After breaking up with my boyfriend, I made a fortune and rose rapidly in my career.

The corridor lights hummed behind him. Chen Ping closed the door, draped his coat over his forearm, and walked toward the stairwell.

That equipment comparison table was still stuck in my head. Four blank parameters—those were machines that were born with fatal flaws, flaws that couldn't be filled in with money or circumvented with permits. But this move only scratched the surface, not the root cause.

He went downstairs and walked towards the old town, without returning to the parking lot.

The riverside food stalls in Nanzhou never close early. Charcoal stoves stretch for a mile along the riverbank, and the smoke from the cooking oil drifts out with the wind, mingling with the smell of the river water and pushing against people's faces as they walk in.

Chen Ping stopped in front of a folding table on the side, pulled up a plastic stool and sat down, holding up two fingers to the stall owner.

"Two skewers of grilled chicken hearts, no spice."

The stall owner skewered the ingredients with an iron skewer, flipped them over on the charcoal fire, and didn't look up.

"I'm sitting across from you."

Chen Ping looked across the street.

Su Qingwan placed a skewer of grilled tofu on a plate, pressed her notebook against the corner of the table, tucked her pen into her coat pocket, glanced up at him, and didn't move.

"skillful."

She pushed the plate aside and gestured with her chin toward the chair opposite her.

Chen Ping draped his coat over the back of the chair and sat down opposite her.

The two ate separately, the charcoal on the stall was still burning, and the wind blew the heat onto their faces.

The vendor brought over the grilled chicken hearts, which were stuck into a small dish with two drops of oil splattered on the side.

Su Qingwan moved the notebook first, without opening it, but placed it horizontally on her lap and cut straight into it.

"You've already checked Hongtuyuan."

It's not a question.

Chen Ping used his teeth to peel off a chicken heart.

"Checked. It's second-hand equipment, with its production capacity capped at 2015 specifications."

"The equipment is in the open."

Su Qingwan flipped the notebook to the middle page, turned it sideways, and pushed it towards him with the paper facing up.

The paper contained a handwritten equity penetration diagram with dense lines and small characters. At the bottom, a single square was circled with three characters inside.

Yan Chengyuan.

Chen Ping picked up the paper and walked from one end to the other.

Hongtuyuan, legal representative Liu Zhengming; go up one floor, Haotian Industry, registered in the provincial capital's high-tech zone; further up, Chengyuan Private Equity Fund, registered two months ago; the last holder, Yan Chengyuan, a 24-year-old graduate student.

Yan Qinghua's son.

Chen Ping put the paper back on the table, his fingers pressing on the corner, and remained silent.

"How did you find Chengyuan Private Equity?"

Su Qingwan took the notebook back and added a line of text next to the bottom square with a pen.

"The provincial capital's Administration for Industry and Commerce just registered us two months ago and made the information public. I spent three days running around and figured out the four-layer penetration chain from the beginning."

"Two months to file for recordation, one month to acquire land."

"Build the shell first, then acquire the land." Su Qingwan capped her pen. "The timing is perfect."

Chen Ping put the iron shovel back into the dish, placed his hands on the table with his hands folded, and stared at the penetrating image without moving.

A thought popped into his head, overturning all his previous judgments.

He always thought that Yan Qinghua's grand plan was an industrial layout, a way to carve out a piece of territory on the map and share the city's orders and resources with Xinhuo. He believed it was a battle for territory and political achievements.

However, the fact that the image revealed Yan Chengyuan's name meant that this was never a matter of political achievement from the beginning.

He had glanced at the additional terms of the approval document and hadn't paid much attention to them at the time, but that one line now clearly came to mind: "Support investors to contribute land as equity, with corresponding financial instruments."

Land is used as equity, financial instruments are used as a shell for private equity funds, and then Chengyuan Private Equity is added on top of that. The chain ends up in the legal and compliant fund holdings in the account of a 24-year-old.

