Reborn a day later, I emptied my enemy's possessions beforehand.

Sun Guiying spoke first: "Old Liu? Old Ma? How did you find your way here?"

Her voice was high-pitched and hoarse, forced out from behind her swollen lips, sounding strange.

Old Liu realized what was happening and quickly said, "Mrs. Zhou, we're looking for Mr. Zhou. Where is he?"

"What do you want with him?" Sun Guiying asked. "Has something happened at the pharmaceutical factory?"

Old Liu and Old Ma exchanged a glance.

Old Liu took a deep breath, as if brewing some bad news that was difficult to say, his voice tense:

"Mrs. Zhou, something terrible has happened. The pharmaceutical factory—the pharmaceutical factory has been emptied out."

"What?"

Sun Guiying's voice suddenly rose eight octaves, and the flesh on her cheek twitched. She covered half of her face in pain, but her hand bounced away as soon as it touched her skin, as if she had been burned.

"The pharmaceutical factory has been emptied out!" Old Ma repeated, his tone more forceful, as if he were adding weight to a scale.

"When I came to work this morning, everything in the guard room was gone—the tables, chairs, computers, and security cameras were all gone."

All the equipment in the workshop was gone, as were the raw material warehouse and the finished product warehouse. Even the packaging material warehouse was completely cleared out.

Wang Jinshan squeezed forward from behind, grabbed Lao Liu's arm, and said in a loud and urgent voice, his lips trembling:

"What did you say? The pharmaceutical factory was emptied out? Which pharmaceutical factory?"

"The First Pharmaceutical Factory, the one General Manager Zhou owns in the north of the city." Old Liu was startled by his movement, his voice trembling slightly.

"Last night I was on the night shift, and General Manager Zhou came over and told all of us on duty to go home and rest, so we left."

When Lao Ma came to take over this morning, he found the factory completely empty.

When I heard the news and rushed over, everything was really gone.

"What about the Second Pharmaceutical Factory?" Sun Guiying's voice became even shriller.

Old Liu shook his head: "We don't know yet, we haven't had a chance to go to the Second Pharmaceutical Factory."

Sun Guiying's complexion—if it was still noticeable given how swollen she was—became even more unsightly.

She turned to look at Wang Jinshan, and Wang Jinshan looked back at her. The expressions on their swollen faces twisted into a common shape—fear.

Zhao Shuzhen whispered something from behind:

"What... what's going on? First our house was emptied, and now it's the pharmaceutical factory..."

Her voice grew softer and softer, and the last few words were almost squeezed out of her throat, as if she were asking everyone present, or perhaps herself.

Sun Guiying took a deep breath, swallowed the smell of blood from her nose, and her voice suddenly became calm and steady, like the tone of someone making a decision when facing a crisis at work.

However, coming from a face so swollen it's unrecognizable, it just doesn't sound right at all.

"Let's go to the pharmaceutical factory. I want to see it for myself."

Wang Jinshan also said, "I'll go take a look too."

Sun Guiying turned to Lao Liu and said:

"Could you call us a ride-hailing service? My phone isn't with me, and theirs isn't either."

Old Liu quickly took out his phone and called a car.

Several people came out of the villa and stood at the entrance of the community waiting.

The sunlight was bright, shining on their swollen faces, making every scar clearly visible.

The residents and passersby coming and going couldn't help but take a second look, and then quickly looked away.

A few minutes later, a white ride-hailing car stopped at the entrance of the residential area.

Sun Guiying opened the back door and got in, Wang Jinshan followed her into the back seat, and Zhao Shuzhen sat in the passenger seat.

The driver glanced at the two "pig heads" in the back seat in the rearview mirror, then at the other "pig head" in the passenger seat. His lips twitched, but he didn't say anything. He shifted gears and stepped on the gas.

Old Ma and Old Liu rode their electric bikes and followed the white ride-hailing car, heading towards the No. 1 Pharmaceutical Factory in the north of the city.

Outside the car window, the city's morning rush hour was slowly passing, and the traffic on the streets was gradually thinning out.

Sun Guiying leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and pondered a question over and over in her mind—

What exactly is going on?

What exactly did that old bastard Zhou Haibing do?

Why did he do that?

Where did he go?

She opened her eyes and glanced at the buildings rushing past outside the window.

The white ride-hailing car turned a corner, went onto the overpass, and sped off towards the northern suburbs.

……

Soon, the ride-hailing car arrived at the pharmaceutical factory. Sun Guiying, Wang Jinshan, and Zhao Shuzhen got out of the car and immediately saw the electric bikes parked in front of the First Pharmaceutical Factory, as well as Lao Li and Xiao Zhao standing at the factory gate looking around.

When Old Li saw Sun Guiying get out of the car, he hurried over to greet her, but stopped after taking two steps—he saw Sun Guiying's face.

His face was swollen like a steamed bun, with several clear finger marks on his left cheek and dried scabs hanging from the corner of his mouth.

He glanced back again and saw that Wang Jinshan and Zhao Shuzhen's faces weren't much better. The three of them standing together looked like they had just come down from some underground fighting ring.

Old Li opened his mouth, wanting to ask but not daring to, and finally swallowed back the words that were on the tip of his tongue, changing the subject to the pharmaceutical factory.

His voice was urgent and panicked, and his finger trembled as he pointed to the factory area behind him:

"Mrs. Zhou, something terrible has happened! The pharmaceutical factory—the pharmaceutical factory has been completely emptied! The workshops, warehouses, office buildings, everything is gone! Nothing is left!"

Sun Guiying didn't say anything, her face gloomy, and she walked into the factory area in her men's slippers, which were two sizes too big.

Wang Jinshan and Zhao Shuzhen followed behind, the three of them passing through the empty guardhouse—

Old Li shouted from behind, "The guardhouse is empty too!"

I walked along the cement road in front of the office building and pushed open the door to the production workshop.

The fluorescent lights were still on, humming.

There was nothing under the light.

Sun Guiying stood at the workshop entrance, her gaze sweeping from the empty floor to the empty walls, and then from the walls to the pipes hanging from the ceiling.

Her lips were trembling, not from the cold, but from anger and fear tangled together, like two ropes wrapped around her throat, making it hard for her to breathe.

She recognized those machines: crusher, mixer, granulator, tablet press, filling machine—

Each and every one of them was added by Zhou Haibing over the years. Although she didn't understand what these machines were used for, she knew they were valuable and that they were the lifeblood of the company.

Now it's all gone.

She then turned and went to the finished goods warehouse.

The roller shutter door was half open, and she bent down and squeezed inside.

Rows of shelves are gone, tens of thousands of boxes of medicine are gone, the forklift marks on the ground are still there, but the forklifts are gone too.

She stood in the middle of the warehouse, suddenly turned around to look at the security guards who had followed her in, and asked in a shrill voice that sounded unlike her own: "Who was on duty last night?"

Old Liu squeezed his way up from the back of the crowd, his face pale: "Mrs. Zhou, it's my shift."

"What exactly happened last night? Explain yourself clearly, word for word!"