“Alright then, Lin Qing.”

Jiang Han steadied her and straightened up, a hint of disappointment in his expression.

In the end, she was just a young girl — hadn’t seen enough of the world.

“This isn’t urgent. When you’ve thought it through, send me a message on WeChat.”

With that, Jiang Han gave Lin Qing his personal WeChat contact.

Lin Qing returned to her floor to start work, her feelings a complicated tangle.

The few colleagues in the CEO’s office had rarely caught Lin Qing arriving late, so they all crowded around her, dripping with pointed sarcasm.

“Oh! Look who’s late today — little Lin! That’s not like you at all.”

“What’s like me, then.”

Lin Qing dug through her bag without looking up.

“Being at your superiors’ beck and call, that’s your style.”

The contempt dripped from between every word her colleague spoke.

Lin Qing didn’t take the bait. Jiang Han was right — by sticking out so much, in just over half a month, she had already made herself unwelcome in the CEO’s office.

“Hey, wait — little Lin, haven’t you been going in and out with President Liang every day lately? How come you’re suddenly on your own today?”

A favored courtier gets targeted for no reason at all.

But Lin Qing simply couldn’t understand these women.

They were the ones who refused to do the work and therefore weren’t valued by Liang Meng — yet instead of looking inward, they took all their frustration out on the person who actually did her job. How did that make any sense?

Take little Zhang in the CEO’s office, for instance — picking up a courier package took her over half an hour. Anyone who didn’t know better would think she had walked all the way to the courier station herself.

Then there was old Liu — a veteran at Longquan — who couldn’t figure out how to use a new photocopier and kept yanking jammed paper out of it. She barely accomplished a handful of tasks, but she had the maintenance technician downstairs racking up so many call-outs that his KPI was through the roof.

And the intern, Linda — nobody knew whose connection had gotten her in — who just sat at her desk playing on her phone all day. When Liang Meng called for someone at anything below fifty decibels, she acted as though she hadn’t heard. And when she did hear, she moved at an agonizing crawl.

Now that Liang Meng’s most tasks were handled by Lin Qing, she genuinely couldn’t figure out what the point of the rest of the CEO’s office even was.

Hard work in the workplace truly does just bring more work.

Lin Qing couldn’t be bothered to explain herself. She just brushed it off with: “Slept in. I’ll stay later tonight to make up the hours.”

“Lin Qing! Lin Qing!”

Just then, Liang Meng called for her.

Lin Qing immediately set down what she was doing and hurried into her office.

“Hand-grind me a coffee.”

Liang Meng was working through paperwork, not even lifting her head.

“I’m absolutely parched this morning.”

Lin Qing heard this and walked over to grind the coffee with somewhat heavy hands.

Everything falls to me. Your hands aren’t broken. Those people out there aren’t dead. Without me, you’d die of thirst?

Lin Qing grumbled to herself, silently seething.

“Here!”

Lin Qing set the coffee down with a bit more force than necessary, and a few drops of the dark liquid splattered across the desk.

Liang Meng looked up, studying Lin Qing with a quiet, measured gaze.

Her service attitude today really wasn’t great.

Liang Meng hadn’t called her out for being late, yet here she was giving her boss attitude.

Liang Meng assumed Lin Qing was still upset about being sidelined from the business operations, so she wasn’t going to coddle her.

She didn’t even touch the coffee. She simply said, in a cool, flat tone: “On a 1.4 million salary, this is your work attitude?”

Lin Qing swallowed a breath of frustration, turned to get a napkin and wipe the desk clean, then went and ground Liang Meng a fresh, smooth cup.

“Your coffee, Your Highness.”

She turned back around, all smiles and attentiveness.

After all, the person who had aggravated her this morning wasn’t Liang Meng.

Liang Meng felt like laughing on the inside, but held it back. She took the coffee and sent Lin Qing back out.

Lin Qing returned to her own workstation, grabbed a random stack of A4 paper, and started frantically fanning herself.

This wretched job — truly… she didn’t want to be here for a single more day.

For her mother’s sake, she was nailed here by those 1.4 million yuan!

Every day serving tea and fetching water, with her hands tied on top of that — forget any career plan whatsoever.

Even calling what she did a “career” felt like a stretch. The only difference between her and a household cleaner was that a household cleaner could walk through the doors of countless homes, while she just drifted back and forth inside a cubicle.

