“I should mention that the Senior Official may have been telling the truth. Your official work didn’t give you many chances to interact with him, but quite a few times, you’d run into him in the hallways of the government building or coming out of a meeting, and he’d always be the one to come up to you to chat. He very rarely did that with lower-ranking officials, especially the younger ones. People took notice. He might not have said anything to help you at organizational meetings, but those gestures did a lot for your career.”

Song Cheng nodded again. He’d known all this, and had been immensely grateful. All that time, Song had wanted the opportunity to repay him.

“Then the Senior Official raised his hand and gestured behind him. Immediately, someone entered and quietly set a big stack of documents and materials on the table. You must have noticed that he wasn’t the Senior Official’s normal secretary.

“The Senior Official passed a hand over the documents and said, The project you just completed fully demonstrates those priceless assets of yours. It required such an immense and difficult investigation to collect evidence, but these documents are ample, detailed, and reliable, the conclusions drawn profound. It’s hard to believe you did it all in half a year. It would be the Party’s great fortune to have more outstanding Discipline Inspection officials like you…. I don’t need to tell you how you felt at that moment, I think.”

Of course he didn’t. Song Cheng had never been so horrified in his life. That stack of documents first sent him shaking as if electrocuted, then froze him into stone.

Bai Bing continued: “It all started with the investigation into the illegal apportionment of state-owned land you undertook on behalf of the Central Commission, yes….