Chapter 151 - 125: All 1.1 Million People Should Thank Me

"We’ll take the smuggling route to Nanshan Province!"

He paused, then glanced at the four men with firearms beside him and said,

"From Nanshan Province, we’ll be smuggled onto a boat and head overseas. We have a contact waiting for us there. Then we’ll get another vehicle to Turui."

"I have a stash of money in a Turui Bank account that no one knows about."

’There’s still money?’

The men, who had been disheartened, suddenly perked up.

"President Cheng, you’re quite cautious, stashing money away in advance."

Xu Huo, watching with great interest from the side, commented.

Cheng Yang shot him a look, then glanced out the window. There were no pedestrians, and the road—built by the Cheng Group for rural public welfare—was clear.

"Kid, I’d advise you to behave,"

Cheng Yang said.

"Don’t try any tricks. Once we get to the docks and cross the border by boat, I’ll let you go."

After he spoke, one of the men pressed a gun into Xu Huo’s side, his eyes full of malice.

"I don’t care who you are. If you don’t cooperate... at worst, we all die together."

Cheng Yang said in a low voice.

"Heh, President Cheng, you have a strange sense of humor."

Xu Huo narrowed his eyes, already formulating a few plans in his mind.

Cheng Yang didn’t respond. His nerves were stretched taut.

「About ten minutes later...」

"Get out of the car!"

The car door was yanked open. The five men forced Xu Huo toward a pier. The roadside was crowded with dockworkers, and fishing boats were moored in the distance.

Just then, a man spotted them and immediately got up to greet them.

"President Cheng, what’s going on!?"

The man, reeking of fish, frowned at the group.

"Don’t ask questions you shouldn’t be asking."

"Get a boat ready, as fast as possible!"

Cheng Yang paused, straightened his suit slightly, and then walked off into the distance.

"President Cheng, isn’t your wife coming with you!?" The man counted the people and frowned again.

"She..."

The words made Cheng Yang falter for a moment, but he didn’t stop.

"She has her own way out."

"Ready the boat!"

"Yes, sir!"

With that said, he looked up at the sky.

"We leave as soon as it’s dark!"

The autumn sky darkened early.

It wasn’t truly dark, just overcast.

But the effect was the same. Before long, Cheng Yang emerged from his hiding place.

"Did you take care of the car?"

"Taken care of."

"When did those cops show up?"

"Don’t know. Looks like a dragnet, not like they followed a lead here,"

one of the men said, watching a police car with flashing lights recede into the distance.

"We switched cars three times, kept our faces hidden, and used fake plates. We’re well-hidden; they won’t find us anytime soon."

Once he was sure, Cheng Yang didn’t hesitate. By now, he was no longer in a suit.

Instead, he was dressed in fisherman’s garb—rain boots and a raincoat—looking every bit the part of an old fisherman.

Without his glasses and fine clothes... he was indistinguishable from any other fisherman.

"Get on the boat!"

Cheng Yang’s face was as dark as a thundercloud. Under the cover of the overcast sky, he hurried toward a boat bobbing on the sea in the distance.

After a long while, under the cover of night, the boat drifted out to sea.

They watched the land recede further and further.

As the neon lights of the city dwindled in the distance, the knot of anxiety in their chests finally loosened.

The other four men scanned their surroundings warily before getting back into character as real fishermen and starting to work on the nets.

Their movements were practiced; no one would ever guess they were a band of desperate fugitives.

In this day and age, the coast guard was understaffed. They barely had any radar-equipped vessels, which meant the open sea was often a lawless free-for-all.

Fishermen killing each other, disguised sea bandits, smugglers, illegal immigrants...

They were everywhere!

These people were brazen and rampant, but their very existence highlighted the massive gap in coast guard resources.

"Thirty years ago, I made my fortune on a boat just like this one."

Cheng Yang said suddenly, watching the scenery behind them shrink.

"Thirty years ago, I was seventeen when I came to Zhaozhou City. What was Zhaozhou City like back then?"

"Backward, chaotic... a completely different world from the Capital City!"

"I came ashore, sold my fishing boat, and took over a sand quarry. But unfortunately, I underestimated how savage Zhaozhou was. People were either stealing my sand or trying to seize the quarry."

"After that, I understood. If you want to make it big, if you want to be powerful, you have to be more vicious than they are!"

