"I don't know a damn thing. I'm just a simple, honest man. Whatever you want me to confess, I won't say it!"
Sitting in the dim, greasy private room of the diner, Huang Baoqiang crossed his arms and glared at the inexplicable, towering man across the table. His expression screamed a mixture of faux innocence and cornered panic—a desperate performance that essentially translated to: *I may look stupid, but you have no proof.*
"If you truly did not know anything, you wouldn't have obediently followed me in here," Adrian noted smoothly, resting his elbows on the sticky tabletop. "We are both intelligent men, Mr. Huang. There is absolutely no point in you pretending to be stupid with me."
Adrian found it genuinely amusing to see the scrawny programmer acting so stubbornly. In his previous life, he had broken hardened yakuza assassins and arrogant warlords. Watching this corporate rat try to play hardball was like watching a cornered mouse bare its teeth at a lion.
"Look, I don't know who you are or what you think you heard," Huang said, lowering his voice to a hushed, conspiratorial whisper. "At most, I'll give you 20,000 yuan as hush money. But you have to swear never to mention this 'misunderstanding' again!"
Seeing Adrian's confident, unblinking demeanor, Huang had immediately folded on his claims of innocence. He desperately tried to buy his way out, hoping a quick payoff would make the pale extortionist disappear.
"..." Adrian said nothing. He merely maintained his dark, ambiguous smile.
"Don't push your luck, kid! Thirty thousand! Not a single penny more!"
Seeing that the stranger remained entirely unfazed by the sum, Huang gritted his teeth, sweat beading on his forehead as he hastily raised the price. Still, Adrian did not speak.
"Brother, you cannot be this greedy! Forty thousand! That is my absolute bottom line! If you still think that's not enough to buy your silence, then go ahead and run to that idiot Zeng Xiaoxian!" Huang jumped up from his plastic chair, his face flushed with indignation. "You are completely insatiable!"
Admittedly, Huang reasoned frantically, if this guy actually went to the radio host, it would definitely cause a massive headache for the production team. But at worst, the network executives would just tie the idiot up in civil court.
In this era, men died for money, and birds died for food. Even if Zeng Xiaoxian went completely bankrupt fighting a lawsuit, the network's legal team could drag the proceedings out for a decade, insisting they were acting strictly in accordance with the signed contract. There were countless, perfectly legal ways for massive capital to financially and mentally ruin an ordinary man!
"Sit down, sit down. Why are you so agitated over loose change?" Adrian smiled, reaching out and effortlessly pressing the programmer back down into his chair with a heavy hand on his shoulder.
"Let me show you something," Adrian smiled, casually reaching into his pocket and pulling out his smartphone.
Huang's eyes immediately widened behind his cheap glasses. Because the original owner of this body had never had to worry about food or clothing, the shut-in had always purchased the absolute best technology available. What Adrian had just pulled out was a pristine, imported iPhone 5.
When the iPhone was officially launched in mainland China, it had instantly become the ultimate, sought-after status symbol among the urban elite. Owning one was an absolute mark of wealth! However, the exorbitant price of Apple products made them utterly inaccessible to the working class. An iPhone 4 was currently selling for nearly 5,000 yuan, and the new iPhone 5 was priced as high as 8,000.
Eight thousand yuan was a staggering amount of disposable cash in 2012. It was worth noting that rent in premium luxury buildings like the iPartment or Ode to Joy was only around 8,000 yuan a month—which was roughly the entire average salary for a white-collar worker in Shanghai. Spending an entire month's net income on a single mobile phone was something only the truly wealthy, or the completely financially irresponsible, dared to do.
'It's fake. It has to be a knock-off,' Huang muttered to himself, desperately trying to analyze his opponent. 'This kid's casual clothes are cheap domestic brands. How much is a full set of that garbage worth? A few hundred yuan? He can't afford that phone.'
But Huang's jaw immediately dropped, and he found he couldn't close it.
One... two... three... four... five... six... seven... eight digits!
Adrian had casually opened his banking app. The account balance that popped up on the high-definition screen completely stunned Huang.
