Chapter 59: New Director Wang
Sheng Wanyan didn’t dare pack too large a bounty, terrified they might question the true origins of the provisions. After all, military men weren’t so easily fooled. Their professional vigilance and analytical capabilities were remarkably high.
She vividly recalled how her brother, Sheng Wanze, had immediately grown suspicious of her over a simple, casual comment she made about ambient bacteria. She absolutely refused to take any reckless chances now. Exposing her secrets to the light of day was the absolute height of stupidity.
Once the packages were safely bundled, Sheng Wanyan sat down to draft her formal reply to Gu Tingxiao. She focused primarily on detailing her daily routines over the past few weeks, explicitly instructing him to stop mailing his salary to her.
Military training was notoriously brutal; he needed to purchase quality food to properly nourish himself and look after his own health. As a financially independent woman drawing her own steady factory wage, she firmly rejected the notion that a man was obligated to bankroll a courtship. No matter the dynamic, one partner should never systematically drain the other.
Even the most passionate romance would eventually burn out and turn resentful under that kind of financial strain. In her view, entering a partnership meant taking responsibility for yourself as well as for each other. Even if their ultimate outcome fell short of forever, she intended to walk away with a perfectly clear conscience.
The letter stretched across two full pages. Because she described her thoughts with meticulous care, the word count naturally added up. She carefully slipped the stationery into the envelope, planning to ship the letter alongside the heavy crates of food the following morning.
The weight of the parcel was substantial, consisting almost entirely of dense cured meats. Yet, she didn’t blink at the one or two yuan required for long-distance postage; some expenses were simply necessary. Besides, compared to the thick wad of savings Gu Tingxiao had blindly entrusted to her, a sliver of postage fee was entirely trivial.
The moment Sheng Wanyan walked through the factory gates after leaving the post office, she noticed the building’s atmosphere felt distinctly tense.
It wasn’t until she returned to her desk in the Propaganda Department that Wu Jiaxiu slid over to deliver the explanation: the newly appointed director of the Logistics Department had officially clocked in for his first shift. True to the proverb, the new administrator had wasted no time launching his first official campaign—an aggressive mandate to slash the operational expenses of every single department in the facility.
Wanyan couldn’t help but feel incredulous. Their department’s logistics budget consisted of nothing more than basic writing paper and fountain pens; how much could that meager inventory possibly be worth? Did the man honestly expect the clerks to furnish their own office supplies just to perform state labor?
“You guessed it. That’s exactly what his memo decreed,” Wu Jiaxiu whispered, shooting Wanyan a look of profound admiration.
Sheng Wanyan was genuinely speechless. Forcing state workers to buy their own pens and stationery to log factory data? To put it elegantly, it was framed as a noble initiative to conserve state resources; to put it bluntly, it was merely an insecure manager trying to flex his new authority.
“The new logistics director’s name is Wang Chaofan, thirty-five years old,” Wu Jiaxiu whispered, dropping the latest background data. “He moved here with his wife and daughter—no son. Word is, he’s an absolute tyrant at home who routinely berates and strikes his wife. The moment he walked out of the executive briefing this morning, he demanded the entire compound implement these austerity measures, declaring the laborers should supply their own writing tools.”
“And did the factory director actually approve that nonsense?” Wanyan asked, her brow furrowing.
“Absolutely not. The factory director shut him down instantly, refuting his proposal right in front of the board. They say when Director Wang stormed out of the conference room, his face was as black as thunder.”
Sheng Wanyan nodded slowly. Had the executive board actually codified such a ridiculous rule, an immediate wave of deep resentment would have rippled through every department in the mill. The factory director was far too politically astute to allow that to happen; there was absolutely no logical reason to fracture the unified, harmonious working spirit of his facility just to appease a newcomer. As a logistics manager, Wang Chaofan’s sole duty was to efficiently execute the supply orders handed down by his superiors. Why on earth did he harbor so many radical opinions?
He was truly being coddled by his family connections.
Following the morning gossip session, Sheng Wanyan settled into her routine. Even when the daily paperwork ran thin, she maintained a flawless performance of diligent labor at her desk.
A short while later, Director Li walked into the room, his expression deeply grim. It was entirely obvious he had been caught in the crossfire of the volatile executive meeting. He downed several heavy gulps of tea from his porcelain mug, desperately trying to steady his temper, but his dark mood remained entirely visible. He sat at his desk in heavy, brooding silence. Not a single clerk in the office dared to breathe too loudly, terrified of drawing the lightning of his foul mood onto their own heads.
Sheng Wanyan kept her head bowed, meticulously drafting her layout designs and keeping her distance. As long as the bureaucratic fires didn’t spread to her corner, she was content to remain invisible.
When the end-of-shift whistle blew, Sheng Wanyan retrieved her bicycle from the compound racks. As she was wheeling it toward the main thoroughfare, she crossed paths with the new logistics director.
