Debt Is a Knife

"How is this possible?!" Inside a conference room in Dawn City's Administration Building. Seated at the table, President Melvin of Boulder City Bank stared at the crate full of black-and-white chips, his eyes bulging so wide they seemed ready to pop from his skull. The moment the anniversary celebration drew to a close, he had rushed to find the Alliance's Administrator, intending to negotiate the ten-million-chip principal and interest due on the Alliance's 510 million debt. As president of Boulder City Bank, every single loan to the Alliance had passed through his hands. He had ordered his sharpest accountants to monitor every expenditure the Alliance made, even keeping close tabs on "insiders" closely associated with them like Liszt and Ditwei. No one understood the Alliance's "financial condition" better than he did. There was no earthly way they could produce the ten million chips needed for their year-end payment! How could an organization fueled entirely by borrowing accumulate a surplus of cash? Not to mention the enormous trade deficit staring everyone in the face—those bumpkins in the northern suburbs had been running at a loss for a whole year! In reality, this was a ramshackle house riddled with holes eaten away by debt and trade deficits. To win the war against the Legion, they had mortgaged far too much of their future. Melvin had banked on precisely this, which was why he had sat down across from Chu Guang with absolute confidence. As things stood, deleveraging and paying down debt was virtually the Alliance's only path to survival. If they didn't trim the scale of their debt to a reasonable level, bankruptcy was the only thing waiting for them! Melvin didn't believe these muscleheads understood the first thing about economics, but he wasn't about to watch this painstakingly constructed house simply collapse either. He would help the Alliance pay off the money. Provided, of course, that the Alliance agreed to the conditions he attached! For example, opening free exchange between silver coins and chips, which would deflect part of the local currency's bubble onto foreign currency. If they went a step further and opened exchange for Cr, that would be even better! If Chu Guang agreed to let chips bridge through silver coins into Cr to settle the debt, Melvin was even willing to forgive half of the Alliance's liabilities in exchange! Those draft beasts worked their fingers to the bone for themselves, of course, but at the end of the day, wasn't it so that lords like them could enjoy life better? Going to Ideal City was, without question, the ultimate indulgence! Yet what he never could have anticipated was that this loan—which should have been impossible to repay—had been settled by the Alliance down to the last penny?! They had even prepared the principal and interest due for next year... "Care to count it?" Chu Guang asked with a faint smile as he looked at the dumbfounded Melvin. "I hear chips are produced by something like a black box, so counterfeiting shouldn't be possible, right?" "Ahem... Such a thing, of course I believe you wouldn't do, but..." Melvin couldn't help staring at Chu Guang. "I want to know where these chips came from." Seeing Melvin's suspicious expression, Chu Guang smiled and answered frankly, "That's a reasonable request. If someone in the Alliance suddenly produced a massive pile of cash, we'd also ask him to explain where the money came from." Melvin nodded. "Then could you tell me?" Chu Guang made no effort to conceal it, stating plainly, "Your shareholders lent it to me." Hearing this shameless reply, Melvin's eyes went wide as saucers. Discarding all grace and decorum, he fumed in utter exasperation, "How could you borrow new debt to pay off old debt!" Chu Guang smiled. "Our loan agreement only stipulated that we couldn't use debt issued by Boulder City Bank to repay loans from Boulder City Bank. It didn't state that we couldn't raise funds through other channels to pay off existing loans, did it?" "But that doesn't solve a damn thing!" Melvin snapped furiously. "Do you have any idea what you're doing? Your debt will grow bigger and bigger until it crushes you under its weight. Not only our money, but everyone's money will go down the drain!" He was finally beginning to grasp the issue of risk. Yet what infuriated him wasn't that the Alliance was irresponsibly inflating its own risk, but that he had a vastly superior solution right here in his hands! And yet, this man sitting across from him had obstinately chosen the absolute worst alternative! "We had no other choice either," Chu Guang said, softening his tone to soothe the banker whose blood pressure was visibly climbing. "Your consumer spending power is simply too weak. We'd love to sell quality goods over there, but your residents can't afford them. And selling low-value-added raw materials to your factories can hardly close the deficit... Anyone with