Me! A high-ranking official!

Forget it.

forget about it.

He picked up his phone again and opened the travel app.

Searching for flights from Dujiang to Mingzhu today, he found one at 4 PM with economy class tickets still available. He selected two, filled in his parents' identification information, and paid.

The moment the order was generated, he felt a sense of relief.

His father, Zhao Dayong, and his mother, Wang Xiulan, lived their entire lives in a village on the outskirts of the old county town. The elderly couple farmed a few acres of land and raised more than a dozen chickens. Whenever he went back home for holidays, his mother would always kill one for him to take with him. His father had a herniated lumbar disc, which would hurt if he did a lot of work, but he never went to the hospital, saying it was a waste of money. His mother was even more frugal; she wore the same cotton-padded jacket for seven or eight years, and even when the cuffs were worn out, she couldn't bear to throw it away.

The farthest place the elderly couple had ever been was Dujiang City. That year, he passed the civil service exam, and his mother was overjoyed. She said she would go to the city to buy him a decent set of clothes. The mother and son took a bus for an hour and a half to Dujiang, spent the afternoon wandering around the wholesale market, and bought a suit for 200 yuan. On the way back, his mother kept saying, "The city is so big, and the buildings are so tall."

That was the only time in their lives they ever "went on a long trip".

He dialed his father Zhao Dayong's number, and it rang several times before being answered.

"Nation-building? What's that about?"

"Dad, you and Mom are going out this afternoon."

"Going out? Where to?"

"Go to Mingzhu City."

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone.

"What?" Zhao Dayong's voice was filled with surprise and unpreparedness!

"Mingzhu City, I won a 7-day trip for two to Mingzhu City in a company event a while ago. It includes meals, accommodation and airfare. I was originally planning to go with Qingqing, but she had something come up and couldn't go. Since the tickets are non-refundable, I was thinking of having you go with my mom."

"No, no, I'm not going." His father refused without even thinking. "The beans in the field need trellises. Who will do it if your mother and I leave? Besides, Mingzhu is so far away. We won't even be able to tell which way is which. What if we get lost?"

"Dad, this ticket costs over 20,000 yuan."

"How many?"

"Twenty thousand. If you don't go, it's void, and you won't get a penny back."

The phone went silent again, then her mother's voice came in from the side, muffled, asking what happened with the 20,000. Her father covered the receiver and said a few words to her, then put the phone back to his ear.

"Is it really impossible to get a refund?"

"I really can't get a refund. The tickets are already booked, and my flight is at 4 PM today."

His father was silent for a few seconds, then sighed heavily.

"You silly child, why waste that money... Okay, okay, go ahead, how do you do it? Your mother and I don't know anything about this."

Zhao Jianguo smiled.

"You and Mom can pack your things now. Just bring a few changes of clothes. It's warmer in Mingzhu than here, so you don't need to bring thick clothes. Make sure to bring your ID cards. Don't worry about anything else. I've arranged for a driver to pick you up and take you to the airport. There will be someone to show you how to board the plane, and a tour guide will meet you after you land. Everything has been arranged."

"You need to hire a driver? How much would that cost?"

"Dad, it's all included in the ticket, you don't need to pay extra."

"Alright, alright." His father's voice held a resigned helplessness, but he could also detect a hint of barely concealed expectation in Zhao Dayong's tone: "Then your mother and I will pack. What time are we leaving?"

"The driver will arrive in about half an hour. Just get ready and wait."

After hanging up the phone, Zhao Jianguo opened the ride-hailing app and placed an order for a private car from the old county town to Dujiang Airport. After placing the order, he called the driver and explained that he was picking up two elderly people who had never flown before. He asked the driver to help them check in and go through security at the airport and sent him an extra 200 yuan red envelope.

The driver readily agreed, saying, "Don't worry, brother. My parents have never flown before. I know the process well and I guarantee I'll get them to the boarding gate."

He thanked her, hung up, and then opened the travel app. He found a private tour guide in Mingzhu City. The reviews were good; she was a local woman in her thirties who specialized in providing local tours for senior citizens. He added her on WeChat, sent her his parents' flight information, and explained that the elderly couple came from the countryside, had never traveled far, and were used to being frugal. He asked her to help arrange their food, accommodation, and transportation for seven days, noting that it shouldn't be too extravagant, but also that the elderly couple shouldn't suffer.