“Hey! Who’s this, all this free time? Sunbathing?”

Lin Qing thought it was another colleague coming to twist the knife.

But wait — the CEO’s office didn’t have any men.

She snapped her head up, and as if today were just a day for running into people she didn’t want to see — there was Wang Zaiwu, impeccably dressed and breezy, wearing his designer sunglasses.

“Who’s sunbathing.”

Lin Qing thought: Even if I were idle, could I possibly be as idle as a good-for-nothing second-generation heir who does literally nothing?

“I’m here for Liang Meng.”

With that, Wang Zaiwu moved to walk past.

Lin Qing, still full of frustration with nowhere to put it, stepped in front of him: “Did you make an appointment? We don’t allow entry without an appointment here. If you want to see President Liang, you need to go to the front desk downstairs and call in for a booking. I’ll add it to the schedule, and only after President Liang approves it can you come up.”

“Hey! Are you crazy?”

Wang Zaiwu was not about to play by Lin Qing’s rules. The fact that he had made it up here meant he had already cleared the front desk downstairs.

Did Lin Qing think she could pull rank on him with a chicken feather for an authority badge? Absolutely not.

“I said — you — cannot — enter!” Lin Qing warned him again, firmly.

She held her ground on principle.

Wang Zaiwu lowered his head, twisted his mouth, and simply pulled out his phone, prepared to play dirty.

“Want to call 110? Here.” He held the phone out toward Lin Qing.

Ever since Wang Zaiwu had spent time at the police station, it seemed to have become a habit. Now 110 was his go-to number of choice.

The two of them were deadlocked when Liang Meng happened to come out to hand Lin Qing some documents to photocopy — and just like that, she let Wang Zaiwu right in.

“But, President Liang…”

Lin Qing wanted to tell Liang Meng: You’re making this very difficult for me.

Liang Meng blinked at her, signaling: don’t blow this up. She’d handle Wang Zaiwu.

Wang Zaiwu, just before walking through the door, made a point of turning back to make a smug, infuriating face at Lin Qing.

He really had just come out of sheer boredom today, dropping by specifically to take Liang Meng to lunch.

“Take me to lunch?!”

Liang Meng actually laughed.

She gestured at the documents piled across her entire desk and shot back: “Do you think I have a double?”

Wang Zaiwu stood with both hands in his pockets, idly tossing a decorative pillow from the sofa up and catching it.

“Why work so hard? Like it’s the real thing.”

“Hey — I really don’t like hearing that.” Liang Meng pushed back. “What do you mean, ‘like it’s the real thing’? You yourself don’t work, you don’t have a job — what right do you have to mock those of us who do?”

Wang Zaiwu just smiled, dropping himself lazily onto the meeting sofa and propping one leg over the other in a sprawl.

He truly made himself at home.

Liang Meng knew Wang Zaiwu’s time was worth nothing, but she still came over and sat down, figuring she’d chat with him for a bit and get rid of him quickly.

“Your family and mine both have more money than we know what to do with.” Wang Zaiwu propped his cheek on his hand, genuinely puzzled. “Every day you could be having afternoon tea, working out, buying bags, and jetting off on trips every now and then. Isn’t that the life?”

Liang Meng could tell — that was exactly how this guy spent his days.

Seeing him so utterly self-assured about it, Liang Meng didn’t even know how to begin explaining to him: Longquan was one of the district’s biggest taxpayers, with over two thousand employees counting the factory — and on the stock market, countless investors were watching Longquan’s share price…

They say being free of worry is its own great blessing. For a brief moment, Liang Meng actually found herself a little envious of Wang Zaiwu’s ability to simply lie flat and do nothing.

“Longquan is so large…”

Before she could finish, Wang Zaiwu cut straight through: “Longquan being large doesn’t make it all yours. I hear your sister was CEO before, and the performance reports were solid — the stock price kept going up. And then there’s still Jiang Han’s stake. As long as you don’t want to be a strong, independent businesswoman, nobody’s forcing you.”

“It’s not that simple…” She tried to explain it to Wang Zaiwu.

Just then, the area outside the CEO’s office suddenly erupted into noise.

And this time, it really was troublemakers.

Even through the frosted glass, Liang Meng could see there were a lot of them, and they were pushing in with force.

“Where’s President Liang?! We want to see President Liang!”

