Chapter 414: The Kidnapping Decision

Zhao Guoqiang hasn't closed his eyes for three days.

He huddles in the underground cellar of his own villa, still wearing the suit from the celebration banquet, his tie crooked across his chest, his shirt crumpled beyond recognition.

The floor is littered with broken glass.

The cellar had once held more than forty bottles of vintage red wine; now only a few scattered bottles remain upright on the rack, the rest smashed by him. The air is thick with strong alcohol fumes, mingled with a sour, rotten stench.

The phone's screen is lit.

The lawyer's last message stopped at 11 p. m. last night: "Zhao Zong, the court has accepted the creditors' bankruptcy liquidation petition. It is recommended that you hire—"

He didn't finish reading.

Zhao Guoqiang smashes the phone against the wall.

The screen cracks but doesn't shatter. The incoming call indicator still flashes—collection calls, twenty‑plus a day, from banks, suppliers, and loan sharks.

He leans against the wine rack, sitting on the floor, both hands cupping his face. Between his fingers the whites of his eyes are streaked with blood vessels.

"Why."

No one answers him.

"Why me?"

The cellar door is pushed open; the butler Lao Wu sticks his torso half inside, his face ashen.

"Zhao Zong... that person has arrived."

Zhao Guoqiang looks up.

"Which one?"

"It's... the contact you previously asked Wang Zong to find. The one who claimed to be able to uncover the inside story."

Zhao Guoqiang props himself up on the wine rack and stands; his knee hits broken glass, a small patch of red oozes from his pant leg. He doesn't feel it.

In the living room sits a middle‑aged man in a gray jacket, his features so unremarkable they'd be impossible to pick out in a crowd. A untouched cup of tea rests on the table.

"Zhao Zong." The gray‑jacketed man speaks, hoarse, "I've found what you wanted to investigate."

Zhao Guoqiang plops onto the sofa.

"Tell me."

The gray‑jacketed man pulls a USB drive from his pocket and spins it on his fingertip.

"Shen Wanshan acted against you, not because of business. Twelve conglomerates coordinated a net, and I can't trace the command source—but I have identified the trigger point."

"What trigger point?"

"Your daughter."

Zhao Guoqiang freezes for two seconds.

"Lingfei?"

"Zhao Lingfei, a student at Gui Ce Yuan Elementary Department, had a clash on campus last week with a special enrollment student. She stepped on and broke his hairpin."

The gray‑jacketed man places the USB drive on the coffee table.

"That special enrollment student is named Chen Yao."

Zhao Guoqiang parts his mouth.

"A hairpin... you're telling me that twelve top‑tier conglomerates are besieging Zhao Construction because my daughter stepped on a hairpin?"

The gray‑jacketed man doesn't smile.

"Zhao Zong, Chen Yao's admission was directly approved through a School Board Member slot from Ding An Industry. Behind Ding An Industry stands the Guo Family. I couldn't trace the link between the Guo Family and Shen Wanshan's Huan Yu Heavy Industry—but one thing I can confirm."

He raises a finger.

"Within four hours of your daughter breaking that hairpin in the Cafeteria, Shen Wanshan personally placed the first call. Four hours, Zhao Zong. The entire strangulation chain was set off by an old hairpin."

Zhao Guoqiang's mind short‑circuits completely at that moment.

Nineteen years.

He had been scraping by in Jiang Hai City's business district for nineteen years. Three years ago he caught the fast track of Qiu Ce Yuan's infrastructure, his accounts quadrupled, and he thought he finally had a solid footing.

In the end, it was all over.

All over.

Because his fourteen‑year‑old daughter, at school, stepped on and broke another girl's hairpin.

The gray‑jacketed man stands.

"Zhao Zong, this is as far as I can go. The waters behind Chen Yao are too deep; tug one hair and the whole body moves. I advise you—"

"What are you advising me?"

Zhao Guoqiang's voice changes.

It's not anger. It's something colder.

"Advise me to admit defeat? Advise me to jump off a building? Advise me to take my whole family out for a cold wind in the northwest? My nineteen‑year foundation was ruined by a little orphanage girl, and you tell me to concede?"

The gray‑jacketed man is silent for a moment.

"Then, Zhao Zong, what do you plan to do?"

Zhao Guoqiang stares at the USB drive on the coffee table, the blood vessels in his eyes spreading like capillaries silently bursting.

"Do you have any other way out?"

The gray‑jacketed man looks at him for a while.

"Yes. But once you step onto that road, there's no turning back."

"Do I the hell have any way back now?" Zhao Guoqiang laughs, his gums showing, "Contact me. Any price works. I've liquidated the last batch of artworks and my overseas accounts—enough?"

The gray‑jacketed man's expression remains unchanged.

"Enough."

He pulls another phone from his pocket and dials a number.

It rang twice, then connected.

"...... Got a job. A Qiu Ce Institute student, a minor female, target code I'll send you later. Must be alive."

The other end was silent for three seconds.

Then a coarse, sand‑grit‑like voice came out: "Payment?"

"Six million Federal Currency, plus a brand‑new Clean Identity."

Another three seconds of silence.

"Add two Countermeasure Chains. Among my people there are three Junior Cunning Practitioners; their equipment wear requires extra compensation."

Hui Jia Ke looked at Zhao Guoqiang.

Zhao Guoqiang nodded.

