Heading for the Plains - Chapter 28

Xia Chao never dreamed that after a lifetime of fighting, she would one day be brought down by a bout of low blood sugar.

She woke up in the police station. Opening her eyes, she found herself lying on a long stainless steel bench against the wall of a meeting room. Her body felt weak and heavy, as if she had spent a night in a holding cell.

The ambulance must have come and gone. She recalled the moments before fainting; vaguely remembering falling into someone’s arms, and then someone helping her drink half a cup of warm glucose.

How embarrassing. If she’d known there was going to be a brawl, she would have eaten more for breakfast. She weakly massaged her forehead and let out a groan, only to be startled by a sudden noise.

It was an argument. A loud, piercing row coming from the room next door. It was the very sound that had dragged her back to consciousness.

Xia Chao listened intently in the gloom. Sensing trouble, she bolted upright and headed for the door. A police officer standing guard was startled by her sudden exit and instinctively moved to block her, but Xia Chao simply swerved past him and headed straight for the mediation room next door.

This time, the officer didn’t stop her. Xia Chao knew why; there was no reason to. The room next door was screaming about their case.

She shoved the door open, and the wailing suddenly became deafeningly clear.

There couldn’t be a more chaotic scene. The man who had fainted after taking a knife to the shoulder had already been sent to the hospital; the people now howling in the mediation room were his family. Five of them, young and old were wailing at the top of their lungs, playing the “desperate peasant” card for the sake of their “precious son.”

Xia Chao scanned the room coldly. She guessed they had been at it for a while. Every officer present looked exhausted and impatient, and the elderly uncles across the table weren’t as loud as they had sounded from the other room.

Having likely been scolded by the police for their initial harassment, they were now competing to see who could sound the most piteous. They wailed about how hard it was to produce a single male heir across three generations, and how his sister had married far away, working herself to the bone just to save thirty thousand yuan for his bride price—only for it to be swindled away by Fang Pandi’s old man.

Xiao Zhen exploded in rage. “Tian Lao-liu! I cut ties with that deadbeat old man eight hundred years ago! If he took your money, go ask him for it!”

“How do we know you father and daughter aren’t in cahoots?” the man spat, squinting his slanted eyes. “Doing filthy business behind closed doors. Who am I supposed to talk sense to? In my eyes, you’re both scammers! The old one sells his daughter in the village, and the young one sells her ** in the city! Ptu! Shameless trash!”

“Watch your mouth!”

It was a deeply insulting dialect slur. Xiao Zhen’s neck turned red instantly. The mediating officer frowned and barked at Tian Lao-liu, but before he could say another word, the opposing side switched masks.

Tian Lao-liu was in his late fifties, short and squat, with teeth stained a burnt yellow by tobacco. He leaned back in his chair and wailed with impressive lung capacity: “Assault!! Officer! Someone owes us money and won’t pay, and now they’re hitting us!”

Like a well-rehearsed troupe, the moment he started, his wife and children followed suit. Their voices rose like suona horns and gongs, each louder than the last. The room dissolved into chaos again, with the elderly parents looking ready to drop to the floor and feign a fainting spell.

Xia Chao watched them, her blood practically boiling in reverse.

She knew this act all too well. There are some people in the world who never leave their village, who have narrow horizons, and who harbor a primitive, feudal kind of malice in their bones. Whether it was the thugs who bullied her as a child or this rolling-on-the-floor Tian family, they were the same. They cower before real strength and look “honest” on the surface, but they are masters of the tantrum and the dirty trick.

The police had already made the situation clear. The son’s break-in had been captured perfectly on CCTV. Xiao Zhen’s knife strike hadn’t hit anything vital. It was textbook self-defense. Meanwhile, the son was looking at legal consequences for carrying a controlled weapon and intent to cause harm, even if it was unsuccessful.

Tian Lao-liu likely knew his son was heading for a jail cell, so the whole family had united to play the “oppressed victim” card, hoping to tear a few chunks of flesh out of the “bride price” and medical expenses.

No matter how fast Xiao Zhen’s tongue was, she couldn’t beat five mouths. Xia Chao sneered and stepped forward, intending to haul the elders off the floor, when a soft sound stopped her.

It wasn’t a world-shaking noise, just a stack of white paper being tapped lightly on the table. Ping Yuan, who had been silent until now, tilted her chin up and leaned lazily against the back of her chair.

Unlike Tian Lao-liu’s thuggish slouch, her posture was elegant, her voice quiet, and her eyes cold. She formed a silent contrast to the chaos, and the temperature of the room seemed to drop a few degrees.

