Chapter 74 All the Relevant Details

I couldn’t help but glance at Zhang Haixing and sigh. From her performance with me just now, killing one more person was a piece of cake for her.

Fatty waited a while and then bent down to dig her out. By this time, she was already unconscious and he was able to dig out her hands first and tie them together. As he dug her legs out, I also went to help. I knew she must have been seriously injured because she was all pliant.

I was a little unsure of what Fatty wanted to do as I watched him tie Zhang Haixing up tightly. He then turned to me and said, “This won’t be enough. This woman must have a way to untie the rope so we have to use other methods to completely immobilize her. Otherwise, with her athletic ability, it will be difficult for us to fight or run away.”

I was smoking a cigarette, still feeling weak and numb, as I thought to myself, do you want to break her hands or cut her hamstrings or something?

The difference between good and bad people was that even if good people had the upper hand, they were less willing to hurt those who had previously hurt them. Of course, my bottom line was very low right now so I wouldn’t stop Fatty if he made a determined effort. And I knew he could do such a thing, too.

But I was obviously thinking too much. Fatty simply tied Zhang Haixing’s fingers with transparent adhesive tape to make them look like Doraemon.

Zhang Haixing was the type of person who would diligently and effectively exercise her fingers’ strength and ability, but Fatty’s binding method apparently prevented one’s fingers from opening. Even if you tried hard to stretch your fingers, the elasticity of the adhesive tape made it too difficult to get off so the flexibility of your fingers practically disappeared.

“This is called beating the snake seven inches below its head. By tying the person and their fingers, you hit them where it hurts.” He clapped his hands. “She said she wasn’t surnamed Zhang. Do you think the whole group of them are the same or is it just this girl who snuck in?”

“Can you see if she’s wearing a human skin mask?” I asked him. But having said that, I realized that Fatty probably didn’t have any experience wearing a mask and wouldn’t know how to tell so I clenched my teeth and staggered over.

Zhang Haixing was still very beautiful, with sharp lines and not a hint of sloppiness. Her face was three-dimensional, soft, and feminine. Such a face and figure would really be amazing in boots and tight leather clothes.

Unfortunately, my life had nothing to do with such things as beauty.

I turned her head over to reveal her white neck. The biggest problem with human skin masks was the connection between the mask and the neck. It was very difficult to make it perfect, but this technical problem had obviously been overcome a long time ago. The mask I wore before had been done so well that you would never see the connecting line without a microscope.

The only flaw I noticed when wearing the mask came about because I kept involuntarily touching it—the temperature.

As long as you wore the mask regularly, you would find that the temperature of your face was slightly higher than when you weren’t wearing it.

This difference in temperature was very difficult to detect and I hadn’t worn such a mask for a long time so I wasn’t sure I would be able to tell it immediately. But if she was wearing one, I would definitely feel it.

As I put my hand on her neck and gently touched her cheek, stroking it a few times, Fatty suddenly asked me, “Fuck, are you trying to molest her? Then I’ll keep a lookout.”

I scoffed, “Molest, my ass.” I didn’t feel anything, which meant that this was obviously her own face.

Maybe she was like Zhang Haike and the mask had already fused to her face. But I thought it unlikely because she had said, “Did you think long fingers were unique to the Zhang family?”

In that case, what she meant was that these people may not be the so-called Zhang family.

Zhang Haixing’s fingers weren’t long but I had definitely heard her clearly at that time, which was why I wanted to see if she was wearing a mask. But I hoped I had heard wrong. After all, compared to us working alone without knowing anything, a group of Zhang family members with good skills suddenly appearing made me feel so much better.

Short Feng lowered his head and I saw that the blood on his hands hadn’t completely stopped. Zhang Haixing had used him as bait to lure Fatty into a trap, but the only thing she didn’t expect was that he was willing to lay down his life to save Fatty.

This German guy was very smart and knew that he would die if Fatty also died. It was only if Fatty survived that he would have a chance of getting out of here as well. So, even though his hands and feet were bound by the iron wire, he rolled into the quagmire and acted as a stepping stone so that Fatty could climb up.

“If those people aren’t the Zhang family, then who are they?”

“If they’re not the Zhang family, then they foresaw that I would investigate and must have faked the information on the internet. They designed almost every step for me.” I took a drag of my cigarette. “But I’m sure they didn’t expect you to appear because Zhang Haixing’s anger towards you couldn’t be covered up. That Zhang Haike’s an old fox, but this woman isn’t very good at disguising herself. That’s why we were careless.”

Zhang Haixing really hadn’t been pretending but I didn’t test her because of my negligence. Moreover, I even let someone like her bring us all the way here.

I was afraid that this was also in their calculations.

Was this a big scheme? If I thought about it carefully, there were actually many flaws that stemmed from me.

They made a lot of use of the blind spots in my thinking.

