"Quickly! Or we'll shoot!"
Zhu Jun took out his identification and casually tossed it to the officer in charge.
At this moment, the major among the armed police officers also came over.
The officer glanced at the ID and was immediately taken aback. He then looked up at Zhu Jun, before turning his gaze to Xu Zhengyang. Gu Nianceng, standing nearby, was also greatly puzzled. He turned his head and was startled as well.
However, Gu Nianceng reacted extremely quickly, snatching the identification documents to prevent others from seeing them, and said in a deep voice, "Arrest them!"
The armed police lieutenant colonel didn't have time to see the identification, but just as the police officers were about to rush over, he waved and asked, "Who is Xu Zhengyang?"
Logically speaking, he, a major in the armed police, is not comparable to Gu Nianceng, the deputy director of the Shancheng City Public Security Bureau.
He certainly knew Gu Nianzeng, but he had come today on orders from above, so he didn't care about anything else and quickly asked.
“That’s me.” Xu Zhengyang stood up and answered, then looked at Gu Nianceng and sneered, “Such arrogance. It seems you’re planning to hide and destroy your credentials so that there’s no way to prove it, is that it?”
Xu Zhengyang was wondering what Li Chengzhong had done. Had he not informed the capital?
Or perhaps the capital city simply ignored this trivial matter?
Why didn't anyone come over to greet me? The people who came all seemed to be Gu Nianzeng's people.
Xu Zhengyang wasn't particularly nervous. At worst, he'd just go with the police; things would be easier to handle once they got to the police station. He never expected Gu Nianceng to be so desperate as to harbor murderous intent. Good heavens… he hadn't planned to deal with him too badly, but now it seemed Gu Nianceng deserved to die.
"What are you all standing there for? Arrest these two!" Gu Nianceng shouted angrily.
Before the SWAT officers could even set off, the major blocked the entrance to the corridor leading to the pavilion and said with a stern face, "Deputy Director Gu, I received orders from above that members of a criminal gang are threatening Xu Zhengyang with guns here. I'm here to protect him and arrest the criminals!"
After saying that, the armed police major turned to look at Xu Zhengyang, saluted, and said, "Hello, I am Xiao Yun, deputy captain of the Second Detachment of the Armed Police Corps of Shancheng City."
Gu Nianceng and Lin Xiangxi were both dumbfounded, while the other burly men carrying guns took two steps back with fear on their faces.
The special police officers were even more puzzled. What was going on today?
We're all family! Why does it seem like we're playing opposing roles?
"Hello." Xu Zhengyang nodded and strode out, pointing at the burly men as he said, "These people are criminals, and they're carrying guns. Arrest them all. This Mr. Lin is the leader... and Deputy Director Gu, he saw it with his own eyes and can be a witness."
Zhu Jun followed closely behind, his eyes warily watching everyone's actions.
Xiao Yun frowned, turned her head, and then waved her hand.
A group of young armed police officers didn't care about the other police officers, special police, or deputy director. They only listened to their superiors. They rushed forward and knocked all the burly men to the ground. Their actions were extremely professional and heavy-handed! They quickly found pistols on them.
Lin Xiangxi was stunned as two armed police officers twisted her arms behind her back.
"Oh, right, Zhu Jun is my bodyguard." Xu Zhengyang turned his head and pointed at Zhu Jun, saying, "He shot and wounded a criminal just now to protect me. He's probably under their protection now. Search inside... There's also a fake Taoist priest who looks to be in his sixties or seventies, swindling people here. He was injured and they took him to the hospital."
After saying this, Xu Zhengyang turned to look at the police officer standing next to Gu Nianceng and said, "It seems like you guys are more professional in handling the rest, right?"
The officer understood immediately and turned to order his men to search the house for all the criminals. Then… the officer looked at Deputy Chief Gu and said in a serious, deep voice, “Deputy Chief Gu, please get in the car with me. You may be suspected of harboring a criminal gang…”
Gu Nianceng stood there dumbfounded, not listening to what his subordinates were saying. He thought sadly to himself: Is this...is it really over?
The police officer had already taken Zhu Jun's identification from his hand and then personally handed it to Zhu Jun.
Xu Zhengyang and Xiao Yun were already whispering as they walked outside.
Several more people poured in through the arched entrance to the bamboo garden.
It turned out to be Li Chengzong with several guards and Li Bingjie, who looked very worried.
Xu Zhengyang smiled wryly. "Is it really necessary? What could possibly happen to me?"
Little did he know that something terrible was about to happen...
Volume Six, Chapter 340: A Crisis Lurks Unnoticed
In fact, many major events have been preceded by various signs and warnings, silently reminding people from all sides long before they erupt...
