APCF – Chapter 127 Fine

With Qi Yujie stepping up to take over the company, Qi Xingchen no longer had to worry about splitting his time between everything. At 8:40 in the morning, Bo Ye received a call from Father Bo.

The investigation on the license plate from yesterday was complete: it was genuine, not a fake, and registered in a neighboring province. Coming all the way across provinces just to show up at this region’s tax bureau…

It seemed even more suspicious.

While Bo Ye was on the call with Father Bo, he had the phone on speaker. Hearing this, the younger ones all fell silent. Father Bo said, “If you think there’s something fishy about it, I can have someone pull the vehicle owner’s call records.”

Qi Xingchen asked a rather naive question: “Can you really get those?”

“At your level, definitely not,” Father Bo chuckled, “but I can. Just wait for my news.”

Qi Xingchen sneaked a glance at Bo Ye.

Bo Ye quickly pretended to be totally absorbed, staring straight ahead and acting like he hadn’t heard a thing.

Just as Bo Ye ended the call, Qi Xingchen’s phone buzzed long and hard again.

It was a text message, from an unknown number:

Meet at 10 a.m. at Xiaohe Restaurant on Jiangpan Road. — Xu Changlin

So Xu Changlin really did reach out first. Looks like their analysis yesterday was right.

Qi Xingchen checked the time — it was already a little after nine. Jiangpan Road was quite a distance away, so he quickly got dressed properly and headed out with Bo Ye.

On the way, worried that Bo Ye hadn’t eaten anything all morning, Qi Xingchen asked him to pull over at a convenience store.

He bundled himself up tightly before heading inside.

He picked out some milk and bread and went to the cashier to pay. While tallying up the total, the store lady stared at him suspiciously and said, “Young man, you look a lot like some celebrity… what’s his name again?”

“Really?” Qi Xingchen pulled up his payment code and casually replied, “A lot of people say that.”

“It’s true… Ah, my memory’s so bad, I just can’t remember the name. Hey, your WeChat code isn’t working.”

So Qi Xingchen switched to his Alipay code — but that didn’t scan either. Luckily, he still had some cash on him, otherwise he would’ve had to borrow money from Bo Ye.

Back in the car, they shared a quick breakfast. While eating, Qi Xingchen couldn’t help but wonder:

Had Dad and Brother eaten breakfast yet? What did they eat?

The Qi family was used to refined, high-quality meals. Could they endure the rough food from mass kitchens?

When would he finally get to see his father and brother again?

The more he thought about it, the more his nose stung. He suddenly remembered a dream he’d had last year:

In the dream, the Qi family’s company was shut down, their house was auctioned off, Dad and Brother were arrested, and his older sister tirelessly ran around trying to save them.

At the time, he thought it was just a nightmare. But thinking about it now, it was very likely the outcome from the last time he was pulled into the book.

This time — no matter what it took — he would never let the Qi family fall into ruin.

After tossing the trash bag, the two continued driving toward Jiangpan Road. At the restaurant entrance, Qi Xingchen unbuckled his seatbelt, but Bo Ye said, “Hold on a second.”

Qi Xingchen was puzzled.

“We still don’t know which side Xu Changlin is really on. If you rush in now, you might fall into his trap. We should observe for a bit first,” Bo Ye paused, then continued, “And also, the one who shows up earliest is usually the more anxious one. The anxious side is easier to manipulate. You’re already less experienced than he is — you mustn’t lose the upper hand.”

Bo Ye made sense, so Qi Xingchen sat back and joined him in carefully watching the surroundings. At 9:45, Xu Changlin got out of his car alone and went into the restaurant.They observed for another ten minutes without seeing anything unusual.

Then Bo Ye said, “Alright, it should be fine now. Go ahead. I’ll wait for you here — call me if anything happens.”

Qi Xingchen nodded. Just before getting out of the car, Bo Ye gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.

With his lover’s warmth lingering on his skin, Qi Xingchen suddenly felt that maybe the road ahead wouldn’t be quite so hard.

The meeting was upstairs on the second floor. Climbing the stairs and making sure to close the door behind him, Qi Xingchen sat down across from Xu Changlin and politely said, “Uncle Xu, I’m here.”

Xu Changlin’s expression was dark and grim. “Didn’t your Qi family teach you that when talking business with elders, you should arrive early?”

“Traffic was heavy, my apologies,” Qi Xingchen said calmly. “Besides, I’m not late.”

Xu Changlin waved it off, “Forget it, I won’t argue with a youngster. Yesterday I looked into it — the charge was changed to fraud because of your Qi family. But someone later bumped up the amount involved, which pushed the sentence up to five years. Do you have any leads?”

Qi Xingchen frowned. “I don’t have any clues yet. But the purpose of increasing the amount — if I’m not wrong — was to make you think that I was the one who added to Xu Sheng’s sentence, and use your anger to turn you against the Qi family.”

Xu Changlin let out a cold laugh. “Borrowing a knife to kill — what a clever move.”

Sensing the bitterness in his tone, Qi Xingchen quickly steered the conversation, “Exactly. It’s like you’re being sold out, and you’re the one counting the money for them.”

Xu Changlin’s face darkened even more. His fists clenched tight on the table — the veins on the back of his hands bulging from the force.

Back when he was on the film set, Qi Xingchen had heard that Xu Sheng’s father had made his fortune from mining — a classic nouveau riche. People like that usually had terrible tempers.

Seizing the opportunity, Qi Xingchen asked, “Do you have any suspects in mind? Like… who was it that told you to have Chairman Li embezzle the money and flee?”

