The intersection of Central Avenue and Peace Road looked like a scene from an absurd comedy.
The traffic light clicked green.
Before the seventy-year-old grandmother could take a step, the four tattooed brawlers formed a protective human shield around her.
Two of them carried her heavy cabbage basket between them as gently as if it contained fragile porcelain eggs. The third man held an umbrella over her head, while the fourth man gently supported her elbow, guiding her across the zebra crossing like a visiting foreign dignitary.
“Step carefully, Grandma!” the shaved-head brawler said, his voice forced into an unnatural, sweet squeak. “Watch out for that tiny puddle! Don’t let your shoes get damp!”
Pedestrians on both sidewalks stopped, rubbing their eyes in disbelief.
“Are those the dock thugs who used to smash market stalls?”
“Look at them! They look like kindergarten teachers helping a toddler!”
The moment the grandmother’s feet touched the opposite sidewalk, all four brawlers let go of the basket, spun on their heels, and sprinted at top speed toward the nearest district terminal three blocks away!
They shoved their way past the crowd, gasping for breath as they slapped their palms onto the bronze scanner plate one after the other.
“Scanner! Look at me!” the shaved-head thug yelled, panting heavily. “Did you see me carry Grandma’s cabbages?! I didn’t even drop a leaf! What is my score now?!”
HUMMMMM.
The crystal pillar chimed with a flat, mechanical tone.
A line of green text scrolled across the holographic screen:
[Scanning Verified: Dog-Leg Liu]
[Action Recorded: Assisting Elderly Citizen with Heavy Grocery Load (+0.02 Points)]
[Motive Analysis: Transactional Hypocrisy, Desperate Greed for Free Apartment (-0.01 Points)]
[Net Result: +0.01 Points. Current Moral Integrity Index: 31.01/100.]
[System Reminder: True benevolence requires selfless virtue. Quick theatrical stunts cannot erase ten years of street extortion.]
Dog-Leg Liu stared at the screen, his jaw dropping so low his chin nearly hit his chest.
“Point-zero-one?!” Dog-Leg Liu screamed, clutching his bald head with both hands. “I sprinted four hundred yards and called an old woman ‘Grandma’ sixty times, and you give me point-zero-one points?!”
Behind him, the other three thugs slapped their palms down, only to receive similar results: 29.02/100, 33.01/100, and 26.04/100.
“This machine has no eyes!” a thug wailed. “Do I have to rescue an entire kindergarten from a burning building to get to eighty?!”
Similar scenes were unfolding in every corner of Jiangcheng.
Down on North Market Street, a famously stingy noodle shop owner who had shorted his customers on beef slices for twelve years noticed a diner leave an ordinary two-yuan yellow plastic lighter on a table.
The owner gasped. He scooped up the lighter and sprinted four blocks down the avenue in his greasy apron, chasing after the customer’s taxi like a madman.
“Stop the car! Mister! You forgot your lighter!” the owner screamed, waving the two-yuan plastic object in the air until the taxi pulled over.
After handing over the lighter with an exaggerated bow, the owner sprinted straight to the market terminal, panting so hard his apron was soaked in sweat.
He slapped his palm onto the scanner.
“System! Did you see that?!” the owner pleaded. “I ran in the wind for a two-yuan lighter! Am I at eighty yet?!”
BUZZ.
[Scanning Verified: Boss Qian]
[Moral Integrity Index: 63.05/100.]
[System Notice: Returning a two-yuan lighter does not balance out twelve years of watering down beef broth. Please serve honest portions for six consecutive months before retesting.]
Boss Qian collapsed against the railing, clutching his chest in despair.
Fifty yards away, sitting in the rear leather seat of his custom armored Maybach, Lin Mo watched the spectacle through the tinted window.
Lin Mo held a warm porcelain cup of roasted barley tea, a faint, deadpan smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
Beside him, Su Wan reviewed municipal economic data on her tablet, chuckling softly behind her fingers.
“Chairman Lin,” Su Wan said, her eyes dancing with amusement. “Municipal police reports indicate that petty street crime has dropped by ninety-four percent in the last six hours. Pickpocketing has completely vanished. In fact, three pickpockets turned themselves in to the police station this morning just to wipe their criminal records and raise their scores.”
Tie Niu leaned back against the passenger seat, cracking a roasted chestnut between his thick fingers.
“Chairman Lin,” Tie Niu chuckled in a deep bass rumble. “Even my old cousins in North River County called me. They asked if helping our neighbor plow three acres of wheat would get them an apartment in your luxury garden.”
