Originally, Gu Cheng had planned to slow things down a few days—first help smooth over resistance inside the factory, then let Gu Peijun convene a village committee meeting to review the production recovery plan, and only after that take everything up to the township and report to Wang Xingmin.

But now, Gu Cheng realized something had shifted.

Xiao Liang’s capabilities were far more unfathomable than he had imagined.

The new sales team had essentially gathered the factory’s core personnel, and Xiao Liang’s grasp of the situation was even more meticulous than his, a man who had always prided himself on being seasoned and worldly. And today, he had done the impossible—he’d completely won those people over.

Gu Cheng now believed that by tomorrow, Gu Peijun could directly convene a village committee meeting to discuss the production recovery plan. As long as the other three committee members didn’t object, they could immediately take it to Wang Xingmin at the township office.

“Want me to give you the meeting room tomorrow morning?” Xiao Liang asked, turning to Gu Peijun. “You can explain the production recovery plan to everyone. Besides the village committee members, signatures from worker representatives are also important.”

“I… I can handle that?” Gu Peijun asked, clearly uncertain.

“Of course you can,” Xiao Liang said with a smile. “Ask my parents or my brother—I’m not exactly a talkative person at home. I can sit for half a day without saying a word. But once you understand every detail of the job, you just sit down and talk—it’s nothing. Anyone can do it.”

“Half an hour is enough for me. I can’t talk for half a day like you,” Gu Peijun said honestly.

“Fine. Tomorrow morning I’ll go to the meeting room first and talk those unruly guys into submission. Around noon I’ll give you half an hour—you bring the village committee members over. Treat it as a temporary joint meeting between the village committee and the factory administration. The faster we move, the better,” Xiao Liang said.

Gu Cheng, who had already been retired for two years, was unusually energized tonight. After drinking for a while, he finally noticed the furnishings in Xiao Liang’s home—especially Xiao Changhua’s briefcase and the documents casually placed on the coffee table and bookshelf. Curiously, he asked:

“Brother Xiao works at the municipal Party committee?”

Xiao Changhua appeared calmer than his wife Ge Minglan, but inwardly, he too was shaken by everything Gu Cheng and Gu Peijun had said over dinner.

Still, when asked, he replied casually, “Oh, I work at the Party History Research Office.”

Gu Cheng frowned slightly. That didn’t quite add up. If he worked at the municipal level—even without a leadership title—he was already in his forties or fifties. Surely his position should have been more widely known.

And yet… no one had ever mentioned it.

If people like Fan Chunjiang or Xiao Yujun had known that Xiao Liang had a father working in the municipal government, would they really have treated him like an easy target?

Gu Cheng didn’t voice the thought, but it quietly resolved some of his confusion.

People who could survive in the municipal “great river and lake” were rarely ordinary.

It made sense now. Xiao Liang, raised in such a household and a university graduate besides, no wonder he had crushed Xiao Yujun and Fan Chunjiang so effortlessly. And those two… hadn’t even forced his father to step in yet.

—

Dinner had been planned as a single bottle of Luzhou Laojiao shared between Xiao Changhua, Xiao Xiao, and Gu Cheng.

But by ten o’clock, the table had turned into something else entirely. Ge Minglan, who disliked drinking, had no choice but to open another bottle. After all, the two boxes of liquor had been personally carried over by Gu Cheng and his son.

When the Gu father and son finally took their leave, Ge Minglan didn’t bother clearing the table first. Instead, she immediately voiced her concern.

“You’ve just taken over the juice factory, and you’re already making such big moves—is this really going to work? If something goes wrong again, how are you going to clean it up?”

Gu Peijun had only come over last night, and Xiao Liang had dragged his brother out for drinks without even mentioning that he had been appointed deputy factory director assigned to Nanting Village on his very first day back.

Now Ge Minglan not only knew her younger son held that position, but also that he would be responsible for pushing through a major restructuring plan.

Frankly, aside from the fact that Gu Peijun had played a key role in exposing Xiao Yujun and helping turn the entire case around, she couldn’t help worrying that the Gu father and son might be using him as a pawn.

Was restructuring a factory really something you just “did”?

And contracting out inventory sales—if the targets weren’t met, who would bear the consequences?

As someone who had worked in a state-owned factory herself, and now held a somewhat marginal position as Xiao Changhua’s career had advanced, Ge Minglan had more awareness than most women of her generation.

In her eyes, her younger son was still that bright but sensitive boy with little real-world experience. How could she not worry—especially after everything he had just been through?

Xiao Liang glanced at his father. Seeing him remain silent, he stepped in to reassure her.

“The factory has already stopped production for a long time. Workers haven’t been paid for two months. We still owe over ten million yuan to the township and to farmers. And the warehouse is full of stock that can’t be sold.”

He paused.

“Those goods all have expiration dates—twelve months total shelf life. Most of them are already three or four months in. If we keep delaying, once they expire, they’ll be worth nothing.”

“Right now, if we don’t fight this out with everything we’ve got, the factory is finished. What’s left will just be a mountain of bad debt, and the losses to the village and township will be irreversible. That responsibility would be far worse than anything we’re doing now.”

“And Wang Shuji and the others understand this very clearly. They won’t push the blame onto us just because we didn’t immediately turn things around.”

Xiao Liang knew he couldn’t truly convince his mother. So he simply used Wang Xingmin as leverage.

At least in her mind, Wang Xingmin was a principled Party secretary who dared to act and confront wrongdoing head-on.

“Old Xiao…” Ge Minglan still wasn’t at ease. She turned to her husband. “What do you think? Is this really going to work?”