Handong: Sha Li wants political achievements? I'll shut down the entire province.

Its daybreak.

A few rays of cold sunlight peeked through the gaps in the blinds.

It was deathly pale.

Like an unsharpened blade, it pierced straight into Li Dakang's bloodshot eyes.

His eyelids twitched twice, and he quickly covered them with the back of his hand.

The skin on the back of my hand was completely wrinkled and chilled.

Last night, he stood in the pouring rain for three hours in the square in front of the Lingxiao Building.

They couldn't even get over the electronic barrier gate equipped with facial recognition.

Yan Qingfeng didn't even see him.

Finally, he waded through the black mud that reached above his shoes and walked back to the car.

The wrinkled trousers are now completely dry.

The fabric clung stiffly to my leg hair, and with the slightest movement, it chafed my flesh painfully.

My throat felt as dry as if I had swallowed half a pound of coarse sandpaper.

Li Dakang swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down with difficulty.

A tearing pain immediately shot through my throat.

The acid in my stomach kept refluxing upwards.

The secure video terminal on the table, which is usually only turned on once a year, suddenly beeped a long time.

The screen flickered twice and then lit up.

It was divided into four small squares, and the top executives of the four major banks in Beijing were all online.

Li Dakang quickly moved forward.

His chest pressed firmly against the iron edge of the mahogany table, and his back slumped instinctively, making him feel half a head shorter.

"Hey, hey! President Ma, President Liu... We're sorry to disturb your rest so early in the morning."

He forced a smile, pulling the corners of his mouth upwards.

His chapped lips split open, and a bloody gash appeared, the rusty taste of blood sliding into his mouth.

In the upper right corner, ICBC President Ma is slowly unscrewing a chubby thermos.

A puff of white steam rose from the rim of the cup, slightly blurring the lens.

"Whoosh—" Bank Manager Ma blew on the tea leaves at the rim of the cup.

"Comrade Dakang, the situation has been reported by your provincial finance department overnight."

He smacked his lips and took a small sip of hot water.

"Three hundred billion yuan of local government financing vehicle (LGFV) bonds defaulted at noon today. That's a huge hole."

"Yes, yes, the hole is indeed a bit... a bit prickly."

Li Dakang folded his hands together and rubbed the cold backs of his hands back and forth.

There were still traces of blood stuck in my fingernails from scratching my scalp last night.

"Look, we've been rushing into infrastructure development in Handong these past few years."

His voice was completely hoarse, with a harsh, cracking quality, "Brother Ma, Brother Liu, could you guys take the lead and issue an urgent approval?"

Li Dakang lowered his body further and further down, almost to the point of kowtowing through the screen.

"Even if you just allocate 50 billion yuan! It would be enough to get through noon today!"

"Five hundred billion? Dakang, do you think you're buying cabbages with that mouth of yours?"

In the lower left corner, Agricultural Bank of China President Liu pushed up his reading glasses.

The lens reflected a cold light.

President Liu leaned back in his large leather chair, his short, stubby fingers tapping on the table.

"You need to take a look at the state of your financial system in Handong right now."

"Even when buying a pack of Hongtashan cigarettes at the convenience store, you scan that... Lingxiao points."

"With you, the RMB is so cheap it's not even good enough to wipe your butt!"

Bank Manager Liu threw the pen in his hand onto the table with a "thud".

"If the ecosystem is completely out of regulation, the money from our national treasury will be allocated there, but it won't even make a ripple."

"With this risk control report, how am I supposed to place my bet?"

Li Dakang became anxious.

The sour, foul odor in his stomach rose to his throat, making his chest feel tight and suffocated.

"That was Yan Qingfeng's doing! Our provincial and municipal party committees firmly support RMB settlement!"

He was practically leaning half his body over the screen, his hands gripping the edge of the keyboard tightly.

"President Liu! If this goes wrong, hundreds of contractors in Jingzhou will have to jump off the bridge across the river today!"

"This is a mass incident that has resulted in deaths!"

None of the four bank managers on the screen responded.

