Chapter 103 Tractor Factory (Repair)...

Unlike the Far Eastern Development Bank, the tractor factory was shrouded in gloom and despair at this time.

The reason is that the new owner decided to restructure the factory, sell most of the assets, and reassign all employees to other companies under her name.

Upon learning this news, the entire tractor factory was in an uproar.

"Olev, didn't you say she was a good person? Would a good person treat our factory like this?"

"What's the difference between her and those funds?!"

"What are we going to do? How am I going to support my children if I don't have a job?"

The burly man ripped off his hat, revealing a bald head, and said with a grim expression, "We're going to find Miss He. She bought the factory's shares, so she should be responsible to us."

A large group of workers surrounded the factory's office building, demanding that the new boss come forward and give an explanation.

Inside the office building, besides the original factory leaders, were the auditing and legal team sent to investigate the factory's assets. Seeing the workers outside in a state of agitation, the team leader hurriedly called He Changyi for help.

Before long, several military jeeps sped over and stopped on the outskirts of the crowd. The bodyguards jumped out of the vehicles and, as if they had practiced before, quickly and silently took up the best positions without any command.

The workers who were originally surrounding the office building turned around upon hearing the noise and surrounded the convoy of jeeps. However, due to the bodyguards' obstruction, they could only stand a short distance away instead of personally overturning the vehicles.

"Where is Miss He? Is she afraid to come see us?"

"Miss He, you have deceived us!"

“This is our factory, you can’t sell it!”

"That's right! Nobody can sell our factory!"

Amidst the deafening roar, the door of a Jeep that looked no different from any other car was pushed open, and a young woman stepped out, her face extremely serious. After surveying the scene, she suddenly turned around, not to get into the car and escape, but instead climbed onto the roof by stepping on the wheels.

The action was so sudden that everyone present fell silent, staring in disbelief at the woman standing on the car.

She stood at the highest point, being watched by hundreds of people, many of whom were hostile, yet she appeared excessively calm and composed.

It was as if this wasn't a crisis of trust, but simply a meeting and chat with the new employee.

The crowd began to whisper among themselves.

"Is it her? Is it Miss He?"

"It should be her. I remember she looked like this when we got paid..."

"I don't think so. All the people in Zhongguo look pretty much the same. Who knows if she'll send a body double?"

"Olev, is she the person you met at the auction?"

Olev, a bald, burly man representing the tractor factory workers and holding the collected vouchers at the auction, stared intently at the woman on the roof of the vehicle for a while before confidently declaring, "That's her."

He stepped forward and asked loudly, "Miss He, we heard you're going to sell the tractor factory, is that true?"

The woman on the roof didn't say anything, but reached down to the people below, and a bodyguard immediately handed her a megaphone.

"It's true."

Her first words to the workers present were an admission of the truth of the rumors about asset disposal and staff relocation.

"I do intend to sell all the assets of the tractor factory and transfer the employees to other factories to continue working."

The crowd erupted into a commotion, with agitated individuals pushing forward, and even the burly bodyguards with guns couldn't stop them.

"Get out of the way! You accomplice! You betrayed your own people for money!"

"Come on, shoot! Kill me! I'd rather die right now than not have a job!"

The bodyguards were in a flurry of activity, trying to protect their boss in the center while avoiding actually firing their guns to prevent further escalation of the conflict.

But the workers had no scruples anymore.

Just as the scene was about to spiral out of control, a woman on the roof of the car stopped everyone in their tracks with a single sentence.

"All laid-off employees will receive compensation equivalent to six months' salary."

Six months' salary!

The worker, who had been raising his fist to punch the bodyguard in the face, seemed to freeze in place and sheepishly withdrew his hand.

Miss Roof continued slowly and deliberately, "The wages at the new factory will be twenty percent higher than your wages at the tractor factory."

"Although the tractor factory no longer exists, you will not only not lose your jobs, but you will also receive higher wages and compensation equivalent to half a year's salary."

People looked at each other, unsure whether to continue their anger or be happy first. In the end, it was Olev who spoke first.

“Ms. He, I don’t understand why you would rather pay a large sum of money to close down the tractor factory.”

He asked, puzzled and saddened, "Is our factory really inferior to that dairy factory that's about to go bankrupt? Why can you spend a lot of money to renovate the dairy factory, but not the same way you would treat the tractor factory?"

Others chimed in, “Yes, why not us? The tractor factory makes way more money than the dairy factory! Our tractors are sold to every collective farm in the Union, and even now, people still remember our factory; they haven’t forgotten us!”

People chattered about the tractor factory's past glory, eagerly telling the new boss stories about those displayed in the hall of honor and those not there, about how they slept an average of only three hours a day in order to produce more tractors.

Some of these events happened to people around them, while others happened to them personally.

“When I was young, I didn’t live at home, I lived in the factory, and slept next to the production line.”

"The old factory director, like us, didn't sleep. Nobody slept. He was hospitalized three times because of heart disease."