a shred of common sense knows sand can't be more expensive than cement, right? And nearly ninety percent of the cement you produce is sold to us. How could we possibly plug this hole just by selling sand?" Melvin sputtered in exasperation, "Even so... you can't resort to this kind of method! What kind of madness is paying old debt with new debt? That's the height of irresponsibility!" The reason he had lent money to the Alliance was because he believed they could pay it back. But the Alliance's present conduct was making him wonder whether they had ever intended to settle up at all! "Yet we have honored every single condition agreed upon," Chu Guang reminded him placidly with a smile. "Back then, you demanded that we import more of your goods to narrow our trade deficit, and we complied to the letter." And they had done so with ruthless efficiency. After securing the two-hundred-million-chip loan, the Alliance had obediently turned its trade surplus into a deficit, and even shot itself in the foot by driving up its own labor costs, making Boulder City's cheap consumer goods increasingly competitive in the Alliance market. Melvin stared darkly at Chu Guang. He truly had no grounds to accuse the Alliance of breaking faith. They had even placed next year's principal and interest right before his eyes. That was why the harshest word he had used from start to finish was merely "irresponsible." Undoubtedly, it was unethical. Even ten thousand excuses could not alter the reality: the Alliance was continually dumping outward the inflation created by overissuing its own currency. "What about the year after that? And the year after that? Ten years from now?" Chu Guang gave a faint smile. "By then, the Alliance might already have ten or twenty survivor settlements. Would we really be short of this pittance to pay you?" Melvin's furrowed brow loosened slightly, though it remained tightly knit. A company's scale and its dividends were two different things. A larger enterprise didn't automatically mean investors took home more money. Up until now, Chu Guang still hadn't yielded on the fundamental issue— "You're worried about the risk of chips, aren't you?" Chu Guang perceptively identified the concern in his eyes, gently laying it bare. "Yes," Melvin admitted flatly, making no attempt to deny it. "I'm worried that if you keep playing this game, the bubble will burst right before it can be cashed out. I finally see through your little trick now. We're using our own credit to endorse your debt." "Now you're being too formal," Chu Guang cleared his throat softly and continued in a gentle tone. "How about this: I have a proposal that can resolve your issue of 'earning too much local currency.'" Melvin's hands unconsciously gripped the armrests of his chair, his eyes fixed on Chu Guang across the table. "What proposal?" "We plan to issue something called bonds. You can think of it as monetizing debt to a certain extent." The moment he heard the word "debt," Melvin started to rise from his chair to leave. But Chu Guang's next words made his rear drop right back onto the cushion. "Bonds denominated and settled in chips... In fact, we've already issued them." "Why didn't you mention a word to—" Melvin's eyes narrowed sharply. He looked at the chips on the table, then back at Chu Guang, realization dawning in his eyes. "I see. That's how you got the principal and interest." Chu Guang smiled faintly. "It's actually quite reasonable, isn't it? Sand can't be more expensive than cement, but roads, railways, buildings, and bridges are far more expensive than cement. You no longer need to build those things, but we happen to need them. So all you have to do is take the local currency you've earned and use it to buy the bonds we issue." Melvin squinted at Chu Guang. The Alliance was indeed offering him a way to address the issue: trapping the surplus local currency in a pool denominated in that very currency, where it supposedly would never depreciate. Yet that still solved none of the root problems. Seeing that Melvin remained unmoved, Chu Guang sighed inwardly. This man was indeed one of the rare sensible figures among the inner-city nobility. With a tight turn looming ahead, while others were eager to slam the gas pedal to the floor, he was the only one who realized they needed to tap the brakes and check the road. In terms of competence, neither Old Charlie nor Minister Sun Ruicai was a match for him. If the Alliance had actually played the deleveraging card after their departmental meetings, they would have lost from the very start. Yet it wasn't their fault either. People of humble origins were natural radicals. Most championed sweeping revolutions, yet often remained constrained by their own limitations, relying on old methods distilled from past experience, ultimately making them conservative in practice. Or, if gifted with foresight, they would realize the old ways were dead ends and