As for who they were, I didn’t think it really mattered. According to the information we had, it was impossible to draw a conclusion. The only thing that was certain was that even if they weren’t the Zhang family, they had deep ties with the Zhangs.

“Damn it,” I cursed. If this was the case, then we were in trouble. We couldn’t contact the outside world so the only thing we could do was find our own way out.

Although it would be painful to go all the way back, it didn’t mean that we were narrowly escaping death. The key point was that if we took the original path back, we would definitely pass through Motuo even if we were exhausted and rather passive by that time. But if we didn’t follow the old path and looked for another exit, it would be a long road ahead. This was the hinterland of the Himalayas so walking around casually was basically tantamount to death.

“Hey,” Fatty handed Short Feng some water, “what do you have to say for yourself? What’s your situation? We’re now three grasshoppers tied to a rope, so let’s have some information. How could your partners use you as bait to harm us? You didn’t hold anything back in the negotiations, did you?”

“We were on guard, but we didn’t expect them to do it here,” Short Feng said. “We didn’t reach an agreement in the lama temple. We met this group of people for the first time back in New York when we were cleaning up Qiu Dekao’s company files.”

Short Feng said that after Qiu Dekao’s company was split up and its advantageous businesses were taken away, all the remaining bankrupt assets were bought by a German company. At that time, they went to take over the business departments, but most of the people had already left. They were joined by a group of project managers who were mainly Chinese.

These people weren’t likely to find other jobs, because unlike flexible Americans, they chose to stay and wait for a new employer. They did field work and reported to New York or Berlin.

Since nearly all the experiences occurred in China during the twenty years before Qiu Dekao’s death, there were quite a large number of Chinese people in these departments, which was reasonable. After investigating, they found that seventy-eight of these people were Chinese.

They re-interviewed these Chinese people because they needed a large number of files and materials to purchase the company’s assets. Of course, they also needed someone to interpret the files, so they needed to understand the relationship between these people and the files.

During the interview, they found that although the company’s projects were going bankrupt, one project was still in operation. Almost all of the resources from these side projects were used by the main project, and the date of the project’s launch was the day Qiu Dekao died.

The most curious thing was that the management authority of this project was level F, which fell under Senior Level Leaders. This was a practice of international companies in which even the board of directors would need half a year to stop such a project; otherwise, they would have to pay a large excessive waiver fee.

As a result, the hidden aspects of Qiu Dekao’s company, the culprits of his many strange actions over the years, and the legendary think tank that he trusted had all finally emerged.

“I always felt that even though Qiu Dekao did so many things, the core motivation was always a bit lacking. His perseverance and energy even up until the last moments of his life must have stemmed from something someone showed him. He must have believed in it wholeheartedly.” I sighed, “Among many things, Qiu Dekao’s work was very accurate and had even reached the point where he knew more of the inside story. At many key points, there must have been real insiders helping him. This kind of thing must have been going on all along, and now this group of people has finally appeared.”

“Do you mean to say that none of his employees are simple?” Fatty asked.

“How many employees were originally working on these projects?” I asked Short Feng.

“With a total of more than seven hundred employees, it was a huge organization. They laid off more than four hundred before we took over,” Short Feng said. “These Chinese people were usually hidden in the huge organization. They may not have been in high positions, but they were all in key positions to push things forward, which is very similar to how the Zhang family operates. Now that the tide has receded and anyone who can hide them has disappeared, they have no other choice but to reveal it all.”

“Isn’t this like usurping the throne? Did Qiu Dekao tolerate the existence of such a system?” Fatty asked.

“This wasn’t an attempt to usurp power. In the corporate systems of Europe and the United States, power is firmly in the hands of the board of directors. The system is intertwined and it’s very easy to root out a Chinese national’s network and underground gang. In doing so, these people were merely ensuring that the company’s resources would flow in the direction they wanted. I think Qiu Dekao had no choice but to acquiesce to this kind of behavior. Besides us, the biggest enemy for him in his later years was the board of directors.” I recalled all the prior details that may have been related to this matter. “Throughout European and American history, it was very common for a company’s controller to hide from the board of directors the fact that he wanted to drain the assets of his empire to accomplish something.”

“It’s kind of amazing,” Fatty said.

“So then you’re the acquirer and the big boss. After you step in, you should be the management. Why are you so passive now?” I asked Short Feng.

“I think it’s because this group of Chinese showed our big boss whatever Qiu Dekao saw. I don’t know what it is, but our boss’s position obviously quickly changed after seeing it,” Short Feng said. “We’ve continued Qiu Dekao’s previous system of not supervising, not asking questions, and injecting a large amount of company funds. And our original operating department changed from the main executor to the auxiliary party.”

“After that, were you so obedient?” I asked him.

I looked into his eyes and knew that he wasn’t finished.

<Chapter 73><Table of Contents><Chapter 75>

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Updated 1/16/2022