Bursting Tomato 11

【Apart from that, he's also reached cooperation agreements with some of the smaller families that attended the banquet.】

Lu Mingqiu: 【What about the major families?】

Hei Ge: 【No movement so far. They left after the banquet ended.】

That meant they either suspected something was off or were fully aware of the situation — either way, the outcome was the same: tacit approval.

Lu Mingqiu: 【Keep constant surveillance on the father and son. Try to figure out when they meet. Have you made any progress on that consciousness-upload simulator?】

Hei Ge: 【Still cracking it.】

Lu Mingqiu: 【Let me know when you have results.】

The conversation ended, and Yan Xianchuan remained oblivious, still fiddling with the porthole in her hands.

Lu Mingqiu recalled the guest list from the Dongye banquet. The Bolov Family had sent someone — Zinaida Bolov, who by seniority was her sister. A person who wore her ambition openly. An alpha. An illegitimate daughter who had eliminated all her rivals, all but guaranteed to be the next head of the family.

During Dongye Zhengqi's speech, she was one of those who watched with a knowing smile. The person beside her was Yan Mingjing, the eldest son of the Yan family head.

Competition within the Yan family was far fiercer than in the Bolov family. Every member of this generation, except for Yan Xianchuan, was highly capable. A family that controlled the arms trade naturally raised its descendants with the smell of gunpowder lingering around them.

The siblings were attacked left and right. If not for the news being suppressed, the trending searches would probably be flooded with their family drama every day.

Lu Mingqiu pulled her thoughts back and continued watching the unfinished video lecture. Before long, Gold Ring sent another message. Earlier, Lu Mingqiu had assigned him to dig through the collateral branches of the Dongye family to find a suitable puppet heir, and it seemed he'd found one.

He sent a photo: a middle-aged man, arm around a boy who looked to be in his teens, leaning halfway out of a sports car.

His features bore a five-point resemblance to Dongye He, but carried an air of spirited confidence — the relaxed ease of someone without worries, enjoying life day by day.

Unlike Dongye He, whose demeanor, under his father's all-around suppression, was steeped in lingering gloom and irritability — like a man drowning in debt.

Gold Ring messaged: 【This is Dongye He's younger brother, Dongye Hang. He's thirty-five now and has a son studying at Night City First High. He's a nominal shareholder in Dongye He's companies, doesn't manage anything, just lives off dividends.】

【They don't touch the Dongye family businesses, and his age fits perfectly. The other candidates are either too old or too ambitious.】

【Good.】 Lu Mingqiu replied, 【Keep an eye on his schedule. We'll need him soon, and I don't want to lose track of him.】

She had considerable confidence in her subordinates' work. Before joining Spark, Gold Ring was a top graduate of a military academy, more than familiar with searching for information and analyzing leads.

Having handled her work, Lu Mingqiu looked up. Yan Xianchuan was still assembling the celestial ship model.

It really was difficult. She wasn't an architecture student, and Yan Xianchuan had never attended university, nor had she ever ridden a traditional Chinese wooden ship. There was no way she could know what the cabin looked like inside.

How could a person imagine something they had never seen? Holding the pieces, she stared blankly at the ship, which still only had its base plate completed.

When she was a child, puzzles weren't this fancy. Most were flat. The small ones had a dozen or twenty pieces, the larger ones five hundred or a thousand. The two-thousand-piece sets only came out when she was older.

The living area where Yan Xianchuan usually stayed had carpet covering most of the floor, except in the dedicated play area. She would often sit on a soft cushion at the low table, fiddling with these educational toys.

Compared to other kids her age, she was undeniably an easy child to care for — able to play quietly for hours on end.

Puzzles used to calm her and keep her focused, but they didn't anymore.

Yan Xianchuan set down the pieces in her hands and said bluntly, "I can't put it together."

Lu Mingqiu turned off the video and sat down beside her. "Let me help you."

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, quickly scanned all the components, and with both hands swiftly assembled a cabin, then fixed it onto the base. "It goes like this."

After she spoke, there was no response. Lu Mingqiu turned her head to look and saw the other woman staring at her, unblinking.

She tilted her head, her brows lifting slightly, her gaze curious. "What's wrong?"

Yan Xianchuan looked away and reached out, imitating her previous actions, picking up the corresponding pieces. "Nothing."

It was just... for a single moment, she'd felt a strange sensation.

When was the last time someone sat with her like this, doing something meaningless together?

The celestial ship was beautiful. The hull was cyan with golden lines tracing cloud patterns. The wings at either end looked like tail feathers stolen from a peacock's plumage — every single feather carried a multicolored eye. The towering Jianmu tree blotted out the sky, and once powered, the jade eye at the crown cast a hazy cyan glow.

Yan Xianchuan looked at it for a while, then said, "Is this eye spying on us?"

