"I want to sue Jinclair Chemicals. I joined their Insect Killing Team, in charge of lab security, but they never told me at all..."
"The American Cockroaches there weigh half a ton, the lab mice stand four or five meters at the shoulder. An American Cockroach broke my leg and warned me that if I kept acting horny and spraying insecticide perfume, they’d ’match’ me..."
A clean-cut white guy with a broken leg was sitting sideways on the ground, sobbing in grievance.
"I, I, I... I want to sue Metamorphosis Pharmaceutical. They turned me into a Beast-eared Maiden. I went to court to ask for compensation, and Metamorphosis Pharmaceutical introduced me to a bar to sell my ass."
A trial Furry Lady spoke up, face full of indignation.
"And me! I want to sue Spercy Organism on behalf of my wife. They transplanted starfish genes into her, and every now and then they’d chop off her legs saying it was for experiments."
"In the end, those dog-fucking bastards shaved off the meat, threw it into boiling water to cook bone broth, then sold it to hospitals as components!"
Another man squeezed out of the crowd, face full of rage, pointing at the creature on stage that looked like a polar bear.
"......" Master Fuli’s face went black with annoyance. He glanced sideways at the white bear overhead with bags hanging all over it, not wanting to talk anymore.
"You gotta have a conscience to do business!" The white bear squatted on the ground with arms around its head, face full of indignation as it spoke: "I’m really not convinced about this one. His wife’s genes mutated and she voluntarily joined our [Self-Healing Gene Research]."
"The contract clearly stated that if the experiment succeeded, she’d serve in our bio lab for twenty years."
"She’s already a Genetic Translocator. We poured 500 million bucks into her. We gotta at least make back our principal, right?"
The man’s face flushed bright red with anger as he cursed, "You fuckers used my wife’s legs as components and sold them to the hospital—we swallowed that!"
"But what the hell is ’Spercy Company product, organic beef bone broth, $6 a liter’? Fuck your mother!"
"!"
An exclamation mark popped out on Master Fuli’s forehead as he stared blankly at the white bear.
"No, really, I’m being framed!" The white bear looked at Master Fuli in panic, waving its hands.
Master Fuli glanced at the Wish List, let out a sigh of relief, then grabbed the Wooden Hammer and gave it a whack.
This thing, at least, hadn’t sold human bone soup.
But its methods were pretty shady; their company actually didn’t possess any cyberlimb manufacturing tech.
Yet somehow, the America Hospital’s supply chain included cyberlimbs produced by their company.
The source of those cyberlimbs was Genetic Translocators—humans subjected to deep gene editing were the raw material for cyberware.
If you wanted a knee replacement, Spercy Company would find a starfish Genetic Translocator and chop off its leg.
Then after professional disinfection and processing—in other words, the bone broth the man mentioned—they’d send it to hospitals and let it flow into the market.
...
"Master Fuli, stop hitting, that’s it, really, there’s no one left to file a complaint..."
Little Angel, head covered in giant welts, lay on her side on the ground, eyes unfocused and dazed, muttering faintly.
The people suing the Royal Mutual Benefit Group were estimated at five to six hundred.
Little Angel had been whacked several hundred times by Master Fuli; by now her mind was gone, and total compensation had reached 900 million bucks.
She took home the MVP of the Complaint Assembly.
Little Angel’s business coverage was simply too broad—everything from finance to public livelihood. Under her, she kept over ten thousand Beast Warriors from various units.
Naturally, there were plenty of people coming to file complaints.
Some had also come to sue Grandmaster Lin, but the number wasn’t all that big—just thirty or so.
And the issues weren’t that serious; most were about overdue payments to suppliers and cheerfully defaulting on agreements.
Grandmaster Lin owed a total of 1.3 billion yuan, plus about 900 million bucks in supplier payments.
Ansheng called to ask, and Grandmaster Lin replied very cheerfully, saying the companies on the other side had already gone bankrupt.
