Chapter 506 - 405: Provoked a Big Shot?

Chapter 506: Chapter 405: Provoked a Big Shot?

She desperately wanted to tear into the manager of her fourth store, but reason held her back.

If she alienated the staff she’d worked so hard to train, it would be impossible to put together another functional team on short notice.

She hurriedly got dressed, applying her makeup with practiced precision.

Just as she was about to leave,

she saw a mountain of missed calls on her phone.

On WeChat, managers from fourteen of her other stores had sent her messages.

All of them had been fined and shut down!

After reading the messages, Yang Yixue’s vision went black, and she had to grab the shoe cabinet to steady herself.

Now, only the first and third stores, which she had been personally overseeing, survived...

’W-Why is this happening?!’

The color drained from Yang Yixue’s face, and her powdered skin was now as white as a sheet.

Like a ghost, she staggered blankly to the sofa and collapsed onto it.

When she came to her senses,

Yang Yixue immediately realized something was wrong.

This seemed to be a well-planned conspiracy.

A conspiracy targeting her!

Yang Yixue thought back carefully.

’It was never like this before!’

Back when she was in the beauty business, people from the supervision bureau would occasionally come by,

but she could always predict around what time they would show up.

Because when the supervision bureau investigated businesses, they always did it area by area, one at a time.

They would never conduct such a large-scale, widespread inspection!

Her stores in South City weren’t even close to each other.

’Could someone have reported me?’

Yang Yixue couldn’t help but consider the possibility.

’But that still doesn’t make sense...’

Even if she had been reported, the bureau would never be this thorough and targeted, taking down all her stores in one go!

It was like a phone thief being surrounded by a task force of experts and a SWAT team.

It was complete overkill, like using a tank to kill a chicken!

Yang Yixue was tormented, unable to figure out what was going on.

Just then, Li Xiaoyan called her. "I heard our stores were all inspected?"

"What’s going on?!"

Li Xiaoyan’s voice was tinged with anger as she demanded answers.

Yang Yixue’s own anger flared, and she shrieked, "You’re asking me? How should I know?!"

Li Xiaoyan was taken aback and stammered, "Th-Then what do we do now? Are we going to lose a lot of money again?"

"Hmph..."

Yang Yixue fell silent.

A moment ago, she had been completely focused on what was happening,

on why all her stores were taken down at the same time.

As for how much money she was losing, she hadn’t had the mental energy to calculate it.

Now that she had a moment to breathe, she did a quick mental calculation.

Rent, employees, fines, discarded materials, and the costs of rectification and smoothing things over...

She estimated that each store’s losses would be at least fifty or sixty thousand.

All told, it was close to a million.

Yang Yixue’s head throbbed.

Her heart ached, too.

Before her divorce, she wouldn’t have cared that much. Back then, the beauty salon industry was booming.

A million was nothing.

But now, this just made a terrible situation worse. The business’s cash flow had just stabilized, and now it was completely shattered.

All that was left were gaping holes for her to fill.

Worse still,

Yang Yixue suspected there would be many hidden losses to come.

The loss of customers, for example.

Moreover, the supervision bureau now ran a popular Douyin account, where they would post videos of non-compliant businesses to make an example of them.

If they did that, the consequences would be unimaginable.

With more than a dozen of her stores shut down, her brand’s reputation in South City would be dragged through the mud!

Yang Yixue’s head felt like it was about to explode from the stress.

She forced herself to pull it together and head out.

She couldn’t just sit back and wait for the worst; she had to go out and stabilize her staff immediately.

「An entire morning passed.」

During that time, Yang Yixue personally met with many of the agitated employees. She had no choice but to promise to hire two more janitors and four more servers on top of the existing staff.

She also had to firmly guarantee she wouldn’t arbitrarily dock their pay.

She had originally planned to recoup her losses from her employees’ wages,

but not only did she fail to get any money back, she ended up having to fork over even more.

She had no choice. She had to keep her staff stable. Even though their contracts had clauses for compensation if they quit without notice, the problem was the sheer number of people she would have to sue.

How long would that take?

Even if she hired a lawyer, the money she’d recover wouldn’t even cover the hassle.

Back in her BMW,

Yang Yixue was so frustrated she wanted to cry.

’What is happening?!’

’My life was going so well, and now it’s just getting worse and worse!’

Gradually, Yang Yixue began to calm down.

She had already realized someone was pulling strings to mess with her, and this person was definitely someone she couldn’t afford to offend.

Anyone who could casually mobilize the entire supervision bureau couldn’t be a minor figure.

’I haven’t offended anyone... Could it be Jiang Liu?’

’Heh, what am I thinking? How could he possibly have the power to make a bureau director personally do his bidding?’

Deep down, Yang Yixue still looked down on Jiang Liu. It was a defense mechanism against her own fear.

She simply couldn’t accept the fact that Jiang Liu was more capable than her!

After some thought,

Yang Yixue found Yue Hong’s number in her phone.

This woman had been a client at her beauty salon and was also a low-level official in the Market Supervision Bureau. Yang Yixue had given her plenty of free beauty cards back in the day to win her over.

"Hello, Sister Yue? This is Yang Yixue, the owner of the beauty salon. Ah, yes, that’s me."

"Of those stores, only one is still open. I’ve temporarily mortgaged the rest. I’m in the restaurant business now... The thing is, Sister Yue, my stores were targeted with a bizarre inspection today, and I wanted to ask if you knew what was going on..."

They chatted for a bit, and Yue Hong said she’d ask around. She had some pull in her department.

After hanging up,

Yang Yixue felt a great sense of relief.

’Just as I thought, building connections always pays off eventually. Good thing I wasn’t stingy with her back then.’

A good deal of her confidence returned.

She couldn’t help but feel proud of her foresight.

A while later, Yue Hong sent Yang Yixue a message on WeChat:

"I asked around. Someone reported your stores to Vice Director Wang. I heard he was furious when he found out and immediately reported it to the director. It seems the director is taking this matter very seriously."

Yue Hong was a little confused.

Why would a single report trigger such a massive response, alarming both the director and the vice director? She suspected Yang Yixue had offended someone she shouldn’t have.

Inside the BMW,

Yang Yixue read the message, her anger boiling over.

Her pretty eyes narrowed.

’I knew it. I was right. Someone really is targeting me behind my back!’

’Yue Hong said it was a report. Such a sneaky, underhanded move doesn’t seem like the work of a powerful person...’

In her experience, a truly powerful figure she couldn’t afford to cross wouldn’t need to file a report. They’d just make one phone call to the director, who would then obediently do as they were told.

But then, why was the bureau’s reaction so massive?

Yang Yixue felt like she was standing on the ground looking up at an airplane—it was there, but it was blurry and she couldn’t see it clearly.

She quickly replied to Yue Hong: "Sister Yue, could you please help me find out who reported me? I don’t mean any harm, I just want to ask them to go easy on me. You know how it is—it’s really hard for a single woman like me to run a business. If I go bankrupt, I just don’t know what I’ll do."

Yue Hong replied:

"Speaking of which, I don’t even want to get started with you. Why on earth did you get divorced? You even have a child together. Jiang Liu is such a good man, right? He’s handsome, he treated you well, and he’s highly educated. Why would you divorce a man like that?"