The other party replied quickly: Boss, don't worry, leave it to me. I've had plenty of experience with elderly people, I guarantee that the uncles and aunties will have a great time.

He transferred half of the deposit.

After doing all that, he put his phone on the coffee table, leaned back on the sofa, and settled the elderly couple in. The only one left was his younger sister, Zhao Lingling.

Zhao Lingling is a senior in high school this year and lives at the county's No. 1 High School. The school is under a closed management system, with security guards on duty at the gate 24 hours a day. Students must register to enter and exit, and outsiders cannot get in at all. No matter how capable Qi Honghai is, he wouldn't dare to put his hands on the school. In places like schools, student safety is the absolute red line; anyone who crosses it will die. No matter how powerful the construction group is in the county, they don't have the guts to do that.

In other words, he no longer has any weaknesses in Linshui County.

His parents live in Mingzhu, and his younger sister is at school. Qi Honghai tried to get his hands on someone close to him, but it was a no-go.

He can focus on dealing with everything that comes next.

Zhao Jianguo leaned back on the sofa and summoned the small bowl.

A light shone from the bottom of the bowl, and consciousness sank to the bottom of the basin. The interface was still the same as before. Today's population was over 374,000, with over 362,000 permanent residents and over 12,000 transient residents. The bottom left corner showed the accumulated silver coins, and the Sumeru Mustard Seed contained over 370,000 from yesterday.

He stared at the string of numbers and began to worry.

Three hundred thousand a day sounds like a lot, but it would take at least fifty days to save up twenty million. But just saving isn't enough; you have to make your money work for you.

The question is, how do we give birth?

He stared at the Treasure Bowl interface, racking his brains for a long time, but couldn't come up with a decent idea. Opening a shop was too slow, he didn't understand stock trading, lending money was illegal, and buying lottery tickets was just paying a tax on his intelligence.

People can only earn money within their own understanding.

He used to be a master at writing documents in the government office, but without that platform, he doesn't even know how to leverage 370,000 to make 20 million.

The next morning, Zhao Jianguo was woken up by his phone vibrating.

He groggily reached for his phone, squinted at the screen, and saw hundreds of unread messages on the WeChat icon, the red number still rising. He yawned, casually tapped on it, and his eyes fell on one of the groups, instantly waking him up.

Grassroots work group.

This group was created last year when we were conducting research on rural revitalization. Two or three people were drawn from each of the fourteen townships, plus several leading departments in the county, making a total of more than thirty people. After the research ended, the group went silent, and no one spoke for more than half a year. He had long forgotten that such a group even existed.

The group currently displays 437 messages.

His heart skipped a beat, and his fingers moved faster than his brain, already clicking the button.

At the very top of the message was a screenshot of a chat. The profile pictures of the two people in the screenshot were blurred out. One of them was revealing information to the other. The content was dense and consisted of several paragraphs. He only glanced at it, and the hairs on the back of his head stood on end.

"...Secretary Zhou's first allergic reaction was treated with penicillin, and the second with doxycycline. These two drugs are not unusual when used alone, but their consecutive use, especially on her first night in office, suggests only one explanation: she was undergoing post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) for syphilis. Only people at risk of syphilis infection would use these two drugs for emergency PEP..."

He couldn't see what came after that; each word felt like a needle piercing his eyes.

His fingers moved stiffly downwards.

The group chat exploded.

"Really? Where did this screenshot come from?"

"Holy crap, does the new secretary have a disease?"

"No, wasn't it said before that it was a heart condition?"

"What I heard was asthma."

"Didn't you see the screenshot? Penicillin and doxycycline, isn't this obviously the standard treatment for syphilis prevention? I searched it on Baidu, and it's exactly the same."

"My God, the new Party Secretary seems like a very proper person, how could he...?"

"They were parachuted in; who knows what their situation was like in the province before?"

"No wonder he was hospitalized overnight, so that's what he was doing."

"Don't spread rumors, what if it's fake?"

"Fake? The hospital has issued a gag order. If they had nothing to hide, why would they issue a gag order?"

Messages kept coming in, one after another. More than 30 people had been scrolling through the messages since around 1 a.m., and they hadn't stopped. Some were shocked, some questioned, some were just enjoying the drama, and some pretended to be rational but were actually fueling the fire. He scrolled down one message after another, his fingers getting colder and colder.

Having worked in the government office for five years, he was all too familiar with the logic behind the spread of this kind of information.

This was not a coincidence.

It was definitely not a coincidence.