Chapter 2
The First Lever
Outside the board hearing suite, Liu Chen stops a clerk from confiscating the altered transfer packet and uses the visible routing mismatch to force a public pause. Madam Han counters immediately by freezing Shen Yao’s voting authority and the joint account tied to their marriage leverage, turning Liu Chen’s first proof into a direct financial threat. The scene ends with Liu Chen holding the packet, the board room watching, and the room shifting toward the first public reversal. In the private waiting lounge outside the Shen Group hearing room, Liu Chen confronts a family office clampdown aimed at Shen Yao’s voting authority and their joint account. Using the photographed blue-tabbed packet and routing mismatch from the records corridor, he exposes a procedural inconsistency and creates his first real leverage. Shen Yao refuses a public stand but gives him a narrow opening, while the family escalates by issuing a temporary hold on her vote and moving to freeze the marriage-linked account, forcing Liu Chen into a minute-by-minute race before the hearing announcement. Liu Chen enters the Shen Group hearing room still carrying the humiliation of his public suspension, but he uses photographed evidence to expose that the transfer packet was altered after his removal. Madam Han and Shen Wei try to dismiss it as a clerical issue, yet the board and legal staff recognize the document chain as real. Before the room can reset, the family office moves to freeze Shen Yao’s voting authority and block the marriage account, turning the confrontation into immediate material danger. A legal assistant then reveals an outside reference number tied to the altered contract, hinting that the fraud reaches beyond the family. In the Shen Group board hearing room, Liu Chen uses the photographed packet to prove the altered contract’s reference number matches a sponsor-side filing outside the family office. The room is forced to recognize procedural fraud, but Madam Han counterattacks by freezing Shen Yao’s voting authority and the marriage-linked account, escalating the conflict from humiliation to immediate material danger while revealing the first hint of a larger external sponsor.