The heavy iron gates of the Taichu Sky-Tower construction site hung twisted on their hinges.
This prime sixty-acre riverfront parcel was the future home of the Taichu 88-Story Sanctuary Sky-Tower & Free Vocational Academy. Lin Mo had designated the first thirty floors as free, state-of-the-art trade classrooms, engineering laboratories, and dormitories for thousands of impoverished rural youth. The upper floors were designed as a permanent headquarters for Taichu’s public welfare foundations.
Now, fifty rusted, twenty-ton dump trucks idled in a choked line across the riverfront avenue. Their diesel exhausts spewed thick, black fumes into the clear afternoon air. Over three hundred tons of warped, brittle slag-steel rebar lay dumped in jagged heaps directly across the primary foundation trench.
In the center of the muddy site, thirty thugs in grease-stained windbreakers leaned against iron pipes. Their arms were covered in crude tiger tattoos, and they held lead pipes and steel prybars.
At their head stood a scarred brawler named Scar-Tooth, chewing a toothpick with an arrogant smirk.
Under his heavy work boot lay the cracked, bloodstained yellow hard hat of Site Supervisor Old Chen.
Old Chen knelt in the wet clay, clutching his broken left arm to his chest. His work jacket was torn to shreds, and blood dripped from his temple onto the mud. Behind him, twelve honest apprentice surveyors stood trembling in fear.
For thirty-five years, Old Chen had inspected foundations across the province. He had seen an entire bridge collapse in a neighboring prefecture because corrupt contractors swapped high-tensile alloy for brittle slag. He had sworn on his soul that no building bearing his signature would ever collapse onto innocent lives.
“Sign the delivery slip, Old Chen!” Scar-Tooth barked, grinding the yellow hard hat into the gravel. “Three hundred tons of Grade-Four rebar at forty-five hundred yuan per ton! That is triple the market price! Boss Lei Bao gives you ten minutes to stamp the invoice!”
“I will not sign,” Old Chen spat, coughing up a mouthful of red saliva. “That rebar is porous slag melted from rusted scrap iron. It has zero tensile strength. If we pour sixty floors of concrete over that garbage, the entire tower will collapse into a tomb within three months!”
“Then you can die right now!” Scar-Tooth snarled, raising a heavy four-foot iron crowbar above Old Chen’s skull.
VROOM!
Three black-and-gold executive vans smashed through the barricade of dump trucks, tires throwing wet gravel twenty feet into the air.
The vans skidded to a halt in a sharp crescent five yards from the foundation trench.
The passenger door of the lead van flew open. Commander Tie Niu leaped out, his heavy combat boots slamming into the mud like twin artillery shells.
Tie Niu’s right hand lashed out faster than the eye could follow. He caught the falling crowbar two inches above Old Chen’s head with a resounding metallic clang.
With a simple twist of his wrist, Tie Niu tore the heavy bar from Scar-Tooth’s grip and bent the three-quarter-inch solid steel into an iron horseshoe.
Scar-Tooth stumbled backward into the mud, his eyes bulging with shock. “Who... who are you?!”
Lin Mo stepped down from the van.
He wore a tailored charcoal wool jacket over a simple white shirt. His footsteps were light and completely silent as he walked through the deep clay. Pinned cleanly over his heart was the Jiangcheng Golden Civic Hero Medal, gleaming under the afternoon sun.
Lin Mo activated his [Pure-Heart Eye].
The site was illuminated with vivid crimson and emerald markers:
[Target: Scar-Tooth (Enforcer for Lei Bao), Age 31.]
[Moral Integrity Score: 6/100 (Black-Sand Cartel Enforcer & Violent Extortionist).]
[Target: Site Supervisor Old Chen, Age 54.]
[Moral Integrity Score: 86/100 (Upright Construction Engineer & Safety Whistleblower).]
[Status: Refused Cartel Kickbacks for 20 Years; Severe Concussion & Arm Fracture.]
Lin Mo walked straight past the thirty thugs, ignoring their raised pipes. He knelt beside Old Chen and placed a hand on the veteran engineer’s trembling shoulder.
A gentle, soothing current of Rank-1 Absolute Peak vitality flowed into Old Chen’s chest, stabilizing his racing pulse and numbing the pain in his broken forearm.
