Against the Algorithm

Chapter 19: The Cost of Chaos

Across the room, still leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and his eyes gleaming with open amusement, Sicheng took a long sip from his mug, his smirk cutting sharp against the rim as he watched the team dissolve under the weight of their own assumptions.

Because this?

This was the best thing he'd seen all week. His Xiǎo Tùzǐ didn't just have teeth. She had fangs. And they had no idea what they'd unleashed.

It was one of those rare, horrible moments when even the air in the room felt like it had turned against them, when every breath came with a bitter sting of disbelief and insult, when reality was so profoundly absurd that it bordered on betrayal—and Yue and Sicheng, normally smug, untouchable, flippantly invincible in the realm of all things financial, stood in the middle of the ZGDX base like statues carved from pure indignation, their phones still lit in their hands, matching expressions of stunned outrage frozen across their faces like synchronized suffering.

Because Rui— Rui —the clipboard-wielding, tea-drinking, smile-too-calm-to-trust manager they had foolishly underestimated, had done the unthinkable.

He had called Madam Lu.

And Madam Lu—who answered on the first ring, who always, always , picked up when it came to her son —had not hesitated, had not asked for context, had not paused to double-check if the financial equivalent of a tactical missile strike was necessary.

She had smiled, apparently. Smiled through the phone. Sweet. Warm. Lethal. And then— with the kind of detached efficiency that only a woman raised in boardrooms and armed with legacy-level banking access could wield —she had frozen everything .

Every account.

Every card.

Every investment holding that wasn't payroll-related.

Even Sicheng's .

Even the account belonging to the owner of the goddamn company.

And now?

Now they had one account left.

One.

The single payroll account where their ZGDX salaries were deposited like clockwork—clean, regulated, modest—and everything else, every trust fund, every family account, every expense tab tied to anything remotely indulgent or unnecessary had been locked so thoroughly that even the bank itself had called twice to make sure it wasn't fraud.

It wasn't fraud.

It was Madam Lu .

It was consequence .

It was a lesson carved into financial stone by the one woman alive who had never let power soften her edges, who had never believed her son was above discipline, who had been informed—by Rui, no less—that certain individuals had disrespected her favorite .

And her favorite?

Was Yao.

The softly spoken, tea-sipping, big-eyed chaos agent who had not even known her name was being used as the war banner for what had just become the most devastating economic takedown ZGDX had ever experienced.

Sicheng hadn't spoken for a full five minutes. He simply stood there, jaw locked, thumb frozen against the side of his phone, as if he could undo the damage by sheer force of will. And when he finally did speak, his voice came low and flat, dangerously close to stunned silence. "...I own this company."