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

"Clang!"

A priceless old Duan inkstone was smashed hard onto the mahogany floor by Sha Ruijin.

The finest clay shattered into dust, and thick black ink splattered all over the ground.

The murky ink stains directly blackened his shiny, high-end leather shoes.

Sha Ruijin was panting heavily, his chest heaving violently like a fully drawn bellows.

Those bloodshot eyes held a frenzied madness, like that of a dying beast.

"Three hundred billion US dollars! That's over two hundred billion RMB!"

Sha Ruijin kicked over the small tea table next to him and roared, pointing at Li Dakang's nose.

"Even if you sold the entire Hantong Provincial Party Committee compound by weight, you wouldn't even have enough to cover the interest on this compensation!"

Li Dakang huddled in the corner of the leather sofa.

His gray hair was a mess, making him look like a drowned dog that had just been pulled out of the water.

His lips trembled, and he couldn't utter a coherent sentence for a long time.

"Secretary Sha...that bastard George has really gone mad."

Li Dakang swallowed hard, his voice trembling with tears.

"He turned around and accused us in the International Court of Justice; he's trying to drag Handong down with him!"

"How dare you say that!"

Sha Ruijin roared, spitting all over Li Dakang's face.

"You're the one who invited this plague in! The Foreign Affairs Office's phones are ringing off the hook!"

Sha Ruijin's legs went weak, and he gripped the edge of the mahogany desk tightly.

He knew better than anyone that if he lost the case, Handong Finance would be declared bankrupt.

Their political lives would be ended on the spot in Beijing, without even the chance to retire in obscurity.

Just as the two were as anxious as ants on a hot pan, preparing to swallow their pride and go to Lingxiao Manor to kowtow and beg for mercy.

"Bang bang bang".

There was a rapid knocking on the solid wood door of the office.

Secretary Bai pushed open the door and came in, sweating profusely and panting heavily.

"Secretary Sha, Mayor Li, we don't need to go to the manor..."

Secretary Bai wiped the sweat from his forehead, his voice trembling.

"Lin Yubing, the chief legal counsel of the Lingxiao Consortium, is already waiting in the reception room downstairs."

Sha Ruijin was stunned for a moment, and a flash of humiliation crossed his eyes.

They're not here to offer help at all.

This is clearly a perfectly timed move, to reap the rewards of victory!

But he had no choice but to grit his teeth and swallow his anger.

"Please let her in." Sha Ruijin slumped into the boss's chair, looking as if all his energy had been drained.

Two minutes later.

Lin Yubing walked confidently into the office, wearing her signature red-soled high heels.

She wore a burgundy haute couture suit, and behind her gold-rimmed glasses, she exuded a cold and sharp aura.

With his aura fully unleashed, he completely overshadowed the two powerful regional officials.

Without saying a word of politeness, she simply slammed a thin document onto the large desk.

"Secretary Sha, Master Yan is kind-hearted and cannot bear to see the local officials of Handong being bullied by foreigners."

Lin Yubing pushed up his glasses, a professional smirk playing on his lips.

"This memorandum is our Lingxiao Consortium's exclusive plan to help the Provincial Party Committee 'settle accounts'."

Li Dakang lunged forward and snatched the document as if it were a lifeline.

He stared wide-eyed, his bloodshot eyes scanning the text rapidly.

"Is Lingxiao willing to pay to buy out the debts of this international lawsuit?"

Li Dakang suddenly raised his head, his voice changed, and his eyes shone with wild joy.

"Could it even help us resolve the public relations crisis facing the William Group overseas?"

"Mayor Li, don't be so happy. There's no such thing as a free lunch."

Lin Yubing pulled over a chair, sat down gracefully, and crossed her legs.

"You know how things are with Master Yan. He spends hundreds of billions of dollars cleaning up your messes, so he has to get some compensation for his hard work."

She extended her nail-painted index finger and pointed in mid-air at the supplementary terms on the last page of the document.

"First, the exploration and mining rights for all mineral resources in the entire territory of Handong Province will be exclusively held by Lingxiao for the next seventy years."

"Secondly, the 51% absolute controlling stake in the provincial commercial banks must be transferred to Lingxiao Financial."

The air seemed to have been sucked out in that instant.

"You're dreaming!"

Sha Ruijin suddenly stood up, gripping the table tightly with both hands, his eyes almost bulging out.