embark on unimagined paths, startling everyone in the end. Fortunately, Chu Guang hailed from a civilized society, and countless players—both professionals and amateurs—flooded the forums every day, constantly discussing how to improve the Alliance. "Limitations" wouldn't vanish through loud voices or frequent chatter, but they could be mitigated through exchange and communication. Game walkthroughs and strategies were often born in much the same way. "I promise that in the future, we will gradually open up the exchange between chips and silver coins. And of course, the exchange of silver coins for Cr will also be open to you." Watching Melvin calculate in his head, Chu Guang cast out the biggest bait of all. Chu Guang could sense that Melvin held his breath the instant those words left his mouth, a flash of fervent heat clearly passing through his otherwise cool eyes. "I want more than a promise," Melvin said, staring fixedly at Chu Guang. "If you claim to keep your word, put it in writing." "No problem." Chu Guang nodded readily. Seeing how easily he agreed, Melvin was momentarily taken aback. Suspecting a trap, he quickly added, "Your signature must be on that paper!" "Haha, of course! For an agreement this important, it naturally needs my signature." Chu Guang chuckled heartily. Looking at Melvin, whose tension had completely dissolved, he continued, "Let's say five years. Within five years, we'll fulfill all our promises! Conveniently, the minimum redemption period for our bonds is also five years. That way, for the next five years, you can store the bubble in this bucket called bonds. Once five years are up, you can take them all out at once and convert them into silver coins, or directly into Cr... How does that sound?" Even though he deliberately tried to conceal his delight, Melvin couldn't keep a beaming smile from creeping across his brow. Rising from the conference table, he walked over to Chu Guang, who had also stood up, and grasped his hand with an open, relaxed expression, pumping it vigorously. "A splendid idea! As soon as I see the concrete documentation, I'll help you issue those bonds immediately... Thank you for thinking things through so thoroughly on our behalf!" Though he had reached a satisfactory outcome, Melvin still retained a shred of caution. He had subtly signaled to Chu Guang that only after seeing that verbal promise turn into a legally binding document would he agree to help distribute the chip-denominated bonds. If the Alliance truly aimed to grow bigger and stronger, it wouldn't make a mockery of its own laws. Chu Guang warmly shook his hand, nodding with a smile. "You're very welcome. Helping you resolve your risks is also helping ourselves." "What we pursue has always been a win-win!" ... Chu Guang hadn't been joking with Melvin. Every word he spoke was true. The Alliance truly didn't want Boulder City's bubble to pop so quickly. Even if every bubble was destined to burst in the end, that would have to wait until his entire plan was complete, and the fallout on the Alliance was minimized! Accordingly, Chu Guang accorded Melvin ample respect. That very day, he drafted a plan for the "free exchange of chips and silver coins" and generously signed his name to it. As an ancillary agreement, Boulder City Bank would serve as one of the Alliance's bond distribution channels, assisting the Alliance in marketing chip-denominated bonds. Furthermore, Boulder City Bank guaranteed that the Alliance's bond trading system would successfully launch in Boulder City! That way, inner-city nobles could not only invest more conveniently in Alliance-issued chip bonds, but also freely list their bonds for sale on the trading platform. A transaction could be completed with a mere flick of a finger! It had practically transformed into a highly liquid wealth management product! Bond buyers wouldn't have to worry about the five-year investment return cycle being too long; whenever they needed cash, they could just sell their holdings. With so many wealthy tycoons in Boulder City right now, there would always be bosses with so much idle cash they didn't know what to do with it, eager to snap up that spread of a few percentage points! And as the agent distributor of this "wealth management product," Boulder City Bank would naturally reap benefits as well, without bearing any of the risks Liszt had to shoulder. That same day, Melvin took his precious daughter and an entourage of bodyguards and set off in high spirits for Boulder City, bearing this monumental good news back with him. He had solved a problem that generations of Boulder City Bank presidents had failed to solve: Converting chips into Cr on a massive scale! "Send written letters to our shareholders! Inform them that a shareholder meeting will be held tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, same old place... Not to discuss dividends, but something far more important than dividends! Tell