In addition to the eighteen luxury property deeds Adrian had discovered earlier, the reclusive host had nearly twenty million yuan in liquid, immediately accessible cash sitting in his primary bank account. Although his total net worth of roughly one hundred million yuan might be considered pocket change to the true, untouchable financial tycoons of the world, among the masses of normal society, he was a literal god.
"Do not try to challenge my monthly allowance with your entire life savings. I have absolutely zero interest in your pathetic forty thousand yuan," Adrian said, his voice dripping with aristocratic disdain.
Seeing Huang's dumbfounded, pale expression, Adrian felt deeply satisfied. While it was true that in a few years, this rustic programmer would eventually scheme his way into becoming a major player in the investment industry, right now, Huang was just a small-time, disposable rat who had just started out. When had he ever seen so much liquid cash casually displayed by a guy in cheap clothes?
If the network executives hadn't even wanted to pay Zeng Xiaoxian five million, how could they possibly have been willing to give Huang the full cut? In reality, for executing the corporate heist, all Huang had received was a measly 500,000 yuan in cash, plus a few networking contacts in the media industry.
Of course, Adrian knew the man's future. Huang was incredibly shrewd. After making this initial dirty fortune, he would quickly leverage those contacts, and in just five or six years, he would go from a rustic country laborer to a legitimate billionaire. He was a ruthless model of a nobody's rise to absolute success! But right now? He was just a terrified, rising star whose total assets barely surpassed a million.
"Since you clearly have so much money... what the hell do you want from me?" Huang stammered, taken completely aback. He carefully looked the tall man up and down, his previous assessment entirely shattered.
He had initially thought this kid was just a lazy, good-for-nothing gamer trying to score a quick buck. But now, realizing the sheer wealth the man possessed, Huang felt that the kid suddenly exuded an aura of terrifying, untouchable nobility. There was no way around it; men who could casually flash twenty million in liquid cash naturally exuded an invisible, crushing weight of power.
"Come on, confess to the camera. Detail exactly how you colluded with the network investors to steal Zeng Xiaoxian's bonus," Adrian smiled, seamlessly turning on the high-definition video recording function on his phone and pointing the lens at Huang's sweating face.
"What are you talking about?! I don't know anything!" Huang immediately denied it, his survival instincts kicking in. "I would never confess to a felony on camera! Not even if you killed me!"
"I'll tell you! I'll tell you everything!"
Exactly five minutes later—after being 'warmly received' by Adrian's ruthless, bone-breaking interrogation techniques in the soundproofed private room—Huang immediately abandoned his so-called legal principles. Nursing a dislocated finger and a bruised rib, the programmer poured out the entire corporate conspiracy in agonizing, recorded detail.
Admittedly, Shanghai was a modern society governed by the strict rule of law, and no ordinary citizen would dare to abuse extreme violence in broad daylight. But if the victim of said violence was a corporate criminal who had just embezzled five million yuan, would he ever dare to run to the police?
Besides, staring into Adrian's dead, predatory eyes, Huang genuinely believed that if he refused, this multi-millionaire would simply snap his neck and pay someone to clean up the mess. After all, everyone talked about the fairness of the law, but everyone in the corporate world knew the terrifying truth: those with enough capital could always find new, creative ways to interpret the law.
"Very well," Adrian smiled, stopping the recording and slipping the phone back into his pocket. "Do you happen to know the exact sentencing guidelines for corporate fraud involving an excess of five million yuan?"
"According to Article 266 of the Criminal Law," Huang rasped immediately, clutching his swelling hand. "If the amount of fraud is particularly massive, the offender shall be sentenced to a fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years, or life imprisonment, and shall absolutely have all of his property and assets confiscated by the state."
Clearly, this ruthless kid had done his legal homework before agreeing to be the network's fall guy.
"You knew the catastrophic legal risks, yet you still dared to execute the theft?" Adrian asked, his dark eyes glinting with genuine approval. He had initially thought the kid was just a greedy idiot, but the fact that he had memorized the exact penal codes proved he was a calculated risk-taker.
"What is there to be afraid of? The timid starve in the gutters, and the bold thrive in the penthouses!" Huang spat, a flicker of raw, unbroken ambition shining through his terror. "The day I left my dirt-poor village, I swore on my life I would make something of myself in Shanghai!"
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