“Tell them that honest sweat always counts,” Lin Mo replied with a quiet grin.
He took a slow sip of tea, looking out at the city streets.
People complain that virtue is difficult, Lin Mo thought, amused by the chaos outside. In reality, humans are very simple. If cruelty pays, people become wolves. If kindness pays one hundred times more, even the wolves will fight each other to carry cabbages.
Lin Mo leaned forward, tapping the driver’s partition.
“Drive through South River Alley,” Lin Mo instructed. “Let us see how the older neighborhoods are doing.”
The Maybach rolled smoothly through the narrow, tree-lined streets of South River Alley.
This was one of the oldest working-class quarters of Jiangcheng. The brick row houses were fifty years old, their roofs covered in weathered gray clay tiles and their alleyways paved with cracked cobblestones.
As the car turned into Willow Lane, Lin Mo’s newly awakened two-kilometer qi sense suddenly tingled.
He sensed a cluster of bright, warm, unblemished spiritual auras fifty yards ahead.
There was no hypocrisy. There was no desperate greed. There was only pure, quiet, honest goodwill.
Lin Mo raised his hand. “Stop the car.”
The Maybach slid to a halt beside a narrow courtyard.
Lin Mo stepped out onto the cobblestones, followed by Su Wan and Tie Niu.
Up on the roof of a low, single-story brick cottage, five young men in dusty work clothes were kneeling on wooden planks, hammering new asphalt shingles over leaking holes.
Down in the small muddy courtyard, fifteen more young men were busy carrying bags of cement, repairing a cracked stone drainage ditch, and stacking neat cords of dry firewood against the wall.
An eighty-eight-year-old widow with white hair and a bent spine sat on a wooden stool by the door, holding a tray of steaming sweet-potato buns, smiling toothlessly at the young workers.
Above the heads of all twenty young men, clean, brilliant green scores shone in clear daylight:
80/100, 81/100, 82/100, and 83/100.
The leader on the roof was a twenty-two-year-old youth named Xiao Hu. Above his sweat-streaked forehead glowed an authentic Goodness: 83/100.
Xiao Hu wiped his dusty brow with the back of his canvas glove, calling down to his companions in the yard:
“Brothers! Make sure the drainage slope leans toward the main street! Grandma Zhang’s courtyard flooded three times during the typhoon last week! We have to finish the roof and the ditch before the rain starts again tonight!”
“Don’t worry, Hu Ge!” a young man carrying a cement bucket shouted back. “We bought twenty bags of waterproof mortar with our part-time wages! The ditch will hold for twenty years!”
Lin Mo stood at the courtyard gate, watching them quietly.
Su Wan tapped her tablet, pulling up neighborhood records.
“Chairman Lin,” Su Wan whispered in surprise. “These twenty young men are all high school graduates from poor families. Three months ago, their small auto-repair cooperative went bankrupt because Zhao Real Estate refused to pay for fleet repairs. Since then, instead of turning to crime, they have spent their weekends quietly fixing roofs and cleaning drains for twenty elderly widows across this district. They never charged a single cent. They even paid for the materials out of their own pockets.”
Lin Mo looked at the blistered hands of the young men, then looked at the steaming sweet-potato buns in Grandma Zhang’s trembling hands.
While the greedy bosses and street punks are putting on shows at the kiosks for an apartment, Lin Mo thought, deeply moved by the sight, these twenty boys were quietly fixing leaky roofs in the cold. This is what true goodness looks like.
Lin Mo stepped through the wooden courtyard gate.
“Brothers,” Lin Mo called out in a warm, clear voice.
Xiao Hu paused with his hammer, looking down from the roof.
When he saw Lin Mo standing in the courtyard in his clean white shirt, flanked by Su Wan and Tie Niu, Xiao Hu nearly dropped his hammer onto the tiles.
“C-Chairman Lin?!” Xiao Hu stammered, scrambling down the wooden ladder with wide eyes.
The other nineteen youths froze in place, holding their trowels and shovels in stunned silence.
Grandma Zhang pushed herself up from her wooden stool, her cloudy eyes blinking in wonder.
Xiao Hu wiped his dusty hands on his trousers, stepping forward with an awkward, nervous bow.
“Chairman Lin... what brings you to our alley?” Xiao Hu asked, his voice shaking slightly. “Are our repair works blocking the street? We can move the cement bags aside right now!”
Lin Mo smiled, placing a firm, reassuring hand on Xiao Hu’s dusty shoulder.
“You are not blocking anything, Xiao Hu,” Lin Mo said gently. “You are building the foundation of this city.”
