Li Yutian held his delicate porcelain teacup like he wanted to smash it against the wall, but he kept himself from doing it; after all, this was the last complete set he owned in this crumbling world. He looked thoroughly choked up, his face tight with a frustration he could barely contain. When Jing Shu came in, it was his nephew Li Bailong and Xiao Lizi who met her at the door, their expressions grim and watchful.
"Want something to drink?" Xiao Lizi asked quietly, his voice barely a whisper in the tense office.
"Same as always, chrysanthemum tea," Jing Shu said, her hand waving through the air as she sounded breezy and unbothered.
Still, Li Yutian felt a pressure hit him like a cold wave the moment she stepped further into the room. That girl had secretly gone to America, and she came back with a whole different air about her, like the sharp, metallic scent of killing hadn't left her clothes yet.
"Sit, sit." He gestured for her to take a seat on the worn chair, then he couldn't help but slam the teacup down on the table with a sharp crack that echoed in the silence. He looked guilty for a long beat, his eyes avoiding hers. "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 is going on?" she asked, her gaze fixed on him.
He sighed and told her everything, the words spilling out in a rush of bitter honesty.
"You know we have 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 to the workers."
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 of the city's hunger.
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 in the apocalypse.
"Yesterday I took people out to help dig a road," Li Yutian said, his voice dropping an octave. "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 had 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 and goods.
Jing Shu frowned deeply. 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 to the higher authorities?
"Who was the person?" she asked, her voice cold.
Li Yutian pointed upward toward the ceiling, his finger trembling slightly. "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 as she processed this. 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 of the transition. People of her rank back then never got close to such powerful figures; her 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 later, 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 to the theft, 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 expensive medicine. His son is 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 the city."
Jing Shu looked puzzled. If his father was dying, their family would be done for once he passed, right? Why are people afraid then? That didn't make sense; the timing was off, and he couldn't be dying that fast.
"The person in power's wife is from the imperial capital; she married down," Li Yutian revealed, leaning in closer. "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 is the classic spoiled rich kid. He didn't cause trouble while someone kept an eye on him, but now his father is dying, and before the capital appoints someone new, Jin Baba plans to seize whatever he can and head back. Who would dare stop him? The man was respected, he did a lot for Wu City, and now his reputation is going to be ruined by his own blood."
Yeah. Wu City had people, the capital had people; power was tangled beyond easy description. He had even swallowed Li Yutian's warehouse goods whole. What would he not dare to do?
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 had given all their time to work, to the unit, or to the people, and they simply didn't have time to raise children properly.
She hadn't expected the people who took her supplies to have so much backing. Both father and mother were formidable, and there was an uncle who was someone important in the central government. Still, there were ways to deal with spoiled brats. It would be messy, sure, but were her supplies, the ones she had fought for 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 soft sofa and pulling out her phone. She sent a few messages to Su Mali and Zhou Bapi. If she remembered correctly, she had once asked both of them why they had risked going after her honeysuckle; Zhou Bapi had even gone all the way to Guangdong just to find the flowers.
"For my Uncle Jin," Su Mali had said back then. "He is a good man; I don't want him to be sick anymore."
"Isn't it that old bastard? He has 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 onto the floor. Hot tea splashed everywhere, soaking into the rug.
"I don't care if Li Yutian loses what is under his seat," he snarled, his eyes flashing with rage, "but the things people put in my care, I will get them back. I will risk losing my position to fight for them; even if Jin Baba retaliates, so be it!"
If they did this, there would 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 from the capital to take revenge.
Jing Shu smiled, her eyes bright and cold. "Fine, let's go. I refuse to believe there's no justice left. If worse comes to worst, we will take it to the capital!"
Li Yutian swallowed hard and stared at her, kind of stunned by her intensity. Was she really that reckless?
"You don't have…any plan at all?"