Why the hell should he still pay them back? He’d already used several warlord-occupied mining zones as collateral to compensate them. If they didn’t have the balls to go seize them, what the hell did that have to do with him?
However.
If Master Fuli wanted, the Lin Group would support Master Fuli in doing good deeds. They weren’t going to undercut their own side. "Tell them to come to the America Main Office, and we’ll give them a discount."
"What a bunch of assholes..."
Ansheng hung up with a face full of speechless disgust, then kicked Little Angel, who was lying on the stage looking kind of dead, and said:
"Aren’t there still dozens of companies that didn’t show up? You take those victims and go collect the debts one by one. Give them what they’re owed, and whatever extra you squeeze out is on your own abilities."
Little Angel lifted her head, glanced at the three or four hundred people scattered under the stage, and decisively shook her head:
"I’m not going. I only have influence in California and a few neighboring states. If I go to other states to collect, they’ll rip off my wings and grill them like chicken wings."
Her little local-Emperor turf was just a few states; if she went onto another Landlord of Longevity’s turf and faced those state landlords head-on,
even if she had the upper hand on the surface, behind the scenes she’d definitely get hit with retaliation and take silent losses.
"Go collect in my name. If they don’t pay up, you can even delist them."
Ansheng gave Little Angel a sideways glance and said, "I really want to see if there are any madmen who’d rather keep their money than their lives..."
"Oh?"
Little Angel looked up, and along with several other landlords who were lying on the ground playing dead, crawled like caterpillars over to Master Fuli’s feet, eyes shining.
"You serious?" Little Angel rubbed her hands together, face flushed with fake shyness, hugging Master Fuli’s arm and shaking it.
"Depends on how you perform."
Ansheng looked at the victims below the stage, lined up in over a dozen queues, registering their cases and grievances:
"You lot might be scumbags with no virtue, but at least, when it comes to using you, you’re pretty handy, and you chicken out fast when things get real."
"Yes, we’re terrified of dying," Little Angel said with a moved expression. "Master Fuli really sees people clearly."
"Shoo, shoo, don’t block my lunch..."
As soon as Ansheng lifted his hand, the Landlords of Longevity who’d been playing dead immediately stepped up, pried Little Angel off, and pinned her back down on the stage.
After explaining everything that needed explaining, one by one, Ansheng got ready to head back to the museum and take Ah Qing out for food.
Incidentally, he’d tack on an extra bit of time to his lunch break—the righteous stand he’d just made
had lit up the Wish List twice, and with the dozen or so points he’d earned at the hospital, he could keep boosting his Physique.
"Everyone’s pretty full of energy," Li Wenkang said from the doorway, looking at the landlords tearing into each other on stage.
"Let them tear. After making a full lap, these few bastards are about the only ones who count as relatively reliable."
Ansheng straightened up and walked off, shaking his head as he gave his own evaluation.
These ten-odd bastards under Little Angel—you could say they’re utterly devoid of conscience, treating people like cattle and horses to be disciplined.
They had relatively little blood debt on their own hands; in their eyes, all living things were just targets to be squeezed for value.
Before that value was completely drained, they wouldn’t casually dispose of the assets in their hands.
Of course.
The so-called "good" here only meant within this cesspool circle of Landlords of Longevity, where they competed to see who was worse.
Each and every one of them was a piece of shit; it’s just that these particular pieces of shit were more obedient and easier to use.
Among this bunch, Little Angel was probably the most sensible and well-behaved; after taking two punches, she self-completed her domestication and training, putting on the act of a clueless young girl.
But Ansheng didn’t care.
As long as he stayed alive, she’d have to keep acting—act until the day she died, and then she’d be posthumously redeemed, having been a "good person" her whole life.
"Here, this thing’s for you..."
Walking out of the Opera House, Li Wenkang stopped following and, from the inner lining of his coat, took out a strange USB drive and handed it to Master Fuli:
"That young lady from her sabbatical wrote something and stored it on this card."