Sure enough!
Just one day later, Qi Tianhu was released on bail.
The result came as no surprise.
Qi Tianhu had been running things in Jinchuan for twenty years. It was hardly unexpected that he could get out so quickly.
But after Liu Yutong received the news, the tension in her heart only tightened.
Her main concern was that someone under her command might suffer unnecessary casualties. If that happened, things would become truly troublesome.
Less than a day after she heard that Qi Tianhu had been released, Lan Die hurried into the room.
“Young Lady, I have four pieces of news.”
“Go ahead.”
“First, before Qi Licheng jumped to his death, we had already sent people to investigate the illegal coal mine on Qingyan Mountain. But by the time our people and the police arrived, the workers with intellectual disabilities had already been transferred, and the entire site had been cleaned out. We found nothing.
“However, the police later made a major discovery in an abandoned mine shaft mentioned in Qi Licheng’s suicide note. A large number of human remains were found there—at least a dozen, according to the preliminary assessment.”
Liu Yutong’s heart sank.
More than a dozen sets of remains.
She immediately thought of Wang Xiaoshu and his grandmother. She was truly afraid that Dashu’s remains might be among them.
If Dashu was really gone, Xiaoshu’s grandmother would surely be unable to withstand the blow.
The old woman had held on for so long because of that last shred of hope.
If even that hope were snuffed out, she might very well give up on life then and there.
Liu Yutong made a silent decision at once. No matter what it cost, she had to send Qi Tianhu to prison—and make sure the case against him was airtight, leaving him no chance to turn things around!
“Second, while our people were following up on the illegal coal mine lead, they received some unexpected information. A normal person had infiltrated that group of intellectually disabled workers—and he was a journalist.”
“A journalist?”
“Yes. According to what we’ve learned, the journalist disguised himself as someone with an intellectual disability and infiltrated the illegal mine. He had been undercover there for more than three months, secretly filming everything. But the day before our people and the police arrived at the mine, his identity was discovered. He was probably captured.”
“Have you found out who the journalist is?”
“We have. His name is Zhou Ming. He’s an investigative journalist for a newspaper in northern China, specializing in undercover investigations and exposés. He’s fairly well-known in the industry. In the past, he reported on illegal cooking-oil operations, pyramid schemes, and gangs controlling homeless children. Several sensational cases that made national headlines were first exposed by him. But because of that, he also made a lot of enemies.
“I’ve also heard that he hasn’t dared to return home for many years.
“Besides that, our people discovered that Zhou Ming was a high school classmate of Professor Xu at BS University. The two of them seem to have been very close.”
When Liu Yutong heard this, she abruptly raised her head. “What? He and Professor Xu were classmates?!”
The moment she heard that, countless pieces fell into place.
It all matched! Every last detail!
In her previous life, she had only learned from others that Professor Xu had died suddenly. She had never known the exact reason.
Now, everything was connected!
Professor Xu must have gotten involved because of his old classmate Zhou Ming. He might even have obtained the evidence Zhou Ming had hidden away.
Otherwise, how could an elderly professor who preferred staying in his laboratory and rarely ever went out have suddenly died a violent death?
“Continue!”
“Third, we have information on Qi Tianhu’s movements. He appears to be gathering people, possibly preparing to retaliate against us.”
Liu Yutong wasn’t surprised by this news.
After being released, the first thing Qi Tianhu did was go to the funeral home and claim his son’s body. He then held an extraordinarily grand funeral.
At that funeral, the local kingpin who had dominated Jinchuan for twenty years said nothing. He stood before his son’s portrait for three full hours.
He didn’t say a word or shed a single tear. He simply stood there.
That kind of silence was the most frightening of all. The man was clearly plotting something.
Sure enough, after the funeral ended, Qi Tianhu began to take action.
Qi Tianhu’s retaliation was most likely to target three areas.
The first target would probably be Professor Xu. If Qi Tianhu intended to eliminate loose ends and silence everyone who knew the truth, Professor Xu would certainly be on his list.
The second target would be their Wanlong Association.
The Wanlong Association had numerous businesses throughout Jinchuan: construction sites, supermarkets, logistics parks, Internet cafés, and more. If Qi Tianhu ignored all restraint and targeted ordinary workers and managers, the resulting impact and casualties would put Liu Yutong and the others in an extremely difficult position.
