Seeing Lu Qi rushing towards Lin Dongxue, Chen Shi did a run-up from behind and rushed directly onto Lu Qi's back, gouging at his eyes hard.

Lu Qi yelled in pain and slammed Chen Shi, who was hanging on his back, against the wall. Chen Shi felt like he had been run over by a road roller. All his internal organs seemed to be squashed flat. He vomited a big mouthful of blood and weakly fell down.

Like a mad lion, Lu Qi turned around and kicked at Chen Shi angrily, but his eyes hadn't recovered yet. His kick missed and a large piece of the wall’s exterior was kicked off.

Chen Shi endured the severe pain and hurried to the side. Lu Qi's eyesight barely recovered. His eyes were red with blood and the corners of his mouth showed a wicked grin. He exclaimed proudly, "Look at you. You look just like a dog!"

It was at that dangerous moment when reinforcements arrived. Several criminal police officers rushed in and pointed their guns at Lu Qi. Lu Qi wrinkled his nose in disgust, turned, and rushed into the manager's office. When the police chased him, they saw him stepping on the desk, protecting his face with both hands, and rushed directly towards the window.

With a crash, the glass shattered and his burly body blasted out of the building like a cannonball and fell down from the fourth floor, crushing a police car parked below.

Lin Qiupu exposed half of his body from the window, fired three shots at the sky and shouted, "Stop that guy!"

The police officers below immediately surrounded Lu Qi in a circle. Lu Qi was hit by several bullets and had jumped from such a height. No matter how tough he was, he was at his end. When the police surrounded him at gunpoint, Lu Qi was helpless and kept panting angrily. He kept glaring at the police around him with his frightening eyes.

Upstairs, Lin Dongxue helped Chen Shi up. The smash just then broke several of Chen Shi's ribs, and he felt some pain when he walked around. Looking down from the window, he saw Lu Qi was cornered like a stray dog.

Knowing that he was unable to turn the situation around, Lu Qi knelt down, stretched out his hands towards the sky, and roared from his core, "Heaven, why have you abandoned me?! Why did you abandon me?! Why did you abandon me?!?!"

The voice went straight up towards the heavens, and even people from a few streets away could hear him. The police officers who were closest to him were shaken by the roar that even their hearts were shaking. The windows of the shop nearby even cracked.

At the last shout, Lu Qi's eyes widened as if he had swallowed something. His fierce face was frozen in an angry expression, and then he fell straight down with his eyes open.

A long time passed before the police dared to move forward. Someone checked under Lu Qi's nose and found that he had stopped breathing.

It took the police a long time to clean up the scene. Out of the staff, one had died and two were injured. The manager had a leg torn off and even the doctor was shocked. The police suspected that Lu Qi committed suicide for his crime. Later, the autopsy report caused a big stir. He had died of a cardiovascular burst.

It was his three loud shouts, coupled with overexcited emotions, that caused his cardiovascular system to burst before dying suddenly.

Peng Sijue had never seen such a cause of death after conducting so many autopsies on corpses.

But there was a question that was raised. Why did Lu Qi suddenly go to Chengxing Company to "settle the score" and what was that about the video he mentioned? When the police searched his residence, they unexpectedly found a video. The video seemed to have been taken secretly. It was a conversation between Su Chan and an engineer. It was mentioned that the corpse was too large to be transported by rocket, and a part of it had to be left behind.

However, after verification, this "engineer" with his back to the camera didn’t exist. The video was forged by Su Chan in order to achieve her own purposes.

Perhaps the inspiration for her forging this video came from the hypothesis put forward by the police. The police never found Dong Xiao's body in the end.

The "engineer" looked a bit like Cao Man from the back. Speaking of which, he had also disappeared along with Su Chan. Lin Qiupu suspected that the two commercial spies colluded to perform this act. The betrayed Lu Qi went crazy.

It was just that the police couldn’t find Su Chan. It was later discovered that all her information was forged. Ever since Lu Qi's death, she had mysteriously disappeared, and this case was left unsettled.