The scene seemed to freeze, and then you could hear Bank Manager Ma slurping his tea on the other end.

"Comrade Dakang."

Bank Manager Ma put down his cup, and the fake smile on his face completely disappeared.

"Where is Qi Weidong, the commissioner sent to Handong?"

Li Dakang was stunned for a moment, cold sweat trickling down his temples and into the yellowed collar of his white shirt.

"Commissioner Qi... is still at the train station guesthouse."

He stammered, "That place is next to the armed police station, it's safe. He... he said he caught a chill and didn't dare to go out."

"Oh, caught a chill?"

Bank Manager Ma let out a cold laugh, and his fat face jiggled.

"Qi Weidong went to Handong with secret orders from above, but as soon as he got off the high-speed train, he saw that the streets and the sky were full of Lingxiao's heavy-duty drones."

"So scared they booked the top floor of a guesthouse overnight!"

Bank Manager Ma slammed his knuckles against the table twice. "They eat instant noodles three times a day and don't even dare to open the curtains a crack!"

President Ma stared at Li Dakang in the camera lens, his eyes looking as if he were looking at a dead man.

"Yan Qingfeng shattered the Wall Street market with a single sentence in New York, and your provincial party committee compound didn't dare utter a peep!"

"The old men in Beijing have a very clear attitude."

He slowed his speech, enunciating each word slowly and deliberately, each one like a knife piercing Li Dakang's ear.

"Now that Handong is home, it's in the hands of conglomerates."

"Then you'll have to take this 300 billion yuan mess and go find Yan Qingfeng to clean it up!"

"Not a single penny of the national treasury will be poured into this bottomless pit."

"this……"

The bruise on Li Dakang's forehead, which he had bumped into, throbbed with intense pain.

It throbbed, a sharp, pulling pain in my nerves.

"President Ma! The higher-ups can't just stand by and watch us die! Handong is the heart of the nation!"

His eyes turned completely red, and he completely abandoned all pretense of dignity, howling at the top of his lungs.

Spit sprayed onto the computer screen, forming tiny droplets.

"drop--"

Nobody listened to his nonsense anymore.

President Liu was the first to cut off the signal.

Then the remaining three companies withdrew one after another.

The screen, which had just been displaying four faces, instantly turned into a static-filled mess of static.

It made a piercing "hissing" sound.

The meeting room was deathly quiet.

All that could be heard was Li Dakang's heavy, broken breathing, like a bellows being pulled out of its jackknife.

The stomach acid finally became uncontrollable.

He suddenly tilted his head and gagged with a "whoosh".

He spat out a mouthful of yellowish acidic water, which splashed onto the red wool carpet.

The pungent, sour smell instantly filled the enclosed room.

Li Dakang's eyes were bloodshot, like a wild dog driven to the brink of madness by being cornered in a dead end.

He grabbed the purple clay teacup from the table.

His knuckles were clenched so tightly they turned white.

He swung his arm and smashed it with all his might against the wall covered with wallpaper of a welcoming pine tree.

"Bang!"

The teacup was smashed to pieces.

Broken porcelain shards mixed with leftover chilled tea were scattered everywhere.

A few sharp pieces of debris flew past his own leather shoes, leaving a white mark.

The last resort for the authorities.

The cup and its contents shattered into pieces of mud so badly that they couldn't be picked up.

Hearing the noise, Secretary Xiao Jin pushed open the door and poked half her head in.

Seeing the mess on the ground, I was so scared that I trembled all over and my legs cramped.

"Secretary Li...Are you alright?"

Li Dakang stared intently at the puddle of acidic water on the ground.

With my hands on my knees, I slowly straightened my limp legs.

The joints made a soft "crack" sound.

He reached up and hastily wiped the filth from the corner of his mouth; it was sticky.

"Go prepare the car."

His voice was hoarse and raspy. "To Lingxiao Manor. Even if I have to sell all the underground pipe networks in Jingzhou today... I'll make Yan Qingfeng cough up this life-saving money!"