Lu Mingqiu: "..."

"It's looking openly. How can that be called spying? The celestial ship comes from a literary work. In it, when the leaders of the intelligent species die, their consciousnesses are sent into the Jade Eye, becoming part of the collective consciousness that governs the entire race."

A look of understanding dawned on Yan Xianchuan. "So all of them are perverts who like to spy on the masses."

Lu Mingqiu laughed. "Right. What you said isn't wrong either. Come on, let's go eat. I ordered your favorite shrimp."

Another two peaceful days passed. On an ordinary afternoon, Yan Xianchuan was lying by the windowsill watching two people fight downstairs when Hei Ge suddenly sent a message: Dongye Zhengqi and Dongye He had met.

Not in some outside location, but in Quhai Tower — on the Dongye family's own turf.

Still in Dongye He's living room. The cleaners and servants had been ordered away. Only four people were present: Dongye He, Dongye Zhengqi, and their respective personal guards, both cybernetically modified.

The camera embedded in the massive LCD TV opposite the sofa activated silently, steadily recording the scene.

At first, their conversation was entirely normal — business planning and quarterly profit-loss analysis. The son reported, the father listened.

Aside from dominating Night City, the Dongye family's business spread across every Federation city of second tier or higher. They took money from the rich and from the poor alike. Prosthetics alone had them rolling in cash, let alone hospital care, which was an enormously profitable industry. Other companies and small clinics could only pick at the scraps — they were no match.

The more money you have, the easier it is to make more. Everything Dongye He said was about how much a certain region had earned, whether it was up or down a few percentage points from last quarter. Actual losses — there were none.

The Resistance had its own foothold in this industry, with friendlier prices, mainly to give third-class residents another option so they wouldn't be bankrupted by exorbitant medical bills. Their profits naturally couldn't compare with the Dongye family's.

In this society, countless commoners died from delayed treatment or from having their medical care terminated after being thrown out of hospitals.

It was hard to say which was higher — the cost of education or the cost of treatment. Besides, medical insurance was something only the wealthy could afford. Insurance could cover at most ninety percent of the fees; without it, patients had to pay the full high price, which was undoubtedly salt in the wound for a sick family.

To buy insurance, one first needed proof of long-term employment for at least six months. And many jobs gave priority to educated applicants — only jobs requiring no brainpower at all hired uneducated laborers.

No money, no knowledge. No knowledge, no way to earn more. Generation after generation trapped at the bottom — that was the vicious cycle.

And this was just one of the methods the wealthy used to control the masses.

The amounts of money they discussed were in the hundreds of millions. Listening for so long, Yan Xianchuan almost forgot how expensive money really was.

Throughout the entire conversation, Dongye He remained standing while Dongye Zhengqi sat on the sofa. They weren't facing each other, so Dongye Zhengqi had to look at his son out of the corner of his eye.

Looking at someone sideways is usually considered disrespectful, but between this father and son, it seemed like a matter of course.

When the business report ended, Dongye He added, "The experiment progress has clearly slowed. As for raw materials, the current number of subjects isn't enough. We'll need to wait for the affiliated families to ship more. I estimate at least two weeks."

At this, Dongye Zhengqi's expression visibly soured. The esper bodyguard had followed him for over a decade — the most trusted of trusted. If Dr. Sera hadn't become so critical, he wouldn't have sent the man. He never expected him to die, and the killer still hadn't been found.

Dongye Zhengqi had thrown a massive tantrum at the head of the city's Investigation Bureau, ordering him to find the culprit immediately. Whether it was a person or an organization, they needed someone to target.

But the fact was, countless agents and elite operatives had searched for days and found nothing.

Dongye Zhengqi's eyes narrowed slightly as he let out a cold snort. "All of you are useless."

He glanced at his son standing to the right front. In his eyes, the other's original, healthy body — the vivacious, energetic form, the elastic skin, the appearance kept free of age by careful maintenance — was practically glaring, more dazzling than the noonday sun. "You're useless too. Why hasn't Minghui Pharmaceutical gone bankrupt yet? A competitor that size snatching our business, and this year's profits are down two percentage points from last year — don't you know how to handle that?!"

"Buy up their shares, poach their core staff, send in corporate spies, kill their leader. Do I have to spell it out for you? How did I raise a son who can't even be propped up on the wall?!"

In the past, Dongye He would silently lower his head, apologize, admit his mistakes. His father would curse him out for being a spineless waste and then calm down.

But not this time. Dongye He squared his shoulders and met his father's gaze directly — this man who insulted him, this head of the family — with an expression that was neither anger nor cold indifference, just watching quietly.

Such an act of insubordination only fueled Dongye Zhengqi's rage. "What's that look supposed to mean?! Are you planning a rebellion?!"

