Chapter Two: The Fraud Hunter Falls First

He saw why people had arrived after midnight: a courier with back pain and no free afternoons, a nurse desperate to release pressure, a driver afraid a yearly membership would vanish with the gym. He abolished annual contracts and launched pay-per-session midnight classes. The first class cost one yuan, and every expense would be public. Zhou Lan circled PUBLIC LEDGER in red. “Our competitors will know how poor we are.” “The whole city knows. Poverty isn’t the secret. How we spend the money is.” By eleven, eighty-three people had enrolled. Five minutes before midnight, professional fraud-hunter Luo Wei arrived with two cameramen and three million followers. His prepared title read: DISGRACED STREAMER SELLS TAINTED SUPPLEMENTS.