Wang Chaofan was also retrieving his bicycle to head home, and the exact second his eyes landed on Sheng Wanyan, his entire face lit up with a sudden, predatory interest. How on earth does our factory employ a girl this breathtakingly beautiful without me ever hearing a whisper about her? he thought, his pulse quickening.
Sheng Wanyan didn’t grant him a syllable of acknowledgment, smoothly mounting her frame and pedaling out into the street. Wang Chaofan’s gaze tracked her graceful silhouette like a hawk, staring fixedly until her form dissolved into the evening traffic before he finally pulled himself together.
An oily smile crept onto his face. He resolved that his very first task the following morning would be to dig through the employee registries, pinpoint exactly which department the beauty belonged to, and schedule a personal inspection of her office.
Wang Chaofan pedaled out of the gates, humming a cheerful capital tune under his breath, his previous anger entirely forgotten. He had initially thrown a massive tantrum over being exiled from the Capital to a regional outpost like Chengdu, but looking at the situation now, he felt he had made the absolute correct tactical move. Clearly, the heavens had recognized his unfair suffering and delivered this exquisite creature directly to his territory for his personal enjoyment.
His mind raced with vivid, dynamic fantasies, already choreographing the perfect, romantic encounter he would stage with the beautiful clerk.
Sheng Wanyan had absolutely no inkling that the erratic new director had targeted her the literal hour he arrived. She returned to her apartment, enjoyed a quiet dinner with her family, and retreated to her bedroom to focus on her knitting.
By this point, she had successfully completed the custom winter sweaters for her grandparents and parents. The only garments left on her roster were her own, her brother’s, and a piece for her future sister-in-law, Pan Yue. It was already the middle of August, and her timeline was growing incredibly tight. She intended to present the completed garments to Sheng Wanze and Pan Yue as a premium, combined wedding gift.
In the mid-1970s, gifting someone a brand-new, hand-knitted garment carried immense social prestige—and providing a matching set of high-grade wool sweaters was an incredibly lavish gesture. She planned to knit Pan Yue’s piece in a vibrant, festive red, perfectly suited for a bride. In this era, bold red wool yarn was an exceptionally rare, restricted commodity.
As a younger sister-in-law, she possessed more than enough independent resources to furnish such a luxury. In most standard households, sisters-in-law were far more likely to greedily demand gifts from the bride; her quiet generosity would set a flawless standard.
Fearing she would run out of days before the October deadline, Wanyan locked her door and ducked into her spatial dimension, determined to utilize the temporal dilation to knock out the remaining three sweaters. She would have them blocked, pressed, and wrapped so she could hand them to the young couple the moment they returned to Chengdu to officially register their marriage certificate in two months.
While inside her dimension, Sheng Wanyan surveyed her agricultural plots. Finding a substantial tract of rich, fallow soil, she cleared the weeds and planted her premium raw cotton seeds. With winter fast approaching, she intended to harvest a massive yield, slip out to the black markets, and sell the uncompacted cotton for a handsome profit. Once the deep winter freeze settled over the province, she planned to halt her underground trading entirely, choosing to simply commute to her factory shift and hibernate in the warmth of her home.
She was inherently, deeply terrified of the cold. When she was a small child in her past life, she had accidentally slipped through thin ice into a freezing lake when the temperature was several degrees below zero. Although the estate servants had fished her out almost immediately, the severe hypothermia had triggered chronic respiratory issues that plagued her youth. Her wealthy family had retained elite specialists to treat her for over a decade, and her constitution had only truly stabilized once she entered university.
Even so, the trauma had left her with severe menstrual cramps and deep lower-back agony whenever her cycle arrived during the cold months, forcing her to endure days of misery every single month. Although her regular consumption of the spiritual spring water had completely erased those physical ailments from her new body, her psychological terror of freezing remained entirely intact. She never wanted to experience that helpless, bone-chilling agony again.
After completing her knitting quota for the night, Sheng Wanyan strolled over to her orchard to harvest some fresh fruit. She never dared bring her dimensional fruit back to the apartment for her family to consume. The produce grown inside her space was far too vibrant, flawless, and bursting with out-of-season freshness; the moment her shrewd elders laid eyes on a perfect peach in the dead of a shortage, they would immediately grow suspicious. The elders of the Sheng clan had survived decades of war and political upheaval—their collective life experience was vast. Her basic, amateur excuses wouldn’t survive five minutes under their scrutiny.
Wanyan picked a handful of plump, ruby-red strawberries and a large, juicy peach. After washing them thoroughly in the spring water, she ate them right there in the orchard, enjoying the sweet burst of flavor.
Once she finished her snack, she stepped out of her dimension and drifted into a peaceful sleep.
The following morning, she arrived at the Propaganda Department and began prepping her desk materials. A short while later, the heavy office door swung open. Director Li walked into the room, flanked closely by the newly appointed logistics director, Wang Chaofan.
“Comrades, look up for a moment,” Director Li announced, his tone stiffly professional. “Allow me to introduce Director Wang, the new head of our Logistics Department. He’s stopped by so everyone can get acquainted.”