However, in many cases, people tend to neglect or ignore this because of their own selfishness.
It's not just humans who frequently make these kinds of mistakes that lead to serious consequences; even ghosts and deities do. In particular, these so-called deities and ghosts are merely people who have just been transformed from ordinary humans.
In Xu Zhengyang's view, the incident at the "Bamboo Garden Club" was nothing more than a rather dramatic coincidence, like a fly accidentally landing in your rice bowl while you're eating. You could just pick the fly out and throw it away, or pour out the whole bowl of rice, and that would be fine. What else could you do? You couldn't possibly go through the trouble of not eating and killing all the flies, could you? That's unrealistic.
Although……
In the pavilion of the Bamboo Garden Club, Xu Zhengyang had indeed considered a potentially terrible scenario because of this scam.
But soon, this possibility was turned into an impossibility by his own self-centered analysis.
Even when Xu Zhengyang left the mountain city with his family, he had completely forgotten about what happened at the "Bamboo Garden Club" and stopped thinking about it. He figured he could leave the rest to the relevant government departments, and Li Haidong would be in charge of arranging for the ghost messengers to carry out the appropriate punishments according to the City God's regulations.
Of course, Xu Zhengyang also decided that Lin Xiangxi, the owner of the "Bamboo Garden Club", and Xuan Yi, the old Taoist priest who pretended to be a god and taught immortal arts, must die!
According to the laws of ordinary people, their crimes do not warrant the death penalty.
However, from the perspective of a deity, they must die, and even after death, they must endure the most cruel punishment! Because they dared to presume to be deities, to blaspheme divine power, to deceive in the name of the gods, and to defile the existence of the gods.
Their crime is unforgivable!
Because of Xu Zhengyang's presence, the cases of Zhuyuan Club involving organized crime and illegal possession of firearms, as well as the criminal acts of deceiving people under the guise of cultivating immortality, have been taken very seriously by higher authorities. A special task force has been established to conduct a rigorous investigation, and all those involved, as well as some officials who have long protected Zhuyuan Club, have been investigated and punished without any leniency.
No one dared to say a good word for them at this critical juncture. Anyone with even a slight connection to this side was afraid to get involved and suffer the consequences.
During the investigation, numerous long-standing cases were uncovered, leading to the downfall of dozens of officials of varying ranks. Seven or eight criminal gangs with organized crime characteristics were dismantled, resulting in the arrest of over three hundred individuals involved in organized crime. More than one hundred related criminal cases were investigated and prosecuted.
The superiors were furious. This was outrageous!
As a result, an unprecedented crackdown on organized crime and evil forces has swept through Shancheng City!
That happened naturally afterward, but let's leave that aside.
During the investigation of the "Zhuyuan Club" incident, the police seized a large number of audio-visual products and printed books from the club, all of which described Taoist methods of cultivating immortality. The scenes described and filmed in these books were so realistic that they were tempting and had a powerful propaganda effect.
According to the confessions of the deceived members, they not only paid for the courses but also spent a considerable amount of money to purchase audio-visual products and magical manuals that were supposedly imbued with divine energy. Furthermore, they sincerely donated money, ostensibly to do good deeds and accumulate merit, hoping to enhance their own moral character.
In addition to these, there are all sorts of fees, a wide variety of them, all mixed up and confusing.
In short, each member has spent at least 300,000 yuan on this over the past six months.
The members of these Bamboo Garden Clubs, who are also disciples of Master Xuan Yi, are either wealthy people, celebrities, or high-ranking officials. In short, none of them are short of money and don't care about spending hundreds of thousands of yuan, some even spending millions.
Of course, those high-ranking officials who are willing to spend so much money... well, where would they get so much money? That's obviously absurd.
This attracted the attention of some people in relevant departments, but it did not attract the attention of higher-ups.
Just as Xu Zhengyang had initially thought, it was nothing more than a scam. Who would dare to go to such lengths to scale the scam to a higher level, or even... reach the level of a cult? Obviously not. First of all, their targets were precisely certain high-end individuals.
Among these high-end individuals, a large portion are simply taking a "let's give it a try" approach, not fully believing in the idea. Some are merely following the crowd, using these classes as a means of socializing, to meet more people, and to facilitate their business dealings.
Such a simple, blatant, and idiotic scam can hardly achieve anything significant.
Especially in today's society where life pressures are everywhere, how many people would be willing to seek such an ethereal thing?
Of course, to put it more directly, Xu Zhengyang, and even those higher-ups, overly relied on their own ideas to make judgments.
The so-called self is actually just an excessive amount of self-confidence.
They are all qualified.
Regardless of the complexity or simplicity of their psychological judgment, they all overlooked...
