Chapter 43
Bai Hewei’s annual leave could best be described as an absolute challenge to the physical limits of a sub-healthy modern youth.
On the first day, he accompanied his parents and grandmother to watch the national flag-raising ceremony. After that, they went to make wishes, and immediately following that, they headed straight to the Forbidden City.
On the second day, they rushed through three different locations in a single breath.
Every subsequent day, his parents and grandmother—clinging to the mindset of “who knows when we’ll ever get to visit again”—obstinately insisted on checking off every single classic attraction in the capital.
Bai Hewei felt like he was subtly dying.
How could a guy like him who sat in an office all day compete with the physical endurance of elderly people who went out to exercise at the crack of dawn?
By the final stretch, Bai Hewei was forced to cheat using the evolutionary factors inside his body just to barely keep up with their pace.
Every day, outside of accompanying his family, Bai Hewei did nothing but complain in his WeChat group, swearing that he would never go on vacation with his family ever again.
He truly couldn’t take it.
Group Chat: My Fate Depends Neither on Me Nor the Heavens
Overworked Beast of Burden: …I’m dying. Didn’t the border say they were facing a severe talent shortage and welcoming everyone to take the national civil service exam? After coming out of it, I feel like what they really want is my accommodation and meal fees!
Stop Urging Me, No Second Child: I saw someone complaining about it on Xiaohongshu, saying the questions this time were brutally hard. It’s probably because too many people registered, so they made the questions difficult; otherwise, there’d be no way to eliminate people.
Monthly Salary 3,800: Sigh, I have it even worse. The position I applied for has thousands of applicants. To save money, I took the train sleeper berth. It’s absolute torture.
Overworked Beast of Burden: ?? Salary Bro, you actually managed to approve such a long leave?
Monthly Salary 3,800: Heh, our design institute has been putting people on long-term unpaid leave while only distributing a base salary. The leaders can’t wait for us to take exams every day. If we pass and resign, they don’t even have to pay us severance.
Crying in a BMW: Haha, I didn’t even bother to register. It’s way too far. By the way, why hasn’t Civil Service Bro shown up?
When Will I Secure a Civil Service Post: I’m here, I’m here. Although I registered, I ended up skipping it. I’ve been spending the last few days vacationing in the capital with my family. Good grief, how is their physical stamina better than mine, an Evolver? This death itinerary is going to run me into the ground. If I knew it’d be like this, I would’ve been better off taking the exam.
Xinxin’s Mom: Elderly people are just like that. Although the proportion of elderly people among Evolvers is very small due to physical and age factors, they aren’t entirely non-existent. I remember the Special Operations Department used to have an elderly Evolver—very rare. It’s said his daily retirement hobbies were square dancing and fishing. After awakening, he suddenly gained the ability to communicate with various kinds of fish, making him an animal-type Evolver. He seems to have found a new passion now, serving as a consultant for seven or eight aquariums simultaneously, raking in quite a handsome sum every month.
When Will I Secure a Civil Service Post: Animal-type Evolvers really have it made. Basically every zoo and aquarium is hiring them with great benefits and high pay, and they don’t even have to deal with people. It’s the absolute dream job.
Crying in a BMW: Civil Service Bro, you’re overthinking it. I happen to be an animal-type Evolver. Hehehe, you think it’s painful when humans can’t communicate properly? That’s only because you haven’t actually spoken to a pig. No matter how stupid a human is, they’re still human at the end of the day. You have no idea what I’ve been through. What I draw isn’t a salary at all—it’s mental compensation fees!
When Will I Secure a Civil Service Post: ……
Bai Hewei closed his phone, feeling that since everyone in this world had a hard time making a living, his mindset improved a bit.
Taking his physical condition into account, Bai Hewei had deliberately reserved an extra day at the end. On the final day of his annual leave, he completely vegetative-padded on his bed playing with his phone, utterly refusing to budge.
Isn’t it great to just mess around on your phone? What was the point of going out to play every single day?
He didn’t want to travel anywhere else again anytime soon.
As Bai Hewei scrolled through his phone, he suddenly noticed that the “Civil Service God” had posted a status update on his Moments.
He opened it to take a look and found that wz1 had shared a recent central conference report. Bai Hewei instinctively tapped the like button.
Then he felt a bit guilty.
He hadn’t practiced a single exam question in days.
Seeing everyone complaining about the border’s talent recruitment exam did make him feel a bit better though. Fortunately, he hadn’t gone to take it back then, otherwise he’d definitely be swearing up a storm too.
