Master Chef Lao Tang flipped a heavy cast-iron wok over a roaring charcoal hearth at midnight on Old Lantern Food Street, sending a fragrant plume of roasted duck and five-spice aroma drifting beneath the swaying red silk lanterns.
For over a century, this two-kilometer cobblestone corridor had been the culinary heart of Jiangcheng’s working families. Paved with weathered granite flagstones from the late Qing dynasty, the street was alive with the clatter of iron woks, the hiss of boiling oil, and the laughter of midnight diners. Two hundred independent food stalls and brick hearths lined both sides of the narrow avenue, tended by elderly master artisans whose recipes had been passed down from parent to child for generations.
Taxi drivers, night-shift hospital nurses, and college students sat together on low wooden stools, sharing five-yuan bowls of noodles under the warm red glow of the paper lanterns.
Suddenly, the peaceful clatter of cleavers and ladles was shattered by the violent roar of heavy engines.
Six black heavy-duty pickup trucks smashed through the wooden pedestrian barricades at the north entrance, their tires screeching and skidding across the damp cobblestones.
Thirty men in matching black leather jackets leaped from the truck beds, brandishing iron crowbars, forged sledgehammers, and heavy lead pipes.
“Clear the street!” the lead thug, Scar-Face Chen, bellowed through an electric megaphone, his voice echoing off the ancient brick walls. “Zhao Real Estate and Gourmet-King Monopoly own the master sublease on this property! Sign the forty-percent royalty chemical-sauce contract right now, or your stalls are firewood before morning!”
Before any vendor could speak, the thirty thugs began swinging their sledgehammers with ruthless, coordinated brutality.
CRASH!
A cart selling handmade bamboo soup dumplings was kicked onto its side, spilling twenty bamboo steamers and sixty scalding dumplings into the muddy gutter.
Beside it, Master Wu’s thirty-year-old beef broth cauldron was overturned by two men with crowbars, sending scalding broth flooding across the stones. Down the street, Master Chen’s clay-pot rice hearth was smashed into smoking red rubble with an eight-pound sledgehammer.
Several young chefs tried to resist with wooden rolling pins and meat cleavers, but Scar-Face Chen and five burly thugs beat them to the ground with lead pipes, kicking them in the ribs.
At the corner stall, seventy-year-old Grandma Liu stood trembling beside her ancient charcoal hearth.
Grandma Liu had been blind since the age of twenty following a childhood fever. For fifty years, she had relied on her delicate sense of touch, her acute hearing, and the warmth of the fire to bake Jiangcheng’s crispest five-spice sesame cakes. She sold them for two yuan apiece, and in half a century, she had never charged a poor student, a wandering beggar, or a street orphan a single cent.
“Please, do not smash it!” Grandma Liu pleaded, her voice shaking as she spread her frail arms wide to shield her ancient clay oven. “This hearth was built with river clay by my late husband when we were married! It has baked bread for fifty years! Please spare my oven!”
Scar-Face Chen sneered, stepping up to the blind grandmother with an iron crowbar raised above his shoulder.
“Old hag, your two-yuan sesame cakes are taking customers away from Gourmet-King’s bakeries!” Scar-Face Chen barked, his face twisting into an ugly sneer. “Move your withered bones out of the way, or I will crack your skull with your own bricks!”
He swung the heavy forged crowbar downward toward Grandma Liu’s head with full force.
Dozens of diners and chefs cried out in horror, covering their eyes.
A pale, slender hand reached out through the shadows of the paper lanterns.
That hand caught the swinging iron crowbar in mid-air.
THWACK.
The solid forged iron rod stopped dead, exactly two inches above Grandma Liu’s gray hair. The immense downward momentum of the blow seemed to vanish into thin air, leaving not even a gust of wind.
Scar-Face Chen grunted, straining with both arms until his neck veins bulged.
The crowbar did not move a fraction of an inch. It felt as if it were welded into fifty feet of solid titanium.
Scar-Face Chen looked up into the calm, unblinking eyes of Lin Mo.
Behind Lin Mo stood Commander Tie Niu and ten armored veterans of the Righteous Iron Guard, their tactical riot shields and stun-batons gleaming in the red lantern light.
