Chapter 93

Chapter 93

Zhou Heting wanted to expand the Zhou family, and over the past two decades, his methods were far from clean. He aspired to be a respectable businessman, so naturally, he sought reliable confidants to handle the dirty work in the shadows.

Over the years, Zhou Heting, leveraging his wealth and power, indeed cultivated several pawns. One of them was Mrs. Zhou's assistant.

The assistant was not only loyal but also meticulous and thorough in covering his tracks.

Therefore, when Mrs. Zhou instructed this assistant to bribe the crew of *The Mandarin Duck Buckle* to stage a wire accident, though uneasy, Zhou Heting ultimately acquiesced—he too wanted to teach Ye Mingzhao a lesson.

Zhou Heting also anticipated that Mrs. Zhou's revenge might not succeed, but he didn't care. If the wire accident succeeded, Ye Mingzhao would at least suffer serious injuries for three months, and with luck, he might even end up paralyzed or dead. If the plan failed, they could handle the charge of attempted intentional injury.

What Zhou Heting didn't expect was that Ye Mingzhao would be so ruthless, following the assistant's trail to uncover Zhou Heting's past channels for hiring thugs. Tracing back, Ye Mingzhao uncovered incidents from over twenty years ago, such as the Zhou family hiring people for forced demolitions during real estate development, causing car accidents for competitors during bidding, and many other minor incidents that even Zhou Heting himself had forgotten.

Now, everything had been exposed.

Using Mrs. Zhou's assistant as a breakthrough, the other pawns also fell into the trap.

—This was thanks to Chu Hengyi's admirer, Detective Dagger. If it weren't for his efficiency, Ye Mingzhao wouldn't have been able to uncover so many past incidents in such a short time, even if he had scoured the original material.

Upon obtaining the evidence, Ye Mingzhao immediately reported it to the police and notified major media outlets.

Ye Mingzhao controlled a vast network of marketing accounts under Starjoy Media. These accounts worked in unison, and within a single night, they broadcast Zhou Heting's carefully hidden "achievements" far and wide. Ye Mingzhao also had the Ye family reach out to the past victims, offering to fund their lawsuits to seek compensation from those who had wronged them.

These victims included ordinary people whose homes were forcibly demolished during the Zhou family's land development, competitors who had been ruined by the Zhou family, and others who, though harmed by Zhou Heting, had not suffered significant losses and were unaware that their family's misfortunes were orchestrated by Zhou Heting. Now, upon suddenly learning the truth, each had different reactions.

Those without money wanted to seize this opportunity to take a bite out of the Zhou family, even if it meant getting a few hundred thousand or a million in compensation to improve their lives. Those with money, though indifferent to the small compensation, wouldn't let the Zhou family off easily, if only for pride's sake.

At the very least, they wanted to punish those who had done the Zhou family's dirty work, completely dismantling his support system.

Moreover, their lawsuits against the Zhou family were encouraged by Ye Mingzhao. If they could use this opportunity to curry favor with the Ye family and Ye Mingzhao, that would be even better.

Thus, under Ye Mingzhao's orchestration, overnight, the Intermediate Court of Xinhai City received over a dozen lawsuits. The news spread online, and netizens, outraged, rallied behind the victims. Some even spontaneously threw rotten eggs at the offices of several companies the Zhou family had invested in.

Zhou Heting was overwhelmed by Ye Mingzhao's actions. Faced with a barrage of online criticism, Zhou Heting could only communicate with platforms, deleting posts, banning accounts, and restricting comments, while also hiring PR firms to whitewash his image, using various tactics to convince netizens that the past incidents were unrelated to him. However, these efforts were largely ineffective. At the same time, he had his lawyers sue netizens who named and shamed the Zhou family online, accusing them of defamation, hoping to intimidate the public into silence.

The second approach did manage to silence many netizens, as most online users, being ordinary people, chose to delete their posts and issue public apologies to avoid the threat of having to apologize or pay compensation.

However, this approach also provoked a backlash. While people dared not speak out freely online, they became even more active in sharing and forwarding gossip.

Because the Zhou family couldn't sue the marketing accounts under Starjoy Media, and even if they did, they weren't afraid.

Zhou Heting could silence netizens, but he couldn't silence Starjoy Media's marketing accounts, nor could he stop Ye Mingzhao from buying trending topics. He could only watch as various true and false gossip and anonymous exposés spread like wildfire across major platforms.

Zhou Heting's carefully maintained reputation was utterly destroyed overnight.

Even more troubling was that as the victims, supported by the Ye family, came forward to sue Zhou Heting, even though they lacked concrete evidence to prove that the past incidents were orchestrated by Zhou Heting, they could firmly accuse the pawns who had worked for Zhou Heting. Zhou Heting's carefully cultivated confidants were picked off one by one, and soon he was left isolated.

Just as Ye Mingzhao had initially predicted—once the snake's fangs were removed, even if it still had venom, its lethality was limited.

