Chapter 772: Administrative Violence

Early morning.

Adam Halt sat in the passenger seat of a black SUV freshly issued by the Energy Administration Bureau, holding a thick stack of land acquisition assessment forms. Two cars followed behind him, carrying several newly hired clerks. This was the Energy Administration Bureau’s first official day of operation, and he was conducting a highly routine preliminary survey.

The Energy Administration Bureau was funding the relocation, compensating residents at one and a half times the market rate. For these people living around the desolate nuclear power plant, this was a windfall they couldn’t refuse.

The convoy stopped at the gate of the first house. It was a dilapidated wooden structure with a yard full of rusty car parts and garbage. Adam opened the car door and walked toward the yard with two clerks.

“Hello, is anyone home?” Adam shouted.

A figure flashed through the crack in the wooden door. Immediately after, the door was shoved open. A stubble-faced man in filthy overalls walked out, leveling a loaded double-barreled shotgun.

“Get out!” the man aimed the muzzle at Adam. “This is private property! Take one more step and I’ll shoot!”

The two clerks behind Adam stumbled back in fright, their hands instinctively reaching for the non-lethal weapons at their waists.

“Please calm down, sir,” Adam raised his hands, trying to show he meant no harm. “We are staff from the Pennsylvania Energy Administration, here to discuss—”

“Discuss my ass!” The man roughly cut him off and spat a thick glob of phlegm. “I know what you want. Trying to buy my land? No way in hell!”

“We will compensate you at one and a half times the market rate,” Adam tried to reason, assuming no one would turn down money.

The man let out a mocking sneer. “I wouldn’t sell it for ten times the price! I just bought this land last week—it’s my ancestral property! I’m going to die here, and no one is driving me away!”

An ancestral property he just bought last week? This absurd logic instantly made Adam realize that the man was not a resident with any emotional attachment to his homeland. This was a hired holdout.

Over the next few hours, Adam and his team scoured the area. The situation was identical everywhere they went. Some people had let vicious dogs loose in their yards; others had strung up electrified wire fences at their gates; some even hired a group of environmental protesters who sat in the middle of the road holding anti-radiation signs, throwing themselves under the wheels whenever Adam’s car approached.

After a whole day, they hadn’t handed out a single assessment form and were instead dragged through the mud.

That evening, on the second basement level of Pittsburgh City Hall.

Inside the temporary office of the Energy Administration Bureau, the oppressive atmosphere made it hard to breathe. Adam sat at his computer, eyes glued to the screen, his fingers hammering frantically away at the keyboard.

“Finally found it,” Adam’s voice carried the anger of someone who had been played for a fool. He pulled up the backend data of the Pennsylvania land registration system and projected it onto the whiteboard. “Look.”

Ethan stood behind him, looking at the heavily fragmented map on the screen. Over the past few days, a highly bizarre change in property rights had occurred across the vast majority of the empty lots within that 500-acre buffer zone—aside from the arrogant residents they had encountered today.

“This land is held by five separate companies,” Adam pointed at the screen. “But these five companies have frantically carved up this 500-acre area.”

As the map on the screen zoomed in, the land dissolved into a dense cluster of tiny dots.

“They sliced the land into about three thousand micro-parcels,” Adam said through gritted teeth. “Some of these parcels are as small as one square meter.”

Ethan’s brows locked tightly together.

“What’s even more sickening,” Adam pulled up the ownership information for these 3,000 parcels, “is that they sold these micro-parcels to 3,000 different natural persons and shell companies of various nationalities.

“Some are registered in the Cayman Islands, some in an obscure little country in Eastern Europe, and others in Africa. I even have reason to believe that many of these are registered using fake names or the names of dead people.”

Adam slumped back in his chair, feeling utterly powerless.

“This is an extremely vicious legal tactic,” Ethan’s voice turned heavy. “If we want to use eminent domain, we have to send written notices to every single one of these 3,000 legal property owners and hold individual court hearings for each of them.

“Just getting through these legal procedures to verify their identities will take years, let alone handling the forced demolitions and compensation afterward.”

“So what do we do next?” Adam asked. “We are completely locked out legally. There’s no way to operate.”

“The boss needs to know about this immediately.” Ethan’s expression was incredibly grave. He pulled out his phone, preparing to notify Leo.

Second basement level of Pittsburgh City Hall, temporary office of the Energy Administration Bureau.

Leo Wallace pushed the door open and walked in. He had just wrapped up a budget meeting upstairs when he received Ethan’s notification. He looked at the map on the screen, chopped into 3,000 fragments, and then at the long list of fake legal entities spanning the Cayman Islands, Eastern Europe, and Africa.

Adam sat in his chair, his face full of dejection. “Mr. Mayor, we’ve hit a dead end,” Adam rubbed his temples. “The legal team has already assessed the situation. Under the current acquisition procedures, even if we work twenty-four hours a day without rest, just completing the service of process will take at least three years.”

Leo ignored Adam’s despair. He picked up the thick copy of the property rights document on the desk, casually flipped through a couple of pages, and tossed it back down.

“These people really play the loopholes of United States law to perfection,” Leo let out a cold laugh. “They are maliciously abusing the law.”

Adam glanced at Leo but said nothing.

Leo looked at the bureau director he had single-handedly promoted. “What are your thoughts now?”

Adam hesitated. He glanced at Ethan beside him, then at the despair-inducing property map. Adjusting his glasses, he attempted to answer. “The problem right now is that the law doesn’t support us. If… if we could change the law…”

Adam’s voice trailed off. He felt his idea was too bold, too wildly unrealistic.

“Speak up,” Leo said loudly. “What do you want to do?”

Gathering his courage, Adam stood up straight, his voice becoming clear. “We draft new legislation. The bill will explicitly state that in projects involving critical energy strategy and state-level emergencies, when the Energy Administration Bureau conducts land acquisition, it only requires service by publication.

“As long as we publish notices in the three largest newspapers in Pennsylvania for three consecutive days, it will be legally deemed as served.”

Leo looked toward Ethan. “Do as he says,” Leo commanded. “Notify Harrisburg. I want to amend the legislation.”

Ethan froze for a moment. This completely subverted the United States’ long-standing legal tradition of protecting private property rights and due process.

“This… this will cause massive controversy,” Ethan swallowed hard. “Furthermore, what if the property owners aren’t satisfied with the compensation and file a lawsuit? The courts will still issue an injunction to halt construction.”

“No, they won’t get the chance,” Leo’s eyes were filled with an icy chill. “The amendment will include a clause allowing us to take over the land prior to resolving any compensation disputes.

“That means, once the three-day public notice period is up, regardless of whether they agree to the compensation price or if they’ve filed a lawsuit in court, the bulldozers can roll right in.

“As for the money, let them take their sweet time squabbling over it in court.”

This was an undisguised, crushing abuse of power.

So-called tyranny often didn’t require rivers of blood. As long as the person in that seat was powerful enough, and as long as he could control the legislative machine, he could use the most lawful forms to carry out the most barbaric plundering.

The law was just a piece of paper that could be altered at will.

Leo no longer felt any psychological burden doing this sort of thing. He had once agonized over a few online insults and doubted himself over whether he was becoming disconnected from the masses. But after truly grasping power and seeing the rock-bottom depths of capitalism, he understood: in this dog-eat-dog world, the only way to protect what you want to protect is to become more of a monster than the monsters themselves.

“Go, Ethan.” Leo tossed the marker in his hand, letting out a sharp CLACK as it hit the table. “Since they want to play legal thugs with me, I’ll show them what administrative violence really means.”