Li Yutian held his teacup like he wanted to smash it, but he kept himself from doing it, after all this was the last set. He looked thoroughly choked up. When Jing Shu came in, it was his nephew Li Bailong, and Xiao Lizi who met her at the door.
"Want something to drink?" Xiao Lizi asked quietly.
"Same as always, chrysanthemum tea," Jing Shu waved her hand, sounding breezy.
Still, Li Yutian felt a pressure hit him like a cold wave. That girl had secretly gone to America, and she came back with a whole different air about her, like the scent of killing hadn't left her clothes yet.
"Sit, sit." He gestured for her to take a seat, then couldn't help but slam the teacup down on the table with a crack. He looked guilty for a long beat. "Jing Shu, I'm sorry. I didn't keep your stuff safe."
"Captain Li, what exactly happened? Stuff from your warehouse got taken too, what's going on?" she asked.
He sighed and told her everything.
"You know we've been auctioning off weapons from the warehouse at high prices, getting monthly grain sponsorships worth a million virtual coins, then assigning distribution to specific people. Grain that can be stored long-term goes into Wu City's food reserves, and the stuff that can't be stored gets used as pay and redistributed down the chain."
Jing Shu frowned and nodded. That was true. The good stuff trickled down to official staff leaders and big canteens before it reached ordinary people, and often only in tiny bits, but it existed. Most of the sponsored grain had been mixed with other edible goods and handed out to civilians, but the donations barely scratched the surface.
Still, the good pay and perks for formal employees gave others incentive, loyalty came from money and supplies being delivered on time. That was the real job security.
"Yesterday I took people out to help dig a road," Li Yutian said, "halfway through, Xiao Lizi called me saying something happened. When I got back, the distribution clerk and that person were already gone. They took last month's supplies and everything I'd prepared for this month, they emptied the whole warehouse, and your supplies went with it." He grit his teeth, the loss was hundreds of thousands — maybe over a million virtual coins worth of food.
Jing Shu frowned. That shouldn't happen. Nobody usually dared touch supplies tied to Wu City's administration. The administrators here weren't bad people, and distribution clerks weren't that high up—how could Li Yutian be stammering like this, not even daring to report them?
"Who was the person?" she asked.
Li Yutian pointed upward, "The son of the person in power in Wu City, Jin Baba."
Oh. So the corruption in Wu City really was connected to him.
Jing Shu knit her brows. In her past life she hadn't known much about Wu City's ruler, only that after he died Tyrant took over, she couldn't remember the exact timing. People of her rank back then never got close to such powerful figures; the only memory was that in the fourth year, when things were dire, he opened the city's reserves and let people have grain.
"Is he a decent man?" she asked.
But when Tyrant took office, his decisions had been extreme.
"Even if it's his son, he can't just take our stuff, can he? Would the ruler really allow this?" she asked. If the person in power had given his blessing, then her supplies might be gone for good. You can't fight a higher-up without thinking about the consequences if you try to appeal to the capital.
Li Yutian took a long breath and shook his head. "You don't know, do you? The person in power is dying, they're keeping him alive with medicine. His son's probably trying to grab everything he can in these last moments. Nobody wants to be the next one to go up against him now, those who tried even took extra oil and natural gas and a lot of cash. People are just waiting for him to finish taking what he can and leave."
Jing Shu looked puzzled. If his father was dying, their family would be done for, right? Why are people afraid then? That didn't make sense, the timing was off, he couldn't be dying that fast.
"The person in power's wife is from the imperial capital, she married down," Li Yutian revealed. "His wife's family is even more prestigious than his, and his uncle is the third-in-command, an appointee from the capital.
Jin Baba's the classic spoiled rich kid. He didn't cause trouble while someone kept an eye on him, but now his father's dying, and before the capital appoints someone new, Jin Baba plans to seize whatever he can and head back. Who'd dare stop him? The man was respected, he did a lot for Wu City, and now his reputation's going to be ruined."
Yeah. Wu City had people, the capital had people; power was tangled beyond easy description. He'd even swallowed Li Yutian's warehouse goods whole. What wouldn't he dare?
Jing Shu fell quiet. It wasn't rare for successful people to have kids who messed everything up, going to prison or worse. Maybe they'd given their time to work, to the unit, to the people, and didn't have time to raise children.
She hadn't expected the people who took her supplies to have so much backing. Both father and mother were formidable, and an uncle who was someone important. Still, there were ways to deal with spoiled brats. It'd be messy, sure, but were her supplies, the ones she'd fought and risked her life to get in America, really that easy to take?
"What are you going to do now?" she asked, leaning back on the sofa and pulling out her phone. She sent a few messages to Su Mali and Zhou Bapi. If she remembered correctly, she'd once asked both of them why they'd risked going after her honeysuckle; Zhou Bapi had even gone to Guangdong just to find the flowers.
"For my Uncle Jin," Su Mali had said back then, "he's a good man, I don't want him to be sick."
"Isn't it that old bastard? He's been tormented by illness for years, now with the end times it's even harder to find medicine," Zhou Bapi had said.
So the key person was still the one in power.
There was a sharp crack.
Li Yutian had thrown down his teacup. Hot tea splashed everywhere.
"I don't care if Li Yutian loses what's under his seat," he snarled, "but the things people put in my care, I will get them back. I'll risk losing my position to fight for them, even if Jin Baba retaliates, so be it!"
If they did this, there'd be consequences. They might get the supplies back for now, but when the person in power died, the backlash could be brutal. Maybe his relation would be the one sent to take revenge.
Jing Shu smiled, eyes bright. "Fine, let's go. I refuse to believe there's no justice left. If worse comes to worst, we'll take it to the capital!"
Li Yutian swallowed and stared at her, kind of stunned. Was she really that reckless?
"You don't have…any plan at all?"