Meanwhile, Li Haidong, Su Peng, and Chen Chaojiang, the direct leaders of the City God's Office, were also taking some of the reports from their subordinate ghost messengers lightly. Su Peng and Chen Chaojiang hadn't even considered this possibility, and they believed that the more people who believed in the existence of deities, the more beneficial it would be for the State God and their City God's Office. Li Haidong also thought it was just a normal phenomenon.
Just like when Xu Zhengyang first entered the workforce and stirred up a great deal of propaganda in Fuhe City to prove the power of "divine beings watching from above," the area under Fuhe City's jurisdiction, after experiencing countless upheavals in officialdom and even bizarre events among the people, returned to peace. Moreover, the crime rate was much lower than before, and the personal character, morality, and quality of the people had significantly improved.
This is a good thing!
Are we supposed to suppress people's sense of awe and faith, so that they will act and behave in a positive way?
All the signs and indications were overlooked by the relevant personnel, as well as by various national departments and the City God Bureaus under Xu Zhengyang.
Their ideas were not wrong, and the people's faith in and reverence for the gods were not wrong either.
But I'm afraid it might be exploited by someone with malicious intent...
If it were merely an individual's scheme to gain wealth and profit through fraud, it wouldn't amount to much. After all, just as the high-ranking officials and Xu Zhengyang thought, no one would be foolish enough to do something so outrageous and absurd, and there aren't many people who could come up with such a far-reaching, almost insane plan.
A person with such ability would probably have already risen through the ranks in officialdom, so why would they have the mind to do something so taboo?
However, if the so-called people who want to take advantage of this matter are some foreign political institutions or groups, and if they rely on their strong power and the advice of many elites to gradually manipulate some people to carry out this conspiracy... the consequences will be unimaginable.
At this point, even though Xu Zhengyang had considered the possibility of a terrible situation, he had no idea how much disaster a crisis would bring him.
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...
Many of the cases involving the "Zhuyuan Club" have been solved and adjudicated.
Unbeknownst to many, a clue that could have been traced back to its source and prevented many future problems was carelessly and without any vigilance cut off.
Time flows slowly, uncontrollably.
After traveling for more than a month, Xu Zhengyang and his family finally returned to their villa in Jingniang Lake, Fuhe City.
What an enviable family!
No need to be busy all day long, working hard to earn money, some even neglecting their families. Unlike Xu Zhengyang, who seems relaxed and carefree, he doesn't have to worry about anything and can sleep until he naturally wakes up every day, counting money until his hands cramp.
Of course, not many people can be as energetic as Xu Zhengyang, sleeping only an hour a day at most and still feeling a hundred times more refreshed than others. In fact, this guy doesn't need to sleep or rest at all now; his mental energy is still full. It's just that due to normal behavior and habits, he inevitably takes a short nap every day. During what appears to be his normal sleep schedule, he's mostly working, studying, researching, and contemplating matters at the State God's Mansion.
What puzzled him was that when he was promoted to the position of First City God, there were only twenty-three City God Offices in the entire country, yet he was given the position of City God of one of the Nine Provinces. Now, after a series of City God Offices were established, the total number of City God Offices has exceeded sixty. If he were to count them on his fingers, he wouldn't be able to do so, and he wouldn't be able to name any of the cities.
However, he has not yet secured a second position as the governor of a prefecture.
That's really strange.
When asked about the Records of the Nine Provinces, Xu Zhengyang suddenly realized that most of the City God Palaces he had established before were in large cities, and three of them should have been metropolitan areas at the level of a Capital God. That's why they were able to have the power of a State God Palace. As for the City God Palaces he had re-established, besides the fact that their regional level was not high enough, another reason was that, in the absence of other State Gods, some City God Palace institutions had been temporarily incorporated into the jurisdiction of his State God.
Xu Zhengyang thought that if things really continued to develop like this, there would be no need for the position of the governor of each of the nine provinces; one position would suffice.
The Records of the Nine Provinces reminded him: That is the position of a Star Lord, a first-rank official in the Heavenly Court.
Xu Zhengyang pursed his lips. Isn't that obvious? I know that principle, but why is this Kyushu Chronicle so stubborn?
Once I become the Emperor and change these Heavenly Laws and Rules, let's see what use this piece of junk will be!
Volume Six, Chapter 341: UFO Incidents in Emergency Situations
Autumn has arrived in the blink of an eye.
The greenery of Jingniang Lake Scenic Area has faded. The mountains and valleys are covered with a layer of withered yellow. Even the vast expanse of Jingniang Lake seems to have become more quiet and serene with the changing seasons, creating a deep and tranquil scene reminiscent of autumn waters and a boundless sky.
Xu Zhengyang strolled leisurely down the mountain stone path, a faint smile on his face.