The frozen mud along the outskirts of the Capital's industrial zone was a jagged, grey wasteland caked in coal soot and the heavy, rusted run-off of the nearby state-run steel mills. The winter wind here didn't whistle through clear bamboo passes; it violently roared through the gaps of the abandoned brick kilns, carrying the suffocating, bitter stench of burning sulfur and stale slag.
Lin Xi walked along the narrow track leading toward her new factory refinery perimeter. She wore her thick canvas winter worker's coat over her pristine white chef's jacket, her hands buried deep in her pockets, her sharp eyes tracking the automated transport trucks hauling her golden aluminum tins toward the railway spurs.
Walking half a step behind her was Gu Shaozheng, his heavy leather combat boots thudding rhythmically against the frozen earth, his dark green officer's coat casting a long shadow across the snow.
CRACK.
The sharp, earsplitting sound of a heavy leather utility strap cutting through the freezing air violently shattered the rhythmic humming of her factory steam valves. It was instantly followed by a small, muffled sob—a sound of raw, suffocating pain that cut straight through the roar of the wind.
Lin Xi halted her steps instantly, her hawk-like eyes narrowing into dangerous slits as she pivoted toward the shadow of a crumbling, soot-stained brick kiln.
Crouching in the freezing mud beside a pile of industrial slag was a small child—a boy no older than six years old, his frame severely malnourished, his tattered cotton shirt so thin his ribs were visibly protruding against the skin. His small face was caked in black charcoal dust and dried blood.
Standing directly over him was a massive, heavy-set brick laborer wearing a grease-stained leather vest, his face flushed an ugly shade of crimson from raw liquor. In his right hand, he clutched a thick, industrial rubber fan belt, swinging it in a sharp arc to strike the boy's back again.
"You worthless little parasite!" the brick laborer roared, spitting a stream of bitter tobacco juice onto the child's tattered canvas shoes. "I bought you from the southern flood communes for ten yuan cash to haul fuel crates, not to sit crying in the mud! Lift that coal sack before I strip the remaining skin off your spine!"
"Please, Uncle Li... the crate is too heavy..." the boy wheezed, his voice a frail vibration as he desperately tried to protect his face with his bruised, raw hands. "My fingers... I can't lift the wire..."
The laborer bared his yellowed teeth, lifting the heavy rubber strap with full force to execute a devastating downwards strike.
~♡~
The rubber strap never touched the child's skin.
Lin Xi moved with the explosive, predatory velocity of a master cook clearing a line. Stepping directly through the freezing mist, her small hand shot out like a hydraulic steel vice, clamping violently around the brick laborer's thick wrist mid-air. The sudden kinetic force sent a dull crack echoing through the open kiln.
"Who the hell are you, bitch?!" the laborer bellowed, his face contorting into an expression of pure, drunken rage as he tried to violently wrench his arm free from her grip. He couldn't budge her a single millimeter. "Get your hands off my property! This brat belongs to my ledger!"
"In my district, a human being is never an asset on a slave ledger," Lin Xi hissed, her voice dropping into an icy, razor-sharp clip that completely froze the blood in his veins.
With a calculated twist of her wrist, she applied a precise, agonizing leverage against his radial nerve, forcing his fingers to instantly paralyze. The heavy rubber strap slipped from his grip, clattering uselessly into the frozen mud.
A heavy-set woman wearing a tattered wool shawl came sprinting out from the dark mouth of the kiln—the boy's adoptive mother, her face caked in grease, her mouth screaming with psychotic territorial rage.
"Thieves! Foreign corporate thieves are stealing our labor!" the woman shrieked, pointing her finger like a dagger at Lin Xi's white jacket. "We signed the official adoption certificates with the local commune office! We pay the state taxes for his residence! You touch that boy, and I will have the civil neighborhood guards lock you in a cell for kidnapping!"
Gu Shaozheng stepped out from the shadow of the brick pillar, his massive, uniform presence instantly towering over the cowering couple like an unyielding monument of iron. His hawk-like eyes drilled a hole straight through the woman's shawl, his right hand resting casually against the leather holster snapped at his hip.
"The civil neighborhood guards answer directly to the Capital Garrison Command, old woman," Shaozheng announced, his deep voice dropping into a low, terrifying rumble that caused the loose bricks to audibly vibrate. "Do you want to test if their local precinct vouchers can override an active military economic audit?"
The adoptive father flinched violently, his drunken confidence completely evaporating as he recognized the high-ranking green green winter uniform and the platinum star gleaming on Lin Xi's chest. "Commander... this is an internal family matter! The boy is lazy! We are simply correcting his behavior so he can earn his grain rations!"
"Correcting his behavior?" Lin Xi scoffed softly, her face a mask of absolute, unyielding dominance as she dropped down on one knee beside the trembling child.
She gently pulled the boy's tattered shirt back, her eyes flashing with a predatory, dangerous fire as she scanned the horrific matrix of old, infected lash marks and purple bruises tracking his small spine. As a woman who had transmigrated into this world from the ultimate cannon fodder baseline, she recognized this exact pattern of domestic terrorism instantly.
