Heavy river swells slammed against the concrete pilings of the Cloud-Crown private marina as Lin Mo pushed open the balcony storm doors and strode down the exterior dock stairs. Su Wan and Tie Niu hurried right behind him, their coats whipping in the cold river gale.
Down at Berth Nine, four high-powered halogen spotlights on the upper deck of Song Zihao’s eighty-foot white Italian superyacht—the Sea Emperor—blazed down onto the rain-slicked concrete pier.
The superyacht’s reinforced steel-plated bow had backed straight into the port side of a thirty-year-old wooden fishing trawler painted faded blue. Half of the trawler’s pine wheelhouse was crushed into splinters, and crates of freshly caught river prawns were spilling into the oily harbor water.
On the wet concrete dock, twenty weathered fishermen in patched oilskins were being held back at baton-point by twelve private marina guards.
In the center of the puddle knelt fifty-five-year-old Captain Old Hai, his left leg locked straight inside a rusted iron orthopedic brace. Blood trickled from a cut above his left eyebrow where a yacht deckhand had shoved him against a mooring bollard. Still, both of his scarred hands reached desperately toward the mud beneath a pair of white-and-gold deck boots.
Lin Mo’s [Pure-Heart Eye] locked onto the kneeling veteran:
[Target: Hai Jianjun (Captain Old Hai) | Role: Retired Navy First-Class Rescue Diver & Trawler Skipper].
[Moral Integrity Score: 94/100 (Shattered his left kneecap diving into freezing rapids ten years ago to pull 30 trapped schoolkids from a sunken ferry; supports 20 retired navy and harbor families)].
[Status: Verified Pure-Heart Hero — 100x Refund Unlocked!].
Standing over Old Hai in a gaudy white commodore uniform with fake gold epaulets was Song Zihao’s private yacht captain, Captain Diao. Above Diao’s peaked cap floated a foul, tar-black halo:
[Target: Diao Biao (Captain Diao) | Role: Song Clan Yacht Commodore & Smuggler].
[Moral Integrity Score: 9/100 (Rammed 6 fishing boats in three years; dumped waste oil into farm canals)].
[Status: Vicious Lackey — Zero Refund Eligibility].
Under Captain Diao’s right boot heel lay a tarnished bronze star suspended from a faded red-and-blue ribbon—Old Hai’s First-Class Navy Life-Saving Medal.
“Please, Captain Diao, lift your foot!” Old Hai’s voice was hoarse from thirty years of high-pressure diving, his calloused fingers scraping against the concrete as he tried to pry Diao’s boot off the bronze star. “The Fleet Commander pinned that medal on me when my leg was crushed at the ferry wreck! Smash my wheelhouse if you want, but don’t grind that medal into the mud!”
Captain Diao laughed nastily, twisting his leather heel harder on the bronze star while puffing on a thin cigarillo.
“A rusty piece of scrap copper from ten years ago?” Captain Diao spat onto the ribbon. “Old cripple, do you know whose yacht is docked at Berth Eight? Young Master Song Zihao’s forty-million-yuan Italian flagship! Tonight is the preview party for the Tianhai International Boat Show, and your ugly wooden bucket was blocking our view of the river bund!”
“We paid our monthly berth fee to the harbor bureau on the first of the month!” a sixty-year-old net-mender among the twenty fishermen (Goodness: 89/100) shouted angrily against the guards’ batons. “Berth Nine is a public commercial slip! You backed into our boat on purpose without sounding a horn!”
“In this harbor, whatever Young Master Song’s hull touches is at fault!” Captain Diao sneered, looking down at Old Hai. “Your wooden tub scratched two inches of imported white gelcoat on our stern! Hand over five million yuan in paint-polishing fees right now, and sign over your twenty fishermen’s river-transit licenses to Song Shipping. Otherwise, I’ll kick this copper toy into the harbor bilge and sink your trawler at the pier!”
Old Hai’s bloodshot eyes trembled as he looked back at his twenty old crewmates—men with sick wives and grandchildren in school who relied on that single wooden trawler for their livelihood. Slowly, the proud old navy diver bowed his scarred forehead toward the puddle.
“Take the medal as collateral until tomorrow, Captain Diao,” Old Hai choked out, his voice breaking. “Just don’t sink the boat... twenty families eat from those nets...”
“Collateral? Who wants a beggar’s tin star?!” Captain Diao raised his heavy deck boot to kick the bronze medal—and Old Hai’s reaching hand—straight off the edge of the pier!
Ninety-four out of a hundred Goodness, and thirty children saved at the cost of his kneecap, Lin Mo thought, the humor in his eyes turning to winter ice. Now a nine-point yacht lackey is stepping on his Navy Rescue Medal. Some trash doesn’t even deserve to stay on dry land.
Before Captain Diao’s boot could move an inch, a dark coat blurred across the rain-slicked concrete.
