Yang Ruoqian spent the night fearing culture.
This was not a normal fear.
Normal people feared cash flow, competitors, lawsuits, or sudden illness.
Yang feared employees developing habits.
Good habits were especially terrifying.
Bad habits could be corrected.
Good habits became invisible infrastructure.
Invisible infrastructure was the system's favorite kind of profit.
The promotion-lane consultation had started as a small staff comment window.
It had ended with quiet work being protected, paid nominations being rejected, and outside creators praising Xplendi for removing guilt.
This was already bad.
Worse, staff seemed to have enjoyed being consulted.
At nine, Yang opened the internal chat.
The first message was from HR.
Should we keep a small consultation step for future staff-facing process changes?
Yang stared at the sentence.
Future.
Staff-facing.
Process changes.
Each word was a small shovel digging his grave.
Chang Zhiqing entered with coffee.
