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

Chen Ping turned the red-covered document to the last page, closed it, and placed it on the table.

"Mayor Fang, I'll take this request back and study it."

Fang Zhiyuan did not stop him.

After the party, Jiang Fan drove onto the highway. Chen Ping leaned back in the back seat and didn't say a word, remaining silent all the way to Nanzhou.

Back at his lodgings, he made a phone call.

"Zhang Chao, are you free on Saturday?"

Zhang Chao is the technical director of the Corefire Center Laboratory. He graduated from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Science and Technology of China and has been working in Nanzhou for eight years. His sense of smell is even better than that of instruments.

"I'm free. What's up?"

"Come with me to Guangling. Dress casually, don't take the bus."

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone.

"clear."

It was five o'clock in the morning on Saturday, before dawn. Zhang Chao was waiting for Chen Ping downstairs in a gray, secondhand Volkswagen Sagitar. A black backpack was tucked into the trunk, the zipper slightly open, revealing several sealed glass sampling bottles and a roll of pH test strips.

Chen Ping opened the passenger door and got in. He was wearing a black windbreaker, sneakers, and a baseball cap pulled low.

"Take the national highway along the river, don't take the expressway."

Zhang Chao nodded, shifted gears, and set off.

The national highway takes forty minutes longer than the expressway, but it doesn't pass through toll booths and doesn't leave an ETC record. Chen Ping stared at the farmland and fishponds flashing past the car window, his mind replaying the sour smell he had caught by the drainage ditch at Tianying Chemical Plant that day.

Water with a COD of 38 mg per liter shouldn't taste like that.

That was the characteristic smell of waste liquid containing high concentrations of phenols. He smelled it once in his undergraduate organic chemistry lab and remembered it.

Once the car reached Guangling, Chen Ping took out his phone and opened a satellite map. To the south of the Tianying Chemical Plant area, separated by a stretch of wasteland, lay the Qinglong River, a tributary of the Yangtze River.

"Head towards Qinglong River, take the rural road."

The Sagitar turned off the national highway and bumped along for twenty minutes before entering a gravel road. The weeds on both sides of the road were waist-high, and in the distance, the chimneys of Tianying Chemical Plant could be seen emitting white smoke.

Zhang Chao parked the car next to an abandoned pumping station. The two of them got out and walked upstream along the riverbank.

The Qinglong River is narrow, less than thirty meters wide, but the water is murky. The stone embankment is covered with moss, making it slippery and difficult to stand on.

After walking about 600 meters, Chen Ping stopped.

Below the riverbank, a section of a cement pipe, less than half a meter in diameter, protruded from the weeds, its opening facing the river. A layer of dark brown crust had formed on the pipe wall, its surface glossy.

No water flowed out of the cement pipe, but a large patch of soil below the pipe opening was a deep purple, quite different from the surrounding yellowish-brown soil.

Chen Ping squatted down, sniffed the tube, and then suddenly tilted his head back.

Zhang Chao also squatted down, flapped his nostrils, and scrunched up his whole face.

"Phenol. The concentration is not low."

Chen Ping took the sampling bottle out of Zhang Chao's backpack and unscrewed the cap. Using a plastic spoon he carried with him, he scraped off a piece of dark brown hard shell from the tube wall and put it into the bottle. He then scooped out two spoonfuls of soil sample from the purple soil below the tube opening and put them into another bottle.

Zhang Chao tore off a strip of pH test paper and stuck it to a moist spot on the tube wall. The test paper quickly changed color, from yellow to deep orange.

"The pH value is between 2 and 3, which is strongly acidic."

Zhang Chao looked up and glanced at Chen Pingfang.

"The water's pH is below 3, and it smells like phenol. It's probably high-concentration mother liquor discharged from a phenolic resin production line. This stuff is being dumped directly into the river..."

He swallowed the rest of his sentence before finishing it.

Chen Ping stood up and traced the path of the cement pipe back to its origin. The pipe was half-buried in the soil, with several manhole covers peeking out intermittently. The last manhole cover was located less than fifty meters outside the perimeter wall of the Tianying Chemical Plant area.