But Ye Mingzhao still showed no signs of stopping. Because Ye Mingzhao firmly believed in "striking the snake while it's down," taking advantage of Zhou Heting's disarray, Ye Mingzhao continued to target the few remaining businesses under Zhou Heting's name under the guise of seeking revenge.

If the companies were publicly traded, Ye Mingzhao would start with their financial reports and business operations, leveraging Zhou Heting's tarnished reputation to incite spontaneous boycotts from netizens. Then, he would expose any regulatory violations and use the Ye family's influence to pressure suppliers and distributors, cutting off raw material supplies and sales channels. If the companies had bank loans, that was even better. Chairman Ye personally stepped in, using Zhou Heting's current situation to persuade major banks to cut off loans and demand repayment, citing the companies' loss of credibility due to the negative impact of their major shareholder, Zhou Heting.

At the same time, Ye Mingzhao hired headhunters to poach key personnel from these companies. The Ye family had numerous subsidiaries, most of which were industry leaders. Now, offering these people high salaries and positions, most employees couldn't resist the temptation. Even some leading figures in R&D couldn't refuse, bringing their entire teams to the Ye family.

Under Ye Mingzhao and the Ye family's blatant targeting, competitors eager to curry favor with the Ye family or simply seize market opportunities also jumped in to muddy the waters. Soon, all the companies the Zhou family had invested in were in dire straits, with plummeting stock prices, broken capital chains, halted operations, and on the brink of bankruptcy.

In addition, Zhou Heting had personally invested in many financial products and had always employed financial advisors to manage his wealth.

In this regard, Ye Mingzhao, who was born with a talent for market manipulation, quickly made Zhou Heting realize what it means that "managing wealth is risky, and investing requires caution."

Although Chu Hengyi was not as meticulous as Ye Mingzhao in financial trading, he had ample funds and sufficient cash flow to support the Ye family business in acquiring the Zhou family. Now, he has handed over his accounts directly to Ye Mingzhao for management.

Under the combined efforts of Ye Mingzhao and Chu Hengyi, Zhou Heting's fortune plummeted by more than half overnight, leaving him with only some real estate and fixed deposits.

*

"Ye Mingzhao is truly the Zhou family's greatest threat. Had we known this earlier, we should have found an opportunity to eliminate him first."

If their plan to sow discord between Ye Mingzhao and the Ye family had succeeded, Ye Mingzhao would have been cast out of the Ye family like a stray dog, and he would never have reached his current status!

This is what it means to "not kill the snake but let it follow the stick!"

Seeing their money and influence dwindling, Mrs. Zhou was both anxious and furious, overcome with sorrow. She now felt that the Zhou family was like a piece of fat meat, being slowly sliced away by Ye Mingzhao, the butcher, with a dull blade, leaving only scraps too meager to make a dish.

—Now, the Zhou family is nothing but a dish on someone else's table.

"We can't just sit here waiting to die," Mrs. Zhou said with red eyes, grabbing Zhou Heting's arm. "We can't let that little devil Ye Mingzhao continue to target us."

At this point, Mrs. Zhou clenched her teeth in fury. If it weren't for the fact that all the Zhou family's enforcers had been rounded up by Ye Mingzhao, she would have already sent someone to kill Ye Mingzhao. It would've just cost a few hundred thousand to pin it on someone else, not as troublesome as it is now.

Seeing Mrs. Zhou, who had lost all reason and was teetering on the edge of madness, Zhou Heting also regretted deeply.

At this point, it was too late for regrets. If he had known that Ye Mingzhao would be so ruthless and leave no room for compromise, he should have found a way to eliminate this little devil earlier.

But back then, he was too wary, fearing that any bold move would raise suspicions from the Ye family. He had planned to use Chu Hengyi as a pawn to slowly dismantle the Ye family's power, but he never expected that the spineless fool Chu Hengyi would be seduced by Ye Mingzhao's charm and willingly become his pawn.

"...Useless!"

Zhou Heting muttered a curse, his face twisted with rage, though it was unclear who he was cursing.

But now, all he could do was sit at home and fume.

Zhou Heting was most skilled at scheming and maneuvering in the shadows, taking advantage of his opponents' inattention to make subtle moves. Once his methods were exposed to the light, with no money, power, or influence to rival the Ye family, Zhou Heting had no choice but to surrender, with no effective means of counterattack.

After all, with so many eyes watching him, Zhou Heting could no longer act in secret. But with his current wealth and connections, it was incredibly difficult to oppose the now towering Ye family.

If Zhou Heting truly had a way to resist the Ye family's retaliation, he wouldn't have stood by helplessly as his closest allies were arrested one after another, nor would he have watched helplessly as the companies he invested in collapsed like dominoes...

Zhou Heting had spent most of his life building the foundation of the Zhou family, but Ye Mingzhao and the Ye family only needed a few years to destroy his life's work.

At this point, even the dim-witted Mrs. Zhou had realized that the Zhou family's fortunes were in decline. Under Ye Mingzhao's deliberate schemes, Zhou Heting had become a toothless snake.

If they continued to struggle, they'd truly end up as snake soup on someone else's plate!