Volume 5, Chapter 4 – Research

A day and a half passed. By the afternoon, while the company was still on the clock, Liu Zhen called Shen He over and asked about her research progress.

“What research?” Shen He blinked exaggeratedly on purpose. “The company never told me anything about that.”

“What do you mean I never told you?” Liu Zhen was furious. “Didn’t I tell you to go ask for opinions in those old neighborhoods?”

“Oh! Right, that did happen.” Shen He suddenly looked enlightened, but then her tone shifted. “But Manager Liu, didn’t you forget something?”

“Me? What could I have forgotten?”

“You still haven’t approved my fieldwork budget.”

Shen He smiled sweetly at Liu Zhen. “Honestly, I really do want to work for the company, but you know my finances are a little tight right now… If the company doesn’t allocate some funds, then I might just—”

Liu Zhen fixed Shen He with a pair of dead fish eyes and stared at her for a long while. Only then did he speak in that sinister tone of his. “I’ve already spoken to Finance about the budget. Go get it from them yourself.”

He really approved it!

Shen He cheered inside.

She’d known a giant company like this wouldn’t be short on money. Especially not now, when they had only just driven their wedge in here and needed to spend heavily to buy people over. How could they possibly be stingy?

Damn that Liu Zhen. He’d deliberately kept it vague before. If I hadn’t been smart enough to ask, he would’ve pocketed the whole sum himself!

Sneering inwardly at Liu Zhen’s conduct, Shen He turned and headed out into the corridor.

“I’m giving you three days at most,” Liu Zhen roared from behind her. “Three days, understand? No matter what, I want results after three days!”

Yeah, yeah, got it—

Shen He answered only in her head. She quickly went to Finance to collect the budget, then was shocked to discover that it came to a full twenty thousand baoyuan!

The purchasing power of baoyuan was still very strong. Her weekly expenses, including transport and food, came to less than four hundred baoyuan. A budget of twenty thousand was enough for her to burn through for a very long time!

“Spend it carefully.” The male employee in Finance kindly reminded her, “The company checks accounts. Every expense needs a proper entry.”

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Black-haired and black-eyed, he was Eastern Xia too, and like Shen He, a local of Wangchuan Circuit. That was why he meant to give her a warning: even if she really did spend the money freely, she still needed to keep proper books and expense labels, so the higher-ups wouldn’t come after her afterward.

But Shen He barely heard a word of what he said after that. The moment she got the money, she slipped out.

“Young people…” The finance employee shook his head. “They always have to take a loss before they learn.”

Shen He really was in a hurry.

Partly because that damned Liu Zhen had given her a very short deadline, and partly because her family really did need money to put out fires.

She ran over to HR again and, using the approved budget, registered an off-site assignment. At once, Shen He felt a wave of relief.

At the very least, from now until three days from now, she would be free to move around outside!

For the time being, she didn’t have to go to this shitty fucking job!

With that much freedom, the first thing she did was pack up and head back to her rental apartment. She grabbed a few personal necessities, then took a cab back to her home in East City.

Unlike most parts of Wangchuan Circuit, where high-rises towered everywhere, Shen He’s home could be classified as old, shabby, and cramped. Generally speaking, neighborhoods like that had been built in the first chaotic year as disaster relief housing. Their primary purpose had never been to look nice or be comfortable to live in. They had simply been meant to solve the housing problem for huge numbers of refugees and displaced people.

The downside was obvious: life in a place like that came with a low quality of living.

But it had one advantage too: housing like that did not require property tax. As long as you had registered and verified your identity at the beginning, and the registered head of household had inheritance transfer rights for descendants, then everyone along that family line could live there for as long as they wanted without paying any extra fees.

Shen He’s home was on the third floor of a building like an old corridor block. She hadn’t even made it up from the stairwell yet when she heard people arguing out in the hallway.

“Sister-in-law Shen, it’s not that I’m being heartless by bringing this up. It’s just that our Shiyu is at that age now, and you know how expensive all of this is. I really don’t have any other choice…”

The moment she reached the third floor, Aunt Zhang Mei’s voice drifted through the air. At the same time, she heard her mother Zhao Xiaorong’s short, uneasy reply.

“Well… I do understand that, I really do… but we actually are in a difficult position too right now…”

With no one else around, Zhao Xiaorong’s retreat only made Zhang Mei feel there was room to push harder. Leaning in closer, she lowered her voice. “Then tell me, if Shiyu really makes something of himself in training, do you think he’d be able to go to the front lines later?”

Zhao Xiaorong didn’t grasp the malice behind it. She only said awkwardly, “The front lines? That… would he be joining the army? Well, that would be a great honor, but…”

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But why bring that up all of a sudden?

What exactly was Zhang Mei trying to say?

Zhao Xiaorong didn’t understand it, but Shen He did.

Her face changed at once. She rushed up from the corner of the stairwell, ignored her aunt Zhang Mei’s startled stare, shoved her in the shoulder, and snapped, “That’s enough! Have you no shame at all? You can actually do something like this?”