However, Bai Hewei still didn’t dare say any of this in front of this Civil Service God.
The man wasn’t related to him in any way; the fact that he was willing to offer him a pointer or two was already plenty. He needed to remain the most polite contact in the man’s friend list!
After finishing lunch, the thought of his annual leave ending the next day and having to return to work made Bai Hewei a bit morose. He went out for a stroll by himself, planning to grab a cup of fruit tea to drink.
As he walked, he spotted Pullman leading a crowd of people into a villa, directing them as they carried out renovations on the property.
Huh?
That fast?
Stunned for a moment, Bai Hewei couldn’t help but step forward.
“Pullman, you mentioned buying a villa last time, but you’ve already closed the deal this fast?” It had only been a few days. How could buying a villa look even more casual than when he usually bought a piece of clothing?
“It’s actually been quite slow, mostly because finding a renovation crew took some time.” Seeing Bai Hewei, Pullman offered a slight smile. “I hired the best designer, but I was worried an ordinary renovation crew wouldn’t be able to execute the desired effect, so I compared quite a few teams before settling on this one. We’ll make do with it for now, and alter it later if it doesn’t work out.”
Is this the confidence of the filthy rich?
Bai Hewei was astounded.
But remembering the one million yuan still resting securely in his bank card, Bai Hewei felt his spine straighten up just a tiny bit.
“For these renovations, roughly how much do you plan to spend?”
“For now, I only plan to spend around ten million RMB,” Pullman said casually. “My sister’s overseas assets are hitting a few snags trying to transfer in, so we’re currently consulting a legal team to figure out a solution.”
…Why did I have to open my big mouth and ask?
“Oh right, my sister mentioned that a treatment commission she took recently was to treat the ‘Sage’ Batu.” Pullman looked at Bai Hewei with a half-smile. “Because Batu suffered a severe backlash from his superpower, even though he’s been cured by my sister, he’s already reduced to an absolute imbecile.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Bai Hewei asked curiously. “It’s not like I was the one who did it.”
Pullman: “…”
“Did you forget what I told you before?” Pullman rubbed his temples. “I heard you went to get tested? During your testing process, there shouldn’t have been any perception-type Evolvers present, right?”
“There really weren’t.”
“Because in any place where you are present, perception-type Evolvers absolutely cannot appear.” Pullman made a shrugging gesture. “Many times, even if you don’t raise a hand, other people will still be affected by your anomalous energy field. This is especially true for perception-type Evolvers. My sister said that a backlash of Batu’s caliber is utterly impossible for an ordinary person to inflict. Not to mention, he truly was one of the world’s top perception-type Evolvers. Since he ended up in that state, other Evolvers of the same type will naturally actively steer clear of you.”
There were no secrets in this world that could remain entirely airtight.
And every single piece of information regarding Bai Hewei commanded a staggering price on the black market.
Even though Huaxia heavily blockaded all news related to Bai Hewei, there would always be people willing to take risks to sell these pieces of information to others.
With Batu ending up like this, as long as people connected the cause and effect, they could pretty much guess a rough outline of the truth.
“Uh, I’m genuinely innocent.” Bai Hewei felt incredibly wronged; it really wasn’t his doing.
“You’d better stop stressing over that,” Pullman smiled. “Recently, I heard that the Central Research Institute has already opened up orders for the third version of the Evolver mitigating agent. If you can help connect me with the Central Research Institute, I’m willing to help them provide an excellent distribution channel. Of course, I will make the purchase under a corporate name. My sister and I plan to establish a pharmaceutical company here, but we haven’t decided where to register it yet. If you can help out, registering it within your sub-district’s jurisdiction works too.”
Bai Hewei’s eyes lit up instantly.
Lately, in order to boost tax revenue and attract investment, the city government had launched a new investment promotion initiative.
Naturally, these investment promotion quotas inevitably trickled down to the grassroots level.
The sub-district leaders were so stressed they practically couldn’t sleep, trying every method to persuade local viral street food stalls to register as private studios just to make up the numbers.
Never mind whether these studios and micro-enterprises actually made money; they just needed to see if the sheer quantity met the target first.
Furthermore, to boost everyone’s enthusiasm, the city government had explicitly stated that if anyone could bring in a company with an annual revenue exceeding ten million yuan, they would be awarded a direct bonus of ten thousand yuan, with the exact reward amount determined by the tax revenue the company generated in its first year.
Initially, this document had been halted by the Discipline Inspection Commission out of concern that it might leave room for corruption.
