Tires hissed across the flooded asphalt outside Hongxing Shipyard as Lin Mo’s twenty armored Maybach SUVs and Taichu cold-chain vans pulled up to the rusted iron gates at dawn.
Through the windshield, grey morning rain lashed the towering gantry cranes and half-built steel freighter hulls along the western drydocks. Outside the main gate, three yellow industrial bulldozers idled with black exhaust belching from their stacks. Forty Song Shipping corporate thugs in black rain slickers stood around them with iron bars.
Lin Mo pushed open the rear door of the lead Maybach and stepped out under the umbrella held by Tie Niu. Beside him, Su Wan opened her waterproof tablet while Master Lu Shan adjusted his bright yellow hard-hat and squinted at the shipyard’s structural beams.
Inside the chain-link courtyard, blocking the path between the bulldozers and a red-brick workers’ canteen, stood a sixty-year-old man in a patched canvas welding jacket. His silver hair was plastered to his forehead by the rain. He held a notarized residential property deed in one scarred hand and a leather blueprint tube in the other. Behind him stood eight hundred weathered welders and hull fitters in grease-stained overalls, gripping heavy wrenches and unlit welding torches.
Lin Mo’s [Pure-Heart Eye] swept across the crowd.
[Target: Master Zhou Guodong | Goodness Score: 93/100.]
[Status: Patriotic Chief Hull-Designer of Hongxing Shipyard — Designed thirty provincial flood-rescue vessels. Currently attempting to mortgage his family home to pay the medical bills and back wages of 800 honest welders (Goodness: 82–91/100).]
Across from Master Zhou stood a slick-haired man in a tailored grey suit holding a court foreclosure megaphone—Chief Liquidator Sun of Song Shipping.
[Target: Chief Liquidator Sun | Goodness Score: 12/100.]
[Status: Predatory corporate liquidator for the Song Clan — Pocketed a promised ¥5,000,000 commission to bankrupt Hongxing Shipyard for pennies on the dollar.]
“Save your breath, Old Zhou!” Liquidator Sun sneered into his megaphone, kicking a puddle of oily water onto Master Zhou’s boots. “Your shabby two-bedroom apartment is worth two million yuan at best! After Young Master Song Zihao canceled those five cargo-ship orders, Hongxing Shipyard owes forty million in defaulted steel loans and penalty interest! The bank already signed the distress lien over to Song Shipping at ten cents on the dollar!”
“Song Zihao delayed the final inspection signatures on purpose!” assistant foreman Zhang Ming shouted angrily from behind Master Zhou. “All five hulls are sitting right there in Drydock Two, ninety-nine percent finished! You withheld the final progress payment just to starve us out!”
“Read the contract, grease-monkey—a missed deadline is a missed deadline,” Liquidator Sun laughed coldly. He waved a hand toward the lead bulldozer driver. “It’s six-fifteen! Tear down that eyesore of a workers’ canteen first, then lock the drydock gates! Anyone who doesn’t clear out in ten minutes forfeits their toolboxes as scrap iron!”
Master Zhou stepped directly in front of the bulldozer’s eight-foot steel blade, his jaw set like cast iron.
“Nobody touches the workers’ canteen,” Master Zhou rasped, his voice steady above the diesel rumble. “Forty welders have hospitalized family members waiting on this quarter’s settlement, and three hundred apprentices sleep in the dorms behind that hall. Take my house deed and my father’s hull patents to cover the men’s medical bills first. If your bulldozer wants the canteen, drive it over my bones!”
“Old fool, do you think I won’t—” Liquidator Sun started, raising his arm to signal the driver.
“Stepping on a ninety-three-point national hull designer is bad for your bulldozer’s suspension,” a calm voice cut through the rain.
Lin Mo strolled between the idling bulldozer tracks and Master Zhou, stopping two paces in front of Liquidator Sun. Tie Niu stepped up beside him, his two-meter frame casting a shadow that swallowed the slick-haired liquidator whole.
Master Zhou blinked the rain from his eyelashes, staring at Lin Mo’s young face. “You... aren’t you Chairman Lin Mo from the Cloud-Crown Marina?”
“Morning, Master Zhou,” Lin Mo said warmly, nodding to a Taichu attendant to drape a dry thermal coat over the old designer’s shoulders. “Elder Zheng told me over midnight wontons that someone was trying to buy eight hundred master welders for scrap-iron prices. I hate missing a bargain.”
