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

The next morning, just as dawn was breaking.

The area in front of the Jingzhou City Bank headquarters had completely turned into a pot of boiling water.

People were packed together, a dense, dark mass.

The line to withdraw money stretched from the marble steps all the way to the intersection two streets away, a distance of at least two kilometers.

"Stop pushing! You're stepping on my shoes! I've been here since 4 a.m., carrying a small stool to queue up!"

An elderly woman wrapped in a red headscarf tightly clutched a tattered cloth bag, her voice so shrill it could pierce eardrums.

The bald old man behind him wasn't buying it at all, and kept sticking his elbow out forward.

"If I'd been a second later, Li Dakang would have used the money to pay for that damn mountain! This is money I was saving to buy my coffin!"

The police cordon set up by riot police was pushed and swayed by the crowd.

Several heavy glass doors were slammed shut with a deafening roar, and shards of glass fell down in a shower, threatening to collapse at any moment.

In the bank manager's office on the second floor.

Qian Duoduo pressed herself against the one-way glass of the floor-to-ceiling window and cautiously glanced down.

In that one glance, the color drained from his fat, fleshy face, and his thick legs began to tremble uncontrollably.

"This isn't about withdrawing money; this is about skinning me alive!"

He pulled out a crumpled white handkerchief and frantically wiped the oily sweat from his forehead and neck.

The red landline on the table started ringing frantically, like a death knell.

Qian Duoduo jumped back as if she had been electrocuted, took two deep breaths, and then held the microphone with both hands.

"Secretary Li... I'm Lao Qian."

"Qian Duoduo! Are you blind? Look at the mess downstairs!"

Li Dakang's roar pierced through the microphone, making Qian Duoduo's eardrums ache.

"Open the doors wide! Run all the counters, don't stop for a minute!"

Li Dakang gritted his teeth on the other end of the phone, his tone filled with a desperate madness.

"Even if the common people wanted to withdraw a billion yuan today, you'd have to put every single penny on the table for me!"

Qian Duoduo had a bitter face and her voice was filled with sobs.

"Secretary Li, where would our branch get that much cash? Even if we released all the cash in the vault, it would only last an hour or two at most!"

"Then go and transfer it! Borrow from the provincial bank! Use your internal reserves!"

Li Dakang rudely interrupted him, refusing to listen to any explanation.

"I don't care what methods you use, we absolutely cannot let the people think the municipal party committee has gone bankrupt!"

"Even if we have to turn the vault upside down today, you have to suppress this panic!"

Li Dakang paused for a moment, then issued an ultimatum.

"If you can't control it, you might as well quit your job as bank manager and just prepare the evidence to go have a chat with the disciplinary committee!"

A beeping tone came through.

Qian Duoduo held the microphone, slumped like a rag doll in the leather boss's chair.

"Bang!"

The office door was pushed open.

The deputy bank manager stumbled in, his tie askew on the back of his head, and one of his shoes was missing.

"Manager, the situation outside is out of control! The roller shutters on the first floor are almost falling apart from being shaken by the aunties. The riot police say they don't dare to lay a hand on the civilians!"

Qian Duoduo gritted her teeth and slammed her chubby hand hard on the large desk.

"Loan disbursement! Open the doors and disburse the loan immediately!"

He stood up, leaning on the table, and gave the order while panting heavily.

"Withdraw all the excess reserves from the treasury. As long as the supply is open and the people see that there is enough money, the run on banks will naturally subside."

The vice president swallowed hard and quickly moved to the settlement computer next to him.

"Manager, I'll go into the back-end system right away and transfer the large amount of liquidity to the front-end teller machines."

"Hurry up! Stop dawdling!" Qian Duoduo paced anxiously around the room with her hands behind her back.

The sound of keyboard typing was particularly crisp in the quiet office.

The deputy bank manager skillfully inserted the highest-level key shield and entered two dynamic passwords.

The Enter key was pressed heavily.

The blue loading progress bar slowly crawled across the screen.

Qian Duoduo walked behind the computer chair and craned her neck.

Two pairs of eyes were fixed on the center of the screen, on the data box representing the bank's life-saving funds.

Eighty percent. Ninety-nine percent.

With a crisp "ding," the page refreshed successfully.

The vice president rubbed his eyes, and his body suddenly stiffened into a wooden block.

He looked as if he had seen a ghost in broad daylight, his mouth agape, but no sound came out of his throat.

Qian Duoduo's gaze followed that direction, and her obese body swayed violently.

In the middle of the screen, the Hantong main account, which should have held hundreds of billions of yuan in liquid funds, now had only a long string of pitiful zeros left.

All the massive deposits and margins that originally belonged to the Lingxiao Consortium and hundreds of upstream and downstream companies have vanished.

In the system's liquidation list, a record in red is clearly displayed.

The funds were fully and legally transferred to an overseas offshore account and a branch in another province in the early hours of last night.

They left Jingzhou completely clean, not a single drop of oil or fat.

"Where's the money? Where did all the money in our account go?!"

Qian Duoduo's eyes bulged outwards as he grabbed the vice president by the collar and spat in his face.

The vice president's hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the mouse, and he managed to open the details of the fund's flow.

"It's all...it's all gone! Yan Qingfeng invoked the legal transfer clause for enterprises."

He closed his eyes in despair.

"Cross-border clearing, legal withdrawal... they didn't leave us a single penny of our initial investment!"

These words were like a giant iron hammer, slamming hard into the back of Qian Duoduo's head.

He felt a tearing, agonizing pain in his chest, as if a rusty iron claw was gripping his heart tightly.

The air seemed to be sucked away instantly, and he opened his mouth wide, like a fathead fish thrown onto the shore.

"Well……"

Qian Duoduo rolled her eyes and made a strange gurgling sound in her throat.

He clutched his left chest tightly with his chubby hand, his legs buckled, and he collapsed heavily to his knees on the carpet with a thud.

"Bank manager! What's wrong, bank manager!"

The deputy bank manager was terrified and rushed over to support him.

But Qian Duoduo's body had already begun to convulse, and cold sweat instantly soaked through his expensive shirt.

A period of chaos ensued.

The sirens of ambulances pierced the sky over Jingzhou with a mournful wail.

Several people in white coats carried a stretcher and, with the help of the security guards on the first floor clearing a path, barely managed to push through the angry crowd of people withdrawing money outside.

They hurriedly lifted Qian Duoduo into the ambulance.

The oxygen mask was quickly put on that chubby face that was bluish-purple.

Just as the car door was about to close, a thick arm suddenly reached out.

Suddenly, Qian Duoduo unleashed a burst of strength, like a dying ember, and ripped off his oxygen mask.

His fingernails dug deeply into the vice president's wrist, his eyes filled with utter despair and fear.

"Call Secretary Li quickly... the money's gone! The Lingxiao Consortium has taken it all!"