"Scarface, are you sure about this? What if things get out of hand?"
Inside the van, the suited man driving looked a bit defeated, glancing nervously at the five excavators trailing behind. His voice trembled.
The scar-faced man in the back seat leaned forward and slapped the suited man's head, cursing, "You useless piece of crap! I give you a simple job and you still mess it up! Just a handful of people, all old, weak, sick, or disabled, and you're telling me some high school kid took you all down?"
"If it weren't for you, would I be crawling out of bed to do this in the middle of the damn night?"
Scarface kept cursing, his eyes cold and sharp: "Whatever. If these holdouts won't move, we'll move them ourselves! In a minute, go house by house—send in a crew, drag everyone out, then bring in the excavators! Move fast!"
After he finished, Scarface glared at the suited man up front, shivering all over. "Why the hell is the AC so cold in here? You trying to freeze me to death?"
The suited man, still rubbing his head from the slap, looked aggrieved. "Bro, I didn't turn on the AC. The windows aren't even open. Wasn't it you who said to save on gas?"
"No AC and it's still this cold? You think I'm an idiot or something?"
Scarface grumbled, sitting in the back. He glanced up and spotted the rearview mirror next to the driver—then froze. "Holy crap, you got a woman hiding in the car?"
He glanced at the rearview mirror—and in it, a woman's beautiful face was suddenly reflected, smiling sweetly, as if she were sitting right there, impossibly close.
The woman was all smiles—charming and alluring, the kind of beauty that could make any man lose himself at a glance. Her neckline was low, her eyes misty and inviting, making her seem all the more fragile and irresistible.
Scarface grinned. "You really know me, huh? Figured I'd be pissed working this late, so you set up a little eye candy? Not bad!"
"Scarface, what are you talking about?" The suited man kept driving, totally confused.
Scarface just chuckled, twisting around to pull the pretty woman into his arms—when he suddenly turned his head.
But the woman's smiling face abruptly withered, shriveling into a dried, wooden mask. Her misty almond eyes flashed, turning blood-red and demonic in an instant.
A guttural, hellish roar ripped from her throat.
The spirit's jaw stretched wide, teeth gleaming like knives. She lunged at Scarface, her mouth growing monstrously large. Scarface lost all control, wetting himself and clawing desperately at the door to escape—but the spirit clamped down, swallowing his head whole in a single, gruesome bite.
"Oh my god!" The suited man turned around, saw the scene, and went pale with fright. He slammed on the brakes, but the excavator behind them crashed straight into the van.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
One crash led to another, and every vehicle behind slammed into the pileup.
Suddenly, shouts of "Ghost!" exploded all around. The tough guys who'd been itching for a fight scattered in a frenzy, shoving and tripping over each other as they bolted in blind panic.
The suited man, head throbbing from the crash, was driven by sheer survival instinct. He yanked open the car door and scrambled out, running like a madman.
He barely took a few steps before something slammed hard into his back.
"This is what happens when I tell you to go negotiate with your company and you come back with this?" Evan Lin stepped on the suited man's back, his expression cold.
"I-I tried to negotiate, I swear! But I don't call the shots—Scarface runs the show! Please, I'm begging you!" Slick sobbed, his voice cracking with terror.
The image of Scarface's head being devoured was burned into Slick's mind. He collapsed, bawling uncontrollably, utterly shattered by fear.
"This is your last chance. Go back and tell your boss to negotiate properly. If you can't solve the housing problem for these people, none of you will get away." Evan said coldly, snapping his fingers.
Snap!
As Evan snapped his fingers, the car carrying Scarface's corpse exploded in a burst of fire, the hood flipping open in the darkness.
The suited man clutched his head, utterly terrified, his legs too weak to stand.
When he finally came to his senses, he realized the whole area had gone silent and Evan Lin had vanished. He scrambled to his feet and ran off as fast as he could.
At the offices of Yang Real Estate Group in Whitewood County, it was already the middle of the night, but the lights were still burning.
Harvey Yang stood by the window, holding a cup of coffee, looking fierce and ill-tempered.
Harvey Yang was in a foul mood. Both Brandon and Brian had been beaten into the hospital today—word was, the same high school kid who'd roughed up Brandon last time did it again.
His original plan was to have the demolition crew tear down the shantytown first, then go after the high school punk who hurt his son and teach him a lesson.
But unexpectedly, he ran into a real hard case, and his whole crew got beaten up again.
Out of options, he had no choice but to send Scarface and his men back out in the middle of the night. After all, the shantytown redevelopment project needed to get underway as soon as possible.
But all night, Harvey Yang's eyelids kept twitching—he couldn't shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen.
Not long after, just as Harvey Yang was about to take a sip of coffee, the office door was suddenly flung open from outside.
Harvey Yang turned to see the suited man, face twisted in terror. Harvey frowned, "What the hell happened to you, showing up like this in the middle of the night? Have you no shame—"
Before Harvey could finish, three ghostly women materialized above Slick's head, their faces twisted in sinister grins, floating and staring straight at Harvey with eyes like bottomless pits.
"Holy crap!"
Harvey Yang sucked in a cold breath, dropping to the floor in fright. His coffee spilled everywhere, his face went ghostly pale, and when he blinked again, the three creepy women had vanished without a trace.
When Evan Lin pushed open the guardroom door, he ran right into Hank Chu and Leonard Chu, who were just about to head out.
"You okay? What happened out there, it sounded like a bomb went off! Those guys didn't seriously bring explosives, did they?" Hank Chu relaxed a little when he saw Evan was fine.
"I just went to the bathroom and saw something going down by the gate. Looked like a car crash, honestly—nothing to do with us. Just stay inside." Evan grinned.
A few moments later, the Three Maiden Spirits quietly slipped back into Evan's backpack.
Sending them with the suited man to find Harvey Yang was just a warning. If Harvey were killed outright, the redevelopment project here would probably grind to a halt.
That would mean a lot of folks here wouldn't even get a shot at new apartments.
But if Yang Real Estate keeps trying to bleed the neighborhood dry, Evan won't hesitate to send the spirits again—and next time, he'll let them suck Harvey into a dried-out husk, nothing left but skin and bone.