"Deal," Hui Jia Ke said into the phone, "Target data will reach your terminal within ten minutes. Note, it must be alive. Bring it out alive."

"Hyenas never make loss‑making deals."

The call ended.

Zhao Guoqiang collapsed onto the sofa, trembling all over. Not fear. It was a kind of pleasure released after being built up to the limit, bordering on madness.

He closed his eyes.

In his mind a face floated up: a quiet little girl with a ponytail, head bowed, tidying up a torn textbook.

"Chen Yao......"

He murmured the name.

"If the people behind you can crush my company, then I have you in my hand; let's see how they negotiate with me."

——

At the same time.

Qiu Ce Institute Faculty Building.

Su Ming pushed the fourth cup of ice‑cold tea to the edge of the table, rubbing his souring eyes.

On the laptop before him seven windows were open, and he had turned the Federal Industry Exchange's underlying database upside down. He had been tracking the Short Selling of Zhao Clan Building Materials' capital flow for almost twenty hours, passing through four shell companies, two offshore trusts, and a charity foundation's front, finally—

All into a single fund pool.

And the actual controller of that fund pool, after cross‑checking corporate information and signature samples, pointed to two names.

Huan Yu Heavy Industry.

Ding An Industry.

Su Ming stared at those two lines on the screen, his fingers frozen on the keyboard.

Shen Wanshan's Huan Yu Heavy Industry is the Qiu Ce Institute's biggest investor.

Behind Ding An Industry is the Guo Family, a "Highly Monitored Target" personally marked by Wei Gong.

These two jointly Short Selling a second‑tier contractor makes no logical sense. Zhao Clan Building Materials is not even a fraction of their size. For players of this scale to go after an ant, the energy expended and the exposed risk are wildly disproportionate.

Unless—Zhao Clan Building Materials is merely a target.

The real operating logic lies deeper.

Su Ming pulled up Shen Wanshan's itinerary for the past three months, then opened Ding An Industry and Guo Family's business registration changes, trying to locate a crossover point on the timeline.

There was nothing.

Spotless.

No formal equity ties, personnel crossovers, or business dealings existed between the two firms. Su Ming even tapped the Investigation Bureau's classified commercial intelligence database—still zero.

Too clean.

Clean to the point of abnormality.

Normally, two unrelated companies would have at least some industry overlap or indirect supply‑chain links. Having absolutely none is itself a trace.

Like two parallel lines, deliberately wiped clean of any area where they could intersect.

Su Ming leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

The string in his mind was taut, yet always missing the final piece—a fulcrum, a key piece of information that could reassemble all fragments.

Unfortunately, there was none.

His clearance wasn't sufficient.

The Qiu Ce Institute's Core Financial System was only open to him up to the second tier; below that lies Shen Wanshan himself and the School Board Member's exclusive data zone. Though Wei Gong ordered him to monitor covertly, he gave no over‑authority retrieval warrant.

Su Ming closed his eyes, running through all known information in his mind for a third time.

No result.

He opened his eyes, closed the laptop, and rose to the window.

Outside, the sky was darkening. The Gui Ce Yuan Elementary Department teaching building had a few scattered lights on; the school‑dismissal bell had probably rung ten minutes earlier. A handful of students with backpacks wandered in small groups toward the main gate on the playground.

Su Ming's gaze swept over those figures, lingering on none.

He sat back at his desk, opened a new spreadsheet, and began compiling today's monitoring log.

His fingers typed two lines on the keyboard then stopped.

Wrong.

It wasn't that twelve conglomerates acting in sync was unreasonable.

But—who could make twelve completely unrelated conglomerates make the identical decision within five minutes?

He had pondered this question before.

But after twenty hours of thought, he hadn't even caught a Shadow.

Su Ming noted this question mark at the document's end, saved, and shut down.

Some answers can't be found while sitting in an office.

He needs more clues.

——

Dusk settled.

Outside the main gate of Gui Ce Yuan Elementary Department, the streetlights hadn't lit yet.

Chen Yao was the last to walk out of the teaching building.

She carried a canvas backpack that had faded from washing, the cuffs of her school uniform were slightly oversized and barely covered her fingers. In her left hand she clutched something, gripping it tightly.

It's the Old Hairpin that had been stepped on and broken.

She had already glued it with glue. The bonding was poor, the crack was clearly visible, but at least it was barely usable.

She turned onto the old street on the right side of the school gate.

This road was about seven minutes shorter than the main road. Several streetlights in the Old District were broken, and on both sides stood old residential buildings awaiting demolition, most windows were dark, with only one or two lit by a dim yellow glow.

Chen Yao's steps were neither fast nor slow.

She walked with her head down, pulling a pair of earphones from her pocket with her right hand and plugging them into her ears; her slender figure moved deeper into the dusk.

Two hundred meters behind her.

A black van, its engine off, silently slipped out from the shadows of an alley.

All the windows were covered with dark film.

On the passenger seat, a scarred hand gripped a walkie‑talkie, its thumb pressing the talk button.

"Target confirmed. Operate alone, no accompanying personnel."

A hoarse voice came through the walkie‑talkie.

"Proceed."

The van's engine rumbled to life.

An old song played in Chen Yao's earphones, but she heard no sound.

The dusk wrapped around her slender silhouette.

And the vehicle was accelerating.