Chapter Four: Twenty-Four Hours

Bai Wei's talent for moving capital had twenty-three hours and forty-seven minutes left. Zhou Lin did not use it to touch a cent. He used it to see where every cent would pass. Mingchuan had built six channels around Yong'an Precision: bridge loans, supplier pressure, delayed wages, and finally a shell company prepared to buy a two-hundred-million factory for twenty million. Its 370 workers were the cheapest line in Zhou Jiming's model. “The ability expires,” Xu Zhi said. “Contracts don't.” Before dawn, Zhou Lin bought the matured claim of Yong'an's largest supplier with his thirty-seven million, then pledged it to a cooperative formed by the workers. By sunrise, the cooperative was Yong'an's senior creditor.