"You know, Father, I'm sometimes curious," Dongye He said, his tone mocking. "What kind of person actually counts as useful in your eyes? I've contributed so much to the Dongye family — opened over a dozen new hospitals, profits rising every year. And in your eyes, all that is worth nothing!"

"Oh, I get it. Dr. Sera is the most useful, right?" He leaned forward slightly, his words feather-light. "Because she can extend your life. That's what really matters."

"Look at yourself. Over the years, is there any organ you haven't replaced? Do you know what people say about you?"

He mimicked, affecting a theatrical tone: "'Dongye Zhengqi? That old fossil. Look at his face, it gives me the creeps. Did you hear he just got a new mistress? Only eighteen. Tsk tsk tsk...'"

"How dare you say that to me!" Dongye Zhengqi slammed the sofa armrest and shot to his feet, glaring at his usually meek and cowardly son.

"Why wouldn't I dare? What do I have to fear?!" Dongye He glared right back. "Have you ever treated me like a person all these years? I'm your son, not some stray dog. When you berate me in front of the servants, do you ever think that I have dignity too?!"

He paced back and forth across the living room like an enraged hyena. "Do you know how they mock me behind my back?! I'm forty years old, and I'm still being trained like an animal by my own father. Don't I deserve any respect?!"

"So what are you trying to say?" The anger drained from Dongye Zhengqi's face. He sat back down, his gaze sharp as an eagle's.

"Father, oh Father. I really do love this look of yours — so sure of yourself." Dongye He suddenly burst into loud laughter, shaking his head and clapping his hands at once.

Dongye Zhengqi watched him like one would watch a fool who deliberately sought humiliation.

From somewhere came a low-frequency hum — the sound of a machine starting up. Then a bang. Dongye Zhengqi frowned and was astonished to find his own bodyguard collapsed on the ground.

Not to be outdone, the cyborg standing behind Dongye He also fell, crashing heavily against the floor.

"You activated an electromagnetic pulse?!" Dongye Zhengqi realized in an instant. "What exactly are you trying to do?!"

"What am I doing?" As if he'd heard a joke, Dongye He laughed so hard he couldn't straighten up, as if he hadn't been this happy in his entire life. The study door swung open, and his secretary Jin Zaishun walked out, holding a pistol in both hands.

Dongye He picked up the gun, aimed it at the man who shared his blood, and said jubilantly, "Why, killing you, Father. Can you imagine how long I've waited for this day? I've been bowing my head under your insults, torn apart by your words. I never thought I'd have a day of defiance."

"Then I found out about you and Dr. Sera. Hahahaha. So my all-powerful father is just a cowardly clown afraid of death."

"You really should see your expression right now. Ah, I truly ought to record this and watch it again and again."

He clicked his tongue. "But I don't make a habit of leaving evidence. Goodbye."

"Wait! I'm your own—" Dongye Zhengqi's eyes bulged in fury as he raised his hand in shock, trying to say something to stop him. But before he could finish, Dongye He pulled the trigger.

The sound of the bullet leaving the barrel was so pleasant. The blossoming of blood was so beautiful. Dongye He watched this man who had oppressed him for decades collapse to the ground like a piece of rotten meat, the spattered blood staining the expensive hand-woven carpet beneath him.

"Congratulations, boss." Jin Zaishun said.

"Congratulations on your promotion too." Dongye He felt immensely refreshed. He let out a long breath and handed the gun back to his secretary. "Go deal with that bodyguard as well."

Everything he had said before about relying on the enhanced cyborg Orielle was a lie. If the two guards fought, they'd face completely unpredictable consequences. If he won, fine — but if he lost? Dongye He wasn't a fool.

He simply activated the electromagnetic pulse, leaving both guards incapacitated. Dongye Zhengqi never carried weapons, nor did he need to. Deprived of his guards, he was just a fish on the chopping block, a lamb to the slaughter — all he could do was stretch out his neck and wait for death.

As for the pulse spreading through the entire district — what did that matter? Later he'd just put out a notice saying there was a malfunction somewhere and personnel were rushing to fix it. Problem solved.

"Orielle, I didn't give you a heads-up. You won't hold that against me, will you?" Dongye He straightened his suit and tie, walked over, and looked down at him. "It was a spur-of-the-moment decision."

"How could I, boss!" Orielle, pinned to the ground by his heavy mechanical limbs, quickly shook his head. "This way is better. Boss even gets to do it with his own hands. Congratulations, boss!"

"I'll send you a bonus later." Dongye He was in high spirits, the smile never leaving his face.

"Thank you, boss!" Orielle echoed, grinning with utmost sincerity.

Another gunshot rang out. The guard of Dongye Zhengqi, immobilized on the ground by his own cybernetic modifications, met his end.

He probably never imagined he'd die in such a manner.