them we are about to witness history!" Amid the ruins just a few blocks from Boulder City, Melvin phoned his secretary, his face flushed with excitement as he spoke. He could hardly wait to break this magnificent news to his shareholders! Clutching her rag doll, Alisa watched her father with concern, a faint melancholy surfacing in her eyes. She only ever learned tidbits from the newspapers long after everything had transpired. Her father practically never spoke to her about work, so she had no idea what agreement the Alliance and Boulder City had reached. Yet Alisa couldn't shake an ominous premonition... Could things truly go so smoothly? ... Alisa, standing entirely outside the fray, wasn't the only one harboring such misgivings; men of real prominence, like Weijia—the big boss running Boulder City's largest trading firm—felt them too. Unlike the little girl's baseless fretting, Weijia's anxiety was no castle in the air. It was forged in the ledgers of his firm's day-to-day operations! And the issues keeping him up at night were vastly more concrete than those troubling the bank president's cloistered young daughter. Goods exported from Boulder City's factories to the Alliance, or products the Alliance proactively imported from Boulder City, were mostly settled in chips. This was both Boulder City's requirement and the fundamental demand that best aligned with the interests of most people here. After all, no one wanted to put their faith in a currency issued at will with zero backing. Yet now, Weijia found himself in the absurd position of wishing Alliance companies would settle payments in silver coins instead—and keep those coins deposited in an Alliance account, even if he had no direct conduit to convert silver coins into chips. The reason was simple. Chip inflation was moving far too fast! Raw materials that cost one chip this month shot up to two chips the next. Suppliers barely gave him the time of day when he paid in chips, and they even demanded that he haul the goods from the Alliance railway station himself, as the stretch of road between the Alliance and Boulder City was in terrible shape. So what if the Alliance had an official listed exchange rate of 1:2? Ninety-nine percent of people couldn't possibly exchange one chip for two silver coins! To exchange currency, one either had to turn to the black market, or buy goods from the Alliance market that who-knew-when would sell, hauling them back to Boulder City to hawk off bit by bit. Weijia never imagined that as a food merchant, his warehouses would end up stuffed with copper ore bought with silver coins... "Aaron, would you believe it? Sometimes I envy my competitors." On the third day after the Alliance celebration concluded—and the day following Boulder City Bank's shareholder meeting—Weijia sat in his office staring at the ledger in his hands, pressing a throbbing temple. Aaron was his secretary and one of his few trusted confidants. Back when the City Hall was besieged, it was this man who had coordinated with Alec, the factory security chief, orchestrating the whole affair behind the scenes. Hearing his boss speak, Aaron was slightly taken aback and asked in a low voice, "Do you mean... Mr. Ditwei?" Weijia sighed and nodded. "Yeah." Didiwei nutrient paste. Once upon a time, relying on cheap northern suburban labor and low material costs, Didiwei nutrient paste had squeezed Weijia Trading Firm's market share in Boulder City. For a while, Weijia had viewed Ditwei as a thorn in his side. Fortunately, however, that fool Ditwei was clearly nowhere near as shrewd as Liszt, or rather, was far too rigid in his thinking. If the Alliance hadn't elevated him to heights he never deserved, that fellow would have remained a petty trader his entire life. Weijia knew very well that the shareholders backing him had actually given Ditwei chances, but that idiot hadn't shown any respect. He never even thought to procure a black card or carve out a slice of profits to grease palms up and down the ladder. So Weijia had merely pulled a few strings and gone with the flow, neatly sweeping him out of Boulder City. Yet now, Weijia found himself envying the guy. Rumor had it that Didiwei Food Processing Plant had completely transitioned into producing animal feed and agricultural fertilizers, thriving in the agricultural market of Sunset Province. Perhaps this was what people called industrial upgrading? By contrast, although the factories under Weijia's firm were also modifying their production lines, they were upgrading in a completely opposite direction. Take the Good Taste Food Processing Plant, for example. To ensure Boulder City's survivors could still afford nutrient paste, he had been forced to slash production costs; that was the only way survivors in Boulder City, with their already meager wages, could buy it. The slightly higher-quality batch was sold to the Alliance. Even though the Alliance's own