“Who are you, brat?!” Scar-Face Chen cursed, trying to kick Lin Mo in the knee with his steel-toed combat boot. “Let go of my bar before I break your neck!”
Lin Mo did not kick. He did not yell.
With his left hand resting lightly in his wool coat pocket, Lin Mo gripped the thumb-thick iron crowbar with the thumb and index finger of his right hand.
He squeezed gently.
CREAK-CRUNCH.
Under the overwhelming pressure of Rank-2 Early Martial Iron-Jade power, the solid forged iron bar bent like warm clay. Lin Mo twisted his wrist, wrapping the twisted crowbar in a neat, knotted loop around Scar-Face Chen’s thick leather belt.
With a light flick of his wrist, Lin Mo lifted the one-hundred-and-eighty-pound thug off his feet and tossed him ten yards through the air.
BAM!
Scar-Face Chen crashed into the bed of his own pickup truck, pinned to the steel tailgate by his own knotted crowbar, screaming in helpless terror.
Extorting seventy-year-old street bakers who sell two-yuan sesame cakes because your chemical soup lost a competition is the lowest form of villainy, Lin Mo thought deadpan. A man who attacks a blind grandmother with an iron bar deserves to be tied to his own truck like a bundle of scrap metal.
“Commander Tie,” Lin Mo said softly. “Clean this alley.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
Tie Niu stepped forward like an iron avalanche. His tactical riot shield smashed into the first two thugs, sending them flying into a fruit stand. The ten Iron Guard veterans moved in tight coordination, their electric shock-batons crackling as they disarmed and pinned all thirty thugs to the cobblestones within forty-five seconds.
The narrow alley fell silent, save for the groans of the defeated thugs.
Lin Mo stepped up to Grandma Liu’s stall and gently helped the trembling elderly woman sit on a wooden stool.
“You are safe now, Grandma Liu,” Lin Mo said warmly. “No one is going to touch your oven.”
Grandma Liu reached out with her weathered, flour-dusted hands, gently touching Lin Mo’s sleeve. Her milky, blind eyes filled with hot tears.
“Young man... you stopped that iron bar?” Grandma Liu whispered, her voice shaking with awe. “Your hands feel as gentle as warm jade. Who are you?”
Master Chef Lao Tang stepped forward, wiping sweat from his face. “Grandma Liu, this is Chairman Lin Mo of Taichu Group! He is the young benefactor who defended my broth at the TV station tonight!”
A blue system scanner window expanded across Lin Mo’s vision:
[TARGET: GRANDMA LIU (LIU CUILAN)]
[GOODNESS SCORE: 94/100 — 50 YEARS BAKING TRADITIONAL SESAME CAKES AT ¥2, FED THOUSANDS OF POOR STUDENTS FOR FREE]
[COMMUNITY ALLIES: 200 HONEST NIGHT-MARKET CHEFS & BAKERS (AVERAGE GOODNESS: 88/100)]
[CRISIS: THREATENED WITH EXTORTION AND VIOLENT EVICTION BY GOURMET-KING MONOPOLY]
Ninety-four points of goodness, Lin Mo thought. An elderly blind woman who spent fifty years feeding hungry children for two yuan. Threatening people like her is why cartels deserve no mercy. Defending them is the easiest moral decision in the world.
Lin Mo stood up and looked across the cobblestone street.
Two hundred street chefs—roast-duck carvers, hand-pulled noodle masters, clay-pot rice cooks, and tofu artisans—gathered around the stall, their eyes filled with anxiety and hope.
“Brothers and sisters of Old Lantern Street,” Lin Mo said, his voice carrying clearly down the alley. “Gourmet-King thought they could smash your stoves and force you to buy their four-yuan chemical broth packets. They forgot that the soul of Jiangcheng lives in your woks, not in corporate boardrooms.”
Lin Mo turned to Su Wan, who stood ready with her tablet.
“Su Wan, issue an immediate public-welfare culinary endowment,” Lin Mo commanded. “Fifteen million yuan from our sanctuary treasury.”
The two hundred street chefs held their breath.
