The internet had been boiling for days over a leaked clip of a female PhD student fighting to defend her rights, but every time people tried to repost it, the videos vanished almost instantly, and the posters' accounts were hit with short bans. The pattern was so blatant that it made righteous onlookers grind their teeth. Word spread that Benma Group's public-relations machine was behind the mass takedowns, leaning on platforms to smother the story before it caught fire. "Can they really cover the sky with one hand?" people fumed. Reporting it through official channels seemed useless; there was no visible response, and the silence felt like a second slap.
When hopelessness starts to set in, online crowds look for a lever. Someone spotted the official Weibo of Audi Motors and tossed out a suggestion that stuck: "Ask Mr. Heifeng at Audi Motors. He's the kind of entrepreneur who won't look away." One message became ten, ten became a hundred, and the comment section under Audi Motors' account turned into a living petition within hours. People detailed the young scholar's ordeal, listed which platforms had scrubbed what, and begged for help. By the time the tide crested, more than a hundred thousand messages were stacked beneath the blue checkmark, all pointing in the same direction—hoping that Heifeng Lu would stand up and force daylight into a sealed room.
While the storm gathered online, Heifeng himself wasn't watching the feeds. He'd been holed up in Audi's R&D labs, tracking the steady State of three piState—A4, A6, and TT—and shepherding the A8 through trial production. The A8 was his obsession: the car that would bear the brand's luxury standard, not just powerful and precise but genuinely plush, the model that says "this is our summit." He was also quietly stocking the pipeline. He had secured designs for the R8, RS7, Q5, and Q7 to broaden the lineup. The SUVs were non-negotiable; entry into that segment through the Q5 and Q7 had to come soon. The R8 would be the supercar halo, kept beneath ¥5,000,000 (~$700,000) to land like a thunderclap without feeling unreachable. The RS7—nicknamed the "suit thug"—was Heifeng's favorite: the ultimate sleeper, businesslike on the surface and lethal underneath, a car meant to humble exotic brands precisely when they least expected it. He wanted people to imagine easing past flamboyant supercars without breaking a sweat and understand that restraint can be its own kind of swagger.
He didn't push for speed because the design and engineering teams had expanded so quickly. The point, this time, was discipline—do it by the book, layer experience upon experience, train talent. He planned a two-stage reveal calendar, timed not for random press days but for marquee auto shows abroad, the kind of events where one solid appearance could echo for months and shape the story people tell about a brand.
The lab door burst open. Huang Ming from marketing all but skidded to a stop, breathless, thrusting a tablet toward him. "Mr. Heifeng, look—everyone's asking you to uphold justice." Heifeng blinked at the tablet. The screen was a solid wall of comments under the Audi Motors Weibo: "Please stand up for the female PhD student, don't let Benma Group bury this!" "Please escalate this to the relevant national authorities!" People had even compiled timelines of deletions and bans across platforms, turning the thread into a dossier.
Huang Ming's first instinct was caution. "We… could ignore it," he ventured. The case didn't involve Audi Motors directly, and the sheer force it would take to bend Benma could mean stomping through a minefield of relationships. A misstep might draw blowback powerful enough to bruise the company for months. Even if Audi Motors stood tall, the gnats would swarm—calls, pressure, favors owed, endless back-channel nuisances. Heifeng weighed it with the same habit he brought to engineering trade-offs. Public stance versus operational drag, righteousness versus risk, the value of silence versus the cost of it.
His phone rang. Uncle Ye Guohua's name lit up the screen. The conversation was short. A small smile tugged at the corner of Heifeng's mouth when it ended. The message had been unmistakable: the higher-ups already had eyes on the rot. "Open a breach," Uncle Ye had said, almost casually. "Let the ghosts and monsters come crawling into the light." That was as clear a green light as a business leader could hope for.
Heifeng turned the tablet back to himself, opened the Audi Motors account, and typed a single line with a promise and a signal: "I am Heifeng. I will take care of this matter." He sat with it for a breath, feeling the change in the room. Before that call, this would have been a lonely stand—principle against power, clean hands against a dirty wall. Now it was something else: an inflection point backed by intention from above. The work would still be messy. If Benma had the muscle to erase posts across the major platforms, the network behind them would not go quietly. But when the State wants, the wind tends to rise.
Huang Ming hovered, unconvinced. "Do we really want to wade into this? The water's deep, and if it turns against us—" Heifeng cut him off gently, unkindly. "Do you believe the higher-ups haven't noticed what Benma's been doing? Minister Ye has already called. Our role is simple: add fuel to the fire." It wasn't bravado; it was strategy. Amplify what the people were already feeling. Turn a chorus into a microphone. If public opinion aligned with official will, the pressure would become a rail, and the whole problem would move.
The meaning of that one sentence on Weibo rippled outward. To the petitioners, a hand reached back through the screen to say, "I see you." It warned the platforms that scrub-and-ban wouldn't be enough anymore. To the quiet figures behind Benma's campaigns, it announced that a company with real manufacturing, jobs, and tax footprints—and friends in the right places—was stepping onto the field. And to Audi's own staff, it set a tone. A brand isn't built only on horsepower, machining tolerances, or leather grades; it's built on a spine. People notice, and they remember, when a firm refuses to avert its eyes.
In the lab's hum of equipment and quiet conversations, the future still pressed forward. A8 test data would be sifted again, ride comfort nudged upward a notch, material choices argued over until consensus sharpened into certainty. The RS7's development brief would keep daring the engineers to hide wolf's teeth behind a businessman's smile. The Q-series schedules would tighten because the market waits for no one. Yet that afternoon's choice reframed everything. It said that Audi Motors would compete in the marketplace not only with products but with posture, that the company's idea of "premium" included the will to do the right thing when it counted.
Huang Ming left the office with his worries intact but tempered by the weight behind the decision. Heifeng, alone again, looked at the scrolling river of comments on the tablet. He wasn't naïve about what would come next: media calls, orchestrated counter-narratives, maybe even attempts to smear Audi to muddy the water. That was fine. The engineer in him knew that systems under load reveal their weak points; properly applied pressure is a diagnostic tool. If this case drew every hidden lever into the open, cleaning them up would be a matter of process and time. And if, in the middle of that, a bullied scholar got her dignity back and a country saw that its outrage could matter, that was the kind of victory no sales chart could measure.