“Supervisor Chen,” Lin Mo said, his voice quiet, calm, and reassuring. “You stood your ground to protect eighty-eight stories of human lives. At Taichu, no honest builder ever suffers for doing the right thing.”
Old Chen looked up through swollen eyes, tears washing clean streaks through the dust on his cheeks. “Chairman Lin... don’t let them pour that steel... it’s death-trap rebar...”
“I won’t,” Lin Mo replied with a faint, cold smile.
Scar-Tooth scrambled up from the mud, backed by twenty thugs waving lead pipes.
“Kid, so you’re Lin Mo!” Scar-Tooth sneered, brandishing a survival knife. “Boss Lei Bao runs all sand, cement, and steel distribution in Jiangcheng! If you don’t buy our slag-steel today, not a single mixer truck will ever enter this site! Your eighty-eight-story tower will be a muddy hole in the ground!”
Lin Mo stood up slowly. He turned toward the nearest heap of dumped rebar.
He reached down and picked up a thumb-thick, rusted rebar rod with two fingers.
The metal was brittle, unevenly pitted with air bubbles from cheap recycled furnace slag.
“Boss Lei Bao claims this is Grade-Four structural alloy,” Lin Mo remarked in a conversational tone.
He placed the thumb-thick steel bar into the center of his open right palm.
He did not grunt. He did not brace his feet.
He simply closed his fingers.
CRUNCH!
A sharp, explosive grinding sound echoed across the construction lot.
Under the ten-thousand-pound hydraulic crushing force of Lin Mo’s Rank 1 Absolute Peak Martial physique, the hardened steel bar shattered like stale soda crackers!
Lin Mo opened his hand.
A shower of black iron dust, crumbly metal flakes, and brittle slag granules spilled from his palm, drifting down onto Scar-Tooth’s boots like coarse sand.
The thirty cartel thugs froze in absolute, bone-chilling horror.
Scar-Tooth’s knees turned to jelly. His survival knife slipped from his numb fingers, plunging blade-first into the mud.
Shattered a thumb-thick structural rebar with bare fingers?!
Is this young man a human being, or an industrial hydraulic press disguised in a tailored wool jacket?!
“Your steel has too much air in it, Scar-Tooth,” Lin Mo said deadpan, dusting his hands on a clean handkerchief. “It cannot even support the weight of my hand. How could it support eighty-eight stories of schoolrooms? If I used this slag, a heavy thunderstorm would file for structural damages.”
Lin Mo turned toward the twelve honest apprentice surveyors who stood behind Old Chen. Their young faces were smeared with soot, and their knuckles were scraped from trying to shield their mentor.
These twelve young men could have run away when thirty thugs showed up with crowbars, Lin Mo thought, his eyes softening. Instead, they stood in front of an elderly engineer and took blows to their shoulders. Integrity at twenty is worth far more than a corporate compliance certificate.
Lin Mo pulled his emerald-green [Benevolence Charity Card] from his pocket and handed it to Su Wan.
“Su Wan,” Lin Mo commanded. “Transfer one million yuan directly into Supervisor Chen’s account. Five hundred thousand for his medical recovery at Taichu Hospital, and five hundred thousand divided equally as immediate safety bonuses and Kevlar gear endowments for his twelve apprentices.”
The twelve apprentices gasped, looking from their bruised hands to Lin Mo with trembling, starry eyes.
“Five hundred thousand for us?!” one young apprentice stammered, tears springing to his eyes. “Chairman Lin, we just held the measuring tape!”
“You held your backbone,” Lin Mo corrected him calmly. “Holding your backbone is the only job requirement at Taichu.”
Su Wan’s fingers moved across her tablet. “Transfer executed, Chairman Lin. One million yuan disbursed to Senior Supervisor Chen Guohua.”
A clear, resonant chime chimed within Lin Mo’s consciousness.
[DING! Pure-Heart Benevolence Expenditure Confirmed!]
[Recipient: Senior Site Supervisor Old Chen (Goodness: 86/100) — Received: ¥1,000,000.00 Medical Care & Safety Endowment.]
[Calculation: Total Spent: ¥1,000,000.00 RMB | Multiplier: 100x Pure-Heart Return.]
[Refund Amount: +¥100,000,000.00 RMB Transferred to Personal Vault!]
[Benevolence Merit Points: +100,000 BMP Awarded!]
[Personal Vault Current Balance: ¥16,727,180,000.50 RMB!]
