Victor covered his face, looking at her with shock and sorrow: “Miss Lin…”

Though it didn’t hurt much, he felt thoroughly wronged, his long eyelashes fluttering—he was on the verge of tears.

Lin Yuchan swiftly surveyed her surroundings. The Western “compatriots” behind Victor were all dumbfounded, probably having never seen such a bold Chinese woman before.

The dozens of Hankou tea merchants across from them were also stunned, their gazes carrying a hint of awe. None of them dared directly resist Western authority, yet this young woman dared to…

She withdrew her right hand, clenched it into a fist, and proudly raised her face.

Victor was accustomed to acting recklessly, immediately inappropriate upon approach today. If this were in Shanghai’s foreign settlement, she could have endured it—just being licked by a teddy bear—but this was Hankou. He certainly wouldn’t have thought about what consequences this attitude would bring to Miss Lin.

The moment Victor had pulled her close, Lin Yuchan’s peripheral vision had swept across the group of Chinese tea merchants opposite. Beyond their astonishment, they looked at her with hatred mixed with contempt, treating her as a despicable creature who worshipped foreigners and willingly degraded herself—their stares made her skin crawl.

Given Hankou’s conservative yet fierce local customs, she’d be lucky if she wasn’t pelted to death with rotten fish while walking the streets later—that would be the mercy of Wuhan’s people.

Fortunately, that slap declared her allegiance. From the group of Chinese tea merchants behind, someone suddenly shouted approval.

“Good! That’s exactly what he deserved!”

“Miss, come over here! We’ll protect you!”

“So what if he’s a foreigner? You think you can abduct our women in broad daylight?”

Behind Victor, a Russian compatriot gestured angrily, muttering curses in his native tongue, probably calling her ungrateful.

The patrol officers hesitated, unsure whether they should arrest her.

Lin Yuchan seized the opportunity to run to the Chinese tea merchants, asking their leader: “Uncle, what’s your surname? What bad things have these foreigners done? Please don’t act rashly—if you damage their factory property, be careful of retaliation afterward.”

Throughout all of Hankou, this spot reeked the worst. She felt she might have found the eye of the anti-foreign storm.

A brawl was about to erupt here, and coincidentally, the Inspector General himself was conducting grassroots inspections. Naturally, local authorities dared not allow any incidents, implementing layer upon layer of security measures that had the entire city under martial law and clearance.

She paused, then whispered: “These foreigners owe me favors—perhaps I can help mediate.”

Anyway, Victor’s Chinese was half-baked, mostly sweet nothings learned from girls—things like “you’re so beautiful” and “am I good?”—his vocabulary extremely limited. The other Russian tea merchants seemed completely unable to speak the local language, so she felt safe making things up.

The lead tea house owner eyed her suspiciously and set down his mop.

An outsider girl with yellow hair suddenly inserts herself into their tea guild’s affairs. Originally they would have dismissed her entirely. But that slap she’d given the foreigner—it had style, it had skill, earning her some credibility to speak as an equal.

He said quietly, “My humble surname is Zhu. Changlong Tea Warehouse. These Russians came to Hankou to establish a tea factory. Forcibly expanding and acquiring land at low prices would be bad enough, but they’re practicing some unknown sorcery inside, roaring day and night, sending black smoke towering into the sky, destroying the feng shui of this place! Miss, if you can truly subdue these foreigners, go tell them to leave quickly, or they’ll regret refusing the toast and being forced to drink the penalty wine! We Hankou people aren’t spineless like those coastal folks—we’ll fight them to the bitter end!”

Behind Boss Zhu, a group of tea merchants old and young all nodded angrily, corroborating his words.

Lin Yuchan struggled to understand his dialect. After listening, she was torn between crying and laughing.

“That’s just them using steam engines—it doesn’t harm feng shui…”

As she spoke, a thought flashed through her mind: Machine-processed tea? Not bad! The efficiency must be incredibly high!

