Me! A high-ranking official!

As Zhao Jianguo walked back, he was troubled by the matter of the treasure bowl.

Twenty million.

Seven days.

He'd never even seen two million in his entire life, and now he'd suddenly owed twenty million. If he couldn't pay it back in seven days, the Treasure Bowl would start taking things from him. What would it take? An arm? A leg? His lifespan? Who knows? He didn't know, and he didn't dare to think about it.

The worst part is that a suspended junior clerk with a serious illness, whose wife cheated on him with his wife, couldn't even borrow that much money from loan sharks. Even Qi Honghai, whose net worth is only a few hundred million, that's assets, not cash. To come up with 20 million in cash within seven days is something that very few people in the entire Linshui County can do.

He pushed open the door, took off his coat and threw it on the sofa, sat down and summoned the treasure bowl.

The Treasure Basin interface lit up, with six major category labels arranged in a circle: wealth, physique, lifespan, spirit, karma, and elixirs. He clicked on each one and looked at them one by one.

In the money category, besides the daily automatic payments, there's also a loan option. You borrow a certain amount and repay double, just like with the Rejuvenation Pill. He calculated that if he borrowed 20 million and had to repay 40 million, he still wouldn't be able to come up with the money within seven days. It would only snowball, getting bigger and bigger, and the price he would pay in the end would be even greater! This path is a dead end.

He had seen the physical enhancement items before: the strength of an ox, the strength of two oxen, speed like the wind, and night vision and farsightedness. These all enhanced one's own abilities and could not directly conjure up money.

Forget about things related to lifespan; that's exchanging things for life, not exchanging things for money.

Within the realm of spirits and souls, there are memories, emotions, and skills that can be borrowed, but the return price is doubled. Borrowing a memory is more expensive than money, so he dares not touch it.

Finally, we come to the category of cause and effect.

There aren't many options in this category, only a dozen or so. Each one has a dark red border, unlike the dark gold borders of the other categories. They have an indescribable feel to them. Let's look at them one by one.

Fortune telling sign: You can borrow a stick of incense's worth of good fortune and repay a hundred million coins.

Great Luck: Borrow a quarter of an hour of great luck to repay a billion coins.

He stared at the two lines of text, his mind racing. A stick of incense burns for fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes of good luck. To repay a hundred million? He'd heard that lottery jackpots could reach four or five hundred million, but the question was, was this luck used when he bought the ticket, or during the draw? What if he was lucky when he bought it, and then it was gone? And if his luck was mediocre during the draw, then his hundred million would be gone for good. If he couldn't repay it then, he might really have to pay with his life!

He continued scrolling down.

Fate-changing talisman: It can record the past and change one's destiny.

Upon seeing the price, his fingers froze instantly.

Does the past alter one's destiny?

He stared at those six words, his heart pounding. If he could rewrite his past, could he become the sworn brother of some big shot? Like the Ma brothers? Like those people on the Forbes list? If he had been brothers with those people since childhood, would he ever lack money? Let alone 20 million, even 200 million would be pocket money.

His gaze shifted to the right, landing on the line of compensation.

One trillion!

He counted the zeros: ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, millions, billions, trillions, trillions.

He leaned back on the sofa, looking up at the ceiling, a bitter smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. The money-making scheme had already plugged all the loopholes. You want to find a loophole? Fine, the price is right here. Can you afford it? One trillion. Forget becoming the brother of the two Mas, even becoming the brother of the president, he couldn't repay that money.

He lowered his head again and continued scrolling down.

The remaining options in the cause-and-effect category all had increasingly outrageous compensation amounts, with the cheapest starting at hundreds of millions. He couldn't even scrape together 20 million, let alone 100 million.

He turned off the cause-and-effect category and stared blankly at the main interface of the Treasure Basin. There were six categories and dozens of options, but none of them could help him get 20 million within seven days.

Just then, my phone rang.

The screen displayed an unfamiliar local number with no contact name. He glanced at it and casually swiped to open it: "Feed".

A scream suddenly erupted from the other end of the phone; it was a girl's voice, distorted with terror.

"Brother! Help me! Help me!"

Upon hearing that voice, his expression changed drastically, and he sat up abruptly. It was the voice of his younger sister, Zhao Lingling.

"Lingling? Lingling, where are you?"

The voice on the other end of the phone changed; it was a deep male voice with a roguish air about him.

"If you want to save your sister, come to the fertilizer plant in the west of the city. If you don't see her in thirty minutes, you know what will happen."

After saying that, the call ended before he could reply.

His face suddenly darkened, and a surge of anger welled up inside him.

Zhao Lingling should be at the county's No. 1 Middle School, a boarding school with 24-hour security guards. Yesterday, he was thinking that in a place like a school, student safety is the absolute bottom line. In the past two years, student safety accidents have occurred frequently, and the higher authorities have been cracking down hard on student safety. Even if Qi Honghai had the guts, the school leaders would never dare to allow it. He never expected that the other party would actually dare to harm his sister!

He stood up abruptly, grabbed his coat, and rushed out, his heart churning with anger. This must have been Qi Honghai's doing. He would settle this score with him sooner or later, but the most important thing now was to rescue his little sister. He went downstairs, got on his electric scooter, twisted the throttle to the floor, and sped off towards the west of the city.

The West Suburbs Fertilizer Plant is located on the westernmost edge of the county town, next to the old provincial highway leading to the city. The plant has been closed for seven or eight years. The iron gate is rusted through, most of the glass on the wall has fallen off, and the weeds in the yard are waist-high. The nearest village is a kilometer away, and apart from stray dogs, no one comes here at all.

He parked his electric scooter at the factory gate and cautiously scanned the surroundings. Several unlicensed bread carts were parked in the yard, and the large iron gate of the factory was half-open, revealing a dark interior.

A man with a buzz cut, wearing a black T-shirt and covered in tattoos walked out of the factory gate. He leaned against the door frame, looked Zhao Jianguo up and down, and grinned, "Zhao Jianguo, you're here pretty fast. Since you're here, come in."

He suppressed his anger, glanced at the other person, and walked towards the factory.

The moment I stepped into the factory, the sunlight outside was cut off, and a smell of rust mixed with machine oil hit me. Several dim lights hung on the steel frame structure overhead, casting a dim light. The open space in the middle of the factory was full of people; at a glance, there were at least forty or fifty of them.

Some were carrying steel pipes, some were carrying baseball bats, and some were carrying machetes on their shoulders. More than forty pairs of eyes were fixed on him.