Ruyi took three brisk steps, remembered the burning pain of calf cramps, and stopped. Her legs were not built for heroism. They were built for propping atop soft down pillows while the afternoon faded into dusk. She pivoted on her cloth slipper, turned ninety degrees, and fell sideways into her canvas hammock. The ropes groaned in protest. Liang Bo, who had raised a pair of sledgehammer fists to crack skull bone, halted mid-charge. He stopped, blinking down at his supine spouse with his biceps bunched tight. "Precious wife?" Liang Bo’s deep voice held baffled reverence. "You are not... charging into the fray? Are you employing an esoteric military formation?" "The sun is right in my pupils, Bo," Ruyi muttered, tossing an arm over her eyes. "And those thugs smell like cabbage soup. Why waste calories?" Ding Dongqiang let out a muffled whimper through a gag of greasy cotton rag. One of the burly men pinning the slacker against the rain barrel snickered, while Director Xu—standing on the stone veranda with the stolen ledger tucked under an armpit—sneered. "Madness," Xu spat. "The girl has lost her mind from fright. Tie them both up. Throw the boy in the quarry pit. We leave for the provincial border before noon." "You aren't leaving anywhere, Director," Ruyi said from beneath her sleeve. She didn't bother sitting up. "My left ear is exceptionally sensitive. Especially when squished against black Bakelite." Xu froze. "What rubbish are you babbling?" Three weeks prior, during her first miserable day at the Progress Headquarters, Ruyi had found the quietest room in the entire brick mansion: the telecommunications annex behind the grain silo. The room contained a cot, zero windows, and an antique party-line telephone that hummed like a slumbering hornet. Naturally, she had taken the heavy receiver off the hook, wedged it under her cheek as an ergonomic neck support, and dozed for six uninterrupted hours. Except an active party line carried every illicit frequency in the valley. Between light snores, she had absorbed Xu's daily noon rituals. The man possessed a pathetic weakness for underground mahjong dens in Fengtai. Every wager, every loss, every panicked withdrawal from the fertilizer subsidy account had leaked directly into Ruyi’s ear canal while she dreamed of sweet sesame buns. "Three thousand yuan lost on the south wind tile on the fourteenth," Ruyi recited smoothly, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "Another four thousand wired to a cousin in Baoding to cover a bad run at the pig-race track on the twenty-first. Coded under 'hydraulic cement expenditure.'" Xu’s face turned the gray shade of dried mud. His fingers dug violently into the ledger's cardboard spine. "You have no proof of those numbers!" Xu shouted, his mask cracking into jagged fury. "A sleepy girl's hallucinations! The authorities would laugh you out of the district office!" "She doesn't need to prove it," a sharp voice snapped from the archway. Qiao Meilin strode into the courtyard. Her hair was pulled into two immaculate braids, her spectacles gleaming with furious vindication. In her hands, she clutched a thick stack of blue-lined ledger pages, covered in her obsessively neat, microscopic handwriting. "I cross-referenced every single receipt with the provincial rail manifests," Meilin announced, her chest heaving with competitive rage. She had stayed awake for seventy-two hours straight to prove Ruyi was an incompetent leader, only to stumble into the exact paper trail of Xu’s grand larceny. "Every discrepancy matches Tan Ruyi’s dates down to the exact hour. The signatures are forged, the grain weight is fabricated, and the official county seal was stamped using shoe polish rather than vermilion paste!" Meilin glared toward the hammock with absolute disgust. "I did the math, you miserable lump! Why do you get to sound clever while lying on your spine?!" "Teamwork makes the dream work, Deputy Head Qiao," Ruyi said placidly, lifting one hand to twirl her finger toward the small side table next to the rain trough. "Bo. Pick up that receiver. Crank the brass handle twice, then three long turns." Liang Bo moved like a mountain slide. He seized the hand-crank magneto, his thick fingers spinning it so hard the casing squeaked. "Done, my tactical flower! Who do I demand to speak with?!" "The Provincial Disciplinary Board. Desk three. Officer Gu," Ruyi instructed without moving her head. "Tell him the duck has laid an egg. Give him Meilin's serial numbers for the missing fertilizer funds. He has been waiting for this case for eighteen months." Xu went pale. He pointed a shaking finger at his hired muscle. "Kill the line! Smash the box!" The two hired men lunged toward Liang Bo, but Liang Bo raised one elbow. The first man ran face-first into the bone and collapsed into the mud. The second skidded to a halt, dropped his cudgel, and bolted out the side gate. Ding Dongqiang spit his rag out, sobbing with devotional fervor. "A divine maneuver! Master conquered an empire without lifting her lower back! The cosmic balance of indolence!" "Quiet, idiot," Ruyi sighed. "You are vibrating the air and disturbing my rest." Liang Bo barked the numbers into the horn with thunderous clarity, hung up the heavy bell, and scooped Meilin's handwritten dossier alongside the battered black ledger from Xu's dropped grip. The young husband turned toward Ruyi, beaming. "The public security bureau is eight miles out," Liang Bo declared, chest puffing with adoration. "I shall deliver these proofs by noon! None shall dispute your glorious vigilance, my sweet wife!" He threw his massive leg over the rusted frame of a heavy Phoenix roadster bicycle. The tires groaned beneath his bulk, but his thighs pumped the pedals with mechanical frenzy, scattering gravel into the plum trees as he rocketed out through the main gates. Silence fell over the courtyard. Meilin stomped her foot, furious that her brilliant accounting would merely end up serving Ruyi’s untouchable status, and stormed off to burn her spare pens. Ding Dongqiang limped over, dropping beside the hammock on his knees to massage Ruyi’s slippered feet in grateful tribute. "Go home, Dongqiang," Ruyi grumbled, closing her eyes against the noon heat. "If you touch my heels again, I will assign you to clean the pigsties." The boy scrambled away on all fours, leaving the yard quiet at last. The soft breeze rustled the willow branches overhead. Xu was nowhere in sight, Bo had the evidence, and two hours remained before lunch. A deafening crash shattered the peace. The courtyard wooden door blew off its iron hinges, splintering into jagged toothpicks against the flagstones. Director Xu stood in the dust, clothes torn, eyes wild with murderous desperation. In his right hand, leveled squarely at Tan Ruyi’s chest, rested a cold steel Type 54 pistol, its hammer fully cocked.

The Lazy Rescue