Chapter Five: The One-Yuan Acquisition

For two days after the Hengfeng evidence became public, Obsidian's phones never stopped. Clients demanded reviews, banks suspended collection-backed lending, and insurers called for new valuations. The board tried to make Jianwei absorb the crisis, only to discover that her independent unit had become the sole name capable of restoring confidence. She did not ask for a raise. She incorporated the Jianheng Provenance Database, converted her five-percent profit share into equity, and brought in Gu Mingzhu's first three thousand family pieces as an in-kind investment. For the first time, she did not merely earn a salary. She owned an asset.