residents had long stopped eating that slop, Shuang Mao Ranch bought some to mix into feed for cattle, sheep, and pigs. Ordinary people had no foreign currency quota, but ranches engaged in productive operations did. As long as they declared their purpose through official channels, payments could be settled in chips. Yet even so, inflation was simply too severe. If a client delayed payment by even a single week, the raw materials that money could buy would shrink. If he could earn more next month, it wouldn't matter as much, but profits were falling further and further behind inflation. He truly couldn't fathom where so much money in the market had sprung from! He pressed his clients frantically for settlements, yet had to suck up to them at the same time, because exporting to the Alliance had become virtually the sole hope keeping Weijia Trading Firm's profits afloat. Counting on the impoverished wretches of the outer city to buy his goods had become an impossibility... Those malnourished scum were already mixing sawdust into their nutrient paste! Weijia could feel an invisible hand steadily siphoning away his profits, but to his dismay, he had no idea what to do. Blame the Alliance for spending too much? They were his number-one customer! If the Alliance's feed processing plants and ranches stopped importing his nutrient paste starting tomorrow, he would have to shut down the entire production line! What if... He settled payments in silver coins next month? It was a desperate measure born of having no other options. Though it would solve part of the production problem, what appeared on the profit line of his ledger would be a string of silver coins he couldn't take with him. One look at that 1:2 official exchange rate, and his shareholders would surely scowl. Just as Weijia was clutching his aching head over the mountain of accounts receivable on his ledger, the telephone rang. Not daring to dawdle for an instant, Weijia knew perfectly well who had the authority to call his direct line, and picked up at once. "Hello?" "It's me." Hearing Xide's voice, Weijia's face instantly plastered over with a subservient smile. "Mr. Xide, what an honor... How may I serve you?" Xide didn't mince words, getting straight to the point. "I have five hundred million in bonds here. Discounted price—I'll let them go for 490 million. Run it through your firm's accounts and buy them." Weijia, already in agony over his stretched cash flow, felt his heart drop into his stomach. He blurted out, "...Five hundred million chips?! Where on earth am I supposed to find that kind of money?" Realizing his tone might have sounded disrespectful, Weijia hastily adopted a humbler posture, bowing toward the receiver with a grimace. "...Respected Mr. Xide, I meant no offense, but the firm's operations require capital to purchase raw materials. We can certainly allocate a portion of our funds to purchase bonds... but we must reserve enough for regular production and operations." The crux of the matter was that just a few days ago, out of deference to Xide, he had already bought five hundred million! Coming up with another five hundred million chips was truly impossible! Xide was equally incensed. He never imagined his good brother Melvin would suddenly stab him in the back. Xide was still holding five hundred million in bonds that he hadn't offloaded yet, intending to sell them off gradually. Yet Boulder City Bank had jumped right into the business of distributing Alliance bonds too. How was he supposed to profit from the spread now? If the price difference was negligible, any fool would run to Melvin to buy! Still, Xide couldn't complain too loudly. After all, he was one of Boulder City Bank's shareholders himself. Melvin's original intention was to let everyone earn more, and Boulder City Bank's profits included a share for him as well. Seeing that Weijia hadn't readily agreed, Xide, though annoyed, pressed on with forced patience. "You're just lending me the money for now. Don't worry about working capital. Boulder City Bank has launched a bond trading platform where they can be traded directly. You can just cash out gradually on the secondary market. If worst comes to worst, settle your vendor invoices with those bonds!" Trembling, Weijia didn't dare ask Xide why he didn't sell them on the secondary market himself. He knew all too well that noble lords would never deign to pick through rotten cabbage leaves on a secondary exchange. In the end, Weijia would most likely have to go to that so-called bond trading platform to play the greater fool alongside other suckers, or simply watch his money sit frozen on the books. He didn't even care whether the Alliance paid interest anymore. Without liquidity, if he didn't want to go bankrupt, his only options would be to sell off those bonds or liquidate his firm's assets... "Give me a straight answer: buying or not? Say the word. If you don't want to do it, I'll