely said a word.
Holy shit!
What kind of monumental fuckup had he just committed?
He had gathered a mob to cause trouble and blockade a construction site right in front of a mayor?
And he had even pointed in the man's face and mocked Yicheng as some provincial backwater that had never seen the world?
Liu Asheng's head buzzed, his mind going utterly blank. It felt as though all the blood had drained from his body in that instant, leaving his hands and feet ice-cold.
An Changlin did not even glance at him. He simply gave Li Xiang a calm order.
"Take them away. Investigate thoroughly!"
"Yes, sir!"
Li Xiang waved his hand, and the SWAT officers and detectives behind him immediately pounced. Working in pairs, they swiftly