The third target would most likely be the Qingyan Mountain lithium mine they had just acquired.
Lan Die had already received reports that unfamiliar faces had recently been seen near the lithium mine. They couldn’t afford to let their guard down.
Besides, Zhang Ting and Xie Jichuan, the two businessmen from Hong Kong City, were scheduled to visit the lithium mine in person within the next couple of days for their first on-site inspection.
If anything happened to them at the mine, the matter would truly spiral out of control. With the safety of businessmen from Hong Kong City involved, the entire direction of public opinion would become impossible to control.
“Fourth, Qi Tianhu is selling off his assets at rock-bottom prices in large quantities—coal mines, property developments, hotels, building-materials factories… He’s dumping everything. He’s raising money like a madman, and according to the information we’ve obtained, he also seems to have contacted people overseas.”
After hearing this final piece of news, Liu Yutong’s first thought was: He’s going to flee!
Or rather, before fleeing, he intended to retaliate like a rabid dog, then disappear with a fortune.
Liu Yutong immediately had someone bring her a map of the Jinchuan area and spread it across the table.
Then she picked up a red marker and marked the locations of every Wanlong Association business in Jinchuan one by one.
The Wanlong Plaza construction site, the supermarkets, the logistics and storage center, Phoenix Authority Internet Café… and the Qingyan Mountain lithium mine they had just acquired in partnership with the Hong Kong City businessmen.
After circling all the locations, Liu Yutong suddenly asked, “Yun Cheng, how many of our core members are in Jinchuan?”
“A little over a hundred.”
“If we spread them across more than a dozen business sites, each location can have at most seven or eight people. But if Qi Tianhu really attacks more than a dozen of our targets at the same time, he could concentrate his forces and launch a surprise attack on any one of them. We simply don’t have enough people to hold them off.”
“What about the entire BS Province?”
“Roughly five or six hundred.”
Liu Yutong made her decision immediately. “Call in reinforcements. We need to be prepared in case anyone makes a desperate move!”
They could call the police, of course, but the police couldn’t stand guard over all their businesses indefinitely before anything actually happened. In the end, they would still have to rely on themselves.
Their top priorities were to mobilize reinforcements to protect their businesses and find Professor Xu and the journalist Zhou Ming as quickly as possible. Once they obtained the evidence in their possession, Qi Tianhu would never be able to recover.
Yun Cheng nodded heavily. “Yes, Young Lady!”
Then he turned and walked to the side, took out his phone, and opened the Wanlong Association Group’s internal communications app.
The app’s interface was extremely simple, featuring only a contact list, a group chat list, and a module for posting announcements.
It was a newly developed app from the Digital Business Group, similar to QQ on a cellphone, except that it had limited functionality and was intended solely for internal communication within the company.
The app had also been developed with the company’s information security in mind.
After opening the app, Yun Cheng quickly tapped a few buttons.
Before long, the same four words appeared simultaneously in the announcement sections of all the major group chats:
[The Young Lady’s Order!]
The four words were displayed in red and pinned to the top. The instant the announcement was posted, nearly all the major groups for core members began vibrating at once.
JH Province Group.
BS Province Group.
HS Province Group.
Imperial Capital Group.
Pearl City General Group.
…
More than a dozen large groups, comprising over five thousand core members of the Wanlong Association, received the message at almost exactly the same time.
[The Young Lady’s Order!]
The announcement contained no unnecessary explanation. There was no reason, no description of the mission—not even a single additional word.
Yet the moment everyone saw those four words, they instinctively put down whatever they were doing and became serious.
In the more than two years since the Wanlong Association had been founded, The Young Lady had never issued a cross-regional mobilization order of this kind. This was the first time ever.
Everyone understood what it meant. Something major was about to happen.
Someone had crossed the Wanlong Association’s bottom line. Someone was trying to test The Young Lady’s limits again and again.
Before long, messages began flooding the major core groups.
“Received! Pearl City members standing by!”
“BS Province members standing by!”
“Imperial Capital members standing by!”
“HS Province members standing by!”
“JH Province members standing by!”
“…”
After countless confirmation messages filled the screens, a new line of text appeared repeatedly across all the groups:
“Please issue your instructions, Young Lady!”
