[Jake's POV]
The next two weeks were a period of unprecedented prosperity for the Golden Koi.
It didn't start with a press release. It started with the docks.
For the first time in five years, the cranes in the southern terminals didn't stop at midnight. Three shifts. Twenty-four hours. Containers from Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Singapore were moving through Golden Koi territory without paying a single "inspection fee" to the mountain. The shipping companies noticed. Within a week, three Imperial-affiliated freight lines quietly rerouted to us because we were 18% cheaper and we didn't lose cargo.