“Talking about ‘swindling’…” She smiled thinly. “Isn’t it just that you sold your daughter, and now you want to use that money to buy a ‘wife’ to serve your whole family? Right?”

She tilted her head toward them.

Tian Lao-liu clearly didn’t know where she had come from. He looked nervous for a split second, but seeing a refined young woman, he regained his confidence. “What’s this about ‘selling’? We saved our hard-earned money from the dirt to get our boy a woman! What’s wrong with that?” He stuck his neck out like a stubborn ox.

Ping Yuan nodded calmly. “Mhm.”

“So, in the end, it’s just about money,” she said slowly. She stood up and leaned over, pushing the stack of papers and her phone across the table like a cold croupier pushing a mountain of chips. “Conveniently, calculating money is my profession.”

“It’s okay if you’re illiterate,” she raised an eyebrow, catching the way they didn’t even dare reach out to touch the paper. She gave a polite, light laugh. “I’ll read it for you.”

Like a cat playing with its prey, the moment Tian Lao-liu decided to reach for the paper, she gracefully pulled it back.

“Let’s start with the shop’s losses. Your son destroyed an automatic sealing machine, a heavy-duty blender, and a smart tea extractor. The refrigeration equipment and the ice machine in the prep area were also damaged.”

With calculations in one hand and her phone in the other, she showed the CCTV footage frame-by-frame. The man was seen wrestling with Xia Chao, leaving a wake of destruction.

Tian Lao-liu tried to bluster through his fear. “It’s a tiny little shop! How much could it cost? The stuff is old!”

“True,” Ping Yuan nodded, her tone strictly professional. “The items are used. Therefore, I will calculate the compensation based on the full price multiplied by the depreciation rate.”

“Actually, the small appliances aren’t the main issue. The commercial refrigeration and ice machines are significantly more expensive than residential ones. A commercial ice maker is about twenty thousand yuan. The blenders, sealers, and extractors—ranging from several hundred to several thousand—aren’t cheap either.”

“These were all replaced with new models this year, only a few months old. The depreciation and residual value calculations are complex, so I’ll give you the result: the property damage is roughly twenty thousand yuan.”

“Besides the equipment, we have to calculate lost revenue. Since the machines are broken and need to be re-ordered, the shop is expected to close for five days, including today.”

Ping Yuan tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, her face expressionless—the image of a cold calculator. “It’s the summer peak season, so there’s no difference between weekdays and weekends. The daily turnover for a community shop like this is about fifteen hundred. Five days is seven thousand five hundred. Then add the medical fees and emotional distress for the staff…”

“One staff member was knocked unconscious by your son, wasn’t she?” She looked up, her gaze sweeping over Xia Chao.

Xia Chao caught on immediately. Emboldened by her “backer,” she instantly began groaning and faking a dizzy spell: “He hit my head! Everything is spinning! I can’t even walk straight!”

“Mhm,” Ping Yuan looked back down and scribbled a few more lines. “Your private dispute with the Fang family is none of our business. But if she goes to the hospital to document her injuries, with witnesses and physical evidence, she is fully entitled to seek compensation.”

“So, combined—business loss, equipment loss, and personal injury. The most conservative estimate exceeds thirty thousand yuan. If you have objections and wish to pursue civil litigation, we are perfectly happy to accept. However, keep in mind that third-party appraisers, lawyers, and subsequent lost-wage fees will also be added to the tally…”

She spread her hands, appearing entirely unbothered. “In that case, the final compensation would likely double to at least sixty thousand.”

Tian Lao-liu was completely cowed.

Xia Chao looked up and thought once again: This woman is terrifying.

It wasn’t just her rapid-fire calculation, nor the fact that she’d actually written out the process with price references. It was that “iceberg” face and the professional tone. It made her incredibly convincing.

So. Damn. Cool. Xia Chao stared at Ping Yuan, her eyes beaming with intense admiration.

Ping Yuan turned her head and smoothed her hair behind her ear. In an angle only Xia Chao could see, she silently mouthed three words:

1. Made. It. Up.

A few blenders were knocked over and could probably be fixed; there was no way the damage was that high.

Her hand dropped naturally from her ear. The paper obscuring her face fell away, and she resumed her calm, steady expression. Only the slight curve of her lips retained a trace of bright, sharp arrogance, like the jagged facet of a crystal, reflecting a blinding rainbow for just a second.

What could be more terrifying than a beautiful woman who knows how to lie?

It was a beautiful woman who could lie and then look you straight in the eye with a face as cold and indifferent as stone.

The whole performance was a masterclass in playing people like fools.

Xia Chao was utterly, completely sold.

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