However, the city government subsequently passed various detailed regulations and documents, inviting the Discipline Inspection Commission to oversee the entire process, conduct random checks, and so forth, determined to push this matter through.
Before Evolution Day, if you said things couldn’t be run this way, they would accept it.
But after Evolution Day, with the economy in its current state, if they still didn’t run things this way, the local area would truly become a dead pool of water.
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
Regardless, the policy had ultimately been rolled out.
After brief deliberation, Bai Hewei decided to let his supervising leader worry about it first.
If he remembered correctly, investment promotion responsibilities were assigned down to specific individuals, and his supervising leader wouldn’t be able to escape it either.
In all fairness, Bai Hewei had an excellent impression of his supervising leader, Zhang Peng. The man was responsible, cared for his subordinates, always charged to the front line himself whenever there was overtime, and approved leave without the slightest hesitation whenever time off was available. He could be counted as one of the few genuinely good leaders Bai Hewei had crossed paths with in all his years of work.
But anyone who frequently worked in the system knew that the better a leader was, the harder it usually was for them to secure a promotion.
Without sufficient connections, background, absolute youth, and a massive stroke of luck, the ceiling for an ordinary person was a full section chief level, and even reaching a deputy section chief level was already incredibly difficult.
Zhang Peng was undoubtedly stuck at this exact bottleneck.
Bai Hewei planned to go test his leader’s stance first.
Because he had a matter weighing on his mind, Bai Hewei didn’t feel as much resistance when going to work the next day.
Just as he arrived at his cubicle, Bai Hewei discovered that the older colleague hadn’t returned from leave yet.
With long seniority, a twenty-day annual leave was truly the envy of others. The man had started his leave even earlier than he had, yet here he was back from vacation while the other guy was still enjoying his holiday!
Bai Hewei calculated his own seniority.
After grinding for a few more years, he would also be entitled to a twenty-day annual leave!
“These are some pastries I brought back from the capital. Give them a try, everyone. They’re a bit sweet, so they’re best paired with tea.”
“And these are some fridge magnets and souvenirs. Feel free to grab whatever you like, just pick whichever one catches your eye.”
Bai Hewei wasn’t an ignorant child who didn’t understand social graces; he still brought back some souvenirs to share among everyone.
Whether it tasted good or not was beside the point; the fact that he still kept you all in mind while away and brought back local specialties was what counted as a thoughtful gesture.
“Have the leaders not finished their annual leave yet?” Bai Hewei asked with a hint of curiosity.
“Cough, actually it ended ages ago. Word is they were called back on the fourth day of their annual leave,” a colleague whispered to Bai Hewei. “You were on leave at the time and you’re not on the permanent establishment, so they didn’t summon you. The other staff who are on the permanent establishment all seemed to have their leave temporarily disrupted to come back, pull a few days of overtime, and only went back to continue their leave after the overtime concluded.”
“What happened? How come I didn’t know?” Bai Hewei was taken aback.
“Apparently, some Evolver organization was causing trouble, and our jurisdiction got caught in the crossfire. We had to cooperate with the Special Operations Department to evacuate crowds and conduct ideological work. Anyway, it counted as an emergency. Plus, the mission supposedly carried confidentiality requirements, so it had nothing to do with temporary workers like us. The permanent staff were all notified via individual phone calls from the office; they didn’t even dare send out text messages.” The colleague shrugged. “Sigh, the Emergency Management Bureau seems to have been working overtime for days on end. They’re just plain unlucky to catch this kind of mess right during the centralized annual leave period.”
Bai Hewei nodded, understanding only half of it.
These days, there were still quite a few troublemaking Evolver organizations around.
However, they usually couldn’t kick up much of a storm and would be suppressed very quickly.
After all, their prefecture-level city wasn’t exactly some economic, political, or cultural hub, and the average income of the citizens wasn’t high either, which naturally meant far fewer incidents occurred.
“I heard it seems like some classified document went missing, or it could be some kind of experimental prototype. Anyway, it’s something highly formidable, and the Special Operations Department is currently conducting a house-by-house screening.”
“The operation is confidential and has nothing to do with temporary workers like us. We’ll just pretend we don’t know anything.”
Bai Hewei simply let the matter drop from his mind after hearing it, not dwelling on it at all.
Inside a residential building somewhere in the prefecture-level city.
“What the hell were you guys thinking? Didn’t I explicitly say not to get discovered by the Special Operations Department? We need to develop our underground network slowly. Are you guys completely deaf? Fortunately, we severed our own limbs in time this time, and the group that got captured doesn’t know our true faces yet. Otherwise, we’d be meeting each other inside the Special Operations Department’s jail cells!” An Evolver was utterly beside himself with rage, screaming furiously at a handful of subordinates.