Lin Mo stepped onto the pier at full Rank 2 Peak Martial speed, his footwork silent over the roar of the waves.
“Who’s there—?!” Captain Diao barely registered a shadow beside him before Lin Mo’s right boot lashed out in a crisp, thunderous side-kick!
BOOM!
Lin Mo’s sole planted squarely into the center of Captain Diao’s chest!
The impact sounded like a bass drum exploding. Captain Diao’s fake gold buttons popped off his uniform coat like shrapnel, his sternum caved inward, and his two-hundred-pound frame launched backward thirty feet through the pouring rain!
SPLASH!
Before the twelve marina guards could blink, Captain Diao cleared the edge of Berth Nine. He plunged headfirst into the foul, oily bilge water floating between the garbage scows at the far end of the slip!
“Commodore Diao!”
The twelve marina guards spun around in shock, raising their rubber batons toward Lin Mo. Right then, Tie Niu landed on the concrete pier behind them with a heavy thud that made the floating pontoon gangway shudder.
Tie Niu didn’t even use a weapon. Moving like an armored bulldozer, he grabbed the two lead guards by their utility belts and hurled them into the harbor on top of Captain Diao. Behind him, eight Taichu security veterans swept the remaining ten guards flat onto their stomachs in five seconds!
On the pier, Lin Mo crouched beside Captain Old Hai. Taking a clean white linen handkerchief from his breast pocket, Lin Mo carefully picked up the dented bronze First-Class Navy Rescue Medal from the puddle. He wiped every speck of mud from the engraved star and smoothed out the wet ribbon.
“A medal earned saving thirty children shouldn’t touch the ground, Captain Hai,” Lin Mo said gently, placing the bronze star back into the old diver’s scarred palms and helping him up by his elbow. “And a soldier who bled for this river shouldn’t kneel to anyone.”
Old Hai stared down at the clean medal in his hands, then looked up at the young man holding an umbrella over his grey head. Seeing the genuine respect in Lin Mo’s eyes, the fifty-five-year-old veteran who hadn’t cried when surgeons sawed away his shattered kneecap felt hot tears spill down his cheeks.
“Thank you, young brother... thank you...” Old Hai’s iron leg-brace clicked as he stood straight and snapped a crisp, rock-steady navy salute. “Retired South Sea Fleet First-Class Diver Hai Jianjun, thanking you on behalf of Berth Nine!”
Up on the second-floor marble balcony of the Cloud-Crown Hotel, Song Zihao—who had just run outside with Manager Wei and a dozen shipping bosses—leaned over the balustrade and roared down through the rain:
“Lin Mo! Are you out of your mind?! Captain Diao is my personal yacht commodore! You kicked him into the bilge for a gang of smelly prawn-catchers?!”
Lin Mo didn’t even bother looking up at the balcony. Instead, he looked at the crushed wooden wheelhouse of Old Hai’s trawler, then scanned the twenty weathered fishermen (Goodness: 85–90/100) who had just been released from the guards’ batons.
Twenty-one honest river veterans with eighty-five to ninety-four Goodness, Lin Mo thought, his pragmatic smile returning as he pulled out his Taichu Black-Gold Benevolence Card. Song Zihao thinks he’s bullying fishermen. I see five billion yuan in sovereign cashback and an entire river patrol fleet waiting to be hired.
“Captain Hai,” Lin Mo asked conversationally, “how much would it cost to repair your trawler and replace the spilled catch?”
Old Hai wiped his face with his sleeve and sighed. “The wheelhouse frame and diesel shaft are cracked, sir. At least two hundred thousand yuan... plus my twenty brothers here owe another three million to the dock credit union for winter nets and their families’ medical bills.”
“Two hundred thousand for a wooden wheelhouse?” Lin Mo shook his head. “If you take a wooden boat out in a Jiangnan autumn storm, Grandma Chen’s canteen won’t get fresh river shrimp on time. And that rusted iron brace on your left knee is pinching your meridian nerves every time it rains.”
Lin Mo turned to Su Wan, who had already opened the portable Taichu Benevolence POS Terminal under her umbrella.
“President Su, wire fifty million yuan directly into Captain Hai and his twenty crewmates’ cooperative account,” Lin Mo ordered calmly. “Ten million to clear every fen of debt and medical bills for all twenty-one families. Twenty million as signing bonuses into Taichu Marine Logistics & Canteen Supply. And twenty million to check Captain Hai into Dr. Gu Qinghe’s mobile surgical clinic tonight—tell Dr. Gu to use his Nine-Turn Gold Needles and bone-marrow salve to rebuild the cartilage in Captain Hai’s left knee so he can throw that iron brace into the river.”
“Fifty... fifty million yuan?!”
Old Hai and the twenty weathered fishermen froze as if struck by lightning.