Eight hundred skilled marine welders with Goodness scores above eighty-two, led by a ninety-three-point chief naval engineer, Lin Mo thought deadpan, admiring the sea of green halos illuminating the rainy drydock. Song Zihao spent six months setting up a predatory foreclosure just to hand me a one-point-two-billion-yuan cashback printer on a silver platter. What a tireless philanthropist.
Liquidator Sun’s eyelids twitched as he recognized Lin Mo from Song Zihao’s frantic late-night group messages. He forced a blustering sneer and held up his laminated bank foreclosure dossier.
“Hold right there, Lin Mo!” Liquidator Sun barked. “This isn’t the Cloud-Crown Hotel! Song Shipping holds the senior equipment liens, the steel-mill promissory notes, and the land-use mortgage on Hongxing Shipyard! Including penalty clauses and capital replacement requirements, buying out this shipyard’s distressed debt costs a minimum of one billion two hundred million yuan in liquid cash! Unless you brought a bank vault in your trunk, get off Song Clan property!”
“One point two billion?” Lin Mo asked. He turned to Su Wan. “Is the math right, or is he padding his commission?”
Su Wan tapped her tablet, where Shen Qiaoqiao’s legal team had already pulled the municipal commercial registry.
“The principal debt, steel-mill arrears, and four months of unpaid wages for all eight hundred welders total one hundred and eighty million yuan,” Su Wan reported crisply. “The remaining one billion and twenty million yuan covers the full equity buyout of Hongxing Shipyard and a wage-doubling reserve for the eight hundred workers. It also funds Master Lu Shan’s workshop safety-dome upgrades and the upfront production capital for fifty newly commissioned Taichu Armored River Freighters.”
“Good,” Lin Mo said. “Put the house deed back in your pocket, Master Zhou. At Taichu Group, engineers design ships—they don’t sell their bedrooms.”
Lin Mo pulled the black-gold Taichu Benevolence Card from his coat and tapped it against the portable POS terminal in Su Wan’s hand.
BEEP!
A brilliant emerald-gold light flashed across the rain-swept courtyard as the terminal printed out a three-foot settlement receipt.
`[TRANSACTION APPROVED! RECIPIENTS: MASTER ZHOU GUODONG (GOODNESS: 93/100) & 800 HONGXING SHIPYARD WELDERS (GOODNESS: 82–91/100)!]`
`[TOTAL EXPENDITURE: ¥1,200,000,000 RMB (¥1.20 BILLION) — FULL DEBT CLEARANCE, TAICHU MARINE LOGISTICS ACQUISITION, DOUBLE WAGES, SAFETY-DOME UPGRADES & 50 ARMORED RIVER FREIGHTERS!]`
Simultaneously, a deep, resonant golden chime thundered through Lin Mo’s mind:
`[DING! 100X PURE-HEART BENEVOLENCE REFUND TRIGGERED!]`
`[SPENT: ¥1,200,000,000 RMB -> REFUNDED: +¥120,000,000,000 RMB (+¥120.00 BILLION) + 1,200,000 BENEVOLENCE MERIT POINTS!]`
`[CURRENT PERSONAL LIQUID VAULT BALANCE: ¥455,500,000,000 RMB (¥455.50 BILLION)!]`
`[GOOD PEOPLE NETWORK UPDATED: 10,367 -> 11,168 VERIFIED BENEFICIARIES (+801)!]`
Inside Lin Mo’s dantian, the massive influx of 1,200,000 Benevolence Merit Points roared like a golden furnace. It pushed his Rank 2 Peak blood and meridians straight toward the threshold of a Half-Step Rank 3 Martial Grandmaster!
Across the rainy courtyard, eight hundred and one mobile phones buzzed in unison.
Master Zhou pulled out his battered phone with trembling, grease-stained fingers. On his screen sat an official municipal bank clearance certificate voiding every Song Shipping lien. Right below it was his appointment as Chief Naval Architect of Taichu Marine Logistics, plus an immediate fifty-million-yuan worker medical credit at Dr. Gu Qinghe’s sanctuary clinic.
Behind him, all eight hundred welders stared at their screens as four months of back pay—plus a 200% signing bonus and doubled monthly salaries—landed directly in their bank accounts.
“My wife’s dialysis bill is paid!” a veteran hull-fitter in the front row choked out, wiping his eyes with a welding glove. “And my salary just doubled to twenty-four thousand a month!”