find someone else." By the time Xide said this, his impatience was palpable. Did this bastard think his wings were fully fledged? At the end of the day, that Weijia Trading Firm could rake in so many chips was entirely thanks to Xide's backing and power. Did this mangy cur really think he had made his fortune on his own business acumen? If nothing else: Had Xide not instructed inner-city research institutions to revise the edible standards for nutrient paste, how on earth could the vile sludge made by Weijia Trading Firm ever have found its way into the feeding troughs of those outer-city swine? Hearing the irritation in Xide's voice, cold sweat poured down Weijia's spine. He blurted out, "I'll buy! I'll buy them!" What he dreaded most was Xide saying he would find someone else. He knew full well that what he did was hardly rocket science, and his factories were mostly located in Boulder City's industrial zone. Xide might have to think twice before trying to squeeze Liszt, but crushing Weijia would take mere minutes, black card or no black card. "Was it that hard to agree in the first place?" Seeing his dog submit, Xide gave a derisive scoff and hung up the phone. He didn't care how Weijia dredged up the funds. If Xide knew how to run a business himself, why would he bother keeping a dog around? He would have slaughtered it for meat long ago. After putting down the receiver, Weijia slumped limp into his chair, feeling as if all strength had been drained from his body. Aaron looked at him with concern. "...Boss?" Weijia rubbed the bridge of his nose. "At the very least... we have to weather this immediate crisis." Aaron fell silent for a moment before speaking quietly. "But the nutrient paste... we really can't water it down any further." "Are you an idiot? How long would it take to make five hundred million off that garbage?" Weijia barked, his frustration boiling over. He stood up from his chair and walked to the window. He had wanted to catch some fresh air, but in the reflection of the glass, he caught a vague glimpse of Ditwei's foolish face smirking at him. A surge of rage flared in Weijia's chest. Unable to vent his fury on the glass, he lit a cigarette instead, puffing smoke out the window. Staring at his boss's back, Aaron hesitated before saying, "...Earlier, some merchants from the north inquired whether we had any surplus production lines we'd be willing to sell. They're very interested in our mixers, filters, and synthesis furnaces, and they're offering a decent price." Those pieces of equipment had been bought with loans from Boulder City Bank during the trade honeymoon between the Alliance and Boulder City to expand production. Boulder City Bank hadn't just extended loans to the Alliance; it had loaned money to factories like theirs as well. Otherwise, they never could have expanded so quickly. The loans on some of the equipment had already been paid off. Selling those machines would at least resolve part of the problem, and they could figure out the rest of the funds later. Weijia glanced back at him. "They want to make nutrient paste?" Aaron shook his head. "No... They want to process animal feed. Lately, corn prices in the Alliance have plummeted, and many factories are transitioning into feed production. Honestly, I don't think there's much profit left in nutrient paste. Maybe we should pivot to feed processing too." Weijia let out a weary sigh. "It's not that simple." As long as he ran factories in Boulder City and intended to do business in a market priced in silver coins, he couldn't dodge that scythe no matter which way he turned. The first blade was tariffs, and the second was exchange rates. Importing raw materials took one cut, and exporting finished goods took another. It had nothing to do with what was produced. Unless they could manufacture something the Alliance couldn't make at all, there was no way out. At the very least, a mere owner of a trading firm like him couldn't solve it—not unless everyone in Boulder City, from top to bottom, united to put pressure on the Alliance. Weijia suddenly had an illusion. It wasn't just one invisible hand taking away his profits. Countless invisible hands had formed an unseen cage, locking every soul in this city inside without mercy. The horrifying thought flashed across his mind, followed by a chill that seeped deep into his bones. The cold tingling at the back of his neck made Weijia shiver involuntarily. Taking two fierce drags from the cigarette clamped between his lips, he cursed under his breath and flicked the unfinished butt out the window. "Damn it, what rotten luck." Aaron watched him silently. "If we don't sell the equipment, our only other option is to borrow more money from Boulder City Bank." "Sell it! Why shouldn't we sell? What's the point of churning out so much garbage when nobody buys it anyway!" Weijia pulled out another cigarette, put it to his lips, took a hard drag, and suddenly