“Tell Liang Meng to come out!”

“We’ve got something to say to her!!”

“That’s right! We want to talk to her face to face!”

Liang Meng’s brow furrowed slightly. From the voices, it sounded like the group of dealers from East China.

“Do you have an appointment? No entry without an appointment here!” That was Lin Qing’s voice.

And just like that, Liang Meng’s confidence in the girl was reaffirmed. When it came to doing her job, this young woman didn’t let her guard down for a second.

“Get out of the way! Stop playing bureaucrat with us! Liang Meng had better come out and give us some answers today, or we’re sitting right here and not leaving!”

“Little girl! While you’re wasting time talking to us, go get your President Liang out here! Tell her to come out and explain herself today — is she trying to put us out of business?!”

“Exactly! Get her out here now!”

“Liang Meng! Liang Meng! Open the door!”

Seeing the commotion outside, Liang Meng stood up to go deal with it.

But Wang Zaiwu suddenly pressed his hand down over hers.

Liang Meng froze, turned her head, and stared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Let the people out there handle it themselves.”

Wang Zaiwu’s expression had turned entirely serious.

Seeing that he didn’t understand the situation, Liang Meng explained: “The entire CEO’s office out there is my sister’s people. The dealers have her backing. Lin Qing is new — she can’t hold them off alone.”

“You’re paying them all a salary. They eat that paycheck, they do the work that comes with it.” Wang Zaiwu held Liang Meng’s hand firmly in place.

The situation was serious. No one was joking.

“Just now, you didn’t let me in, and Lin Qing wouldn’t have backed down. As for the rest of the CEO’s office — normally you can never catch them slacking off. Today they’ve handed you just the right opportunity. Useless people? Stop keeping them around.” Wang Zaiwu said with complete conviction.

Liang Meng cast a worried glance toward the door, then got up.

“You’re still going out?”

“I’m going to pour some tea. We can’t just sit here with nothing to drink.”

Liang Meng accepted Wang Zaiwu’s suggestion.

“The company employee handbook is crystal clear — no bypassing the chain of command. If you want to see President Liang to raise an issue, you need to submit a request in advance through the internal system, go through the proper approval process, and then visit at the designated time. You’ve brought this many people to cause a scene — I’ll have no choice but to call security.”

Outside, every member of the CEO’s office staff went completely silent. Only Lin Qing — alone, slight, and slender — stood blocking the door to the CEO’s office.

“Little girl, I’m telling you — don’t bite the hand that feeds you! This Liang Meng — we only call her ‘President Liang’ out of respect for her sister! Today, if she doesn’t come out and explain herself to us, tomorrow we’ll make sure she’s just plain ‘little Liang’!”

“She talks about doing live streaming and cutting off our income — the nerve! When your President Liang was still in diapers, we were already busting our backs for Longquan!”

“That’s right! Tell her to come out now!”

“Liang Meng! Liang Meng! Open up!”

Seeing the chaos outside, Liang Meng stood up to go out and handle it.

Wang Zaiwu stopped her with his hand again, tilting his head. “Have you figured out what to say to them if you go out there?”

Liang Meng paused, and then shook her head helplessly.

She genuinely had not been able to work things out with Daiwei.

She had spent half the conversation trying to explain the “Boxed Pig” game theory and the “one-code-per-customer” system to Daiwei, but he simply refused to accept her live-streaming plan.

Daiwei insisted on keeping the distribution rights for Longquan’s flagship product line in the dealers’ hands.

He called it “stable operations.”

Liang Xing and Jiang Han couldn’t openly stop her, so they were letting the dealers stir up trouble to pressure Liang Meng from the other direction.

“If all else fails, I could go out and try to reason with them?” Liang Meng said, without much confidence.

Wang Zaiwu smiled and shook his head. “If these people were willing to listen to reason, they wouldn’t have stormed your office door. Stick with what I said — I’ve recently learned the turtle method: when it’s time to pull your head in, you pull it in. Retreating may be shameless, but it works!”

“Wang Zaiwu!” Liang Meng was both exasperated and amused as she stood up. “What have you been doing with the first half of your life?! The things you say are genuinely something else. The most important thing in life is being responsible — responsible for yourself, responsible to others! Did your parents never teach you about accountability? When things get hard, you just tuck your head in and ignore them — no wonder you can’t hold down a steady girlfriend!”