“My kid’s college tuition is saved!” another welder shouted, hoisting his heavy wrench into the air. “Long live Taichu Group! Long live Chairman Lin!”
Master Zhou’s knees gave out. The sixty-year-old shipbuilder dropped onto the wet concrete, clutching the leather tube containing the hull blueprints his father had left him fifty years ago. Hot tears streamed freely down his weathered cheeks.
“Our shipyard is saved,” Master Zhou whispered hoarsely, bowing his forehead toward Lin Mo’s boots. “Father... the drydocks didn’t fall into the hands of smugglers! Eight hundred families have a roof over their heads this winter!”
Lin Mo reached down with both hands and lifted the old master up by his elbows.
“Concrete is bad for old knees, Master Zhou,” Lin Mo said deadpan. “Besides, I’m not running a charity. I need fifty twin-hulled, reinforced-steel armored river freighters built before the autumn storms hit. Can your eight hundred men deliver?”
Master Zhou wiped his tears with his sleeve, his spine straightening like a forged keel. “With full steel supplies and power restored, my men and I will work three shifts around the clock! No storm or pirate barge on the Yangtze or Tianhai River will ever dent a hull built by Hongxing!”
“And I’ll handle the roof!” Master Lu Shan boomed, tapping his yellow hard-hat as fifty Taichu engineering trucks rolled through the gate behind the Maybachs. “Chairman Lin allocated two hundred million from that swipe for my team! By tomorrow night, we’re erecting an all-weather steel-and-tempered-glass safety dome over all four drydocks so your welders never have to work in the cold rain again!”
One point two billion out, a hundred and twenty billion back, plus fifty armored cargo ships and eight hundred loyal industrial veterans, Lin Mo mused, feeling the warm golden Qi humming through his bones. At this rate, Song Zihao deserves an Employee of the Month plaque in my lobby.
Over by the lead bulldozer, Chief Liquidator Sun stood frozen in the mud, staring at the municipal court’s electronic lien-cancellation notice flashing red on his tablet.
His face drained to the color of wet chalk. Because Lin Mo had paid off 100% of the principal bank notes and penalty clauses in cash before the 6:30 AM foreclosure gavel, Song Shipping’s predatory ten-cent buyout contract was legally voided. That meant Sun’s promised five-million-yuan foreclosure commission had just vanished into thin air!
“No... you can’t pay off a distressed foreclosure in full with cash!” Liquidator Sun screeched, waving his tablet wildly. “My five-million-yuan commission! Bulldozer driver, ram the gate anyway! Young Master Song said—”
Tie Niu took two heavy strides forward, caught Liquidator Sun by the collar of his wet grey suit, and lifted him half a meter off the ground with one hand.
“The new shipyard owner is standing right here, and you’re still barking about bulldozers?” Tie Niu rumbled, his gravelly voice vibrating against Sun’s eardrums. “Take your thugs and your yellow tractors off Taichu property in thirty seconds, or I’ll test our new hull-press on your spine.”
Dropped into a puddle, Liquidator Sun scrambled backward on all fours, lost one of his Italian leather shoes in the mud, and bolted down the access road. His forty corporate thugs sprinted panicked behind the retreating bulldozers.
Inside the drydock, a roar of triumph erupted from eight hundred throats.
Master Zhou threw the main backup breaker switch, flooding the towering gantry cranes with golden work-lights. High atop the scaffolding of the flagship hull in Drydock One, twenty senior welders sparked their plasma torches to life. A shower of white-gold sparks cascaded down through the morning mist as they welded Taichu Benevolence Group’s golden lotus emblem onto the thirty-foot steel prow!
By noon, Grandma Chen and Little Guo’er had arrived with six insulated catering trucks, filling the newly warmed workers’ canteen with the rich aroma of braised pork ribs and hot shrimp wontons.
Yet night soon fell over the western docklands, and thick autumn river fog rolled across the water outside Pier Nine. Suddenly, the peaceful hum of the drydock generators was cut by the low thrum of forty outlaw outboard motors.
Out in the swirling black mist beyond the pier floodlights, three iron-plated river barges cut their running lamps. On the prow of the lead barge stood a scarred martial artist in a sleeveless leather vest with a black iron patch over his left socket. It was One-Eyed Crocodile (`Goodness: -8/100`), river boss of the Black-Tiger Martial Alliance, holding a three-meter steel harpoon as forty thugs raised gleaming machetes and lit kerosene firebombs!