The conference room filled quickly.
Staff filed in from different departments, some still holding their coffee, others pulling out their phones the moment they sat down. Chairs scraped against the floor. Murmured conversations crossed over each other.
"Why are we here?"
"No idea. Got the message twenty minutes ago."
"Emergency meeting? Did something happen?"
"The boss called it. That's all I know."
Wang Jin walked in, straightening his jacket as he took his seat. His eyes moved briefly across the room before settling forward.
Guo Tian entered behind him, unhurried, hands in his pockets. He glanced around the room with a relaxed expression and pulled out a chair near the front.
The murmuring continued.
"Is it about the auditor?"
"Has to be."
"What could he have possibly found in three days?"
Then the door opened.
Tao Jun walked in first. The room quieted instinctively. He moved to the head of the table without a word and remained standing. Li Feng followed behind him, folder in hand. He pulled out a chair to the side and sat down, setting the folder flat on the table in front of him.
---
Tao Jun pulled out his chair and sat down. He reached forward and adjusted the microphone, the small tap cutting through the remaining whispers in the room. Everyone settled.
"Welcome everyone." His voice came through clear and steady. "This meeting is rather urgent. I am sure it has affected your workflow for the day and for that I apologize. But it simply cannot be helped." He paused. "Mr. Li has some important information to pass across."
Every head in the room turned.
Li Feng stood up. He opened the folder. "Over the past three days I have gone through every record this company holds dating back three years." His voice carried across the room without effort. "What I found was not an accident. Not a recording error. Not an oversight."
He looked up. "This company has been robbed."
A loud murmur erupted across the room. Heads turned. People leaned into each other, voices overlapping.
"Please everyone." Tao Jun's voice came through the microphone firm and steady. "Calm down."
The room settled reluctantly.
Li Feng continued. "Certain individuals within this company have been bleeding it dry for years. And it has affected every single one of you sitting in this room. Your bonuses. Your benefits. Resources that should have reached your departments. All of it quietly disappearing quarter after quarter."
The murmuring rose again, lower this time. Angrier.
A staff member near the middle raised his hand. "Mr. Li." His voice was firm, not disrespectful but direct. "You have been here for three days. The auditors before you were here for weeks. Months even. And they found nothing." He looked back at Li Feng. "How exactly did you come to such a conclusion in three days?"
Several heads nodded around the table. Doubt rippled through the room like a wave. Someone near the back muttered just loud enough to carry.
"Is he just bluffing to cover his incompetence?"
Li Feng tapped the microphone once. The room quieted.
"I came here today to do exactly that." He looked across the room. "I would like to call on the head of the accounting department. Mr. Wang Jin. Please come forward."
Wang Jin looked up from his seat. He had told himself Li Feng was bluffing. He had almost convinced himself of it. But something about the calm in Li Feng's voice made that conviction feel very thin all of a sudden.
He stood slowly, adjusting his tie. A microphone was passed down to him.
Li Feng turned to face him. "Mr. Wang. Your fleet operating costs. On average how much does this company spend monthly on vehicle maintenance?"
Wang Jin cleared his throat. "Approximately ¥180,000 per month. Standard for a fleet this size."
"Reasonable," Li Feng said. "And your fuel costs. Do they fluctuate month to month?"
"Naturally. Depending on route distances and fuel prices at the time."
"Of course." Li Feng opened the folder. "So it would concern you to know that for fourteen consecutive months your fuel costs did not fluctuate once. Not by a single yuan."
A murmur moved through the room.
Wang Jin said nothing.
"Fourteen months," Li Feng continued. "Same routes. Same distances. Same costs recorded to the exact figure every single month." He looked up. "Mr. Wang in the real world fuel prices move. Drivers take different routes. Vehicles consume differently. Perfect consistency in operational costs does not exist." He paused. "Unless someone is writing the numbers before the trucks even leave the yard."
Wang Jin's collar felt very tight.
"Furthermore." Li Feng turned to the screen where a chart appeared, three years of data laid out clearly. "Your maintenance records show routine servicing costs spread evenly across all vehicles every quarter. Clean. Organized. Perfectly balanced." He tapped the screen. "But three of those vehicles spent a combined total of eleven weeks in the repair yard during that same period. Meaning they were not operating. And yet their fuel and maintenance costs appear in the records without a single reduction."
The room had gone very still.
"Someone was billing the company for vehicles that were not moving," Li Feng said simply. "Month after month. Quarter after quarter. Small enough amounts that no single entry raised a flag. But over three years—" He turned back to face the room. "The total comes to just over ¥2.3 million."
Wang Jin straightened up, clearing his throat. "Mr. Li those figures you are referring to — during that period the company was transitioning to a new fleet management system. There were overlapping records. Data from the old system carried over into the new one creating duplicate entries. It was an administrative transition error. Nothing more."
A few heads around the room nodded slowly. It sounded reasonable. Plausible even. Someone near the back whispered. "That actually makes sense."
"That is a reasonable explanation Mr. Wang," Li Feng said. "System transitions do cause overlapping records. I considered that."
Wang Jin's shoulders loosened slightly.
"So let us move away from the fleet records entirely," Li Feng continued. "Your supplier invoices. Specifically a company called Hua Tong Trading." He turned a page. "In the past three years Hua Tong Trading has billed this company for warehousing consultation services on fourteen separate occasions. Totaling ¥890,000."
