Inside the Cloud-Crown Gold Banquet Hall on the second mezzanine, crystal chandeliers blazed over a forty-foot mahogany conference table. A dozen shipping directors and hotel board members allied with the Jiangnan Chamber of Commerce sat around the table swirls of brandy in hand, watching the double doors swing open.
Lin Mo strolled in with Su Wanqing—whom the team affectionately called Su Wan—at his side and Tie Niu two paces behind his shoulder. Thirty banquet waiters and night-shift cleaners stood lined up along the gilded walls, their shoulders tense.
Song Zihao walked straight to the head of the table and dropped into the high-backed leather chairman’s seat. He propped both of his burgundy crocodile-skin boots directly onto the stack of provincial cold-chain transit applications Su Wan had submitted that afternoon.
“Take a look around, President Su, Chairman Lin,” Song Zihao said, puffing on his cigar as he gestured lazily around the hall. “Every river berth, cold-storage pier, and customs warehouse from here to the Yangtze estuary belongs to my Song Shipping and Medical Clan. You think buying a few trucks in a third-tier town like Jiangcheng gives you the right to run cargo through Tianhai Capital?”
Song Zihao tapped a thick, one-sided equity transfer contract lying beside his muddy boot heel.
“My father and the other three Jiangnan clans are generous,” Song Zihao sneered. “Sign over fifty-one percent of Taichu Benevolence Group’s logistics shares to Song Shipping tonight for a token price of one yuan. Do that, and we’ll allow your trucks to deliver vegetables for us at a ten percent margin. Refuse, and your groceries can rot on the highway until next winter.”
Su Wan didn’t even sit down. She looked coolly at the crocodile-skin boots resting on her company’s permit applications.
“Young Master Song,” Su Wan said, her voice crisp and clear across the hall, “Taichu Group owns its fleet outright with zero debt, and the national riverway is public infrastructure. Demanding fifty-one percent of a hundred-billion-yuan enterprise for one yuan isn’t a business negotiation. It’s extortion.”
Before Song Zihao could reply, the heavily made-up influencer clinging to his armchair—a twenty-three-year-old livestream celebrity named Tiffany—let out a high, shrill giggle.
Above Tiffany’s bleached hair and diamond-encrusted hairpin floated a murky, lipstick-pink and black halo:
[Target: Zhou Lili (“Tiffany”) | Role: Influencer & Song Zihao’s Companion].
[Moral Integrity Score: 12/100 (Sold fake whitening creams to students; evaded ¥8,400,000 in livestream taxes)].
[Status: Gold-Digging Parasite — Zero Refund Eligibility].
“A hundred-billion-yuan enterprise?” Tiffany covered her mouth with five-inch rhinestone fingernails and looked Su Wan’s practical charcoal business suit up and down with exaggerated pity. “Oh, honey, did you buy that suit on a livestream clearance rack? Even the buttons aren’t real mother-of-pearl! If your boss actually had a hundred billion yuan, why were you riding in a mud-splattered refrigerator van with an old wonton lady?”
Several Song Clan shipping directors around the table chuckled, raising their glasses to flatter Song Zihao.
Twelve out of a hundred on the Morality Scale, and eight million in tax evasion, Lin Mo thought deadpan as he pulled out a leather chair for Su Wan and sat down beside her. Song Zihao has an eight, and his girlfriend has a twelve. Together they barely add up to one-fourth of a qualified human being.
Tiffany turned her painted eyes toward Lin Mo, sizing up his plain dark overcoat. Seeing that he wore no flashy watch or gold chains, she assumed his twenty-million-yuan suite booking downstairs had drained every last fen of his company’s working capital.
She snapped her fingers at the fifty-year-old banquet head waiter, Old Liu, who was standing by the service cart with a bruised wrist where Song Zihao’s bodyguard had shoved him earlier.
“Waiter! Roll out the Imperial Crystal Champagne Pyramid—the one with the thirty bottles of vintage Dom Pérignon Rose gold-label!” Tiffany ordered loudly. “Three million yuan for the tower, plus five hundred thousand for the imported caviar platter!”
Old Liu and twenty-nine other banquet waiters and night cleaners hurried to wheel out the towering ten-tier crystal pyramid and thirty chilled gold bottles. Every single one of the thirty staff members—from white-haired Old Liu (Goodness: 88/100) to the young dishwashers and floor-sweepers (Goodness: 82–87/100)—looked exhausted. Manager Wei had forced them all to work an unpaid sixteen-hour double shift to serve Song Zihao’s entourage.
When a young cleaner accidentally bumped the edge of the carpet with the cart wheel, Tiffany kicked the girl’s shin with her stiletto heel. “Watch where you’re rolling that, you clumsy maid! One bottle of that champagne is worth ten years of your broom-pushing life!”
Tiffany then leaned across the mahogany table, resting her chin on her hand as she smirked at Lin Mo.