struck upon an idea. Looking straight at Aaron, he blurted out, "Wait, I've got it! The Alliance issues those bonds, so we'll issue them too!" Aaron froze, hesitating. "Us? But... who's going to buy them?" Who would buy bonds issued by a factory? They couldn't possibly ask Mr. Xide to buy them back... That would be suicide. "Isn't payroll coming up?" Weijia chuckled, beaming with self-satisfaction. "Hurry to the finance department and have them draw up IOUs—oh no, bonds! Hand them out to those poor bastards. Once things pick up a bit later, I'll pay them back with principal and interest!" Aaron stared unblinkingly at his boss. "Can... can that really work?" Weijia Trading Firm employed over four thousand workers with an average daily wage of four chips. Even if they docked 120 chips in wages and bonuses from each person, that would only scrape together about 480,000 chips. You didn't even need to do the math. It was short by at least three zeroes! "I've got no other choice. Every scrap we can squeeze out counts. At least we can scrape together the money for incoming shipments. Those suppliers outside only take cash; we have to pay the urgent stuff first." Weijia had his own rationale. He paused and continued languidly, "As for Mr. Xide's five hundred million... that's a separate account. We'll just take out another loan from the bank president." First, he would borrow five hundred million chips in bonds from Mr. Xide as collateral, and borrow five hundred million from Boulder City Bank under the guise of production. In reality, that five hundred million wouldn't be used to expand production at all. He would pay 490 million of it to Mr. Xide. Just like that, Weijia Trading Firm would book a paper profit of ten million. That floating profit would be cold, hard cash, and the interest generated by the collateralized bonds would be enough to cover the interest on the Boulder City Bank loan. Though it sounded like completely muddled accounting, Weijia was confident that President Melvin was a man of the big picture who wouldn't refuse him the loan. Boulder City Bank wouldn't disavow bonds it was acting as distributor for, would it? Come to think of it, it made total sense. Short on cash? Just borrow! If you borrow, I borrow. If you go rotten, I'll rot even worse. Having thought everything through, Weijia instantly felt as light as air. His mind cleared, bathed in pure delight. Far from fretting, he burst out laughing. The equipment had to be sold, of course. It was his property; disposing of it was his prerogative. With so many avenues to make money these days, where fortunes could be amassed with a flick of a finger, only fools would slog through the most thankless, unrewarding drudgery. Wouldn't it be far more pleasant to sell off the plant and become a market maker? Besides, the lighter the assets, the faster one could run. The reason Xide couldn't bring Liszt under heel was precisely because that sly profiteer had stubbornly refused to move his factories into the city, wasn't it? Still, Weijia was a clever man after all. Glancing at Aaron heading for the door, a thought struck him, and he called out at once. "Wait a second." Aaron stopped in his tracks. "Do you have any other instructions, boss?" Tossing his cigarette butt out the window, Weijia walked over to Aaron with a smile and patted his shoulder. "Almost forgot to mention: your salary will be paid as usual, including your colleagues' salaries and the security guards' pay... Rest assured, follow me, and I won't let people of real talent get the short end of the stick." Aaron nodded. He hadn't asked his boss about that in the first place. After all, wasn't that only natural? ... Night finally fell, and the shift change bell chimed at last. Handing over their tasks to half-grown children, the day-shift workers lined up at Alec's station to collect last month's pay. At first, Sberg had wondered if the sun had risen in the west today—Alec, the security chief, was personally handling payroll, flanked by a squad of thugs who looked like pure trouble. It wasn't until Sberg received an IOU from Alec's hands that he snapped to attention. Good grief, these crooked merchants were cunning beyond belief! Everyone was exhausted and lacked the energy to fight. Some wanted to grumble, but no one dared step forward. Some accepted the slips readily, likely out of lingering trust in the boss. Sberg dutifully took the IOU dubbed a "bond," comforting himself with the thought that a tycoon with such vast holdings wouldn't run off and default over this. Still, life was getting stranger and stranger. If wages were paid in IOUs today, what would they use next month? An IOU for an IOU? A gaggle of ragged, impoverished laborers trudged out of the workshop. Not far ahead, Kent suddenly crouched down. Just as Sberg thought he had found some cash, Kent excitedly thrust a cigarette butt high into the air, then stuffed it into his