Novel
Under account-freeze pressure and supplier humiliation, Liang returns to the ancestral restaurant, reads the financial damage as deliberate social warfare, and uses Madam Qiao’s trust to access the hidden pantry wall. With Old Chef Wei’s ledger code and seal, he opens a concealed storage space containing the family’s old business records, a hospital-linked procurement trail, and the patronage map. The chapter identifies Director Shen as the man behind the original silence, tying the auction scam to an older money-and-power route. As the clock pushes toward noon and Xu Ren’s pressure mounts, Liang prepares to turn the family’s buried influence into active leverage, ending on Wei’s reveal that someone was intentionally excluded from the original cover-up.
By nine-thirty, the freeze notice had been copied twice and pinned beside the dinner board like a body tag. The stark white paper, official and unforgiving, seemed to drain the color from the room.
Liang Chen stepped into the ancestral restaurant and felt the room’s shame hit him before anyone spoke. The front hall was full of supplier men in damp jackets, each of them holding a delivery slip instead of a greeting. On the lacquered board