“Hey, Country Boss Lin,” Tiffany drawled sweetly. “Downstairs, your little concierge bragged that your black card never bounces. Since you came to Tianhai to beg Young Master Song for shipping lanes, why don’t you pay for my three-million-yuan champagne tower right now? Call it your ‘provincial tuition fee’ for breathing the same air as us!”
Song Zihao grinned around his cigar, leaning back to watch Lin Mo sweat. “Go ahead, Chairman Lin. Show us how generous Taichu Benevolence Group is. Or does your card only work when you’re putting on a show for country truckers?”
Lin Mo looked at Tiffany’s outstretched hand, then glanced at the thirty exhausted, honest banquet staff standing silently behind the crystal pyramid.
“Three million yuan is pocket change,” Lin Mo said mildly, reaching into his coat pocket. “My card has no spending limit. However, it does have a strict medical allergy to parasites, scammers, and tax evaders. Still, since Miss Tiffany is so confident, feel free to try.”
Lin Mo placed his black-gold Taichu Benevolence POS Terminal on the polished mahogany table and gave it a light push.
The sleek terminal slid smoothly across the wood and stopped right in front of Tiffany’s champagne flute.
“An allergy to parasites? Hah! What a cheap excuse for an empty bank account!” Tiffany sneered, pulling down the sleeve of her sequin dress so the whole table could admire her diamond bracelet. “Watch closely, country bumpkin. Anyone who sits at Young Master Song’s table is upper-class nobility!”
With a smug toss of her hair, Tiffany pressed her rhinestone-tipped index finger firmly onto the biometric recipient scanner of the Taichu POS Terminal.
For half a second, the banquet hall was quiet.
Then the terminal’s top strobe light erupted in blinding, blood-red flashes, and the built-in 120-decibel speaker blared across the vaulted ceiling like an air-raid siren!
BZZZZT—WEEEE-OOOO-WEEEE-OOOO!
Every brandy glass on the table rattled as the mechanical voice broadcast echoed off the marble walls:
[CRITICAL ALERT! TRANSACTION DECLINED!] [RECIPIENT IDENTIFIED: ZHOU LILI (“TIFFANY”) — MORAL INTEGRITY SCORE: 12 / 100!] [SYSTEM AUDIT SUMMARY: GRADE-D GOLD-DIGGING PARASITE! SOLD LEAD-TAINTED FAKE SKINCARE TO 40,000 STUDENTS! EVADED ¥8,420,000 IN PERSONAL LIVESTREAM INCOME TAXES VIA SHELL ACCOUNTS!] [GUARANTOR LINKED: SONG ZIHAO — MORAL INTEGRITY SCORE: 8 / 100! WARNING: STAY AT LEAST THREE METERS AWAY TO AVOID KARMA CONTAMINATION!]
WHIRRRR-rip!
A three-foot red audit slip shot out of the terminal’s thermal printer, listing the exact offshore bank account numbers Tiffany had used to hide her livestream tax evasion!
The entire Gold Banquet Hall went dead silent.
Two shipping directors choked on their brandy, coughing violently into their napkins. Along the wall, several young waiters bit their lips so hard their shoulders shook as they tried not to laugh out loud.
Tiffany’s face went from heavily powdered white to beetroot red, then to ghostly green.
“Turn it off! Turn that lying machine off!” Tiffany shrieked at the top of her lungs. Two minor merchants at the end of the table were secretly angling their smartphone cameras toward the red tax-evasion printout. Panicking completely, she lunged for the paper slip, missed, and dove headfirst under the heavy gold-velvet tablecloth to hide her face!
CRASH!
Song Zihao was so humiliated that he slammed his crystal brandy goblet onto the mahogany table, shattering the glass into shards.
“Lin Mo! You brought a rigged prank speaker into my banquet hall to insult me and my woman?!” Song Zihao roared, kicking his chair back as his twenty black-suited bodyguards reached inside their jackets. “Do you want to walk out of here on a stretcher?!”
“Don’t blame the machine, Young Master Song,” Lin Mo said deadpan, picking up the terminal and blowing a speck of cigar ash off its screen. “I told you it was allergic to parasites. To prove the terminal isn’t broken, let me show you what happens when a real human being touches it.”
Lin Mo turned in his chair toward fifty-year-old head waiter Old Liu (Goodness: 88/100) and the young cleaner girl whose shin Tiffany had kicked (Goodness: 86/100). Behind them stood the other twenty-eight exhausted banquet waiters and dishwashers (Goodness: 82–87/100) along the wall.
“Uncle Liu,” Lin Mo said warmly, gesturing toward the boutique display window of the Vacheron & Patek Swiss Watch Arcade directly connected to the banquet foyer. “How long have you and these twenty-nine staff members been on your feet today?”
Old Liu blinked in surprise, bowing respectfully. “Sixteen hours, sir. Since six this morning, without overtime pay.”
