Chapter 1473 - 481: A Person Can’t Live Only for Money

Chapter 1473: Chapter 481: A Person Can’t Live Only for Money

It didn’t take much time or effort to mop up the remaining enemy troops in the city. With the Guines insurgents, the locals, and the new Cuban recruits leading the way, those routed soldiers basically had nowhere to run.

What was counterintuitive, though, was that the local puppet troops held out longer than those European lords, and their will to resist was far more stubborn.

First off, this isn’t the European homeland; European Soldiers don’t have much fighting spirit. Once they decide to surrender, they surrender. But the local puppets know exactly what they’ve done, and they know the people on the other side will never leave them a way out, so they’d rather fight to the death than put down their guns and give up.

So David and the others very cordially sent them on their way, without the slightest room for mercy.

Once every last pocket of resistance was wiped out, everyone who needed to be arrested was arrested and everyone who needed to be killed was killed, but it still wasn’t time to rest. They had to scrape Havana clean, street by street, corner by corner, to make sure the European Community didn’t leave behind anything they shouldn’t have, right before pulling out.

Meanwhile they had to calm the populace, register and catalog them, rebuild government offices, hold public trials, throw people in prison, settle accounts, investigate assets, tally losses, restore grain supplies, get industrial production running again, and so on and so on—an endless mess of tasks.

If this were some inexperienced resistance group, even if they really did beat back the invaders, took Havana, and grabbed the reins of Cuba, they’d still be completely at a loss.

It’s easy to conquer the realm, hard to rule it.

Without enough loyal, committed, educated grassroots cadres to build a new, effective governance system from the bottom up, the new government’s power would be easily hollowed out from below by opportunists—or else contaminated and diluted by outside forces.

And the transfer of power is not child’s play. No matter what you said in your propaganda before, once you reach this stage, in the end you have to rely on brute force and violence, cutting through the mess quickly, wiping out all your opponents and then laying down new political rules.

At a moment like this, every "necessary" compromise plants a hidden landmine in the future of the nation and the people.

Ninety-nine percent of the local Cubans are illiterate, and of the educated remainder, ninety-nine percent are cronies of the drug dealers, holding the overwhelming majority of Cuba’s assets. Truly clean, independent intellectuals are one in ten thousand.

If the only force here were the local insurgents, most likely they’d have no choice but to compromise with those people and ask for their help. In the end either the compromises would stir up massive popular resentment and, under the corrosion of power and money, the insurgents would slowly degenerate into a second group of drug lords; or in short order they’d leave loopholes that outside powers could exploit to infiltrate and overthrow them. Either outcome would be ugly.

Not to mention that education, industry, healthcare—each of these is a grand project that a small country can barely even dream of. To develop all that from zero while surrounded by wolves on all sides, under constant pressure and threat, is something that, across all human history, only a tiny handful of people have ever managed.

Luckily, they weren’t alone. Most of the players were busy happily chasing routed troops all over Cuba, collecting loot and having the time of their lives, not bothering with this stuff. But under the military control of the Dragon Field Soldiers, urban public order was already slowly stabilizing, and no large-scale unrest had broken out.

Next came the distribution of relief supplies and a whole list of other things, keeping everyone working themselves to the bone.

And right at this critical juncture, someone came looking for David.

"Kid, haha! Guess who I found in Havana?"

A sharp female voice sounded behind David. She slapped him on the shoulder from behind, making him, already mentally exhausted from rescuing surrogate slaves under the royal castle, feel even more worn out.

"..."

He flicked his shoulder casually to shake off her hand and didn’t answer.

David’s reaction made Olivia extremely displeased. She straight-up kicked him in the ass, sending him stumbling.

"Hey! Kid, I’m talking to you. You deaf or what?!"

David was helpless. He turned around and pointed at the line of pregnant women at the castle entrance, waiting to get into the medical trucks.

"I’m busy with serious work. Go find someone else to play with, okay? Besides, who the hell would we know in Havana?"

David had only come to Havana once a year ago, with the others. Anyone he met back then who’s still in Havana is basically as good as dead now.

"You blockhead!"

Olivia was so angry her teeth were grinding; she practically wanted to jump up and take a bite out of his skull. But because this was sensitive, she could only grit her teeth and whisper in David’s ear:

"I saw someone down south in the city..."

————

Dragon Field Soldiers, guerrillas, Revolutionary Army, Horizon Mercenaries, United States bandits...

In the eyes of the Cubans, this gang of freshly arrived toughs had countless names.

Some were curious, some terrified, some confused. They hid at home, afraid to step outside. Only when the sound of gunfire gradually faded did they dare sneak a peek through cracks at the window, stealing glances down at the street.

Whenever those Soldiers looked up, they jerked back into their rooms like lightning.

After all, since ancient times, the disasters brought by armies to ordinary people have never been less than any natural catastrophe, and the old saying that "for three days after a city is opened, blades don’t go sheathed" is a piece of traditional wisdom that’s traveled the world.

Even with acid churning in their empty stomachs, dizzy with hunger, they still wouldn’t leave those tiny shelters. That was the last scrap of safety they had.

But their fear came from the unknown. They didn’t know these people down there. Once both sides slowly started to interact, that fear could be gradually dissolved—just like no Lord Dong would ever be afraid of the People’s Liberation Army showing up downstairs at their building.

And then there were those whose fear came from what they already knew.

Precisely because they knew Horizon Corporation, precisely because they knew certain things, they were afraid of these victors in a way that came from their very souls.

This kind of fear outweighed the threat of death to their own lives, outweighed the fear of those drug lords who were currently being hunted down.