He spoke, his eyes fixed on the skyscraper he had spent his entire life building.

The tower that overlooked all of Zhaozhou City, the one that let him look down on everyone else!

The boat drifted on. The skyscraper grew more distant, shrinking in his field of view.

"No need to make excuses for yourself, Boss Cheng."

Xu Huo, slumped on the deck behind him, spoke nonchalantly.

He was tied up, his hands and feet bound.

"Excuses? Heh, you call those excuses?"

Cheng Yang sneered disdainfully.

He knew that the moment he stepped onto this boat, he was no longer Boss Cheng, nor the formidable President Cheng.

"Do you have any idea what kind of development I brought to Zhaozhou City!?"

"Thirty years! It only took me thirty years! The Cheng Group took root in Zhaozhou City, and its level of civilization and prospects for development underwent a qualitative transformation!"

"You think nobody knew about the things I did?"

Cheng Yang’s emotions suddenly erupted.

Like a madman, flitting from one extreme to the other, he suddenly grabbed Xu Huo by the collar, his expression dark and menacing.

"You think I’m the only one who’s done things like this!?"

"The only one who successfully washed his hands clean?"

"Chen Jian, Zhao Jianshu, Zhang Qiu—have they committed fewer crimes than me!?"

"Do you know why I kept pouring money into that shopping mall even though it was always losing money!?"

"Why was the Cheng Group able to expand so brutally in Zhaozhou City?"

He threw one question after another at Xu Huo, his emotions spiraling further out of control.

Or perhaps, his emotions had been out of control from the moment he boarded the boat.

Xu Huo paid him no mind, still smiling faintly as he mentally filed away the names Cheng Yang had mentioned.

"Back when they were begging me to open the mall, when they were persuading me every which way to build the plaza, why didn’t they bring up what the Group did in its early days!?"

Cheng Yang abruptly released his grip and took a deep breath, composing himself slightly.

He stared coldly at Xu Huo.

"Now that you’re on this boat, don’t even think about leaving."

"The Cheng Group is gone... and you’re not going to live either."

Let him go?

Let him go at the border?

Yes, Cheng Yang had said that. But so what? A dead man is still a man!

Otherwise, he never would have mentioned the money in the Turui Bank account in front of Xu Huo. In his mind, Xu Huo was already a dead man.

"This society is full of animals."

"One more or one less like me makes no difference."

"Young man, why did you have to push things to such an extreme?"

Cheng Yang straightened his clothes, his expression vanishing. He continued to gaze back in the direction they had come, but Zhaozhou was no longer visible.

"It was only ten people who died..."

"Even if the Cheng Group’s development was built on a pile of bones, still, how many was that really?"

"Do you know how much conditions in Zhaozhou improved after the Group appeared?"

"Zhaozhou should be thanking me..."

"All of Zhaozhou, all 1.1 million of its people, should be thanking me!"

With that, Cheng Yang turned around.

He extended his arm and pointed forcefully at Xu Huo.

"And that includes you!"

How much development can a large conglomerate bring to a city?

It depends.

If it specializes in the internet, aside from general tax revenue, there’s basically no development unless it’s a top-tier industry leader.

But the Cheng Group was different. It was founded twenty years ago!

The current year is ’03!

They could only get into brick-and-mortar industries; no one was playing big in the internet space yet.

And the impact of brick-and-mortar industries on a small county...

Let’s put it this way.

There’s a very famous shopping mall in the Eastern Country with branches all over the nation.

If one of these plazas opens in a county...

A small-scale one can create at least a thousand jobs. The ripple effect stimulates the growth of numerous raw material suppliers. Capital starts to circulate, turning stagnant water into a flowing river!

If it’s a large-scale mall...

It can directly solve the employment problem for tens of thousands of people!

Revenue increases dramatically, the local city’s GDP grows, and the municipal government has money for public welfare.

Indirectly, the raw materials and processing stages involve another huge group of people!

The expenditure of capital isn’t just consumption; it’s a form of equivalent exchange. The production of raw materials within Zhaozhou itself is very slow.

So, you suck their blood!

Suck the blood of the surrounding cities. Turn backward, remote areas into raw material suppliers, and continuously transport those resources into Zhaozhou City!

In this way, the flow of capital most needed for a city’s development—a virtuous cycle—is created.

Beyond that...