"He is malnourished, his fingers are frostbitten from handling unrefined fuel without gloves, and his respiratory lines are caked in charcoal dust," Lin Xi stated, her voice projecting absolute, cold authority across the grey wasteland. "You didn't adopt this child to build a family; you trafficked a helpless orphan to run slave labor inside your private kiln lines to protect your own margins."
"We paid ten yuan cash!" the adoptive mother shrieked, her greed overriding her fear of the uniform. "He consumes our rice every night! If you want to drag him off your sector, you will pay us a clean five hundred yuan for his breeding debt! Otherwise, he stays in this dirt!"
~♡~
Five hundred yuan in the winter of 1986 was a staggering, astronomical extortion sum—enough to purchase a permanent brick house in the local commune.
Lin Xi didn't waste a single millisecond bargaining over the currency. She reached into the inner lining of her wool coat, pulled out her heavy leather corporate checkbook bearing the supreme seal of the Bank of China, and swiftly executed a sharp sequence of ink strokes.
RIP.
She snapped the white paper ledger line from the book, tossing the check directly into the adoptive mother's grease-stained hands.
"There is exactly five hundred yuan certified state credit on that line," Lin Xi stated, her voice dropping into a lethal, quiet whisper as she rose back up to her full height, her white jacket catching the wind.
"Take the cash, pack your tattered rags, and clear out of this industrial zone before sunset. From this micro-second onward, this child's legal administrative files, his residency permits, and his life custody are officially transferred to the logistics division of The Xi Garden Corporate Conglomerate. If I see your faces or your hired thugs within two miles of my factory fencing again... Gu Shaozheng's auditing squads will execute an immediate perimeter seizure of your entire brick kiln for illegal human tracking. Get off my track."
The adoptive mother clutched the five hundred yuan check like a lifeline, her jaw slacking as she read the flawless, multi-provincial banking seals stamped on the paper. Realizing they had just extracted a small fortune from the capital's most dangerous businesswoman, the couple backed away into the shadows of the kiln, disappearing into the dark mists without a single word of retort.
Lin Xi turned back to face the small, trembling boy. She reached down, her small, steady hands gently lifting his frail frame completely out of the frozen mud, wrapping her own heavy canvas winter coat securely around his shivering shoulders.
The child looked up at her through his soot-smeared tears, his wide, fearful eyes tracking the brilliant white platinum star on her lapel. "Sister... am I going to be locked in the dark vaults?"
"No," Lin Xi smiled beautifully, her eyes flashing with a deep, untamed maternal warmth as she smoothed the charcoal dust from his forehead. "You are going to the kitchen. From this day onward, your name is Lin Chen. You are going to learn how to command the fire, not carry the fuel. Let's go home."
Gu Shaozheng stepped up to her side, his large, gloved hand gently resting against the boy's head, his dark eyes radiating a profound, silent respect as he opened the passenger door of the military logistics truck. The internal family friction was completely conquered. She had future-proofed another helpless soul from the gears of the old era.
~♡~
Twenty minutes later, the green logistics truck roared back through the high iron shipping gates of The Xi Garden's automated factory refinery. The atmosphere inside the primary manufacturing sector was a roaring sea of high-velocity commercial production.
Lin Xi walked onto the concrete floor, leading the newly clothed Lin Chen straight into the warmth of the executive break room, where A-Mei was already waiting with a steaming bowl of fresh Velvet Ginger Porridge to soothe the boy's stomach.
"The industrial distribution lines for our new Gilded Aluminum Tins have completely broken the capital's retail records this morning, Miss Lin," A-Mei reported, her voice immediately dropping back into the razor-sharp rhythm of corporate business as she slid a new ledger across the table.
"Every single state-run department store across the three northern districts has sold out of our advanced Sulfuric Sauce within four hours of opening. Our net profit lines for the day have already cleared four thousand yuan cash. But the market victory has just triggered a massive counter-strike from the Central Industrial Bureau."
Lin Xi systematically rolled up her sleeves, her hawk-like eyes instantly regaining their predatory, cutthroat corporate fire as she looked down at the new administrative brief. "The residual elements of the bankrupt Red Star Cartel?"
"Worse," A-Mei hissed, her jaw tightening with severe gravity. "The General Manager of the state-run Capital Canning Monopoly—Director Feng—has just filed an emergency Industrial Standard Directive with the Ministry of Light Industry. He is claiming that our use of imported foreign-grade aluminum containers violates the national manufacturing codes for domestic condiments. He has officially deployed a team of high-level industrial inspectors to blockade our Western Gate loading bays at dawn tomorrow to confiscate our automated machinery for 'unregulated raw material deployment'."
Lin Xi lifted her heavy iron ladle, her eyes flashing with absolute, unyielding dominance as she looked from the signed contracts to the expanding smoke stacks on the horizon. The first localized domestic battle of the second major arc was officially underway. Her business was scaling at an exponential rate, and she was prepared to turn their new industrial directive into a complete slaughterhouse.
"Director Feng believes that because he commands the state-run canning monopoly, he can legally padlock my assembly line," Lin Xi smirked, her voice a low, lethal vibration. "He has no idea that by targeting my aluminum tins... he has just given me the exact excuse I required to execute a hostile corporate takeover of his entire canning network. Tell the brigade to double the boiling velocity. The main course is officially served."