The next moment, a far greater tremor struck. To Kang Zhaoming it felt as though a meteor had slammed into the building; the whole of him was shaken into a stumble.

Instinctively he dashed to the window — and froze in disbelief. Several excavators and front-end loaders were ramming the building he stood in with savage, relentless force.

"Hey! There's someone in here!" Panic seized Kang Zhaoming, and he bellowed out the window.

But once excavators and bulldozers set to work, the noise was tremendous. Before anyone could possibly have heard Kang Zhaoming's voice, it had already drowned in the din.

"Don't tear it down! There are people inside! Hey, hey, hey!" Kang Zhaoming was so frightened he nearly wet himself. "There's someone in here!"

No one paid him any mind — in truth, no one could possibly have heard him.

"Fuck your ancestors! I'm still inside this building!" Kang Zhaoming, frantic now, screamed himself hoarse.

Yet still no one heard him. He was out of options; he would have to find a way out himself. Jumping from the third floor would most likely kill him, and if it didn't, he'd be crippled for life — that kind of idiocy was not something Kang Zhaoming would ever stoop to.

But it was already too late to go down by the stairs. The bulldozers below had already knocked the building's entrance clean away.

Kang Zhaoming racked his brains and could not come up with a single clever plan. He had never imagined he could be so unlucky — waiting in Xiaofen's home for her to return, and walking straight into a forced demolition. Raised in a house of great wealth, he had never experienced such a thing, and it had never once crossed his mind that such misfortune could ever befall him.

There was nothing else for it. Fearing he would be crushed to death, he could only crawl under the bed. He'd heard that during an earthquake, the space beneath a bed was the safest place to be.

In the blink of an eye, the three-story red-brick building was reduced to a heap of rubble. Zhu Xiaozhang and Wang Shubin waited a while, and when Kang Zhaoming did not return, they grew anxious and called his phone.

The phone rang more than a dozen times with no answer, until it cut off on its own. Still no one picked up.

Wang Shubin grew alarmed. He dialed again, and after a moment, someone finally answered!

Kang Zhaoming was at that moment buried in the wreckage, and it was thanks to a broken bed that he had stubbornly held on to life. It was also a stroke of luck that Xiaofen lived on the top floor — had it been the first or second, no bed board, however sturdy, could have withstood the crushing weight.

When the building had come down entirely, Kang Zhaoming felt a lurching jolt, and then his head struck something he could not identify, and he blacked out.

He came to again to the sound of his ringtone. As he instinctively reached for the phone, a searing pain shot up from his legs — they felt as though they had been smashed and broken.

Even so, Kang Zhaoming felt profoundly grateful: he had not died after all!

"Hello! Wang Shubin, come get me, quick! Xiaofen's place has been demolished, I'm in the rubble, my legs seem to be broken, the pain's killing me!" Kang Zhaoming howled into the phone.

"What? Young Master Ming, hold on, we're on our way!" Wang Shubin was startled by what he heard. Xiaofen's building had been torn down, and Kang Zhaoming was still trapped inside?

Wang Shubin and Zhu Xiaozhang called the police and an ambulance at the same time. Then they ran to the demolition office, where they found Li Cihua in the middle of negotiating compensation with a relocated resident.

"Our boss got buried under the building you people tore down! Who's in charge here?" Zhu Xiaozhang bellowed the moment he stepped through the door.

Li Cihua had assumed it was someone of consequence, but when he looked up and saw that it was Zhu Xiaozhang, his brow furrowed at once.

He knew this Zhu Xiaozhang — a hanger-on who followed at the heels of Kang Zhaoming of the Divine Doctor Kang family. When the Qibing Building was completed, Kang Zhaoming had even brought Zhu Xiaozhang and Wang Shubin along to the ceremony.

"Zhu Xiaozhang, what's all this racket about?" Li Cihua was not afraid of him. For all the fame of the Divine Doctor Kang's household, the Zhao family he served was far more formidable than the Kangs.

"Ah? Brother Cihua?" Zhu Xiaozhang had known the shantytown demolition project was Zhao Qibing's undertaking, but he had assumed some minor underling was in charge here. He had never expected it to be Li Cihua himself. Even so, he had to speak his piece. "Brother Cihua, my boss, Kang Zhaoming, is in that three-story red-brick building right over there — and you went and tore it down!"

Li Cihua's head buzzed. Kang Zhaoming was still in that building? What in the world was Kang Zhaoming doing there?

The Zhao family might not fear the Kang family, but if Kang Zhaoming of the Kangs had been crushed to death, an explanation would have to be given. This was no ordinary bystander they had crushed — the Kang family's influence was considerable. The Zhao family even bought a batch of wound-healing medicine from the Kangs every year.

"What? Kang Zhaoming is still in there?" Li Cihua asked urgently.

"Yes. We've already called the police and an ambulance. You have to make those demolition people stop — my boss is still alive, it's only his legs that are broken!" Zhu Xiaozhang said.

When Li Cihua heard that Kang Zhaoming was not dead, he breathed a sigh of relief. So long as the man lived, it would be easy enough to handle. A broken leg could be settled with a sum of compensation, and presumably the Kang family would say no more about it.

"Gu Bang, Fabai, you two handle the compensation agreements with the relocated residents here. I'm going over to take a look!" Li Cihua felt that this day had brought him one disaster after another — no sooner had the business with Wei Zhao been settled than Kang Zhaoming of the Kang family got himself crushed.

Having given his instructions, Li Cihua ran off with Wang Shubin and Zhu Xiaozhang toward the three-story red-brick building. Fortunately, his earlier order had been only to demolish the red-brick building, so once the excavators and bulldozers had pushed it down, they had gone no further.

Otherwise, two more shoves and Kang Zhaoming would have been dead for certain.

The police rescue came in good time. Soon Kang Zhaoming was carried out of the rubble by firefighters. His face was drenched in blood; a preliminary examination showed only a gash on the head, plus fractures in both legs — nothing else wrong. It was a stroke of luck amid misfortune.

Li Cihua stayed behind to cooperate with the police investigation, while Wang Shubin and Zhu Xiaozhang rode along in the ambulance, taking Kang Zhaoming to the First People's Hospital.

By now Li Cihua was no longer afraid. He had already reached demolition agreements with the residents of the building; even a police investigation would be of no concern. As for the business with Kang Zhaoming, it could only be called an accident.

Kang Zhaoming lay in the ambulance, his face a mask of misery, wailing aloud. He had never suffered such hardship in all his life, and now that both legs were broken, the pain was beyond description.

"Damn it, Li Cihua, I will never let you off!" Kang Zhaoming said viciously.

"Young Master Ming, Li Cihua is Zhao Qibing's man — we can't afford to provoke him!" Wang Shubin knew Kang Zhaoming was furious, but Zhao Qibing was indeed someone the Kang family could not afford to cross.

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