“Do you have Mr. Bai’s cooperation?” asked Ju De as he entered the private meeting room.
“I am not sure,” said Li Yun. “He appears to have taken the bait, but the old man is stubborn. We should wait to see if he has a decision.”
It might have been simpler if Li Yun had supernatural powers that could imitate the Buddha, but he was quite limited by what he could do. His abilities took too long to prove and it wasn’t showy enough to make an impression. His medical abilities may be mysterious, but Mr. Bai's health was deteriorating because of age. It might be possible to extend his life a bit, but to advertise that ability risked him sounding like one of those bad infomercials or quacks. The former judge also had a wealth of experience dealing with different people. Even with Li Yun’s experience, he couldn’t go against people like Mr. Bai, who was just a step below Song Taiji in terms of people management skills.
The only approach Li Yun could take was to pretend to be a mentalist while partially adding in information that only Mr. Bai would know. Li Yun’s knowledge was based on Mr. Bai’s genetics, which he had to decipher and analyze. Genetics determined a person's physical traits like hair and eye color, but they also influenced a person's characteristics.
From there, Li Yun could only rely on Mr. Bai’s creative human brain to determine the true nature of Li Yun’s actions. It was a long shot.
“If you hold off too long, he’s going to start investigating you,” said Ju De.
“It wouldn’t be too bad,” said Li Yun. “The identity I took over is a real gardener, and his files are pretty simple.”
“Are you going back there?”
“No, I’ll wait for them to call,” said Li Yun.
“What if they don’t call?”
“We’ll give him some time,” Li Yun knew Ju De wanted to start Plan D.
Plan D involved Ju De acting as the abused son of Governor Ning. It was the type of sappy story the media liked to eat up. A family witness and all the evidence that Wing Bo had gathered should be enough to start an investigation. It wasn’t too far from the truth, but Li Yun would rather not have Ju De personally involved. Ju De seemed to find the idea enjoyable, but Li Yun didn’t.
****
Mr. Bai sent out his people to investigate the new gardener. His team quickly sent him all the documents available on the gardener.
“Parking tickets, traffic tickets, and noise complaints are the only thing on file,” said the investigator on the phone.
“Anything about scams?” asked Mr. Bai.
“Nothing of that sort.”
Mr. Bai hung up and tapped his fingers on the table. The gardener had mentioned information that no one else should have known. He admitted to being a good mentalist, but could a simple gardener really have that ability.
“Everything that he said about karma, was it really just made up?” Mr. Bai’s worst fear was the afterlife. No matter what religion he looked into, the afterlife wasn’t a good place for him. He had placed his faith on the possibility of reincarnating, but what the gardener had implied frightened him.
He thought about how he should live out the rest of his life. The only way he knew how to free himself from the bad karma was to let everything out in the open. However, it would also destroy his legacy. He paced back and forth, unable to decide what was more important, his eternal soul or his legacy on Earth.
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A few days later, Li Yun returned to Mr. Bai’s villa. Mr. Bai’s housekeeper had called earlier to request his presence. On his arrival to the villa, the head housekeeper greeted him.
“Mister, Mr. Bai wanted to give you this,” the housekeeper said as she handed to Li Yun a little package.
“What happened to Mr. Bai?” Li Yun was unable to sense movement inside the villa.
“I am not sure, but a few days ago, Mr. Bai said he’s going to return to his homeland and dismissed all the staff,” said the housekeeper.
“His homeland?” Li Yun thought Yide was his homeland, unless Mr. Bai was talking about something metaphorical.
“How was he acting?” Li Yun asked the housekeeper.
“He was acting very odd, pacing back and forth in the living room.”
Deep within the human psyche, the mind, without logic or reasoning, will believe in concepts beyond belief. Mr. Bai wanted to believe he could be saved, and he had placed that hope in Li Yun’s words.
“His lawyer dropped by the day after and said that the estate was going to be sold very soon,” the housekeeper continued. “I’m the last to move out of the estate. He guessed you would return and told me to leave after I see you.”
Li Yun thanked the housekeeper and returned to his tool van. Inside the package was a thumb drive. If he guessed correctly, it contained recordings at the Midnight Sky Bar.
Li Yun scrubbed the number painted on the van, revealing the original number. Once the van was cleaned, Li Yun returned it to the parking lot by the real gardener’s apartment. The gardener was still vacationing in Macao after he had suddenly won a lotto, funded by the Abyss’s gambling hall.
Li Yun took a cab to Shennong’s downtown office. As he walked inside, the front receptionist stopped him.
“Do you have an appointment sir?” The receptionist asked.
Li Yun scratched his cheek. He didn’t have an appointment but he technically owned the building. He rarely ever visited the downtown building during the usual office hours, so the lobby receptionist didn’t recognize him.
“Can you call Mr. Bu and let him know Li Yun is here?” Li Yun asked.
The receptionist called upstairs and nodded for Li Yun to proceed up to the 7th floor. Security was tight as there was a lot of proprietary information Bufu wanted to protect. There were two guards at the main entrance and two guards at the elevator lobby.
As Li Yun entered the office, he went to the corner office. Although the lobby was secure, the office itself was open. Even Bufu was sitting out in the open with his large monitors sitting on top of his workstations.
“You have it?” Bufu asked.
Li Yun nodded. Bufu led Li Yun to a private office on a different floor. Bufu was paranoid about data breach, so he had a separate server networks for different applications. Opening an unknown thumb drive required a secure computer that wasn’t connected to the outside world. Once Bufu opened the folder, there were hundreds video and audio files from the past twenty years.
“The files are cleaned, but it’s going to take forever to look through all of these files,” said Bufu.
With the information in hand, Li Yun needed to devise a strategy to release the information to the public. Even if the information was successfully uploaded over the web, the content needed to resonate with the public. The content must induce enough rage in the general public to push a thorough investigation. Otherwise, it would be forgotten.
The general public was too fickle to rely on. If they revealed the information and someone released a big name celebrity scandal, it would be wasted. A document with illegal deals wasn't as explosive as a sex scandal by a politician or celebrity. Even a corrupt politician wasn't newsworthy unless it was a large-scale operation, much less a law firm involved in illegal deals and prostitution.
The criminals involved were given a quick slap in the hand, but never truly punished. And it came down to the lack of public awareness. People liked to pretend they care, or convince themselves that they care about justice, but what they truly wanted was for others to view them as just.
With Mr. Bai’s files, they needed to release a series of videos in the correct order. The first to get everyone's attention, the second to keep the conversation going, and the last to seal the deal. The videos would not be used as evidence, but a way to start the investigation.
Li Yun and the others combed through hours of videos. It was a sickening combination of drugs, sex, and money laundering schemes. The majority were used as blackmail materials for politicians, public officials, and businessmen. It wouldn’t be appropriate to leak everything as there were innocent people involved.