"Mineral resources are vital to the national economy and people's livelihood! Provincial banks are the purse strings for Handong's finances!"

He gritted his teeth and squeezed the words out from between them.

"Giving you water, electricity, and gas is one thing, but now you want to take everything from us, even the mines and banks?"

"Yan Qingfeng isn't negotiating; this is blatant robbery!"

Faced with the provincial party secretary's furious rage, Lin Yubing didn't even flinch.

"Blatant robbery? Secretary Sha, you're exaggerating. This is a fair trade."

She picked up the intact glass of iced tea from the table and gently shook it twice.

"You can tear up this memorandum and go to the International Court of Justice to reason with those bloodsuckers on Wall Street."

Lin Yubing raised her eyes, her gaze sweeping coldly across Sha Ruijin's face like a blade.

"However, we'll have to wait for the international arbitration ruling to be issued."

"You and Mayor Li probably don't even have the right to throw a tantrum in this office anymore."

Hit the nail on the head.

This statement directly exposed Sha Ruijin's last line of feigned defense.

He was like a shadow puppet whose spine had been removed, all his strength drained away in an instant.

Yes, if they don't sign this unequal treaty, Handong will go bankrupt, and he will immediately be placed under investigation.

The agreement was signed, and Handong became a mere shell of its former self, completely reduced to Yan Qingfeng's private money exchange.

Sha Ruijin closed his eyes in pain, his eyelids twitching uncontrollably.

His hand holding the pen trembled like a leaf, hovering over the paper and refusing to fall.

Li Dakang stood to the side, like a walking corpse, too exhausted to even utter a word of advice.

At this moment, the dignity of the government was trampled into the deepest, bottomless quagmire by capital.

Meanwhile, in a cheap rental room in a village within Jingzhou city.

The air was filled with a pungent musty smell and the sour stench of fermenting inferior alcohol.

Hou Liangping, wearing a pilling gray sweater, slumped on a worn-out sofa covered in cigarette butts.

He held a half-flattened bottle of Erguotou liquor in his hand, tilted his head back, and took a big gulp.

"Cough cough cough..."

The spicy liquid choked him and brought tears to his eyes, but he seemed not to feel any pain.

He stared intently at the old television set in front of him, its screen displaying static.

On the television, news was being broadcast that the Lingxiao Consortium had taken over the entire water, electricity, and gas network of Handong.

That aloof and high-ranking Yan Qingfeng has actually become a living bodhisattva who saves the people of Handong!

"Savior? Yan Qingfeng is clearly a monster who eats people without spitting out the bones!"

Hou Liangping smashed the bottle against the wall, shattering glass shards all over the floor.

His once clear and upright eyes were now filled with a frenzied madness.

Sha Ruijin chickened out, and Li Dakang knelt down.

Even Team Leader Qi, sent from Beijing, was so frightened that he scurried back to his hometown with his tail between his legs.

The official path has been completely blocked by Yan Qingfeng.

But the obsession in Hou Liangping's heart had not been extinguished!

"The authorities are rotten to the core; they can't control you with the sword of the law."

Hou Liangping gritted his yellowed teeth, his eyes flashing with a desperate, reckless glint.

"Then I'll drown you, you capitalist, alive in a vast ocean of the common people!"

He stumbled to his feet and pulled an unregistered old-fashioned mobile phone from under the messy coffee table.

He pressed his greasy fingers against the keys and skillfully dialed a number he knew by heart.

That was the landline of Lao Zhang, the union representative of Dafeng Factory.

These laid-off workers from the bottom rungs of society are the powder keg in Handong, ready to explode at any moment.

The phone rang seven or eight times before it was finally answered.

A rough, weary male voice came from the other end of the line.

"Feed? Who?"

Hou Liangping took a deep breath and deliberately lowered his voice.

The tone of his voice carried a ruthless and seductive quality.

"Old Zhang, don't worry about who I am. The Lingxiao Consortium has taken over all the banks in Handong these past few days, and the resettlement funds for your Dafeng Factory are stuck in their accounts."

His knuckles were white as he gripped the phone, like a venomous snake flicking its tongue in the shadows.

"Just cursing at home won't do any good. Tomorrow morning, take your bunch of desperate brothers and block the entrance to the Lingxiao Building. Without bloodshed, you'll never get this life-saving money back!"