A wire mesh fence was strung on top of the wall, but a section of the corner had collapsed, allowing a view into the factory area. Next to the wall was a row of gray corrugated iron sheds, with three thick pipes extending from the roofs. The pipe walls were wrapped in duct tape, and yellow liquid was seeping from beneath the tape.

Chen Ping took out his phone, put it on silent, and took more than a dozen photos. He photographed the pipe's layout, the sediment on the pipe walls, the purple soil, and the discolored pH test strips. Finally, he took several close-up photos of the exterior of the tin shed in the distance and the details of the pipe connections.

Zhang Chao squatted down next to the manhole cover and used a wrench to loosen the bolts. As the cover was lifted, a pungent odor rushed up, and both of them turned their heads away at the same time.

The bottom of the well was filled with half a pool of dark brown liquid, with a layer of foam floating on the surface.

Zhang Chao stretched out his arm, scooped half a bottle of liquid from the surface of the sample bottle, tightened the cap, and then wrapped it with two layers of plastic wrap.

"With this concentration, we can determine the components by running a gas chromatograph. Phenol, formaldehyde, toluene... it's probably all in there."

Chen Ping put the manhole cover back in place, stood up straight, and looked around.

The riverbank was deserted, with only the occasional truck passing by on the distant national highway. The chimneys of Tianying Chemical quietly emitted smoke, and the deep rumble of machinery echoed from the factory grounds.

Everything is running as usual. The underground drain is also running as usual.

Chen Ping squatted back down and opened the file saved on his phone—the seven-page document Su Qingwan had given him. He turned to the last page, which was a breakdown of Tianying Chemical's shareholding structure.

The largest shareholder of Tianying Chemical is Guangling State-owned Investment, holding 35% of the shares. The second largest shareholder is a company called Xinyuan Investment, holding 28% of the shares.

The actual controller of Xinyuan Investment is listed as Fang Zhifang.

Fang Zhiyuan's younger sister.

Chen Ping locked his phone and put it back in his pocket.

The two returned to the pumping station by the same route and got into the car. When Zhang Chao started the engine, his fingers still had brown stains from the sampling.

"Director, when will these samples be sent for testing?"

"Once you return to Nanzhou, go online immediately. Only one paper report will be issued; it will not be entered into the system."

Zhang Chao nodded, and the car drove onto the gravel road.

Chen Ping leaned back in his seat, took out his phone from the inside pocket of his windbreaker, and opened his chat window with Su Qingwan.

He selected six of the most representative photos, including the culvert opening, the purple soil, and the liquid in the manhole, and sent them along with a text message.

"Qinglong River, 50 meters south of the wall of Tianying Chemical Plant, is directly discharged through a culvert. The pH value is 2-3, suspected to be phenolic mother liquor. Samples have been taken and are being sent for testing. Xinyuan Investment, Fang Zhifang."

Once the message was sent, a "typing is in progress" message quickly popped up at the bottom of the chat box.

Three seconds later, Su Qingwan replied with four words.

"Received. Keep it safe."

Chen Ping encrypted the conversation and locked it in the phone's hidden photo album.

As the Sagitar drove onto the national highway, the factory chimneys in Guangling gradually shrank into a gray dot in the rearview mirror.

Chen Ping stayed home all Sunday, reviewing the three draft technical documents from the industry standards alliance, annotating each page. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Zhang Chao sent an encrypted email with the gas chromatograph's test report attached.

Phenol concentration: 4200 mg/L. National emission limit: 0.5 mg/L.

It exceeded the standard by 8,400 times.

Chen Ping stared at the number for ten seconds, then printed out the report and locked it, along with the photo, in the hidden compartment of his briefcase.

My phone vibrated at 6:50 a.m. on Monday.

Caller ID: Municipal Party Committee Office.

Chen Ping answered the call.

"Secretary Chen, the Provincial Party Committee General Office just issued an urgent notice requiring you and Vice Mayor Fang Zhiyuan of Guangling City to come to the provincial capital at 9:00 AM the day after tomorrow to give a special report on the dual-city industrial synergy plan. The original notice has been sent to your email."

Chen Ping stood by the window with his phone in his hand. The morning light shone through the gaps in the blinds, leaving streaks of light on the clasp of his briefcase.

The briefcase contained enough evidence to bring down Fang Zhiyuan, who was completely unaware of it.