I See through Everything

However, fate had other plans.

「That night,」 after bypassing the Central Mountain Range, the typhoon veered and made landfall near Kaohsiung. As a result, the area around Pingtung County also suffered a considerable impact.

The storm surge along the local coast was unusually fierce.

At that very moment, Jiang Miao, traveling along the network cables, seized control of some of Anye Company’s electronics.

He had the typhoon to thank for not making a direct landfall in Pingtung County, which would have cut the power. Otherwise, he would have had a very hard time getting in through the network.

Originally, Jiang Miao had planned to observe the reactions of Jiang Anye and the others that night. But after seeing the news that the typhoon had made landfall in Kaohsiung, he immediately changed his mind.

He decided to take advantage of the raging storm engulfing Pingtung County.

Using his knowledge of the building and facility layout, which he had long since figured out, he took control of the computers in the rooms Anye Company was using for experiments. Since these rooms were temporary modifications, they were using laptops.

This gave Jiang Miao his chance. The camera on one of the laptops, which hadn’t been closed, was silently activated.

Using the light from the laptop’s screen, he surveyed the room. It was clearly an office for experimental data, filled with not only laptops but also various books and scratch paper.

His eyes suddenly lit up. He found the room’s layout very interesting. It had likely been set up for temporary use, with ordinary foam-core color steel panels used to partition the space into several rooms.

Perhaps Jiang Anye had arranged the breeding experiment here for the sake of secrecy. This also meant that the wiring for the other rooms was routed through this computer room.

Soon, the battery of one of the laptops began to burn.

With the storm still raging outside, the factory building was naturally empty, so no one noticed the fire starting in the computer room.

In a short while, the particleboard desk and the surrounding books and scratch paper also caught fire.

In the adjacent office building, Jiang Anye, who was in the break room engaged in a ’deep exchange’ with his personal secretary, was suddenly plunged into darkness.

"A power outage?"

"Boss! Don’t stop!" came a whiny, coquettish voice typical of a Taiwanese girl.

Jiang Anye grabbed hold of two key points, not forgetting that one flaw. He tirelessly instructed his secretary on how to fill that flaw. He could be so carefree because the breeding facility had a backup generator.

Sure enough, after a short while, the power in the room came back on.

"Boss, you’re so amazing! I worship you!"

Deep in the process of ’imparting his wisdom,’ Jiang Anye grew even more focused. He was drenched in sweat, but that couldn’t quell the surging excitement in his heart.

While Jiang Anye and his secretary were engrossed in their ’deep exchange,’ the fire in the computer room of the breeding facility next door was growing more intense. Once the foam inside the color steel panels ignited, it spun completely out of control.

It soon spread to the adjacent rooms.

The dozens of tanks housing hundreds of thousands of experimental eel fry now had no power. The air pumps had stopped working, and the surrounding air was filled with toxic fumes from the burning foam and plastic.

However, because of the constant rain outside, the roof never reached its combustion temperature. It only produced a large cloud of steam, though a lot of black smoke was still billowing out from the cracks.

But with no one outside at this time, these anomalies naturally went unnoticed.

The flames caused the temperature inside the factory to skyrocket.

Inside the tanks, the eel fry were essentially boiled alive by the searing heat of the surrounding fire.

「Two hours later,」 a security guard got up to piss. He rubbed his eyes and saw flames coming from the factory building not far from his window. The sight scared the piss right back into him.

Having finished ’instructing’ his secretary, Jiang Anye had just taken a shower and was about to have a small drink before heading to bed.

Suddenly, his phone rang.

"Hello, Old Xia. Still up this late? What’s going on?"

"Boss, it’s bad! The factory’s on fire!"

"What?" Jiang Anye didn’t even notice the sweater slipping from his shoulders as he ran to the window and threw open the curtains. He immediately saw flames and plumes of black smoke rising from the factory building in the distance.

"Old Xia, get everyone to fight the fire, now!"

"Boss, we can’t! The wind outside is too strong. We can’t even stand steady."

"Dammit!"

The seven employees at the breeding facility, clad in raincoats, stood with Jiang Anye. They braved the fierce wind and rain, trying to get closer to the factory building.

Naturally, their efforts were in vain.

They could only watch helplessly as the entire building was burned to ashes.

Early the next morning, the wind had died down considerably, but the heavy rain continued.

Jiang Anye hadn’t slept a wink all night. With dark circles under his eyes, he looked at a dozen or so members of his management team. "The research data and the newly cultivated eel fry have all been destroyed. What do we do now?"

The head of the technical department wasn’t too worried. "Don’t worry, Boss. The data from the computer room is gone, but we have backups here in the company’s office building. Besides, we were just verifying the technology, not researching it. Even if the experimental eel fry were burned up, it doesn’t affect the big picture."

"Good, that’s good." Although Jiang Anye was pained by the loss of the factory, the thought that a mere multi-million-dollar building was nothing as long as the eel fry production could proceed smoothly eased his mind.

Xie Xiaowei’s brow furrowed, but it quickly smoothed out. He actually had a sliver of doubt. ’Could someone have deliberately set the fire?’ But after thinking it through, he dismissed the outlandish suspicion.

After all, in yesterday’s weather, it was nearly impossible to even stand steady in the storm, let alone run in to commit arson.

Perhaps worried about further problems, Jiang Anye ordered all the data to be split into three copies. One copy was to remain on the computers in the office building, and another was to be placed in the safe at his villa.

He would take the third copy with him to South Korea.

「October 16th. The weather had just cleared up.」

Jiang Anye took Xie Xiaowei and a dozen other people and flew straight to Busan.

He was impatient to start making money. After all, the way Hailufeng Company was raking in cash hand over fist had stimulated his greed, making him desperate to take their place immediately.

He just didn’t know that this was bait laced with poison, luring him step by step into an abyss of no return.