The New Year was fast approaching. In a nursing home on the outskirts of Long'an, an old person sat in a wheelchair looking at the koi in a temperature-controlled pool. Su Chan, dressed in black, approached him from behind and put a USB flash drive on the stone table in front of him. She said, "Father, I got it."

The old man grabbed her hand, patted it lightly, and said, "Well done. Not only did you get this core technology, you also destroyed the Zhuoyuan Company. Soon, we Hanjie can make a comeback again."

Thinking of all these years of hard work and sleeping on brushwood tasting gall[1], which made you so fond that you would be unwilling to let go.

Just as the old man was immersed in his ambition of reviving Hanjie, Su Chan very untimely asked, "Father, I... May I take a break?"

"Take a break? How long do you plan to have this break for?" The old man sneered. "You only have a few years of youth. If you don't make good use of it when you’re young, it will be too late to regret it later."

Hearing these cold-blooded utilitarian words, tears instantly swelled up in Su Chan’s eyes. She knelt down and held the old man’s knees. “I... I don’t want to live this kind of life anymore! I don’t want to lie, scam, or play with people’s feelings anymore. I want to live an ordinary life. Please, father... I can do something else. I can go to your company as an office clerk!"

The old man stretched out his dry hand to hold up Su Chan's chin. Compared with his face full of wrinkles and age spots, her skin was plump, shiny and elastic, like a high quality piece of Xuan paper.

He said meaningfully, "My dear daughter, you were born with a beauty that is unparalleled in the world. This beauty is like a natural disability, making your life destined to be extraordinary. No matter how poor your background was, you would have been destined to be what men dream of. Their pursuit of you re-empowers you with value. You should know how to use it to find a place in this man's world!"

Su Chan's tears fell on the old hands of her adoptive father. In order to complete her mission, her heart had been broken many times. All she wanted were ordinary things.

A defiant anger rose in her heart. She grabbed the ashtray on the table and raised it at the USB disk. "I sacrificed too much for this!"

"You dare?!" The adoptive father growled with a low voice. His cloudy eyes shone like a fire in a furnace.

In the end, Su Chan didn't dare to defy this look. She slammed the ashtray against her head again and again. The self-harming form of resistance made her feel inexplicably happy and she laughed wildly.

Finally, she passed out into a coma and fell into the pool. Her blood spread throughout the big pool, scaring the fish away.

An assistant hurried over after hearing the noise, and the old man said calmly, "Tend to her injury and create a new identity for her. I have a new mission to give her! The Liu Group in the South is rising, and it’ll carve up Hanjie’s market sooner or later. Think of a way to get her to be an undercover agent next to Director Liu."

The assistant didn’t have the heart to do so and frowned. "Miss has only been back for a few days. Let her rest for a while. Doing this kind of thing is truly a torture."

"You sympathize with her?!"

Facing the old man's gloomy gaze, the assistant was too scared to say anything more. The old man pointed to the pool. "Does she look good?"

Su Chan was floating in the water and surrounded by a misty blood red, like a beautiful picture scroll. The assistant gulped and nodded. "Miss is just so beautiful."

"She’s so beautiful that people ignore her own value. This is her misfortune. Because of this..." The old man's eyes were cold again. "She will always just be a tool, and a tool is not worthy of sympathy."

The old man looked at the gloomy sky. Since the advent of the smartphone, the world had come together to aspire to monopolize market share. Within this turbulent flow, a person’s fate was just so small.

Even he himself was just a stepping stone for others!

1. People nowadays use this to describe self-imposed hardships to maintain resolve to attain their ambition/revenge. Background story in English can be found here: https://cn.hujiang.com/new/p191864/ [/ref] for the sake of reviving Hanjie, tears flickered in the corner of the old man's eyes.

[ref] Xuan paper, or Shuen paper or rice paper, is a kind of paper originating in ancient China used for writing and painting. Xuan paper is renowned for being soft and fine textured, suitable for conveying the artistic expression of both Chinese calligraphy and painting.