“Every vendor whose stove was damaged tonight receives an immediate fifty-thousand-yuan cash grant for repairs and medical care,” Lin Mo announced. “Furthermore, Taichu Group commissions Master Lu Jian to replace every smashed clay oven with a handcrafted, high-efficiency copper hearth and precision induction heating system. And starting tonight, all two hundred of you are charter members of the Taichu Hundred-Chef Culinary Guild!”
A young noodle maker dropped his tongs in shock. “The Taichu Hundred-Chef Guild? What are the membership fees?”
“Zero fees,” Lin Mo replied with a smile. “Zero rent, zero franchise commissions, and full legal protection by Shen Qiaoqiao’s thirty attorneys for ten years. You cook with pure ingredients, charge fair prices to working families, and Taichu covers the rest.”
Grandma Liu clasped her hands together, tears streaming down the deep creases of her face. “Zero rent? Copper hearths? In fifty years, every developer who came here only asked for higher rent... Chairman Lin, you are a saint sent by the heavens!”
The two hundred street chefs erupted into cheers. Many of them broke down in tears, hugging each other and bowing toward Lin Mo with profound reverence.
Lin Mo pulled the Black-Gold Benevolence Card from his coat and swiped it on Su Wan’s mobile reader: ¥15,000,000.00.
BEEP.
A grand, celestial chime resonated deep inside Lin Mo’s consciousness:
[Ding! Detected spending of ¥15,000,000.00 RMB on 200 Heritage Culinary Artisans (Goodness: 82–94/100) & Taichu Culinary Guild Foundation!]
[Target Integrity Verified: Preserving intangible culinary heritage and protecting vulnerable street artisans.]
[Triggered 100x Pure Benevolence System Refund!]
[Received Cash Refund: +¥1,500,000,000.00 RMB!]
[Funds deposited directly into Host Personal Liquid Vault!]
[Personal Liquid Vault: ¥37,000,000,000.00 RMB!]
[Benevolence Merit Points: +1,500,000 BMP!]
[Good People Network Expanded: 7,650 verified righteous allies (+200: master street chefs & bakers)!]
One point five billion pure refund, Lin Mo thought, feeling the warm, crystalline resonance of his Iron-Jade Bones humming with boundless vitality. Thirty-seven billion liquid vault balance. Spending fifteen million to protect the culture of an entire historic street and getting fifteen hundred million in return. Benevolence is the most unstoppable economic engine in history.
Two master coppersmiths from Master Lu’s workshop, who had accompanied Tie Niu’s truck, immediately unloaded a gleaming, hand-hammered red copper hearth. They carried it gently to Grandma Liu’s stall and locked it into place.
Grandma Liu ran her blind, calloused fingers over the smooth, warm metal of the new copper oven. Her weathered face lit up with a pure, radiant smile. “It’s so smooth... the heat distributes so evenly. My sesame cakes will be crisper than ever!”
Suddenly, loud sirens wailed at the street entrance.
A long convoy of black luxury sedans screeched to a halt outside the cobblestone archway.
Zhao Peng stepped out of the lead Maybach, followed by four corporate lawyers carrying thick, leather-bound folders and six armed bodyguards. His suit was rumpled, and his eyes burned with venomous malice.
Zhao Peng pushed his way through the cheering crowd until he stood ten feet from Lin Mo.
“Enjoy your little charity party, Lin Mo!” Zhao Peng screamed, waving a gold-sealed legal document in the air. “You can buy these dirty street peddlers new copper pots! You can buy them fifty thousand yuan in pocket money! But you forgot one thing!”
Zhao Peng thrust the document toward the television cameras and reporters who had rushed over from the TV station.
“My Gourmet-King Group holds a twenty-year master commercial sublease for this entire two-kilometer street!” Zhao Peng roared, a manic grin spreading across his face. “We control the master water intake valves! We control the natural gas main! And we own the sublease on the eight-story Golden-Lotus Banquet Hall at the end of the alley!”
Zhao Peng turned toward the two hundred terrified chefs, pointing an accusing finger at the master utility junction box mounted on the brick wall.
“You refused my chemical sauce contract?!” Zhao Peng snarled. “Then starve in the dark! My engineers are shutting off the gas main and the water supply to this entire street right now! Let us see how Grandma Liu bakes her cakes without gas, water, or electricity!”