HS Province, Pearl City.
Ma Da was leading a group of new recruits from the Human Resources Department through orientation in the conference room. Just as he reached the point about company culture and was talking himself hoarse, his phone suddenly vibrated in his pocket.
He casually pulled it out and glanced at the screen. The instant he saw the message, the expression on his face changed.
The next second, he tore the employee ID hanging around his neck, tossed it onto the table, and turned to the deputy beside him. “You take over here. Finish the rest of the training.”
With that, he hurried out of the conference room.
As he walked down the corridor, Ma Da made a call. “Taozi, book me the soonest flight to Jinchuan. I don’t care what class it is—as long as there’s a seat. Everyone in Pearl City who doesn’t have an urgent assignment, bring them all. Every last one.”
“Brother Ma, apart from those we have to leave behind to guard the city, we can probably mobilize around a thousand people. You want all of them sent over?”
“All of them!”
“If there aren’t enough plane tickets, charter a flight. If that won’t work, drive!”
“In short, I want to see everyone standing on Jinchuan’s turf within one day. Not a single person missing!”
“Yes! Understood, Brother Ma. I’ll arrange it right away!”
At the same time, in the provincial capital—
Yu Xin was sitting in a conference room in the Mobile Business Division, discussing the antenna design for the company’s first engineering handset with the technical team.
She, too, received a message during the meeting. When she opened it, a red pinned announcement from a group chat appeared on the screen.
She only had to glance at it before immediately ending the meeting. “That’s all for today. I have an urgent matter to deal with. Organize the follow-up proposals and send them to my email.”
Half an hour later, a convoy of more than a dozen black Mercedes-Benz vehicles left the provincial capital.
Scenes like this were unfolding almost simultaneously in cities across multiple provinces throughout the Dragon Kingdom.
Within just a few hours, flights bound for BS Province were being booked in huge numbers.
Large numbers of vehicles bearing license plates from different provinces took to the highways heading southwest at nearly the same time.
Countless people dressed in black suits were making their way to Jinchuan by every means available.
At the same time, messages were flooding more than a dozen major group chats in the capital, Pearl City, BS Province, and elsewhere.
“Received! Departing immediately!”
“On the way to the assembly point!”
“Booked the earliest flight. Expected to land in BS Province in four hours!”
“The self-driving convoy is on the highway. Estimated arrival in Jinchuan: ten hours!”
“The first group of three hundred has departed!”
“…”
Not a single message asked what had happened or whether the trip could be delayed for a couple of days.
To them, if The Young Lady summoned them, they had to appear where they were needed. No explanation was necessary.
Viewed from a purely rational perspective, such almost fanatical obedience was utterly incomprehensible.
But if you truly understood the history of the Wanlong Society from its founding to the present, if you understood how Liu Yutong had gathered these people—once scattered across street corners and pushed to the fringes of society—and given them jobs, dignity, and a place they could call home, then you would understand where this terrifying unity came from.
The most difficult kind of loyalty to buy in this world sometimes required only two things: sincerity.
That afternoon, unfamiliar faces began appearing in large numbers at Jinchuan’s long-distance bus station and railway station.
Most of them were between twenty and thirty years old. Every one of them looked energetic and particularly fit.
In Jinchuan, this was highly unusual.
It wasn’t the New Year, nor was it a holiday. Normally, most of the city’s young people had already left for work in the big cities by this time of year. More people went out than came back.
For so many young people to arrive in Jinchuan in wave after wave was clearly abnormal.
What was especially strange was that nearly all of them spoke with out-of-town accents.
The highways were attracting attention too, particularly at the exits.
Jinchuan was no provincial capital or major metropolis. The city normally saw very little outside traffic, and foreign license plates were rare sights on its streets.
Yet starting at noon, vehicles with out-of-town plates began streaming off the highway one after another. Almost all of them were black Mercedes-Benz sedans, occasionally mixed with dark-colored commercial vans or buses. They emerged from the toll station in a long line.
Some local taxi drivers noticed the unusual scene as well and began chatting about it whenever business slowed down.
“Holy crap, what’s going on today? I picked up seven or eight young people with out-of-town accents at the bus station in one go. They were all headed downtown, and none of them had much luggage. Doesn’t feel like they’re here to sightsee. Anyone know what’s happening?”
“I picked up more than a dozen at the railway station too. Normally, I’m lucky if I get three or five passengers around this time. Business is incredible today! Does anyone know what’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you what—I was waiting for passengers at the rest area near the highway exit earlier. I hadn’t even been there half an hour when I saw at least twenty black Mercedes-Benz cars come through the toll station. All had out-of-town plates, and none of them stopped. I’ve been driving a taxi for five years, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen a spectacle like this in our little city.”
“Why are all these rich people suddenly descending on Jinchuan?”
“Could they have discovered a gold mine here and come to strike it rich?”
“Not that I’ve heard! But I did hear something else. Things haven’t been very peaceful in Jinchuan lately.”
“What do you mean by ‘not peaceful’? Come on, tell us more.”
“You haven’t heard? A few days ago, that guy from Jinchuan—the son of Tiger Qi—jumped from a building. He died on the spot.”
“Holy crap! Seriously? You mean the one from Tiger Group?”
“Who else could it be? How many Tiger Qis are there in Jinchuan?”
“My cousin works as a security guard in that building. He saw it with his own eyes. You have no idea how horrible it was. Tiger Qi had just been put into a police car downstairs when he watched helplessly as his son came crashing down from the roof!”
“Damn… Then could all these outsiders be here for Qi Tiger’s son’s funeral?”
“Don’t rule it out. In Jinchuan, only the Qi family has that kind of clout.”
“But it doesn’t feel like that to me. Who wears suits and doesn’t even put on mourning clothes when attending a funeral? I think they look more like they’re here to pick a fight…”
“Whatever. It has nothing to do with ordinary people like us. Let’s just keep our heads down and work.”
“Exactly. Making money is what matters. Come on, let’s get moving!”