“We don’t care!” the tea merchants clamored in unison. “Our tea sales have dropped thirty percent this year! Since ancient times, tea processing has been a manual process. They’ve violated trade customs and offended the sages—all of Hankou’s tea can’t be sold! If they dare keep using machines, our tea guild won’t let this slide!”

Lin Yuchan fell silent and nodded.

“I’ll try. I can’t guarantee I can convince them, though.”

“Much obliged, Miss.” Boss Zhu gratefully clasped his hands. “Go ahead, but be careful of that yellow-haired devil—he’s been eyeing you with shifty eyes. Don’t let him take advantage!”

With that, he waved to the others, telling everyone to temporarily set down their baskets of rotten fish and sit down to rest.

They’d been in this standoff for so long—it was indeed tiring.

Lin Yuchan smiled: “Everyone still has business to do. What a pity to waste time. Why don’t a few people stay here while the others hurry back to work? Wasting time is wasting money!”

Seeing that she could indeed communicate with the foreigners, the tea merchants hesitantly nodded.

They’d been organized by the tea guild to confront this group of Russian merchants for several days running, severely affecting their business.

Boss Zhu nodded. The tea merchants encouraged each other with farewells, and more than half left.

Seeing no immediate riot, the patrol officers exchanged glances and departed the way they’d come.

Lin Yuchan walked back to the entrance of Shunfeng Tea Factory, looking at the group of Russian tea merchants who were two heads taller than her.

Victor snorted and turned away, ignoring her.

Lin Yuchan sneered: “You can call the patrol to arrest me. Hankou has a foreign settlement and a Municipal Council court.”

Victor quickly turned back with a smile: “Miss Lin, don’t think so badly of me. I understand—hitting shows love, scolding shows care.”

What a joke. Hede paid customs officials high salaries precisely so they’d focus on work and not engage in side businesses. To actually make a scene over such romantic matters would not only be embarrassing—Victor couldn’t bear to lose his job.

Of course, it was also because Miss Lin was adorable even when fierce. If an ugly Chinese man had fought with him, Victor would have sent him to prison long ago.

Lin Yuchan warned: “If you come within six inches of me in public again, I’ll hit you again.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll make sure there’s no one around next time before getting intimate with you.”

Lin Yuchan didn’t argue with him. She chose a Russian merchant who looked less fierce and said politely, “The Hankou tea merchants don’t welcome your use of machines. You gentlemen had better find a way to coexist peacefully with them, or this business won’t be sustainable. Otherwise, even if you resort to force and privilege, you’ve seen the local temperament—they won’t let you profit in peace.”

The Russian merchant muttered incomprehensibly, not understanding much English. Victor shook his head and magnanimously served as translator.

“Mr. Levinov, my distant cousin,” he concluded, “came to Hankou to invest in a tea factory, employing Chinese workers and paying generous wages. He doesn’t know what the locals are dissatisfied about.”

Lin Yuchan laughed despite herself. The “coward” was right here.

She thought quickly. The locals believed “machines harm feng shui”—naturally complete nonsense. All of Hankou probably didn’t have many steam engines. Traditional Chinese people were wary of all unfamiliar things, naturally having no fondness for this.

Attitudes couldn’t be changed overnight. In the coming decades, when building railways and stringing telegraph lines, popular resistance would remain heavy.

But today… If she could make these tea guild bosses retreat peacefully, no longer throwing seafood at foreigners everywhere, perhaps Hankou wouldn’t maintain such strict security?

She thought for a moment, then said to Victor: “Could I go inside and see their machines?”

The Russian merchant Levinov was tall and burly, wearing at least three layers of cotton clothing, a thick felt hat, and a wool scarf wrapped around him, only half his face showing, his gloves thick as bear paws. Originally a robust and mighty fine man, he’d bundled himself into a polar bear.

This polar bear was restless too. Under Wuhan’s winter cold wind, he constantly hunched his neck and stamped his feet, quite disgraceful to the fighting nation.

Between the felt hat and scarf, a pair of rough, alert eyes were exposed. These eyes had probably never seen a Chinese woman up close, studying Lin Yuchan carefully for a long while.