Whether the industrial park can be built or whether the yield rate can be improved has never been the key issue.

Once the approval for the 30 mu of land was obtained, the door was opened for the asset to be transferred into the shell company.

Through this structure, the funds from the Nanzhou Industrial Revitalization Special Fund became a clean, market-oriented investment on the books, with a clear source and compliant path, without triggering any violation warnings.

The grand plan proceeded smoothly, and the political achievements were attributed to Yan Qinghua.

When someone came to investigate, Liu Zhengming took the lead, while Yan Chengyuan was just an ordinary fund holder with no administrative dealings with his father, so it was unclear and he couldn't be implicated.

Yan Qinghua had been immersed in Nanzhou for twenty years, and this was definitely not the first time he had used this tactic.

Chen Ping pushed the piercing diagram back towards Su Qingwan, pressed two fingers on the paper, paused for a moment, and looked up.

Are you planning to publish this?

Su Qingwan tucked the diagram into her notebook and closed it.

"Business registration information is public information, the diagram is legal, and the approval documents are official documents; all of them can be cited and are not in violation of regulations."

There was a pause.

"Once it's issued, the shell company is ruined, assets can't come in, and the financial logic of Hongtu is broken."

Chen Ping pulled his hand back from the table, picked up the last string of chicken hearts, held it between two fingers, twirled it twice on the table, didn't eat it, and put it down.

"Don't touch this line yet."

Su Qingwan paused her pen, waiting for him to continue, without urging him.

"If this gets out now, he'll lose an empty shell, a grand plan that never got built."

Chen Ping pressed the iron shovel back into the dish.

"He spent twenty years in Nanzhou, but he can come back in less than six months. He can just change the plan, the route, the shell, and start all over again, doing the same thing over and over again. Neither you nor I can stop him."

Su Qingwan lowered her head, drew two lines on the notebook, and stopped writing with her pen, without looking up.

"Wait until he pours in the city's matching funds."

Chen Ping spoke these words very slowly, pausing for a full time.

"Wait until Hongtu actually gets support from the city, until those suppliers officially transfer their contracts, until Yan Qinghua says those four words a second time at the Standing Committee meeting, until he really thinks this pipeline is secure."

Su Qingwan added a line to the notebook, put the pen cap back on, and looked up.

"Then what."

"Then you light the fire."

The wind pushed in from the river, making the incandescent light bulb cord sway back and forth. The circle of light on the ground shook twice. The stall owner turned over the next batch of skewers, the charcoal fire crackled, and then settled down.

Su Qingwan closed the notebook and looked directly at him.

"Are you waiting for him to bury himself in the mud?"

"It's not about burying him." Chen Ping stood up, lifted his coat from the back of the chair and draped it over his forearm. "It's about waiting until he's dug the hole deep enough before lighting it."

Su Qingwan stuffed the notebook into her bag, zipped it up, and placed her hand on the bag's buckle, not rushing to stand up.

"Did you plan to use this opportunity when you called me here?"

"I didn't ask you to come."

Chen Ping took out two banknotes from his wallet, placed them on the bottom of the plate, turned towards the river, took a few steps, paused under the lamp that had been swaying for a while before finally stopping, and did not turn back.

"Keep this article safe and don't share it. I'll tell you when the time is right."

Su Qingwan did not respond.

"We need to hit the bullseye the time, and write a beautiful draft."

There was a two-second silence behind me before a very soft voice came, neither a yes nor a no.

Chen Ping draped his coat over his shoulders and walked into the darker area, the heat from the charcoal fire clinging to his back as he retreated step by step.

Su Qingwan remained seated, slinging her bag over her shoulder, without standing up.

The image that penetrated through the paper was tucked in the middle of the notebook. Inside the bottom circle, three words were clearly visible.

She looked down, took out her phone, opened the notes app, and typed in two lines: Yan Chengyuan, timing.

Save it, lock the screen, and the screen goes dark in the river breeze.