Chapter 108: Underground

"So we have roughly identified the major groups behind the cruise missile attack. Or at least the ones who hired the warship of mercenaries that launched the cruise missile, anyway. Even better, they weren't satisfied with just killing Riley Rong. From the military police's interrogation, it seems that they requested that the mercenaries remain on standby to attack more of Rong Group's buildings and property. Unfortunately, because of the strong naval presence that appeared as a response to the attack, they didn't have the opportunity to do so."

That was the problem with mercenaries. Nothing they did made any sense, at least not according to any military doctrine. If this was carried out by the military, the navy would have pulled out the warship long ago. They wouldn't bother having the ship pointlessly remain in enemy waters, dodging patrols and attracting attention from the authorities.

Most likely the mercenaries didn't want to do that too, but they didn't have a choice. Their employers insisted, and since they were receiving money from them, they allowed their greed to blind them to tactical common sense…which led to their defeat.

Not only that, they must have gotten overconfident because of the technology of their warship. The navy's engineers and technicians were studying them right now, but they discovered that the mercenaries had installed an engine superior to any on our battleships and cruisers. It was developed by a foreign company and allowed the ship to reach unprecedented speeds. No wonder they could evade the patrols so easily.

Whatever the case, we had finally succeeded in capturing them. I was just worried that the masterminds would get away with this and commit the same crime in future…especially since it was clear that their desire for vengeance had yet to be sated. They would simply take the chance to hire a new group of mercenaries and launch missiles on the city again, which was likely now that the navy would pull back the patrol groups after arresting the first batch of mercenaries.

Now that I thought about it, that might be why the first group of mercenaries was stupid enough to hang around. They were expendable pawns, sacrificed by their employers so that the navy would lower their guard and thus allow the second group of mercenaries to pop up and launch another attack. Damn it. I might have underestimated them.

However, I planned to counterattack and get them all in one fell swoop before they had the chance to massacre many more people just because of their unreasonable hatred.

"They are the Er Enterprises, Ye Conglomerate and Hao Holdings. I'm sure you have heard of them before."

"Oh, I most definitely have." Bu Fan smiled and waved for the waitresses to leave. "And they won't stop here. They still plan on demolishing a few more of the Rong Group's buildings. I don't know why. The Rong Group has already collapsed and most of its shares have been bought out by them. I suspect it's because they want to murder the members of the Rong family – like Ricardo Rong and his wife, for example. Pull the weeds out by the roots and ensure there's nobody in the Rong family left to take revenge. Very ruthless…and very unethical."

"They aren't human!" One of the other men snarled, without a trace of irony. I tried not to snort. Weren't we about to do the exact same thing?

Well…at least we weren't blowing up entire buildings or places in the city and involving innocent people along with the targets. So we had a line we refused to cross, unlike those tyrannical bastards. In fact, the whole reason why we were planning to take them out was to prevent the deaths of so many innocent people.

Riley Rong's fangirls were one thing. I doubted they were "innocent" in the truest sense of the word, given how they stalked, harassed and hounded Lily Ling. They would even have driven her to her death if they could. But I wasn't sure if they actually deserved to die. Well, they were already dead, so there was little point in dwelling on what-ifs.

"So how do we do this?" I asked. And for good reason. Unlike most CEO male leads, I didn't have any experience with the underground. In fact, I didn't even have any contacts with the underworld other than Bu Fan, and my influence on secret societies and underground organizations was zero. Nonetheless, there were things I could help with…which was why I was here.

"I have contacts and people infiltrating their companies." Bu Fan leaned back, stroking his chin. "The working conditions in these groups are pretty terrible. They exploit their staff, forcing them to work overtime over the most stupid reasons – and unpaid overtime too, cut away their bonuses or withhold their pay over trivial matters such as giving their CEO wrong advice on romance or some nonsense like that. The CEOs spend most of their time chasing girls or stalking them, forcing their staff to maintain a 24/7 watch over their romantic targets without any form of welfare, delegate the bulk of their responsibilities to beleaguered secretaries, aides and managers while they waste their time flirting with girls or going on vacations, cancelling meetings out of the blue and disrupting conferences just from a single phone call from their girl, fire staff for saying even a single bad thing about their girlfriends or wives. Oh, and favoritism toward their girlfriends or wives, at the expense of staff who have loyally worked there for years. It didn't matter how hard they work or how long – a single bad word about their loved one and they are kicked out of the company. Never mind they didn't receive any compensation for overtime, overwork or anything."