Wang Zaiwu disagreed and fired back: “Fine! Be responsible then! Go out there right now! Let those dealers tear into you until you’re bleeding from the ears! After that, you’ll have no credibility left inside the company or out. And when you reach a point where you can’t get a single thing done, feel free to use that magnificent sense of responsibility of yours to clean up the mess!”

“Wang Zaiwu!”

“Yelling my name won’t help!” Wang Zaiwu also stood up. He was a full head taller than Liang Meng. “I, Wang Zaiwu, never do anything that brings me no benefit! I never accept moral blackmail! I’ve lived like this for over twenty years — am I not doing perfectly fine? Is our family business not flourishing? Without that so-called sense of responsibility you’re talking about, what exactly am I lacking? What is anyone lacking because of me?”

Wang Zaiwu unleashed a completely unrestrained tirade at Liang Meng.

And Liang Meng found herself rendered utterly speechless.

She genuinely had no concrete or effective means of keeping the dealers in check right now.

Going out there was a dead end either way.

“Then what do you suggest we do?” Liang Meng sat back down in a huff.

Wang Zaiwu took an irritated sip of his drink, then slid his own cup over to Liang Meng: “Trust those you employ, don’t employ those you doubt. Hand this to Lin Qing. If she can’t handle it, fire her tomorrow and bring in someone who can!”

Liang Meng stared at Wang Zaiwu for a moment.

This guy didn’t just live with astonishing clarity — his approach to life was simple and blunt in equal measure.

If Jiang Han were like Wang Zaiwu — brash, unafraid, saying what he meant — maybe the two of them wouldn’t be stuck in something as murky and complicated as what they had now.

For the moment, Liang Meng had no better option. She’d follow his lead.

Seeing the dealers refusing to leave, and no movement from inside, Lin Qing read her boss’s intention.

If that’s how it was —

Then don’t blame her for what came next.

Lin Qing rolled up her sleeves and decided to let go of all personal dignity and embrace a delightfully shameless existence.

“Oh, you’re right — I was playing you!”

Lin Qing drew herself up to her full height, and turned from perfectly pleasant to cold and hostile in an instant!

“Hey! You, little girl—!”

“Don’t ‘you’ me!” Lin Qing stepped forward another pace, relentless. “Every country has its laws, every family has its rules, and every company has its regulations! You need to make an appointment to see President Liang! You’re the ones who came here insisting on breaking the rules! So you started this!”

“Why, you little—!”

The head dealer, who had been a regional power player at Longquan for years, was not accustomed to being treated like this.

“Call the HR manager! Who do you think you are?! Do you know who I am?! Speaking to me like that?!”

“I don’t care who you are!” Lin Qing waved her hand, going full chaotic. “We’re all just working for Longquan! Why should workers make life difficult for other workers? We’re all out here to earn our own slice, aren’t we? The company tells me what to do and I do it — same as you! You think you’re impressive? Go be impressive back in your own territory! I’m not someone you hired. My paycheck doesn’t come from you. So what gives you the right to come here throwing your weight around? Who’s going to listen to you?!”

“You, you, you…!” The dealer was so furious the top of his head was steaming. “Is this really the kind of people the company hires now?! No manners whatsoever!! Who do you think you are!”

Lin Qing shot back: “I’m an only child. You tell me what position I hold.”

“Everyone ignore her — let’s just charge in!”

The dealers’ blood was rising; they started egging each other on.

Lin Qing planted herself in the doorway and pulled a safety hammer out of the drawer, dropping it on the floor with a loud clang!

“Come on! The door’s right there! Whoever dares to break it down, I’m calling 110 right now! You want to make a scene? I’ll tell you plainly — I just walked out of a police station yesterday! Picking fights, brawling — as long as no one dies and no blood gets drawn, the worst you get is detention. Two weeks and you’re back out. I’m single with no dependents — one person fed, whole family taken care of. I might as well think of it as a free room and board elsewhere! Anyone bold enough — come on! Pick it up and swing it!”

“You little wretch — don’t think I won’t!”

“Come on! Come on! Hurry up and smash!”

Confronted with this formidable character, several of the older dealing bosses were thrown completely off balance.

Still, one cunning older dealer in the group, seeing that the direct approach wasn’t working, switched to soft tactics and stepped forward.