“Xiao He?” Zhao Xiaorong’s eyes widened in shock. “Hey… you can’t treat your aunt like that!”

“Mom!” Shen He turned and glared at her in exasperation, then exposed the whole scheme in one sentence. “She’s after Dad’s injury compensation!”

Injury compensation, to give it its formal name, was disability-retirement compensation. It was certified, reviewed, and paid out by the dojo military authorities to Refining Qi cultivators who had been forced to withdraw from the front lines due to disabling injuries.

What?

Zhao Xiaorong’s face changed too. She looked at Zhang Mei in disbelief and saw her dodging the gaze. At once, she knew her daughter had not accused an innocent person for nothing, and her own tone stiffened. “This… younger sister-in-law, this is too much.”

“How am I being too much?” Zhang Mei had clearly decided to go all in. She turned and glared at mother and daughter alike. “The money we lent you back then still hasn’t been fully repaid! How many years has it been now?!”

“It’s not as if we haven’t been paying you back.” Shen He stared at her coldly. “You get a payment every so often… So what, Aunt? You want to throw away family ties and turn this into a one-shot deal?”

“I… I didn’t mean it like that…”

Zhang Mei’s momentum faltered, and she absolutely didn’t dare admit to a charge like that.

It was hard to say what things were like in the new districts, but in old districts like this, if you wanted to live in peace nearby, going without the support of your extended family simply wasn’t an option.

No one in Zhang Mei’s family was a cultivator. Her son, Shen Shiyu, seemed to have a chance and some promise in that direction, but it hadn’t happened yet. She didn’t dare openly break with her elder brother’s family either. She had only been making sideways hints and probing suggestions.

Forget it.

Seeing how timid her aunt looked now, some of Shen He’s fury subsided.

She pulled a stack of cash from her pocket and handed it to Zhang Mei, lowering her voice as she said, “Take this much for now. I’ll find a way to make up the rest soon.”

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Th-this is…?

Zhang Mei stared at her wide-eyed at first, then suddenly understood. She grabbed the money and darted straight into the stairwell, terrified that mother and daughter might change their minds.

“Xiao He?” Zhao Xiaorong, on the other hand, was alarmed. “What is this… where did you get that money?”

“From the company.”

Shen He curled her lip, took her mother by the hand, and led her back inside. Only then did she tell her about everything that had happened over the last few days.

“People around here all believe in Ancestor Xia.” Zhao Xiaorong sounded worried after hearing it all. “That includes those dojo compounds ringed by gangs too…”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m not going anywhere near those places.”

Shen He knew exactly what she was worried about, so she soothed her gently. “That idiot doesn’t understand any of the twists and turns here at all. I’ll just find a few retirement homes or something and ask around. As long as people see me doing it, that’s enough.”

“Then you’d better do it cleanly.” Zhao Xiaorong hesitated for a moment.

Star Tower Group was a giant company, one of the so-called corporate giants. If something like this were discovered, the consequences would be no less serious than offending the local Dao factions.

Once that matter was settled, Shen He counted out another portion from the money she had left and gave it to Zhao Xiaorong, telling her to buy some demon beast meat and stew soup for her father. Then she went into the inner room to visit her father, Shen Fei, and found that he was asleep and still hadn’t woken up.

She sat in the dim room for a while, stroking her father’s bare arm stump. Only after a long time did she come back out and pick up the coat she had just taken off from the sofa.

“Be careful on the road!”

Zhao Xiaorong knew Shen He was working under a deadline, so she didn’t say anything more to dampen her spirits.

“Remember to come back before dark! You don’t want to run into a yin-soul demon pool!”

Shen He grinned. “I’ve got a little skill to me, at least.”

She waved, grabbed the wooden sword hanging on the sofa as well, and quickly went out and downstairs. Looking at the sunlight, she let out a breath.

The atmosphere at home was just too heavy.

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The truth was, living in a rental wasn’t only about money. Spending years in a place like this would drive anyone mad.

Of course, Shen He wasn’t trying to avoid responsibility.

If someone else were earning money outside and she had to stay home to take care of her parents, she wouldn’t have complained.

But right now, she was the only one bringing in money.

Under those circumstances, she absolutely couldn’t afford for her own mental state to start collapsing too.

“So where should I start?”

She hadn’t gone far. Leaning against the area beneath the stairwell, Shen He took out her phone and started checking recent media reports.

After scrolling through a few headlines, she came across a bulletin that looked strangely familiar.

[The southern part of Qinglao Mountain has been struck by a meteor. There are currently no casualties. The relevant departments are organizing evacuation and relocation. Anyone who sees this notice is asked to seek shelter immediately.]

Seek shelter immediately?

What kind of nonsense is this now…?

Instinctively, Shen He felt there was a major story buried in this.

She might not be a reporter, but if she could “research” something good, then people in the relevant professions wouldn’t be stingy about buying it from her, right?

“That settles it.”

She clicked off her phone and set off in high spirits.

Qinglao Mountain bordered this whole district. She had grown up playing around there, and she knew the roads better than the back of her hand.

If she left now, she could still take a look around and make it back in time for dinner.