Two corpses lay on the floor, the stench of blood gradually spreading. Dongye He naturally had no intention of lingering. He instructed his secretary Jin Zaishun to handle things, turned off the electromagnetic pulse, and as he left the room, he laughed out loud once more.

"No wonder those bottom-feeders are always trying to cause trouble for us. Rebelling feels damn good."

The moment the electromagnetic pulse activated, the television's camera stopped working. No one caught the rest of the feed, but it wasn't hard to guess that Dongye He must have succeeded.

He wouldn't make a move without absolute certainty, because if he failed, Dongye Zhengqi would never spare him. In wealthy clans, there was no blood loyalty.

Yan Xianchuan watched half of their argument and found it less exciting than the fight she'd seen downstairs. But when she returned to the window and poked her head out, the two had already been pulled apart by others, still cursing each other — wishing good health upon each other's relatives — but at least they'd stopped throwing punches.

What a shame. She'd missed the ending.

Yan Xianchuan slumped back into her seat, chin propped on her hand, watching Lu Mingqiu issue orders. She looked even more exuberant than Dongye He.

Her eyes sparkled brightly. What was shining in them — sunlight or her original aspirations?

She really couldn't understand this woman. What filled her mind? A sense of justice? Or hope? Or ideals? All of it was hazy, intangible.

None of these words were something Yan Xianchuan could grasp. She couldn't even make sense of her own thoughts, let alone get inside someone else's head.

How strange. What exactly was an ideal, that it held such power to make one person, to make countless people, willingly cast aside their lives just for the chance to see it realized?

The Resistance wanted to hypnotize Dongye He. But without an electromagnetic pulse to help, if things went wrong and the alarm was raised, the consequences would be far worse than kicking a hornet's nest.

Yet they acted as though they'd never considered it at all.

Lu Mingqiu ended the call and looked up, immediately catching the other woman staring at her, lost in thought. This had happened too many times in recent days for her to find it odd anymore.

"Want to eat?" she said.

The other nodded, as expected. "Eat."

If they wanted to take down Dongye He, they obviously couldn't do it the way he'd done to his own father — striking at Quhai Tower. The security spread throughout the tower could surround the building three times over. The right move was to act when he was outside.

Dongye Zhengqi's death was officially reported as a sudden heart attack brought on by years of overwork. The event happened so abruptly that there was no chance to save him, and he was gone.

During the news interview, when Dongye He spoke about his relationship with his father, tears welled up instantly. Several times he broke down sobbing, needing long pauses before he could continue.

He spoke of how his father had raised and taught him as a child, how his father had trusted and encouraged him as he grew into a man. It was a perfect portrait of a devoted father and filial son.

His eyes red, his face full of grief — as though he and his father had shared a wonderful bond.

The host seemed deeply moved as well, beginning to recount Dongye Zhengqi's contributions — how many hospitals the Dongye family had opened, how excellent the facilities and services were. Not once mentioning the exorbitant prices.

They even staged a few street interviews praising Dongye Zhengqi. The uninformed listeners might genuinely mistake him for some great philanthropist.

At the end, Dongye He announced that his father's funeral would be held in three days. Finally, looking at the camera, he said, "In today's society, many people don't take their own health seriously. Like my father — he stayed up late working all the time. Once or twice is nothing, but over time, the body gives out."

"I've felt how fleeting life can be, so I'd like to hold a charity fundraiser. All the proceeds will go toward medical care, to provide some help to those suffering from illness. I'll personally donate eighty million first. In addition, the hospitals under the Dongye family will offer special discounts to reduce medical expenses, with the added cost fully covered by us."

When he finished, his glowing image lingered for a few seconds as applause from the host echoed in the background.

Eighty million. At first glance, it sounded like a lot. For the average worker earning a few thousand credits a month, it would probably take several lifetimes to accumulate that much.

But don't forget — Yan Xianchuan, the waste of the Yan family, received tens of millions in allowance every single month.

Eighty million was probably worth about one of the vases in Dongye He's living room.

The news continued to air, but Yan Xianchuan had lost interest. She'd started sitting up straight, then gradually slumped into the sofa, and finally lay her upper body flat, arms raised above her head with hands stacked together — the classic posture that would earn a scolding from any mother.

"Are we going to catch him at the funeral?" she asked.

"Funerals have lots of people and heavy security. It's not the time to make a move," Lu Mingqiu dismissed the idea. "It'll be easier to act when he lets his guard down, when he's celebrating."

"But we could go to the funeral and take a look." Lu Mingqiu lowered her gaze to her. "Dongye He will hire lots of performers. It'll be like a concert. Quite lively."

Yan Xianchuan: "I really can't understand the way rich people think."

Lu Mingqiu smiled. "No matter. I don't understand either. So — want to go? Consider it a bit of relaxation."

Yan Xianchuan: "You're the boss."