Li Chang’an had single-handedly wiped out the entire Yunxiao Group board of directors. Naturally, he wasn’t about to let those immensely powerful old geezers get away so easily.
As countless residents of Night City watched, members of the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team descended upon the Yunxiao Group tower in armed helicopters.
By now, the Yunxiao Group was leaderless and in complete disarray. With ruthless efficiency, Li Chang’an had the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team swiftly and completely take over all security operations from the security department.
With that, the Charles family’s internal power struggle had finally come to a close.
Even if those old geezers on the board had any other ideas, with both the security department and the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team—the two enforcement arms—under Li Chang’an’s control, they were powerless to turn the tide.
...
It took about a week for Li Chang’an to show all of Night City the true meaning of lightning speed. After firmly establishing his foothold in the Yunxiao Group, he immediately launched a top-to-bottom purge of the company.
Hundreds of corrupt employees within the company were punished.
Several board members even had "accidental" drownings related to various corruption charges. For a time, everyone inside the Yunxiao Group was both terrified and resentful of Li Chang’an.
In the past, when they heard about the street gangs of Night City being so thoroughly slaughtered by Li Chang’an that they were begging for mercy, many inside the Yunxiao Group had thought it was just because those street punks were weak, scared shitless by a teenager.
But now, as they faced Li Chang’an themselves,
they finally understood what those gangs had been up against...
After spending the better part of a month cleaning up the various problems within the Yunxiao Group, Li Chang’an turned his attention outward.
For the past six months, he had been mobilizing the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team to sweep through the city and eliminate gang forces.
The gangs, crying foul, had retaliated numerous times.
After all, if they couldn’t deal with the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team, couldn’t they at least take it out on the NCPD and the civilians of Night City?
Every time Li Chang’an deployed the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team to take down a gang hideout, gang members would randomly slaughter civilians in a nearby area.
Their main strategy was to meet violence with violence, an eye for an eye.
They were trying to use public opinion to make Li Chang’an hesitate.
And it worked. After a few rounds of this, many citizens grew fearful.
Many people took to the net, pleading with Li Chang’an not to push the gangs too hard, otherwise it would be the civilians who suffered in the end.
At the time, it seemed Li Chang’an had actually listened.
For a long time afterward, he didn’t deploy the Anti-Terrorism Mobile Team to hunt down gang members again.
The remaining gang members thought they had dodged a bullet. They even believed they had found Li Chang’an’s weakness by threatening civilian lives, so they started using civilians as human shields for everything.
But now that Li Chang’an had full control of the Yunxiao Group’s corporate machine, he had essentially taken over more than half the power in Night City.
And so he once again bared his fangs at the gangs.
After all, while a chaotic Night City was interesting, in the long run, it didn’t serve Li Chang’an’s interests.
He needed to crush the Advanced Technology Group and its several megacorporations to obtain the methods and data for creating the Genetic Potion.
To do that, he had to consolidate all the power at his disposal. Under these circumstances, Night City, his home base, absolutely could not remain as chaotic as it had been.
To put it bluntly, with active gangs and a company full of parasites, Night City and the Yunxiao Group were basically a sieve that anyone could pass through freely.
A force as scattered as loose sand could accomplish nothing of importance, and would only backfire at critical moments.
And so, the thunderous campaign to sweep away the gangs began.
And to ensure the gang members had nowhere to hide and to transform Night City into a society governed by law, Li Chang’an made three moves in quick succession.
First, Li Chang’an worked overnight to change Night City’s laws. In three days, the ordinance granting gang members the rights and protections of citizens, including the right to life, would be revoked.
In other words, anyone with a government record as a gang member or with gang tattoos had three days to either have their tattoos removed or turn themselves in to the NCPD.
Once the amended law took effect after three days, these people would effectively be stripped of their humanity.
Second, he issued enormous bounties to encourage the citizens of Night City to report gang members. After the amended law took effect, any resident of Night City could shoot and kill any active gang members they found on sight, without any legal repercussions.
This one-two punch was enough to leave the gangs dumbfounded.
But the most outrageous part was Li Chang’an’s third move. For the next month, a city-wide curfew would be enacted at midnight every night. The entire NCPD would be mobilized to patrol the streets, and anyone found loitering or acting suspiciously could be shot and killed on the spot.
The justification for these killings was simple, almost carelessly so: ’What kind of decent person is wandering the streets after midnight instead of sleeping at home?’
Instantly, a palpable fear gripped Night City. Everyone could sense the absolute, irreversible will behind it all.
The newly appointed Little Charles was truly going to exterminate every last gang!
When news of this reached the major gangs, they were on the verge of collapse. They desperately wanted to fight to the death, to wage a bloody war against Li Chang’an and show him that the gangs were not to be trifled with.