What the fuck? Was there something wrong with these CEOs? How the hell did they ever managed to run their respective companies properly when they wasted so much time indulging in such nonsense? Not to mention these were adult CEOs, supposedly experienced businessmen, running multibillionaire corporations. Why were they so…childish and petty?

Did the author not do any research on how real CEOs work? Or was this another case of fantasizing, where the world only revolved around the female lead? Where the authors indulged in the fantasy of the CEO male lead dropping every single thing to chase after her? Because she was some kind of special snowflake?

Whoops. I shouldn't have criticized the female leads. Now their CEO male leads would come after me with a vengeance, make me bankrupt and destroy my livelihood just because I said a single critical paragraph about them. I was so scared.

"We have to destroy their companies totally," I declared, more determined than ever. I could feel rage welling up inside me at the sheer absurdity of their antics. Well, the thing that pissed me off the most was still the assassinations. I couldn't believe that people still resorted to murder – even mass murder – in the twenty-second century. This was modern society we were talking about, where crime rates had fallen to all-time low, poverty was nearly eradicated and people enjoyed higher standards of living, decent education and affordable healthcare.

Yet we still had psychotic CEOs and retards resorting to murder in such a barbaric fashion? This read just like a trashy CEO or son-in-law or urban cultivation story where every character existed solely to kill the female lead or the male protagonist…despite being set in a modern day urban setting that was governed by contemporary laws.

Yeah, I knew that low crime didn't mean no crime, and even in modern urban cities, murders still happened. But the number of murderers and murderesses that the main characters of CEO, son-in-law and urban cultivations stories run into just…made it utterly unbelievable and ridiculous.

Trying not to burst a vein, I took a deep breath to calm myself down. Bu Fan continued, blissfully unaware that I had nearly suffered a stroke from the sheer stupidity of his revelations.

"We are trying to organize strikes…get the staff and underpaid and overworked employees to rise up and turn against the CEOs and the board of management. Unfortunately, unions have been outlawed by the CEOs, so we can't unionize, but we have been gathering evidence of the CEOs' misdeeds and favoritism."

"I see. So if we bring this to court, we can sue all these CEOs and ruin them. Shut down their companies or at least improve working conditions by replacing the CEOs and board with more mature and responsible people. CEOs who won't stop a meeting and run off at the drop of a hat when their girlfriends or wives call them."

"Yeah." Bu Fan nodded, and then he grinned. "But we obviously don't plan on waiting for that."

"Huh?" I gaped at him, caught off guard. Bu Fan sighed.

"You know how these big companies work. The reason why nobody had exposed their horrid working practices before is because they can shut them down very easily. These are major corporations we are talking about here. They can afford the best lawyers while the poor exploited staff don't have anyone decent to represent them. They can fabricate and destroy the evidence. They will even countersue the staff for breach of contract, you know, the non-disclosure agreement. For revealing workplace practices, which they aren't allowed to. Also, many of them are still waiting for outstanding salaries, so they can't afford to quit and find a new job. Apparently, if they want to quit, they have to pay a bond of several ten thousand yuan, which they can't afford. It's all very insidious."

That was capitalism for you. Squeeze as much profit from your exploited staff as possible. These people truly weren't human. And they wanted to kill Riley Rong.

Then again, from what I heard, Riley Rong did the same exact thing. He would stop meetings and leave the board or his staff hanging whenever he heard news about Lily, running off to stalk and chase her. He forced his driver and aide to work overtime and cancelled their bonuses whenever they gave the "wrong" romantic advice or suggested that he should give up because Lily was already married. He would also ruthlessly fire staff who said so much as a bad word about Lily, forcing them to pay the bond and suing them into imprisonment when they couldn't afford to.

Yeah, most female readers might find it romantic when they read the whole story from the female lead's point of view, but for the rest of us, the CEO male lead is clearly an awful piece of human being. Abusive and exploitative trash. A villain of the highest order.

"So the law won't work." Bu Fan leaned closer, resting his elbow on the glass table in front of him. "We'll need a more…direct approach. That's why I invited my friends from the underworld here. If our opponents want to crush us with the law…then we'll just circumvent the law completely."

"We'll kill them!" A gang leader snarled. "They won't be safe from our blades!"

"Well…actually, they are. Being rich, paranoid CEOs, they have the best security that their money can buy." Bu Fan sighed. Then he looked at me, a grin crinkling his face. A cigarette in one hand, he waved it at me. I flinched at the smoke – I was a non-smoker and I hated cigarettes, especially since they caused lung cancer – but waited for my friend to continue. He smirked and nodded. "And that's where you come in."