[Good People Network Expanded: 4,801 Verified Righteous Allies!]
A warm, crystalline wave of golden benevolence qi circulated through Lin Mo’s meridians, nourishing his physical core with pure vitality.
Old Chen looked at his phone screen, gasping as the one-million-yuan deposit notification flashed before his eyes.
“One million yuan...” Old Chen choked out, tears spilling down his dusty cheeks. “Chairman Lin... you gave me one million yuan just for doing my job?”
“Refusing corruption when a pipe is pointed at your head is not just doing your job,” Lin Mo said warmly. “It is heroism. Heroism carries a dividend.”
Lin Mo turned toward Tie Niu. “Tie Niu.”
“Sir!” Tie Niu stepped forward, his eyes burning with combat readiness.
“Throw these thirty trespassers off our lot,” Lin Mo instructed. “If any of their trucks are still blocking the avenue in five minutes, have our heavy excavators push them into the river.”
“Understood!” Tie Niu grinned ferociously.
Tie Niu signaled forty Iron Guards who poured from the vans in armored tactical vests. Within thirty seconds, the thirty cartel thugs were stripped of their weapons, hoisted by their belts, and thrown head-first into the mud outside the perimeter gates like sacks of rotting potatoes.
Scar-Tooth scrambled up, bleeding from his nose, and scrambled into his dump truck, leading the convoy of fifty trucks away in panicked retreat.
Two Taichu medical nurses helped Old Chen onto a stretcher, preparing to transport him to Taichu Sanctuary Hospital.
Before the ambulance door closed, Old Chen grabbed Lin Mo’s sleeve with his uninjured hand.
“Chairman Lin... wait!” Old Chen gasped, his voice urgent. “Lei Bao is ruthless! He controls all eighteen concrete batching plants and alloy steel mills in Jiangcheng through cartel agreements with Zhao Real Estate! If you want to build this eighty-eight-story tower without their poisoned steel, there is only one man in the entire province who can help you!”
“Who is he?” Lin Mo asked.
“Master Lu Jian!” Old Chen said, his eyes filled with deep reverence. “Everyone in the trade calls him ‘Lu Ban’er’! He is a structural engineering genius and the direct heir to an ancient Mechanism and Array Clan. His ancestors designed imperial palaces that survived ten-magnitude earthquakes without a crack! Three months ago, he was supervising the construction of the Hongqi Public Primary School for Zhao Real Estate. When he discovered Zhao Real Estate swapped the structural steel with hollow slag pipes, he refused to cover up the crime.”
Old Chen swallowed hard, his throat tightening with raw emotion.
“The Zhao executives threatened to bury him in concrete if he spoke out,” Old Chen whispered. “So Master Lu stole three boxes of mining dynamite in the middle of the night and blew up his own thirty-million-yuan foundation to bedrock! He saved eight hundred children from a future collapse, but the Zhao Consortium sued him into bankruptcy. Lei Bao broke his right leg with an iron bar, blacklisted his company across the province, and sent armed debt collectors to destroy his family drafting workshop! He is trapped in the Old Industrial Zone right now!”
At that exact moment, a sharp, high-frequency alarm chimed directly inside Lin Mo’s mind!
[URGENT DISTRESS RADAR ALERT LV.2!]
[TARGET DETECTED: 8.4 KILOMETERS NORTHWEST — OLD INDUSTRIAL ZONE WORKSHOP #4!]
[RECIPIENT: MASTER ARCHITECT LU JIAN, AGE 50.]
[MORAL INTEGRITY SCORE: 92/100 (HEROIC UNCOMPROMISING MASTER BUILDER)!]
[THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME PHYSICAL DANGER — THIRTY CARTEL DEBT-COLLECTORS ARMED WITH SLEDGEHAMMERS BREACHING INNER COMPOUND!]
Lin Mo’s eyes flashed with decisive, sovereign light.
He turned toward Tie Niu and Su Wan.
“A master builder who detonates his own thirty-million-yuan project rather than endanger children is an irreplaceable national treasure,” Lin Mo said, his voice cold as a winter gale. “We do not allow heroes to be beaten by street thugs.”
He pulled open the heavy door of the executive van.
“Tie Niu, leave ten armed guards to secure the foundation trench and watch over Old Chen’s crew,” Lin Mo commanded. “The rest of you, board the vans and prepare the breaching rams. We are going to recruit our Chief Architect.”