CHAPTER 91: CHAPTER 92 – THE BACKLASH BEGINS

Lin Feng didn’t need drama.

He needed timing.

And as dawn cracked over Jincheng, he knew the moment had arrived.

The evidence was verified.

The players identified.

And the pattern of coercion traced back—layer by layer—to Spectron Intermediaries, the international "consulting" firm operating under a corporate veil just wide enough to hide threats, bribes, and reputational manipulation.

But now, that veil was about to be burned.

At 9:03 a.m., a public statement went live from the verified account of Celica Group’s Civic Ethics Division—a department Lin had quietly rebuilt after taking over as CEO.

The statement wasn’t loud.

It was precise:

**"Recent investigations have uncovered links between a foreign ’consultancy’ operating under Spectron Intermediaries and patterns of indirect pressure on civic actors in Jincheng’s public infrastructure bidding.

In alignment with our transparency values, we are releasing anonymized metadata, communication timelines, and network mappings—available for peer review."**

Attached was a digital archive.

Open-source. Verifiable.

And brutal.

It showed:

Spectron’s financial ties to offshore shell firms aligned with Nantai Holdings

A hiring timeline that lined up with Yuwei’s intimidation attempts

And location tags that placed Spectron operatives within 300 meters of Celica personnel multiple times during "coincidental" security alerts

Within minutes, two local journalists picked up the file.

Within an hour, it hit five major civic forums.

By noon, it trended nationwide.

Inside Nantai, the fallout landed fast.

Zixuan was in the middle of a private strategy session when one of his aides interrupted.

"Sir... it’s out. They named Spectron. They published everything."

Zixuan didn’t flinch. "Reaction time?"

"Too fast. The civic platforms aggregated the data instantly. Someone fed them toolkits to parse the logs. It’s clean. And bad."

He stood slowly.

Then exhaled.

"They’ve shifted from defense to narrative control."

At Celica HQ, Lin sat with Bingqing, Ruoxi, and Guo Yuwei, watching the social graphs light up in real time.

Mentions of Spectron, coercion, and foreign interference surged past 40,000 tweets per hour in under three hours.

And more importantly, city council members were now being tagged directly in the comments.

"They’re demanding an emergency ethics session," Ruoxi said, reading updates from her media contacts. "Three junior councilors just issued a joint statement calling for a freeze on all bids connected to firms with foreign intermediaries."

Lin nodded. "It’s enough. We’ve created civic weight. Zixuan’s proxies will be untouchable in the current cycle."

Yuwei closed her laptop and looked up. "Then what’s his next move?"

Lin leaned back.

"He’ll deny it. Distance himself. And try to shift public attention somewhere else."

"And if that doesn’t work?"

"Then he’ll panic. And make mistakes."

By late afternoon, Zixuan did exactly as predicted.

A carefully worded statement was issued through Nantai’s public relations division:

"Nantai Holdings has never retained the services of Spectron Intermediaries. We categorically deny all associations between our infrastructure investments and any form of external coercion. We encourage fair investigations and support transparency."

But there was a problem.

The paper trail said otherwise.

A minor invoice from nine months earlier—signed under a different name, but sourced from a Spectron-controlled account—surfaced within two hours.

Then a former junior analyst from Nantai anonymously leaked internal memos that mentioned "Spectron’s consultation rates" for strategic influence engagements.

The denials collapsed.

And the media, now blood-scented, pounced.

At Jincheng Civic Hall, the mood was rapidly shifting.

For years, citizens had viewed public-private infrastructure deals as murky but tolerable.

Now they saw them as manipulated.

And the narrative Lin helped shape—with careful phrasing, real evidence, and clear moral position—had found resonance in unexpected places.

University students launched a digital campaign called:

"No More Ghost Hands."

A respected civic blogger posted a timeline connecting Zixuan’s investments to every major blacklisted consultancy operating across five provinces.

And an ethics advocacy group formally requested an independent investigation into foreign corporate interference.

But amidst the civic chaos, Lin remained calm.

This wasn’t victory.

It was only momentum.

That evening, he sat alone in his office, sifting through reports. A soft knock came at the door.

Bingqing stepped in, holding two cups of warm tea.

"You look like you haven’t blinked since noon," she said.

"I haven’t," Lin replied. "Too many moving parts."

She handed him a cup and sat across from him.

"I was wrong about Yuwei," she said after a moment.

Lin glanced at her.

"She’s tougher than I gave her credit for. I used to think she only operated well in a courtroom—safe, formal, controlled."

"She’s still all of those," Lin said. "She’s just better than anyone realized at surviving the battlefield too."

Bingqing nodded.

"Then maybe we all underestimated what this team really is."

Meanwhile, in a café downtown, Guo Yuwei met quietly with a young political aide who’d reached out earlier that day.

He was nervous, clearly not used to backchannel meetings, but he had something real.

"My supervisor asked me to kill a resolution," he whispered. "A harmless one. Just a proposal to review third-party consultant approvals. She said it wasn’t the right ’climate’."

"And?" Yuwei asked.

"I ignored her. Then I got an offer. Private scholarship. Overseas."

"From Spectron?"

"Not directly. But the email had syntax quirks... same kind as the Spectron dumps online."

Yuwei leaned back, appraising him.

"You’ll be safe. But you need to document this. Quietly. On the civic chain. We’ll help you upload it safely."

The young aide nodded.

And in that moment, a small ripple formed.

Another thread for Lin Feng’s net.

The next morning, an unmarked package was delivered to Lin’s office.

Inside:

A USB

A stack of foreign contract sheets

And a handwritten note that simply said:

"You’re not the only one they tried to corner."

The sender: anonymous.

The implication: terrifying.

Zixuan’s reach had gone deeper than anyone guessed.

But now, every hand he once used was burning the rope.

Lin called a full meeting—Bingqing, Ruoxi, Yuwei, and now two key technologists from his civic development team.

"The fallout isn’t just for show anymore," he said. "We have public momentum, but that makes us targets. We need to shift from reactive to preventive."

"What’s the plan?" Ruoxi asked.

"We build a Civic Firewall—not software. A network of professionals across law, tech, and media who can respond in real time to coercion, misinformation, or legal smokescreens."

"A civic immune system," Bingqing murmured.

"Exactly."

By midday, Lin Feng stood on the rooftop of Celica HQ, watching the digital billboards flicker across the skyline.

One of them now displayed a quote attributed to him—taken from a recent internal memo that had quietly gone public:

"You can control silence. But you can’t control what grows in its place when people start listening."

It wasn’t bravado.

It was a warning.

Because the shadows were no longer quiet.