A thin, slight Eastern girl, small as a squirrel in the Siberian forest—normally, he would have dismissed her. But with just a few words, she’d actually made more than half those ignorant Chinese leave. Her eloquence was beyond imagination. Levinov wondered—could she be some noble lady who liked to dress plainly and investigate among the people?

And she actually dared to casually hit foreigners! Victor had actually endured it!

Levinov deeply understood the importance of relationships and connections in Eastern society. That thickly bundled big head nodded once, friendly light showing in his bear-like eyes.

“Please.”

“Wait…” Victor followed behind, explaining weakly, “She’s just a businesswoman… your competitor. Don’t easily let…”

The little skirt flashed. Lin Yuchan seized the time and had already slipped through the gates of “Shunfeng Brick Tea Factory.”

Unlike ordinary tea workshops, this Russian brick tea factory contained no scattered processing implements. Three massive Western machines in the center were the most conspicuous equipment.

Dozens of Chinese workers sat in corners. With people making trouble outside, they were happy to stop work, smoking and chatting idly, maintaining neutral positions.

Lin Yuchan carefully examined these machines—not for frying tea, but steam hydraulic presses that compressed loose tea into blocks, making tea bricks and tea cakes—exactly the styles Russians favored.

This Levinov was quite good at following trends, establishing a processing factory near the source, then directly exporting to Russia. He’d also designed highly efficient steam engines. Lin Yuchan roughly estimated that, based on these steam hydraulic presses’ efficiency and energy consumption, the processing and transportation costs per dan of tea totaled only six or seven taels of silver, twenty percent lower than her “Boya Russia Special.”

She suddenly turned to Levinov, smiling: “Tea bricks processed this way, shipped to St. Petersburg, could sell for at least two hundred rubles per dan, right?—Let me calculate, approximately one hundred ten taels of silver?”

Levinov started and couldn’t help but nod.

He’d come to China as the first crab-eater processor, originally planning to make windfall profits. He hadn’t expected that within months of arrival, his profit margins would be estimated by someone.

Lin Yuchan quietly slipped her hand into her bag, found her notebook and pencil, and blindly recorded these figures.

The Hankou tea merchants threatened to smash the Russian merchant’s machines, claiming they harmed feng shui, with evidence being that since the Russian merchant’s arrival, Chinese tea couldn’t be sold.

She now understood clearly. This was merely surface appearance, not essence.

The main contradiction was that Levinov used steam engines for massive output, plus as a foreign merchant, he naturally possessed various tax and transportation privileges, making his costs much lower than traditional Chinese merchants.

After his arrival in Hankou, local tea supply had surged while demand remained unchanged short-term. Hankou was the beginning of the Sino-Russian tea road spanning thousands of miles—buyers were mostly Russians, who naturally favored the quality, affordable products from their compatriot Levinov.

How could Hankou tea merchants not be angry when their business shrank for no reason?

Rotten fish and shrimp were quite polite. If they learned from certain American steamship companies to directly hire assassins to bombard competitors, Levinov would probably be a dead bear by now.

Lin Yuchan observed the steam hydraulic presses from top to bottom. Levinov waited impatiently beside her, asking through Victor:

“Miss, please go tell those Chinese merchants outside that China is gradually opening its doors. Foreign merchants like me will become increasingly common—they must adapt. If they persist in refusing fair competition and continue using violence against my factory, I’ll be forced to hire private armed guards. Casualties would be inevitable then, which nobody wants to see.”

The petite Chinese girl looked at him sideways, cold amusement in her eyes.

“Sorry, I was just dragged here to watch the excitement—I’m not your mouthpiece.”

Victor said disappointedly: “Miss Lin, you wouldn’t really speak for those fools outside, would you? This stupid country doesn’t deserve you—you clearly have more in common with us.”

“This rotten fish situation has caused martial law, seriously affecting my normal travel. I just want to resolve it.” Lin Yuchan incidentally inspected the tea factory warehouse, looking up at the neatly arranged shelves, silently calculating Levinov’s business scale while saying, “Mr. Levinov, what are your demands? To make money smoothly in Hankou? To coexist peacefully with Chinese merchants?”

