The announcement was scheduled for 9:00 a.m.
They chose the time deliberately—early enough to control the narrative, late enough to ensure maximum visibility. No one likes to admit structural failure, but if it must be done, it should be done when attention is highest and dissent is still forming.
I watched it unfold from my office, not on the main screen, but on a secondary monitor.
Distance preserves judgment.
---
The language was careful.
Painfully so.
Words like realignment, enhanced accountability, distributed authority.
No mention of mistakes.
No admission of error.
They were still trying to preserve dignity after losing control.
That, too, was predictable.
---
Han Zhe stood beside me.
"They accepted all conditions."
"Yes."
"Public. Documented. Irreversible."
"Yes."
"They moved fast."
"Because delay would imply reluctance," I said. "And reluctance would confirm weakness."
He nodded slowly.
"They're afraid."
"They should be."
---
Fear is not a problem.
Unacknowledged fear is.
---
By noon, the internal channels were flooded.
Not outrage.
Not celebration.
Confusion.
People were trying to understand what this meant for them—not in theory, but in practice.
Who decides now?
Who signs off?
Who takes responsibility when things go wrong?
The questions revealed something important.
For years, responsibility had been abstract.
Now it was about to become personal.
---
The first resistance appeared within hours.
Subtle.
Polite.
A department head requested "clarification" on authority boundaries.
Translation: Where can I still hide?
I responded with a diagram.
Not words.
Boxes.
Lines.
Names.
Responsibility mapped cleanly.
No overlap.
No ambiguity.
No escape routes.
---
The response was immediate.
Another message.
This exposes individuals to disproportionate risk.
I replied.
That risk already existed. You simply weren't carrying it.
Silence followed.
---
The second resistance came louder.
A coalition.
Five senior figures, aligned not by ideology but by habit.
They requested a collective discussion.
I declined.
Not because discussion was unnecessary.
Because collectives dilute accountability.
---
Shen Yu reviewed the request.
"They're framing it as concern for stability."
"They're framing it as fear of visibility."
"They won't like being denied."
"They don't have to like it."
---
The third resistance came quietly.
And it was the most dangerous.
---
A revision draft surfaced.
Unofficial.
Circulating informally.
It kept the structure intact—but reintroduced contextual discretion.
A phrase so vague it could swallow any rule whole.
Someone was trying to resurrect ambiguity under the guise of flexibility.
---
I addressed it publicly.
Immediately.
Without attribution.
Contextual discretion without predefined limits nullifies accountability. This revision contradicts the framework and will not be adopted.
That sentence did more than reject a document.
It named the tactic.
---
That night, my father called.
"You're forcing a reckoning," he said.
"No," I replied. "I'm removing delays."
"They'll blame you."
"They already do."
"And when this stabilizes?"
"They'll forget," I said. "That's how systems survive."
He exhaled.
"You've crossed from influence into authorship."
"Yes."
"That's a lonely place."
"I know."
---
The reckoning arrived sooner than expected.
Not through collapse.
Through exposure.
---
A mid-level director resigned.
No scandal.
No protest.
Just a simple statement citing "misalignment with the new accountability framework."
Others followed.
Quietly.
One by one.
People who had thrived in opacity.
Who mistook discretion for wisdom.
Who had built careers on being necessary but undefined.
---
The exits created space.
Space reveals structure.
Structure reveals truth.
---
By the end of the week, productivity dipped.
Predictably.
Then it stabilized.
Then it improved.
Not in speed.
In coherence.
---
Gu Chengyi brought the numbers.
"Decision cycles are slower," he said.
"Yes."
"But failure rates are dropping."
"As expected."
"And escalation paths are clearer."
"That's the point."
He studied me.
"You realize they're starting to trust the system."
"Trust isn't the goal," I replied. "Reliability is."
---
The final illusion broke during a leadership forum.
Unscripted.
Someone asked the question no one had wanted to voice.
"What happens if this doesn't work?"
The room went quiet.
They waited.
For reassurance.
For rhetoric.
For comfort.
---
I answered instead.
"Then we will know exactly why."
That unsettled them more than false certainty ever could.
---
"What if the pressure becomes too much?" someone pressed.
"Then those who cannot carry it will step aside," I said calmly. "And those who remain will be capable."
"That sounds harsh."
"It's honest."
---
Afterward, the chair approached me privately.
"You've changed the tone," he said.
"No," I replied. "I removed the pretense."
He hesitated.
"For years, we believed control required ambiguity."
"And now?"
"And now I see it required courage."
I met his gaze.
"Then don't waste the moment."
---
That evening, alone, I reviewed the timeline.
The rejection.
The departure.
The absence.
The return—not as participant, but as reference.
This had never been about power accumulation.
It had been about definition.
---
People think power announces itself.
It doesn't.
It clarifies.
It draws lines that cannot be unseen.
And once those lines exist—
illusion has nowhere left to hide.
---
Chapter Twenty-Five was not explosive.
No climactic confrontation.
No dramatic collapse.
Just something far more irreversible.
The moment the system understood—
that it could no longer pretend not to know.
And that knowledge,
once internalized,
cannot be undone.