He looked up. "Mr. Wang what exactly does Hua Tong Trading consult on?"
Wang Jin blinked. "They provide logistical advisory. Route optimization. Industry standard practice."
"Is it." Li Feng turned the folder around so the front row could see. "Because Hua Tong Trading was registered as a business entity eight months before their first invoice to this company. They have no website. No office address on record. No other clients that can be verified." Another pause. "And their registered bank account—" Li Feng looked directly at Wang Jin. "Was opened by a Mr. Wang Jin. Same identification number. Same registered address as your personal residence."
The room erupted.
Voices overlapped from every direction. People stood from their seats. Someone dropped something. The noise rose until Tao Jun's voice cut through it sharply.
"Everyone. Sit down."
Chairs scraped. The room slowly pulled itself back together but the tension that replaced the noise was thicker than anything before it.
Wang Jin stood completely still. The microphone hung loose in his hand. His face had lost all color.
Li Feng looked at him quietly. "The money was never going to a supplier Mr. Wang." His voice was even. Almost gentle. "It was going to you."
"Scumbag!"
"How could you!"
"All this time!"
Insults and outrage poured across the room from every direction. People were on their feet again. Fingers pointed. Voices cracked with anger and disbelief.
Wang Jin couldn't raise his head. He stood exactly where he was, microphone still in his hand, staring at the floor.
Li Feng tapped the microphone once. "Everyone."
The room pulled back slightly.
"Mr. Wang has done terrible things. That is not in question." He looked across the room slowly. "But let us not stand here and pretend that everyone in this hall is without fault."
The noise died completely.
"Minor expense padding. Petty reimbursements that were never legitimate. Small adjustments made here and there thinking nobody would notice." His eyes moved across the room. "Individually the amounts are small. Over time they are not." He paused. "You know who you are."
Every head that had been raised in anger slowly found the table.
Tao Jun stood up. He didn't reach for the microphone. He didn't need to. "Mr. Li." He turned briefly. "Thank you." Then he faced the room. "I am deeply disappointed. Every person in this room I have held in high regard. I have treated this company like a family and I have treated all of you the same way." He let that sit. "And this is my thanks."
Not a single sound. Somewhere near the back a chair shifted quietly and went still again.
Tao Jun turned. "Mr. Wang."
Wang Jin finally looked up.
"You were not satisfied with stealing from this company. You bought off the auditors who came before to cover your tracks. You looked me in the eye every single day knowing what you had done." He straightened. "Do not expect any mercy after this."
Guo Tian stood up from his seat. "Mr. Li." He looked across the room, voice carrying with authority. "This company is forever in your debt." He turned slightly to address the hall. "People like Wang Jin are the evil root of society. I hope everyone here takes today as a lesson they never forget."
A few heads nodded around the room.
Li Feng began to clap.
Slowly. Deliberately. One clap after another echoing through the quiet hall.
Guo Tian looked at him, uncertain. The smile on Li Feng's face was unreadable.
Tao Jun frowned slightly from his seat.
Li Feng leaned forward toward the microphone. "What a speech," he said calmly. "Truly. Deputy Manager Guo." Another smile. "If I didn't know any better I would have considered you a genuinely good person."
Murmurs broke out immediately. Heads turned. People exchanged confused glances.
"What does that mean?"
"What is he saying?"
"Is he accusing—"
Guo Tian's expression shifted. He straightened to his full height, jaw tight, eyes fixed on Li Feng. "Mr. Li." His voice came out firm and deliberate. "What exactly do you mean by that."
His fist closed slowly at his side.
"Slowly," Li Feng said. "I am simply stating the facts."
Tao Jun leaned forward. "Mr. Li please don't keep us in the dark."
Li Feng turned to face the room one more time. "When I first went through these records everything pointed to Wang Jin. The fake supplier account. The billing irregularities. The fleet records." He paused. "It was clean work. Thorough enough to fool two previous auditors." He closed the folder. "But something still bothered me."
The room was completely still.
"The numbers still did not add up."
He let that sit for a moment.
"Wang Jin's embezzlement over three years came to a significant amount. But when I mapped the total losses against the company's actual performance the gap was too large. Even accounting for everything Wang Jin had taken there was still money missing. A considerable amount that had no clear origin and no clear destination." He tapped the table. "I went back through everything twice. The trail Wang Jin left was deliberate. Visible just enough to be found. Clean just enough to look like the whole picture."
He looked up. "It wasn't."
Murmurs began to stir again.
"Wang Jin was not the one who bought off the previous auditors," Li Feng said simply.
"What?" Tao Jun's voice came out sharp.
"Wang Jin did not have the access or the authority to approach outside auditors. That conversation would have had to come from someone senior. Someone the auditors would take seriously." Li Feng's eyes moved to Guo Tian. "Someone like a deputy manager."
The hall erupted briefly before settling under the weight of the silence that followed.
Guo Tian didn't flinch. "Those are serious accusations Mr. Li. If you cannot back them up with something substantial you should expect serious legal action."
"I expected that response," Li Feng said calmly.
He reached into the folder and produced a separate set of documents, setting them on the table. "This company has a logistics network that moves significant cargo volume across multiple provinces. Large sums of money pass through operational accounts regularly. Supplier payments. Freight contracts. Transit fees." He looked up. "Which makes it a very convenient vehicle for something else entirely."
He paused.
"Money laundering."