Chapter 239: The Simplest Move

*Bael’s POV*

By evening, Shen Rui has the details extracted from Haowei’s middleman.

The relay accounts, the transaction logs, and at the end of three routing layers, an address. A private residence in a city three hours away, registered under an obscure holding company, occupied by someone who has been receiving real-time updates on Bael’s schedule, his board, his legal proceedings, and his family.

Eight weeks. The operation has been running for eight weeks before the broadcast ever aired. Someone has been building this carefully from the shadows while the rest of the world believed there was nothing left of them to find.

Bael looks down at the slip of paper.

Driving to that address with a private security team is an option, but an unpredictable one. Unconfirmed identity of the occupant, potential leaks, and no outcome guaranteed under the law.

There is a simpler move.

Bael takes out a secondary phone from his desk drawer, a direct line reserved for high-level enforcement contacts when matters require swift, quiet intervention. He dials.

It rings twice.

"I have a location," Bael says calmly when the line connects. "There is an active corporate espionage and wire fraud operation running out of this address." He states the location clearly, word for word. "The occupant is operating under an alias. Make sure your team runs their prints the moment they’re in custody."

"Understood, Chairman Wuchen," the voice responds firmly. "Units are moving."

Bael ends the call, sets the secondary phone face down on the desk, and turns back to his main terminal.

***

By seven in the evening, the result from his visit to Jun Holdings begins to materialize in real time.

Shen Rui stands in front of his desk, handing over the latest market reports. "Jun Holdings has initiated the closure of their short positions. The liquidity drain on Wuchen Group stock has ceased."

"And the media outlets?" Bael asks.

"Retractions are already being drafted," Shen Rui reports, his voice crisp. "Three major financial news sites have quietly pulled the articles published this morning. Our legal team is issuing a formal statement regarding the false allegations, and market confidence is recovering. Stock value is up three percent since the afternoon dip."

Bael reviews the numbers. The corporate fire Jun Haowei stoked has been put out. The institutional investors who were wavering hours ago are falling back into line now that the financial pressure has evaporated.

Everything is returning to order. Whatever is waiting at that address, the raid will handle it by nightfall.

"Good," Bael says, closing the laptop. "Have legal monitor the closing bell statements. That will be all for tonight."

Shen Rui bows his head slightly. "Yes, sir."

Once Shen Rui leaves the office, silence settles over the top floor. Bael stands up, buttons his suit jacket, and reaches for his coat. His mind shifts entirely away from corporate maneuvering and moves toward the estate. Toward Runze.

He can still feel the faint tremor that had run through Runze’s hands beneath the tablecloth this morning when the police summons arrived. Runze had forced a calm smile onto his face, swallowing whatever fear he was holding inside to keep his composure at the table. He had held it together all day, and Bael had not missed that.

Now, the storm is over. Bael is ready to go home to him.

He turns and walks toward the office doors.

Then, his primary phone rings.

The screen flashes with the name of the Senior Police Investigator, the very man who issued the summons for questioning hours ago regarding Wuchen Ming’s death.

Bael answers, bringing the phone to his ear as he steps toward the glass windows. "Investigator. I assume your office is preparing the formal notice dropping the inquiry."

There is no immediate answer. Only the heavy, ragged sound of the investigator breathing on the other end of the line, background noise echoing with the chaotic clamor of a police command station.

"Chairman Wuchen..." The investigator’s voice sounds completely unstrung, stripped of all its earlier professional coldness. "We just executed a high-priority raid on an address flagged by federal dispatch."

Bael pauses, his eyes narrowing slightly. "And?"

"We took one suspect into custody," the investigator stammers, his words stumbling over each other. "He was using a false name, but... Chairman Wuchen, the moment my team brought him under the lights, everyone in the room froze. We all knew his face."

A strange, unnatural stillness settles in Bael’s chest. "Get to the point."

"We ran his prints just to prove to ourselves we weren’t seeing a ghost," the investigator chokes back a breath, his voice trembling violently. "It’s... the man sitting in our central holding cell right now... is Wuchen Ming."

The world stops.

For one suspended moment, Bael hears nothing except the blood moving through his own ears. His hand remains against the phone, his eyes fixed on the reflection in the glass, while the investigator’s words repeat themselves with impossible clarity.

*Wuchen Ming.*

Alive.

The name should mean nothing more than a dead man’s name by now.

Bael had ordered Ming’s death after Runze was discharged from the hospital. He had gone with Grandmother to the prison to confirm the body himself when the call came.

The remains had been badly damaged.

He remembered that much clearly.

There had been a body. Identified, confirmed, filed. Bael had accepted that conclusion without question because there had been no reason, at the time, to imagine anyone would go to the trouble of replacing a corpse.

He had returned home that night with Grandmother carrying the knowledge that Ming was finally gone.

Runze had been left asleep upstairs.

He had never seen the body, he had never gone to the prison. He had never stood beside Ming’s grave or been given the chance to say goodbye. Bael had kept all of it away from him because there was no reason for Runze to carry the weight of a dead man who had already taken enough from him.

And now that certainty has been ripped apart in a single sentence.

He had killed Ming. There was no uncertainty in that. Ming had been supposed to die quietly.

He had died.

Or so Bael had believed.

His eyes lower to the phone in his hand.

"What did you say his name was?"

There is a brief silence on the other end.

"Wuchen Ming."

Bael closes his eyes for half a second.

Not because he doubts the investigator. He doesn’t. The investigator’s voice is too unraveled for this to be anything other than exactly what it sounds like.

He closes them because for one moment, before the cold logic takes over, he simply needs the world to stop moving.

Then it does. And then he opens them again.

"Keep him isolated," Bael says. "No visitors or calls. No one outside the investigation knows he is there."

"Chairman—"

"Especially the media."

His voice leaves no room for discussion.

"I want the officers who identified him separated and interviewed individually. I want every photograph taken during the raid secured. Every fingerprint record, every identification document, every item recovered from that residence comes directly to me."

"Understood."

"And Investigator."

"Yes?"

Bael looks out over the city.

"Do not question him again until I arrive."

He ends the call. For several seconds, he simply stands there.

The anger comes next, but it isn’t wild. It settles into him slowly, cold and precise, sharpening everything it touches. Wuchen Ming had spent months making the world believe he was dead, and all that time, he had been alive and moving pieces into place against Bael without Bael ever realizing it.

His mind returns to the last two days.

The media campaign hadn’t been an isolated attack, the board crisis hadn’t been an attempt to take Wuchen Group on its own. Even Haowei’s involvement suddenly makes sense.

They were all parts of the same operation.

Different pressures had been applied from different directions, forcing Bael to divide his attention while the people behind the attack moved through the gaps. The media had damaged his reputation, the board had created internal instability. Haowei had taken advantage of the pressure to push his own interests forward. None of it had been random, and none of it had happened by accident.

Bael turns away from the window.

"Shen Rui."

The office door opens almost immediately.

Shen Rui steps inside and takes one look at Bael’s expression. Whatever he sees makes him stop near the door instead of speaking immediately, his attention shifting to the phone still in Bael’s hand.

"What happened?"

Bael puts on his coat deliberately.

"Change of plans."

Shen Rui straightens. "We’re going somewhere?"

"The police station."

Shen Rui follows his movement, already reaching for his own phone. He hesitates for only a moment before asking, "Is this about the suspect?"

Bael looks at him.

"Wuchen Ming is alive."

Shen Rui goes completely still.

The name takes a moment to register because there are some names a person hears so often in the past tense that hearing them spoken as if the person still exists feels impossible.

Bael walks out of the office.