“Young boss, we’re just old river hands!” sixty-year-old Uncle Fu (Goodness: 89/100) stammered, waving his calloused hands frantically. “Our whole lives aren’t worth fifty million yuan! Even if we fished until we were a hundred—”
“Put your thumb on the scanner, Captain Hai,” Lin Mo said with his signature deadpan grin. “My company just arrived in Tianhai tonight, and we don’t have a single river captain who knows the channels without hitting sandbars. Strictly speaking, you and your twenty brothers are rescuing my supply chain.”
Seeing that Lin Mo wouldn’t take no for an answer, Old Hai’s chin quivered. With twenty fishermen standing behind him as co-recipients, the old navy diver pressed his scarred thumb onto the glowing glass of the POS terminal.
BEEP!
A brilliant pillar of emerald-gold light flashed across the terminal screen:
[BEEP! TRANSACTION APPROVED: ¥50,000,000.00 TRANSFERRED TO CAPTAIN HAI JIANJUN (GOODNESS: 94/100) & 20 HONEST HARBOR FISHERMEN (GOODNESS: 85–90/100)!]
Inside Lin Mo’s consciousness, a five-billion-yuan golden tsunami crashed into his vault:
[DING! SPENT ¥50,000,000 ON 21 VERIFIED PURE-HEART BENEFICIARIES!]
[MARITIME BENEVOLENCE MULTIPLIER (100X) ACTIVATED! +¥5,000,000,000 (¥5.00 BILLION RMB) CREDITED TO SOVEREIGN LIQUID VAULT!]
[CURRENT LIQUID VAULT BALANCE: ¥118,900,000,000 (¥118.90 BILLION RMB)!]
[GOOD PEOPLE NETWORK: 10,057 (+21) | BONUS: +50,000 BENEVOLENCE MERIT POINTS!]
Two seconds later, twenty-one battered feature phones and waterproof pagers along the pier chimed in unison with bank deposit alerts!
Uncle Fu stared at the two-million-yuan personal settlement alert on his screen, his knees hitting the wet concrete with a splash as he covered his face and wept aloud. Beside him, a thirty-five-year-old fisherman whose daughter needed cochlear implant surgery laughed through his tears, hugging the mast of the broken trawler.
Right then, Dr. Gu Qinghe (Goodness: 96/100) stepped out of the Taichu medical van at the end of the pier carrying his silver medical case. When he applied a warming meridian patch to Old Hai’s left knee, the agonizing phantom ache that had tormented the old diver every rainy night for ten years vanished in ten seconds!
Old Hai flexed his left knee inside the brace for the first time in a decade. Turning to Lin Mo, the old captain and all twenty fishermen dropped to one knee on the pier, their voices booming over the river wind like a naval cannon salute:
“Captain Hai Jianjun and the twenty brothers of Berth Nine swear on our lives! As long as we breathe, Taichu Group’s cargo will cross the Jiangnan River through any storm or blockade!”
Up on the hotel balcony, Song Zihao watched Captain Diao being fished out of the bilge water with three broken ribs while twenty fishermen swore loyalty to Lin Mo. His face twisted with venomous rage.
“Fifty million for twenty crippled fishermen and a smashed wooden boat?!” Song Zihao barked into his phone, turning the speaker all the way up so his voice echoed across the marina through the dock PA system. “Fine, Lin Mo! Since your new captains have a smashed boat, let’s see what they sail on! Listen up—every yacht broker, shipbuilder, and cargo-vessel dealer at the Tianhai International Boat Show!”
Across the harbor, the illuminated glass dome of the Tianhai International Boat Show Exhibition Center—where thirty European superyachts and commercial river vessels were docked for tonight’s midnight VIP trade fair—glowed against the night sky.
“I am Young Master Song Zihao, Vice-Chairman of the Boat Show Committee!” Song Zihao roared into the microphone. “Cancel every vessel lease and purchase inquiry from Taichu Group immediately! Any dealer at the marina who sells or rents even a wooden rowboat to Lin Mo tonight will have their showroom bulldozed by the Song Clan tomorrow morning!”
Down on the pier, Su Wan’s corporate tablet chimed with six consecutive red alerts. She looked up, her brow furrowing slightly.
“Chairman Lin,” Su Wan reported crisply, “all six commercial boat brokerages at the marina just canceled our midnight cargo-barge lease simultaneously, and forfeited their deposits rather than cross Song Zihao. Captain Hai’s crew has money now, but not a single seaworthy boat for tomorrow’s river run.”
Lin Mo looked past the broken wooden trawler toward the glittering exhibition pier next door, where thirty brand-new, twenty-million-yuan European luxury superyachts were bobbing side by side under strings of party lights.
“The commercial barge dealers canceled?” Lin Mo asked deadpan, a slow, dangerous grin curving his lips as his [Pure-Heart Eye] spotted an enraged 88/100 Goodness halo inside the main yacht pavilion. “What a shame. I guess Captain Hai and his twenty fishermen will just have to haul live river shrimp in thirty European superyachts instead.”