Securing these funding grants hadn’t been easy for him; developing slowly was the only way to go.
Yet look at them—who knew how they had trained their recruits? They had only just recruited a few Evolvers and prepared to stir up a bit of trouble when they immediately got nabbed.
He had come here carrying a vital mission!
The Evolver taking charge of the conversation was named Ji Hang. He had only recently been evaluated as a B-class Evolver, making him a relatively powerful individual among Evolvers.
It had taken him an immense amount of effort to be recruited by a certain organization as an domestic operative, gaining access to a pool of freely disposable funds and corresponding organizational authority. He had envisioned making a grand impact, only to suffer a crushing defeat before the campaign had even truly begun.
Ji Hang had come with a specific objective.
The higher-ups had informed him that within this prefecture-level city hid an incredibly powerful Evolver. However, they hadn’t managed to uncover this Evolver’s identity yet, and only a handful of international super-organizations knew who this individual actually was.
Consequently, Ji Hang’s mission was to lay low in this prefecture-level city and slowly locate that Evolver. If he could manage to pull the other party into his organization, he would easily secure a triple promotion! Even if he couldn’t, simply confirming the other party’s identity and submitting a report would count as a monumental achievement.
Ji Hang understood perfectly clearly that a manhunt of this nature was absolutely impossible to complete entirely on his own.
Coupled with the fact that he had a budget on hand, he had planned to recruit a few Evolver lackeys to help him search together.
Who would have thought that the lackeys he recruited would turn out to be incredibly arrogant, believing themselves to be the “Chosen Ones” destined to stage some grand “Return of the Dragon King” drama? The moment they got his money, they went out to hit on girls, pick fights with people, and kicked up a whole mess of trouble that directly drew the attention of the Special Operations Department.
Wait, no.
The scale of the Special Operations Department’s mobilization felt a bit too excessive.
If it were just a routine public disturbance, how could it possibly escalate to this degree?
Did Ji Hang not know the capabilities of the lackeys he had bought off? Every single one of them was roughly an E-class or F-class Evolver, basically only a tiny bit stronger than an ordinary human. For instance, one lackey with a flame superpower claimed to control fire, yet the spark he generated wasn’t even larger than a cigarette lighter’s flame.
He could only afford to buy off this caliber of recruits. Any Evolver with actual strength wouldn’t give a damn about the meager amount of cash he could offer.
“Spit it out. What exactly happened to draw such a massive deployment?” Ji Hang sneered. “If you guys don’t start talking, don’t blame me for getting violent.”
Ji Hang glared fixedly at these few lackeys, waiting for them to tell the truth.
After a long silence, one lackey was finally pushed forward, his face twisted in a miserable grimace. “I… I’ll talk. This really had nothing to do with me.”
“A few days ago, Boss Ji, you handed us our pay, so we thought about going out to have a good time, grab some drinks at a bar. You know how Zhiqiang is—the moment a couple of drinks hit his stomach, he completely forgets his own name. He insisted on showing off his flame superpower to some beautiful girl at the bar. When the girl ignored him, he started throwing a tantrum, crying that people only looked down on him because he had no money, completely ignoring his own short and stubby build—as if anyone would actually like him.”
“After that, he claimed he wanted to pull off a massive heist, and there was no way we could hold him back. He said he knew that near the residential community where he lived, there was a high-ranking official who was about to retire. He looked all prim and proper normally, but he definitely wasn’t a good person. So he led us to scale the wall and break in. Hey, as luck would have it, the security cameras happened to be broken and the property management hadn’t fixed them yet.”
Hearing up to this point, Ji Hang’s facial muscles tightened.
He seemed to understand what this bunch of lackeys had done, and why he was being relentlessly pursued by the Special Operations Department.
“What happened next?” Ji Hang’s expression turned ferocious, looking nearly ready to tear them apart.
“There was no one home at that official’s house; they rarely lived there. Zhiqiang said he had staked out the place long ago and it was very safe, so we successfully slipped inside and picked the lock. Inside, there was a combination safe box that we couldn’t open, so Zhiqiang used his superpower to burn the combination lock off. We took out a small box from inside, a watch, along with a few gold bars, a stack of cash, and stuff like that.”
“What was inside that box?” Ji Hang demanded immediately.
Just a few gold bars and a gold watch—how could that possibly be worth the Special Operations Department pursuing them this relentlessly?