“I do. And it’s laughable,” Xu Changlin said through gritted teeth. “It was the same woman my unfilial son tried to take advantage of.”

The woman Xu Sheng had tried to take advantage of…

At that moment, Qi Xingchen’s vision went dark. He felt both shocked and somehow unsurprised.

It really was her!

Qi Xingchen calmed himself and said, “You mean Tao Tao, right?”

“I have one more thing I need to ask you — please answer truthfully,” Qi Xingchen said with difficulty.

“Do you know anything about the fire at Tiancheng Mall?”

He didn’t ask whether it was Tao Tao who instructed Xu Changlin to act — because there was no way he would admit to it. Admitting that would make him an accomplice to arson, a serious crime with heavy legal consequences.

But Xu Changlin answered without hesitation: “I made a lot of engineer friends back when I was mining. When she came to me, the first thing she had me do was find out the wiring layout and general fire prevention structure of Tiancheng Mall. At the time, I didn’t understand why she wanted that information. It wasn’t until the accident at your family’s mall that I realized.”

In order to drag the plot back on track, she was even willing to commit such heartless acts. Qi Xingchen’s hands trembled uncontrollably with rage.

Or rather — it wasn’t just about forcing the plot back. As a typical Mary Sue romance novel, Peach of the Night had now gone completely off the rails when it came to the so-called “romance line.”

Tao Tao didn’t just want to bring down the Qi Corporation. When the nest is overturned, how can any eggs remain unbroken? If the Qi Corporation collapsed, he wouldn’t fare much better either.

Maybe Tao Tao’s true target… was him.

Qi Xingchen froze for a moment, an indescribable feeling rising in his heart.

Maybe it was because of his existence that his father and brother had suffered so much pain they never should have had to endure.

But now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. Qi Xingchen took a deep breath and asked, “Uncle, what are you thinking of doing now?”

“What am I thinking?” Xu Changlin ground his teeth. “My son’s grudge must be avenged!”

“Good. Then it’ll be easier to work together,” Qi Xingchen said. “We have the same goal. You must have some evidence of your contact with Tao Tao, right? Bring it out, and we can figure out our next steps.”

“Evidence…” Xu Changlin’s face darkened even more. “I don’t have any evidence.”

This was one of the things that made him furious.

“No evidence?” Qi Xingchen paused. “You two didn’t communicate through messages?”

“No. She’s extremely cautious. We never exchanged messages. Every time she called me, she used a virtual number. And whenever we met, it was at locations she picked — places where I later found out there were no surveillance cameras nearby.”

Qi Xingchen had been hoping to grab onto a lifeline, but hearing this, despair sank even deeper into him. He couldn’t help but slump his shoulders.

Then he heard Xu Changlin say, “But after our last meeting, I saw her get into a car — a white car with a red license plate. The plate number was…”

Before, Qi Xingchen had been confused — how could Tao Tao alone have been powerful enough to get Xu Sheng’s sentence increased, and how could she have gotten the authorities to target the Qi family so heavily?

After talking with Xu Changlin, he understood everything now.

They were both like grasshoppers tied to the same string — they could only survive by working together. Qi Xingchen asked Xu Changlin to send him all his call logs, even if they were from virtual numbers. Then he told him to contact his engineer friends to see if they could find evidence that Tao Tao had hired someone to commit arson. Meanwhile, Qi Xingchen would investigate the car she got into.

When they left the restaurant, to avoid alerting any lurking reporters and exposing their meeting, Xu Changlin left first. Qi Xingchen waited more than twenty minutes before heading out.

Bo Ye was waiting outside to pick him up. As soon as Qi Xingchen got in, Bo Ye asked, “How did it go? Smoothly?”

Qi Xingchen said, “Both yes and no. The good news is…”

Five minutes later, Bo Ye, like Qi Xingchen, was in disbelief.

Just for the sake of a story plot, she could disregard over a dozen human lives. Could she even still be called human?

“Forget it. Let’s not talk about her anymore,” Qi Xingchen said, “Brother Ye, can you come with me to see my dad?”

Bo Ye nodded and started driving toward the detention center.

At the restaurant parking lot gate, Qi Xingchen habitually pulled out his phone to scan the QR code to pay.

A few seconds later, the screen showed: Payment failed.

At the convenience store earlier, the cashier had scanned his payment code, so Qi Xingchen thought maybe it had just been a network or QR code glitch. But now he was the one scanning, and it still didn’t go through — that meant there was a problem with his bank card.

Feeling a little embarrassed, he watched Bo Ye pay for him. On the way to the detention center, Qi Xingchen called his bank relationship manager to ask what was wrong. After all, it would be terrible to be caught out without money while trying to handle urgent business.

The manager promised to check, and soon called back: “Mr. Qi, your account is currently under judicial freeze. Funds can only come in, not go out.”

Judicial freeze?

Qi Xingchen was stunned for a second, about to call his sister to ask for details — but before he could, Qi Yujie’s call came in first.

“Xingxing, two things: First, the invoice was leaked by the branch company in S Province. I’ve already told the local manager to pull the surveillance footage. We should have results in a day or two. Second, the company just received a penalty notice from the Securities Regulatory Commission. They believe the Qi Corporation is suspected of malicious short selling. They have now frozen all of our personal accounts, securities accounts, fixed assets, everything — and fined us 8.3 billion yuan. The cash on the company’s books plus the money in our private accounts has already been confiscated — 3.1 billion yuan total. We’re still short 5.2 billion.”