pocket. "Lucky! Two butts!" The short fellow walking beside Kent eyed the cigarette butt with envy, smacking his lips. "I bet that fell out of Mr. Weijia's office. Only a great lord like him could be so wasteful!" Indeed, this spot wasn't far from that lord's office. Sberg sighed and muttered, "What's so lucky about that... It's getting colder and colder. Probably going to snow." Kent cast him an impatient glare. "So what?" "So... we need to bundle up." "Then go bundle up! What, you don't even know how to put on clothes?!" Kent glared, a cigarette butt dangling from his mouth, his vicious scowl looking like security chief Alec had been starved for three days. "Right..." Not wanting to ruin his good mood, Sberg quietly shrank to the side, his face lined with gloom. Part of it was the freezing weather ahead, and part of it was the increasingly chill climate around them. The boss had paid them. With IOUs. He had no idea whether the paper could buy dinner, let alone whether the clever Lord Weijia would still honor the debt if he ever quit. Just two days ago, the esteemed Mr. House had announced Boulder City's latest victory over the radio: the brilliant President Melvin had forced the iron-headed bumpkins of the northern suburbs into concessions, permitting Boulder City to purchase Alliance bonds. That time, Mr. House had spent even longer explaining the ins and outs, charitably unraveling the mysteries for illiterate, ignorant paupers like them. Yet Sberg couldn't feel the slightest bit of joy. No matter how good that stuff was, he couldn't afford it anyway. Instead, his boss had forced another product onto him: Good Taste Food Processing Plant Operating Bonds. With a name that long, it was bound to be bad news. And without a doubt, the Alliance's bonds were no good either. Sberg couldn't understand—especially why his bosses, already so obscenely rich, still had to borrow from dirt-poor wretches like them. Returning to his drafty shack. Nursing a trace of resentment, he sat before the table, used a broken match to light a candle found by his comrades, picked up a pen they had chipped in to buy, and scribbled furiously across tattered old newspapers: [...Having acquired a black card, Pol had too much to drink that day. He gave his former tormentor and boss—Stephen, a man who looked like an overgrown rat—a savage beating. Still unsatisfied, he looked toward Stephen's gorgeous wife and daughter and unbuckled his leather belt... Naturally, this was to whip Stephen's backside raw and humiliate him utterly before his wife and daughter. Pol was as ferocious as a beast in the jungle. He was an Awakened with strength to spare; of course he could do as he pleased, and no one could stop him.] It defied logic. Not that anyone cared about that anyway. Yet as he wrote, Sberg frowned and couldn't resist crossing out the latter half, starting over as he muttered softly under his breath. "...Yet in his heart, Pol knew that beating Stephen solved nothing, not even if he unbuckled his belt and pissed all over him. Killing one overgrown rat merely left another corpse in the street to draw flies. Boulder City would remain Boulder City; everything would stay just as it had always been, without the slightest change. And he himself would merely have to scurry ignominiously out of the Great Wall to throw his temper tantrums somewhere else." "So he sought out the unemployed editor Bill, the child laborer Rudy who had been humiliated by Stephen, the female worker Cathy who had been bullied by the security chief and shareholders conspiring together... He told them that one man cannot defeat a Deathclaw, but if many stand together, even the Mother Deathclaw will fall at our feet. We can learn from the Alliance; we can unite too! Alone, an individual is weak, but as long as we stand together, Stephen will fear us—every single Stephen will!" "To hell with crooked merchants and noble lords!" *The Awakened Pol: The Story of a Poor Slum Boy Who Stumbled upon a Vial of Awakening Potion and Beat a Suit of Power Armor to the Ground in the Final Battle.* He made the title exceptionally long. It could have been longer, but he had run out of room at the top of the page. Lacking the funds to print it, Sberg could only copy it out twice by hand. One copy would be sent as a submission to the Alliance's *Survivor Daily*, accompanied by an earnest postscript hoping the manuscript could be reviewed by that original author... if that author was still there. If they were willing to publish it, perhaps they could sponsor him with a small stipend... He didn't ask for much, just enough to buy basic daily necessities. The other copy he kept for himself. He needed to read it to the readers of *Worker Daily*—the folks of the Workers' Association. Thinking of the outrageous, absurd plotlines and the looks his fellow workers would give him tomorrow, Sberg felt his cheeks flush warm. Yet deep in his heart, a gentle warmth spread...