“We don’t know, we broke in under the cover of darkness,” the lackey said, on the verge of tears. “That official didn’t report it to the police either, so we assumed the matter had blown over. We were even thinking about finding a gold shop to cash in the gold—you know how high gold prices have been lately.”
“Who would’ve thought that two days ago, we saw that that official had fallen from grace and been arrested, and he ended up spilling our business to the authorities too. I have absolutely no idea what was inside that box. That kid Zhiqiang is holding onto it, saying it’s a rare commodity that’s bound to be worth a fortune and he wants to sell it for a massive price. As for the rest, I truly don’t know anything else.”
The lackey stammered out the details, finally explaining the entire sequence of events clearly.
After listening, Ji Hang felt thoroughly unwell.
Something this massive had occurred, yet he had actually remained completely in the dark? If he hadn’t asked, this handful of lackeys would probably have hidden it to the very end, planning to drag him down to the grave with them!
“Where is Zhiqiang?” Ji Hang roared. “No wonder I haven’t seen him around these past couple of days. Didn’t he claim his mother broke her leg and he had to go back to take care of her?”
“Uh, Boss… his parents divorced and started their own families ages ago. He’s a left-behind child.”
“Boss, you’re going to help us, right? We know your organization is incredibly powerful, you can definitely save our lives.”
“Zhiqiang was the one who did everything. I don’t want to get caught, my parents are still waiting for me to graduate and take the civil service exam.”
“If I get caught, my dad will beat me to death. Boss, save us, we really didn’t know what was inside that box!”
…
If he weren’t left with only these few lackeys, Ji Hang truly wanted to slaughter this bunch of idiots.
But he couldn’t. Destroying a corpse and wiping away all traces was far too difficult in this day and age. The moment a human life was lost, it would immediately escalate into a major incident, and he wouldn’t be able to withstand the scrutiny at all.
As things stood, he was completely stuck on this sinking ship.
“I’ll help you? How the hell am I supposed to help you?” Ji Hang suppressed his simmering rage. “Hurry up and track down that brat Zhiqiang. Let me see what that item actually is first. If we’re lucky, it’ll count as a massive achievement. If we’re unlucky, we’d better go line up to turn ourselves in early!”
After thinking it over, Ji Hang still secretly reported the situation to his superior.
He had to at least figure out what exactly that absolute bastard Zhiqiang had stolen.
As they neared clock-out time in the afternoon, the unit began assembling everyone for a meeting once again.
“We have already notified the staff who are still on annual leave to return as quickly as possible, and we will make it up to them later. Those who have already finished their annual leave can focus entirely back on their duties,” the sub-district Party secretary emphasized during the meeting. “Per the requirements of relevant departments, our jurisdiction currently needs to launch a fire prevention and anti-theft awareness campaign. Additionally, we need to cooperate with the local sub-district police to conduct screenings and improve the general atmosphere of our jurisdiction! While carrying out your tasks, remember to also promote anti-fraud awareness. Let’s execute these tasks in tandem, creating a consolidated effort…”
Sitting near the back, Bai Hewei listened to the point of feeling rather drowsy.
Assisting in catching thieves falls on us too?
If the Skynet surveillance system can’t even catch someone these days, are we supposed to catch them instead? If we’re that amazing, why doesn’t the Skynet funding go toward paying our salaries?
Every single day it’s a ‘consolidated effort’ or ‘playing the piano with both hands.’ I’m utterly sick of hearing it; can’t they come up with something new?
Who knows which leader made this decision? Does whether the atmosphere is good or bad seriously rely entirely on us?
The other staff members in the sub-district were clearly harboring quite a bit of resentment. They had only just returned from their leave, and before the other departments had even entered proper working mode, their side was already expected to start pulling overtime.
Conducting door-to-door screenings and verifications in this blistering heat—they were going to roast to death!
Complaining was one thing, but the work still had to be done.
Bai Hewei was entirely used to it.
Don’t be fooled by how every single one of these colleagues was uttering a torrent of complaints; when it came time to actually do the work, they would still have to roll up their sleeves and get to it, otherwise this work would truly become endless.
As for what the leaders said, there was no need to take it too seriously.
The grassroots remained ironclad while the leaders flowed like water. Bai Hewei had only been working here for five years, yet he had already seen three different top leaders come and go, and the leadership team had changed multiple batches. What did he have to care about?
Bai Hewei only snapped back to full alertness upon hearing the words “meeting adjourned.”
As for catching thieves or whatever—what did that have to do with him? He just needed to cooperate with the local neighborhood cop, that was all.