Levinov nodded. Wasn’t this obvious?

Lin Yuchan: “What if the two are mutually exclusive?”

Levinov’s face darkened. He removed his gloves, positioning his thick body to intentionally block the order forms and account books hanging on the wall.

“In any orderly, competitive, civilized society, these two things are compatible, Miss Lin.”

Lin Yuchan thought: Playing dumb.

Long-term, introducing foreign merchants to compete with local merchants on the same stage would indeed help improve local business competitiveness, with mutual benefit and progress.

This was the ideal state based on equality between nations without policy interference.

But now, Levinov had parachuted into Hankou with steam engines in his left hand and foreign merchant privileges in his right, delivering a double-dimensional reduction strike—equivalent to using firearms against swords and bows, while expecting opponents to be honorable and virtuous, waiting for him to reload before charging…

Wasn’t this dreaming?

She looked at Victor, helplessly shrugging: “You’d better have Mr. Levinov hire more bodyguards. Open attacks are easy to dodge, and hidden arrows are hard to defend against. Tell him not to worry—if Chinese people harm him, his motherland should declare war to seek justice for him.”

Both Levinov and Victor’s faces changed color.

Victor immediately recalled certain threats he’d received not long ago.

“…stuffed in a sack and beaten…”

He quickly whispered a warning: “These Chinese really would do it!”

Especially Miss Lin! She had backing!

Levinov’s face grew uglier. He’d thought these Chinese were outwardly strong but inwardly weak, at most just cursing.

Now, even his compatriot Victor was defecting and retreating, telling him Chinese people dared harm him?

Indeed, even a Chinese girl dared slap a foreigner. What might those muscular local tea merchants do?

Though Levinov was a shrewd businessman, he’d never left the country before and only half-understood the mysterious Far East. Encountering this unconventional girl, his originally fearless personality now felt somewhat uncertain.

If he died mysteriously in a foreign land, what good would his powerful motherland do?

Even if his death could win Russia a hundred unequal treaties…

No, no—he wasn’t that patriotic. It wasn’t worth such a sacrifice.

He felt hot all over and couldn’t help pulling down his wool scarf.

“Miss Lin, what’s your advice?”

Lin Yuchan quietly looked down, checking the steam hydraulic press manufacturer—surprisingly some British ironworks in Shanghai. Wuhan locally still lacked capacity for producing and assembling large machinery.

She thought for a long while, then smiled: “If I can help you resolve the Hankou Tea Guild, Mr. Levinov, how would you thank me?”

Levinov peered out the window, exhaling two streams of white breath.

Boss Zhu from the tea guild was still waiting outside with several tea merchants watching like tigers, hoes, and mops ready at their feet for another wave.

He snorted.

Only now did he truly believe this Miss Lin was also “in business,” completely lacking the hospitable virtues of the great Eastern nation, actually knowing how to demand benefits from him.

However, Levinov had his scales. To get rid of these Chinese tea merchants, he wasn’t afraid of spending money—as long as costs were lower than hiring bodyguards and factory protection mercenaries, he could accept it.

He rewrapped his throat with the scarf, speaking in muffled tones: “If you can truly persuade them, silver is negotiable…”

“I don’t want silver.”

Lin Yuchan smiled brightly, her cheeks also steaming briefly like morning mist clearing and sunlight falling, reflecting vivid amusement in her eyes.

“Mr. Levinov, could I borrow your steam engine blueprints to copy? Don’t worry—my factory is in Shanghai. I won’t compete with your business.”

Levinov’s color changed dramatically: “How dare you…”

“You just personally advocated open, fair competition. You wouldn’t want to monopolize even machine blueprints, would you? You also said that more and more foreign merchants will come to Hankou in the future, bringing various Western machinery. Your few steam engines aren’t exactly treasures.”

The little girl was taking advantage of his predicament to extort him, completely lacking martial virtue. Levinov grumbled complaints in Russian and was about to storm off.