Lin Mo looked around at the twenty young men, his voice carrying clearly to every corner of the courtyard.
“You spent three months fixing roofs and repairing drains for elderly widows when nobody was watching,” Lin Mo said. “You didn’t do it for a camera. You didn’t do it for a terminal score. You did it because your hearts are pure.”
Xiao Hu’s eyes reddened. He looked down at his scuffed boots, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Chairman Lin,” Xiao Hu whispered. “Our parents taught us that even if we are poor, we cannot lose our conscience. Grandma Zhang has no children. If we didn’t fix her roof, the ceiling would have collapsed on her bed.”
Lin Mo turned to Su Wan.
“Su Wan,” Lin Mo commanded. “Disburse ten million yuan immediately.”
Xiao Hu dropped his paint roller into the bucket, while the twenty youths behind him froze with their mouths open.
“Ten... ten million yuan?!”
“Ten million yuan,” Lin Mo repeated firmly. “One million yuan to establish the permanent South River Widows Welfare Maintenance Trust, ensuring Grandma Zhang and every elderly resident in this district receives free lifelong home repairs and food delivery. The remaining nine million yuan will be divided equally among all twenty of you. That is four hundred and fifty thousand yuan in cash startup capital for each brother.”
Lin Mo smiled at Xiao Hu.
“Furthermore, your team is hired today as the core engineering directors of the new Taichu Municipal Civic Restoration Corps, with permanent corporate contracts, brand-new heavy excavation machinery, and full health benefits.”
The twenty young men stood frozen, their mouths open in total shock.
Four hundred and fifty thousand yuan in cash. Permanent engineering contracts. New machinery.
“Four hundred and fifty thousand...” a young man dropped his shovel, covering his face with both hands and bursting into loud, shaking sobs.
Xiao Hu fell to his knees in the mud, tears pouring down his dust-caked cheeks as he gripped Lin Mo’s hands with both palms.
“Chairman Lin! You gave us a reason to hold our heads high!” Xiao Hu cried out, his voice choked with profound gratitude. “For three months, people called us useless losers because our shop failed! You saw our hearts! Our lives belong to Taichu!”
Tap.
Su Wan swiped Lin Mo’s Black-Gold Sovereign Benevolence Card across the console.
BEEP.
A magnificent, universe-shaking celestial chime erupted inside Lin Mo’s soul:
[Ding! Detected spending of ¥10,000,000.00 RMB on Genuine Civic Youth Employment & Elderly Home Protection!]
[Target Beneficiaries: Xiao Hu (Goodness: 83/100) & 20 Righteous Youth Volunteers (Goodness: 80–83/100)!]
[Purpose: Elderly maintenance trust fund (¥1,000,000) and direct startup grants (¥450,000 each) establishing Taichu Civic Restoration Corps!]
[Pure Altruistic Intent Verified: Rewarding authentic unsung virtue, supporting underprivileged youth, and sheltering vulnerable widows!]
[Triggering 100x Pure Benevolence System Refund!]
[Cash Refund Received: +¥1,000,000,000.00 RMB!]
[Funds deposited directly into Host Personal Liquid Vault!]
[Personal Liquid Vault: ¥100,000,000,000.00 RMB!]
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
A glorious, golden celestial bell chimed across Lin Mo’s entire consciousness, resonating through every meridian in his body.
Giant golden characters exploded across his mental vision:
[HISTORIC MILESTONE ACHIEVED!]
[HOST PERSONAL LIQUID CASH VAULT HAS OFFICIALLY REACHED ONE HUNDRED BILLION YUAN!]
[Current Verified Liquid Balance: ¥100,000,000,000.00 RMB!]
[Benevolence Merit Points: +1,000,000 BMP | Total BMP: 192,949,528 BMP!]
[Good People Network Expanded: 9,920 Verified Righteous Allies (+20 young civic restoration leaders formally integrated)!]
One hundred billion yuan in liquid cash, Lin Mo thought, feeling the immense weight of the milestone settling into his dantian. One hundred billion yuan. I started thirty days ago with forty-eight yuan and fifty cents in my pocket, standing in the cold rain outside a wonton stall. Now, I hold the wealth of an entire empire.
Suddenly, the System chimed again with a soft, resonant golden chime:
[Ding! Special Heritage Mission Unlocked: "Returning to the Origin"! System Directive: Host has reached ¥100 Billion! Returning to Grand Golden-Plume Plaza where the first ¥48 wontons were bought unlocks a Special Heritage Reward!]