He forced a chuckle and latched onto Lin Qing’s arm, trying to get friendly while putting on pressure at the same time: “Little lady, young lady, ease up on the fire! We didn’t come here today to cause trouble. We just have some matters we’d like to bring to President Liang’s attention. You blocking us like this and keeping us old colleagues from speaking our minds — isn’t that a bit cold-hearted?”

Lin Qing smiled coolly and shifted into a plaintive, put-upon tone: “Is that so? Am I really that cold-hearted? I honestly don’t feel that way at all. Heavens, I hesitated nineteen times — I softened thirteen times — and twice I had the urge to just let you in. But my sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow it! I slapped myself mentally several times before I could keep up the outward appearance of calm indifference while turning you away. You have no idea the internal struggle I went through — torn between going soft, respecting my elders, and doing my duty! Uncle, please don’t keep telling me I’m cold-hearted. Are you not satisfied until you’ve pushed me to a complete breakdown, crushed my spirit, and shattered my heart? Is that what it takes for you to feel you finally understand me? The kind of ‘warmth’ you want from me… I simply cannot give…”

“Hmph.” Another dealer was so exasperated he ran out of steam entirely.

At this point, an older dealer, the type who liked to lean on seniority, dared to speak up.

“Young person, you need to see the bigger picture! We’re here to see President Liang about something very important. Don’t fuss over the small details!”

Lin Qing replied: “Big picture? Uncle, you’re asking too much of me! I’m just a little assistant — I haven’t even entered the playing field yet, so how could I possibly develop a ‘bigger picture’ like yours? Don’t talk to me about big pictures — big tangerines, big apples, big bananas, big watermelons — I don’t have any of those either! You say I’m being petty, but being detail-oriented IS my job! If I don’t sweat the details at work, should I wait until I’m dead at the crematorium to start? Should I count how well done I am then?”

“You—!!”

Several of the dealers had come in with righteousness and force on their side, but Lin Qing’s relentless, circular non-logic had completely deflated them, one by one.

Facing this young woman’s one-person defense, the dealers felt like throwing powerful punches at cotton — completely at a loss, their momentum and intensity entirely unable to land.

To top it off, before coming here, Daiwei had told them not to burn bridges completely with the CEO’s office — just push Liang Meng for answers, apply pressure, and nothing more.

So the dealers were left with one final tactic: a sit-in.

Let’s see who could outlast whom.

“Then we’ll just sit here and not move! Liang Meng can’t go without food or water or a bathroom break forever!”

And with that, seven or eight big men settled themselves squarely onto the floor of the CEO’s office — the carpet suddenly hosting several unwanted human lumps.

Hmph. Try to outlast me.

Lin Qing wasn’t even slightly worried.

The moment the dealers sat down, Lin Qing turned the office air conditioning to maximum heat, moved the water cooler out of reach.

Then she pulled out her personal mini electric hot pot and started cooking stinky tofu noodle soup.

“Ugh, what is that smell?! Did something die and get cooked?!”

Before long, the dealers were all wrinkling their noses.

“Right? And this hot air blowing makes my mouth so dry — I can’t take this smell at all!”

Lin Qing paid them absolutely no attention. She ordered a durian from a delivery app, tipped it into the pot, and stirred everything together.

In less than ten minutes, every single person in the CEO’s office had scattered.

Everyone was pinching their noses and hunching over, fleeing the suffocating atmosphere.

As they left, the dealers couldn’t resist one final shout in the direction of Liang Meng’s office: “Liang Meng! Don’t sit in there like a turtle hiding in its shell! You think you can do live streaming and cut off our income — we dealers are just going to go along with whatever you want?! One day without you changing your company strategy, we’ll be back here every day!”

“Ugh, can we just go already?! Let’s talk on the group chat later. It reeks! I’m about to pass out!”

“Alright, alright, let’s go — I’m getting dizzy too.”

After everyone had gone, Lin Qing removed her face mask and quietly cleaned up the aftermath of the battlefield by herself.

Hearing silence outside, Liang Meng and Wang Zaiwu finally came to the door.

“Whoa —!”

The moment the door opened, Wang Zaiwu — who had never encountered anything like this in his entire sheltered life — immediately retched.

Liang Meng frowned helplessly and looked at Lin Qing.

Lin Qing just spread her hands. If there had been any other way, she wouldn’t have gone this far off the rails either.