Suddenly, several shouts came from outside the window.

Levinov couldn’t understand, but Victor caught the gist and immediately paled.

“Still not coming out! That Lin girl has probably been bought by them! Or bullied!” Boss Zhu cursed with a group of tea merchants, approaching closer. “While the patrol’s away, let’s go in ourselves and smash their monster machines! Even if we’re punished, we have the guild, we have connections. A few pieces of scrap iron—we’ll pool money to compensate him! Can the officials shut down all of Hankou’s tea houses and warehouses?”

With industry unions backing them, the tea merchants felt confident. Something crashed—apparently, something had struck Shunfeng Tea Factory’s gate.

The Chinese workers idling inside collectively jumped, and without waiting for their foreign boss’s orders, they trotted out the back door.

Levinov howled like a bear, truly furious.

“Tell that girl,” he angrily had Victor translate, “the machine was designed by engineers from St. Petersburg Imperial University. I don’t have blueprints, but I can give her an hour to look freely. Now, have her drive away those Eastern barbarians outside! Quickly! Quickly!”

The steamship “Luna” had finished its thorough cleaning. All cabins were clean and tidy, washrooms flushed repeatedly with river water, ready to welcome new passengers.

Su Minguan watched his subordinates finish tidying the steamship, ordered the dozens of special passengers detained in the lower hold to be closely guarded, then quietly disembarked.

He didn’t follow Lin Yuchan toward the concession, but went in the opposite direction to the old county seat. First he visited five or six silver shops, exchanging those gold and silver jewelry for drafts in batches—nearly a thousand taels of silver kept close to his body.

His ship now concealed rebels of unknown origin. Whether exposed or not, he needed substantial cash reserves for emergencies.

Then he made friendly visits to several local shops, flying copper coin flags, showing his face to confirm everyone was still settled and working without desertion.

Finally, he found a locally famous teahouse, ordered tea in a private room, and waited patiently.

Hankou was the last treaty port on the inland waterway. Before departing Shanghai, he’d contacted several local shipping merchants, planning to acquire some berths and warehouses for convenient coordination.

However, with the city under martial law today, his business partners were inconvenienced and delayed.

A clever peddler took the opportunity to knock on the private room door, carrying a basket of gaudy items, poking his head in with a smile: “Young master waiting for someone? While you’re idle, why not pick some jewelry for the missus at home?”

Su Minguan couldn’t help but smile.

Pick jewelry? He’d just had dozens of gold and silver pieces in his arms, keeping none, exchanging them all for money.

Because he knew Lin Yuchan disliked such decorations. He looked down on current popular aesthetics, finding them overly vulgar and flashy, lacking beauty.

Still, he refused unceremoniously: “My wife doesn’t like them.”

As if he had a wife.

The peddler wouldn’t give up easily, quickly smiling: “Whether she likes them doesn’t matter—as long as you like them, Young Master! With your distinguished appearance, your wife must be an understanding lady. You’re prosperous in business, generous in spending—buying things to dress her up, she’d be happy before it’s too late. How could she not like them? The key isn’t the style of these ornaments, but your thoughtfulness. As they say, women make themselves beautiful for those who appreciate them. She can’t see the hairpins when wearing them—ultimately, they’re for men to see!”

Su Minguan was thoroughly annoyed and had to tell the truth: “I’m not married.”

Peddler: “…”

Are you mocking me?

Swallowing his anger, he was about to leave.

Su Minguan suddenly called: “Come back.”

The poor peddler had to comply.

“Not bad eloquence. Let me teach you something.” Su Minguan magnanimously smiled, whispering instructions: “Come back in an hour. By then, all the bosses here will be richer than me—your jewelry won’t lack buyers.”

The peddler was overjoyed and was about to thank him when Su Minguan added, “Use those flattering words you just said about my wealth, but develop them further. Make them feel that not spending money would be embarrassing, being stingy would be criminal, haggling would be heartless—understand?”

The peddler left with profuse gratitude.

Su Minguan had arranged a temporary shill for himself, then sat properly, preparing for battle.