Chapter Ninety-Four – To No Avail

Walking along the footprints of the past towards the future—could this be nothing more than a wasteful repetition? Xu Shixi, Tang Dai, and Qiao Siming felt as if they had returned to eight years ago, watching their memories replay, scene after scene. Each step brought the past sharply into focus, vivid and unyielding.

One of his feet hovered in midair, unable to touch the ground. He knew that the moment he landed, he would lose himself in reality, sink into the depths of his history. He had to break free from this state.

They arrived at the construction site for Happy City. In the southwest, the residential district was beginning to take shape; several buildings had already risen from the earth. The central shopping mall was still under construction. Yet, in the southeast, an error in the blueprint calculations had caused the entire building to shift toward the road.

Inside a makeshift iron-walled cabin, Xu Shixi met with Master Wu, the site supervisor. Wu advised continuing with the current plan, since the investment in the foundation and the two stories already built was substantial. If they tore it down, who would bear the loss of millions?

As the saying goes, a single thread moves the whole body. Moving the southeast residential district back would require shrinking the central mall or reducing the size of the plaza. When buyers and investors put in their money, they had reviewed the plans, receiving repeated assurances and promises. Now, the gap between reality and ideal was vast. If the investors demanded refunds en masse, the Happy City project would grind to a halt, perhaps becoming an unfinished ruin.

Tang Dai suggested contacting the original design firm, demanding a reasonable explanation and solution. At the very least, they should shoulder part of the cost, so that the losses for Xunyuan and Tang Corporation could be minimized.

Xu Shixi was uncertain about Tang Dai’s proposal. He had been deeply involved in the planning, and he held final responsibility for the blueprints. The fault that had surfaced now was inescapably his. He feared that years of savings would go up in smoke.

The upper management at Xunyuan knew little of the technical nuances. They would simply pick the superior option between two choices, adopting whichever was best.

A great leader doesn’t need deep professional expertise, but must have an eye for talent and the wisdom to appoint the right people. When Xu Shixi first applied to Xunyuan, his resume and his speech instantly revealed his abilities and brilliance.

“Why haven’t you negotiated with the design company?” Tang Dai pulled Xu Shixi aside, questioning him.

Xu Shixi gazed out the fogged glass window at the blurred gray buildings. A colorless gloom seemed to settle over him, so oppressive he could barely muster the strength to lift his eyelids.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t contacted the designers. But faced with such a grave mistake, they failed to show the responsibility expected of a major firm—evading, deflecting, and shifting blame in their words.

“The priority now is to find a solution, not to assign blame,” Xu Shixi said with forced seriousness. As he spoke, his cheeks flushed; the heat in his earlobes threatened to burn them off.

“How can you be responsible if you don’t pursue accountability?” Qiao Siming pushed between the two, breaking their closeness. “Do you think you’re so rich?”

Tang Dai nodded, the lines of tension in his face and his tangled brows relaxing a little. Xu Shixi had voiced her unspoken thoughts; her unfinished words had reached his mind.

A flash of white light crossed her eyes, a feeling difficult to describe spreading from the core of her being. What was it? Something she’d never felt in over twenty years.

Yet she quickly dispelled this foreign sensation. For anything unfamiliar or invasive, before she could gauge its danger, she’d rather erase it than let it take root and multiply.

“Let’s all calm down.” Xu Shixi’s voice was weak.

The air seemed to solidify. He braced himself beneath the weight pressing down from above, knees slowly bending. How much longer could he endure before being crushed?

Xu Shixi took his coat from the chair, opened the door, and stepped out of the cramped iron cabin. The iron walkway beneath his shoes rang out with clattering, masking his chaotic thoughts for a moment.

A circuit around Happy City, at a normal walking pace, would take half an hour. With a troubled mind, pausing every few steps, it might take an hour—perhaps even longer. He wandered through the buildings in the gathering dusk, like an abandoned infant cast into the mountains, seeing only a patch of misshapen sky overhead, black as night.

Two hours earlier, excavators, pile drivers, wall builders, and mixers had composed a grand symphony. Residents nearby suffered miserably. Now, with silence and darkness, the site seemed a deserted graveyard; windowless openings became tombs.

Never before in all his years had Xu Shixi felt so lost and uncertain. The problem before him was a tangled ball of yarn—impossible to unravel, and the more he tried, the more hopelessly knotted it became.

He sat down on a stone block, blowing away the gray dust that covered it. Strange—why couldn’t he see the dust swirling in the air?

He clung to the fractured pillar, refusing to collapse into a pile of rubble in this moment.

He and Yishu were alike in temperament—stubbornly persisting in pointless self-assertion.

As for the meaning of such persistence, even he, the person involved, could scarcely explain it.

Speaking of Yishu, after November began, Kaiseng’s order volume reached its peak, ushering in the busiest season of the year. The sales for November alone rivaled an entire quarter.

By the end of October, Liu Hanzhang had informed Su Yishu and Guo Yamei in the company group chat: from November 1st to 12th, after their shifts at Textile City, they needed to report to the office, preparing in advance for the upcoming Double Eleven shopping festival.

Several young women in the customer service department couldn’t handle the irregular day-and-night shifts and dreaded the online chaos of Double Eleven. Under the double strain, they were ready to quit.

They had arrived together, and now left together. The youthful mind and soul are always swayed by loyalty and impulse.

Liu Hanzhang took his anger out on the HR staff. One key point in recruitment was to avoid hiring more than two people who knew each other, especially if they ended up in the same department.

He lowered his pride and pleaded with them to stay, at least until after Double Eleven, for the sake of consistency. Yet their resolve couldn’t be swayed. Even withholding a month’s pay wasn’t enough to deter their departures.

HR posted job listings across major recruitment sites, receiving a flood of resumes daily, but few fit the criteria. In slow seasons, there was time for learning, but during busy periods, veteran employees struggled to handle their own workload, let alone train newcomers. The risk of chaos only increased.

With no other options, Su Yishu and Guo Yamei became the saviors of Kaiseng’s customer service. Their accumulated experience and seniority were enough to handle any crisis that Double Eleven might bring.

Liu Hanzhang privately approached Yishu, hoping she could persuade Yan Lu to return. Though Yishu was the type to focus solely on her own duties and never meddle in others’ affairs, her performance and quality were solid. Compared to many careless customer service reps, she was the epitome of diligence.

Yishu responded to Liu Hanzhang’s suggestion with remarkable calm. In companies, value is exploited while it exists, discarded when it’s gone, and when value returns, people are lured back with feigned humility. She had seen it all, and nothing surprised her anymore.

She simply remarked that Yan Lu had found a new direction in life and started working towards new goals. The past had become as insubstantial as drifting clouds, impossible to trace.

Liu Hanzhang didn’t quite understand Yishu’s meaning, but one thing was clear: Yan Lu would not return to Kaiseng.

That evening, Yishu called Yan Lu to discuss the matter. Even after the call ended, Yan Lu’s triumphant laughter lingered in Yishu’s ears.

Only then did Yishu realize she cared about others’ opinions and judgments. However detached she might have seemed, the waves concealed beneath her calm exterior were fierce and tumultuous.