Please, System! This Young Mistress Doesn't Want To Be A Hungry Ghost!

Chapter 1

The automatic doors of Shanghai International Airport slid open, and Hong Ye stepped out into the press of the arrivals hall. The air, thick with the familiar scents of jet fuel and a faint, almost sickly sweet artificial floral fragrance, stung her nostrils. It had been five years since she'd last walked through these doors, five years since that… bastard had sent her away, a pampered exile to a life she'd never wanted. She'd been a puppet on his strings for far too long, and now, finally, she was back.

"Homecoming," she thought, the word a bitter taste in her mouth. This wasn't a homecoming. This was a declaration of war. She wouldn't allow him to twist the idea of 'home' into another weapon against her.

The terminal bustled with travelers, a mix of hurried footsteps and fragmented conversations in a dozen languages. Despite the apparent chaos, an underlying sense of order and control was clearly visible. The ever-present security cameras, the uniformed personnel, the subtle yet pervasive feeling of being watched—it was all a carefully crafted facade, a performance of perfect security that she knew, intimately, was both real and incredibly fragile. He had always bragged that he had friends in high places, and she knew, deep down, that some of those friends were watching her every move, even now.

She walked with purpose, her expensive suit a stark contrast to the casual attire of the other travelers. Her pulse quickened with a mixture of apprehension and excitement. She wasn't just another face in the crowd; she was a force about to be unleashed, a carefully calibrated storm, and all of the evidence was contained within the purse that hung at her side. It was both her greatest weapon and her greatest vulnerability.

Inside the innocuous leather bag, nestled amongst her personal effects, were the fruits of years of clandestine work. There were meticulously gathered documents detailing every one of his illegal operations, every fraudulent transaction, every dirty deal. There was also, more importantly, the proof of her clandestine accumulation of shares, the paper trail that would allow her to dismantle his corporate empire and take it for herself. She was the one that would expose the man behind the mask, she would rip it all away, piece by piece, and the feeling made her want to smile.

She had spent years planning this very moment, waiting for the right time to strike, biding her time in the shadows while she waited for him to make a mistake. His arrogance had always been his greatest weakness, and it was that hubris that would be his undoing. She knew that they knew that she was coming, she knew that they would be watching, but it did not matter. She was ready.

She was ready to take back her life and claim what was rightfully hers. She was ready to tear down her father's criminal network and expose him for the monster that he was. She was ready to begin.

Hong Ye continued to walk briskly through the terminal, her mind already shifting from the thrill of her return to the cold, hard reality of what lay ahead. The evidence in her bag was damning, a comprehensive catalog of her father's transgressions. But exposing him was just the beginning; the real challenge would be dissecting the intricate web he had spun over decades, separating the legitimate business from the festering rot of his criminal empire.

She knew that Hong Quan Industries, at its core, was a legitimate and profitable business, a technological marvel built on circuits, silicon, and genuine innovation. He had started with very little and built the company into something impressive, something worth having, and that made her all the more determined to be the one to take it. But that success was inextricably tied to the shadow operations, the illegal activities, the countless atrocities he had committed in the name of greed.

It wasn't as simple as cutting out a tumor. It was like trying to untangle a knot of rusted barbed wire, where one wrong move could unravel the whole thing and destroy both good and evil together. It was the constant and underlying feeling of evil that made it all so difficult, and what was even worse was that she knew that it all was not necessary.

He had used Hong Quan Industries as a front, a disguise for his true nature. She knew the company, intimately, she had practically been raised in its offices, and that intimate knowledge allowed her to see all the places that he had hid his crimes, all the places that the common man never saw. The legitimate research projects were often cover for illegal weapons development, the sprawling logistics network used to transport drugs and trafficked human beings, the legitimate financial dealings a smokescreen for money laundering. It was a system of interwoven lies, a perfect example of how corruption could fester even in the brightest of lights.

The idea of simply shuttering the whole operation, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, was tempting. But it would cause untold economic chaos, destroy thousands of jobs, and cause immeasurable damage to people's lives that had nothing to do with her father's crimes, the people that her father had convinced of the truth of his business, and it made her sick. She couldn't simply destroy the entire thing just to make sure that her father suffered. She wasn't like him.

She had always taken pride in the company's good works, her father had always been dismissive of that part, but even he had to admit that some of the technological leaps it had accomplished were actually good. The technology could be used for the good of the people, for bettering society. He simply saw it all as an avenue for profit and control, and that made her blood boil. She knew that he only cared about the money and the influence, but she knew that his work could be used for the good of all, and not just him.

She had to find a way to separate the good from the bad, to excise the cancerous growth without destroying the healthy tissue. It was a monumental task, a complex and delicate operation, but she was more than ready to perform it. She had already made plans for how she was going to separate the criminal element from the legitimate business. She already had plans for who to bring in to run the new company, a collection of people that she knew that she could trust, but would also respect the company and respect the community.

She was walking into a battlefield, and the first battle was not going to be a fight for shares, it was going to be a fight for the soul of Hong Quan Industries. She knew that she could do it. She had been planning for this day for her entire life.