“And how much does that Swiss watch boutique in the foyer charge for their flagship rose-gold mechanical watches?” Lin Mo asked.
The honest duty manager of the watch arcade (Goodness: 84/100), who had been standing by the foyer door watching the commotion, stepped forward hurriedly. “Sir! Our thirty flagship rose-gold tourbillon and calendar watches in the foyer vault are priced at exactly one million yuan each—thirty million yuan for the full cabinet!”
Thirty million yuan for thirty hardworking staff with eighty-two-plus Goodness, Lin Mo calculated with a satisfied nod. That’s three billion yuan back in my pocket, and Tiffany gets to listen to the green chime from under the tablecloth.
“Bring all thirty watch boxes out here,” Lin Mo told the watch manager. He turned back to Old Liu and the twenty-nine waiters, dishwashers, and cleaners. “Come line up and tap the green screen. Every person who worked this banquet floor tonight gets a one-million-yuan Swiss watch. Each box comes with a full buyback receipt so you can cash it in at any bank tomorrow for clean retirement and housing money.”
“What?!”
Under the tablecloth, Tiffany poked her head out so fast her diamond hairpin snagged on the lace fringe. “One million yuan each?! For thirty dishwashers and floor-sweepers?! Are you insane?!”
“Line up, everyone,” Su Wan said with a faint smile, opening her tablet to log the employee-welfare gift receipts. “Chairman Lin doesn’t like repeating himself.”
Trembling with disbelief, Old Liu stepped up first and touched his calloused thumb to the POS terminal, followed one by one by the young cleaner girl and the twenty-eight banquet workers.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Thirty times in a row, the terminal glowed with warm emerald-gold light and chimed like spring water:
[BEEP! RECIPIENTS VERIFIED: 30 HONEST BANQUET WAITERS & CLEANERS (MORAL INTEGRITY: 82–88/100)!] [TRANSACTION APPROVED: ¥30,000,000.00 PAID IN FULL FOR 30 SWISS TOURBILLON WATCHES!]
Inside Lin Mo’s mind, a tidal wave of golden cashback thundered into his vault:
[DING! SPENT ¥30,000,000 ON 30 VERIFIED PURE-HEART BENEFICIARIES!] [100X PURE-HEART CASHBACK TRIGGERED! +¥3,000,000,000 (¥3.00 BILLION RMB) DEPOSITED INTO PERSONAL LIQUID VAULT!] [CURRENT LIQUID VAULT BALANCE: ¥113,950,000,000 (¥113.95 BILLION RMB)!] [GOOD PEOPLE NETWORK: 10,036 (+30) | BONUS: +30,000 BENEVOLENCE MERIT POINTS!]
Within two minutes, the watch arcade manager and his clerks wheeled out thirty polished mahogany boxes. Old Liu opened his box with shaking hands, staring at the gleaming rose-gold timepiece and the stamped one-million-yuan buyback guarantee certificate inside.
The young cleaner girl whose shin Tiffany had kicked burst into tears, hugging her watch box to her chest. “One million yuan... Mom doesn’t have to scrub restaurant floors with her bad back anymore! Thank you, Chairman Lin!”
“Thank you, Chairman Lin! From today on, we quit the Cloud-Crown to work for Taichu Group!” all thirty waiters and cleaners shouted in unison, stripping off their Cloud-Crown aprons and tossing them onto the floor in front of Song Zihao’s boots before wheeling the untouched champagne cart out of the room!
Under the table, Tiffany bit her lip until it bled, staring with rabid jealousy at the thirty million-yuan watch boxes walking past her nose. She had humiliated herself before the whole room begging for a three-million-yuan champagne tower, while Lin Mo had casually dropped ten times that amount on cleaners just to prove his card worked!
Song Zihao’s face was livid, the veins on his temples throbbing like earthworms. “You think throwing thirty million at waiters makes you a dragon in Tianhai, Lin Mo?!” he snarled, stalking toward the floor-to-ceiling glass doors overlooking the hotel’s private marina. “Let me show you who rules the water here!”
Right at that moment, a deafening CRUNCH of splintering timber echoed up from the storm-lashed marina below the balcony!
Lin Mo stood up and walked to the balcony railing.
Down at Berth Nine under the dock floodlights, Song Zihao’s eighty-foot white Italian superyacht had just reversed its steel hull straight into an old wooden fishing trawler. The impact smashed the patched trawler’s wheelhouse in half!
On the rain-slicked concrete pier, a fifty-five-year-old man with a scarred face and an iron leg-brace was down on one knee in the puddles. Ignoring his bleeding forehead, the crippled veteran pulled a worn First-Class Navy Rescue Medal from inside his soaked oilskin coat. With both trembling hands, he held the medal up in front of a sneering yacht captain’s boots—begging the thugs not to smash the trawler that fed twenty retired fishermen’s families!