In order to buy the best quality and cheapest tractor products from the Vladimir tractor factory, the collective farms would wait at their doors before dawn, vying for the first tractor to come off the production line.

Only when the crowd's voices gradually subsided did He Changyi ask, "So, where are those collective farms now?"

These words struck like a heavy hammer blow to everyone's heart.

Olev opened his mouth, wanting to say something but unable to utter a word.

After the alliance dissolved, the collective farm system completely collapsed as the new government promoted the privatization of rural land.

Without the vast, large farms, farmland was re-fragmented into small plots, no longer suitable for mechanized farming, and the tractor market shrank dramatically.

Olev murmured, "But...but someone has to farm!"

He Changyi then asked, "How long has it been since you sold a single tractor?"

The crowd fell completely silent.

Their expressions were so sad that even the bodyguards who were being shoved couldn't help but want to offer them comfort.

He Changyi said calmly, "This is not your fault, nor is it the factory's fault. Times have changed, just like the arrival of the Ice Age. We all have to learn to adapt to the new climate. In any case, we must first survive."

Olev said dejectedly, "Ms. He, thank you. And I'm so sorry about today..."

He waved his hand, turned around, and led the way away.

"We should go."

First, a few people who had been surrounding Olev followed him, and then more and more people left, like a stone slipping and causing the entire gravel mountain to collapse.

Among those who left, some were beaming with joy, eager to share the good news of their compensation and raises with their families; others looked dejected, lamenting the irretrievable passing of an era.

Some people looked unhappy, unable to believe that a crisis could be resolved so easily.

Look at that Chinese woman, she only said a few words and wasn't even dragged off the roof of the jeep!

She's an absolute enchantress! A witch! A bewitching monster!

As the crowd gradually dispersed, the bodyguards surrounding the jeep all breathed a sigh of relief.

That was terrifying. If hundreds of people had charged at the same time, even if they had guns, they might not have been able to protect the boss and get him out safely.

Lermontov exaggeratedly wiped away his sweat and leaned back in the carriage in a relaxed manner.

"I was almost beaten up by an old man who's about the same age as my grandmother! He even told me to shoot him in the head with a gun!"

Xie Xuejun rudely grabbed Lermontov, kicked him aside, and gestured to the boss on the roof of the car.

"Please step down onto my shoulders."

Lermontov quickly suppressed his protest and said instead, "I can help you down too!"

He Changyi shook his head and said, "You all move aside."

She braced herself against the roof of the car with one hand and nimbly jumped down.

Lev asked curiously, "Boss, aren't you worried something might happen? The situation was really critical."

He Changyi said coldly, "The situation is indeed critical, but it didn't have to be this critical—who leaked the message?"

If He Changyi's plan is followed, the news of the asset disposal and staff reassignment will be announced at the same time as the compensation and wage increase. The workers will not besiege the office building or attack her, the new boss, out of panic and anger.

Someone deliberately misled the workers.

He Changyi strode towards the office building, instructing Xie Xuejun as he went, "Take control of all the factory leaders."

Without saying a word, Xie Xuejun led his men into the office building, and soon a chaotic sound came from inside.

He Changyi was not in a hurry to meet the leaders of the tractor factory. Instead, she went to visit the legal audit team first. After appeasing everyone with a large bonus, she left with the first draft of the report.

Inside the meeting room, the tractor factory leaders were forced to sit quietly in their chairs, with bodyguards behind them glaring at them, ready to tie them up if they dared to resist. Several people had already been awkwardly tied to their chairs.

When He Changyi entered, the middle-aged factory manager shouted, "What are you doing! This is illegal! I'm calling the police!"

Instead of getting angry, He Changyi laughed and said, "Okay, go ahead and report it now. I also have something to report to the police."

She slammed the thick stack of draft reports onto the table, braced her hands on the surface, and scanned each of the factory leaders present.

“I didn’t originally intend to do anything to you. Wouldn’t it be better to retire with the money? Or did you learn something from the dairy factory and want to kick me out of my factory?”

Most of the people present looked uneasy, while only a very few looked puzzled.

The middle-aged factory manager said, "What are you trying to say? I don't understand what you mean."

He Changyi sneered, "It's alright, the court will understand."

She casually flipped to a page of the report and read aloud: "As of the report date, there is a huge and inexplicable discrepancy between the factory warehouse records and the actual inventory... The records show that there are fifty tons of special steel and two hundred assembled tractors in stock. However, the actual stock of the aforementioned special steel in the warehouse is only three tons, a shortage of forty-seven tons; and only seventy-one of the two hundred tractors, a shortage of one hundred and twenty-nine."

The factory leaders present began to look grim, and in the dead of winter, some of them suddenly broke out in a sweat.

She continued reading: "With the approval of the factory manager, three machine tools in good condition were sold to an equipment company as 'scrap metal' for $1,000. The market price of a single similar used machine tool is no less than $250,000. As of the date of this report, the factory's finance department has not received the proceeds from the sale."

He Changyi suddenly looked at the factory manager, whose facial muscles were twitching uncontrollably.

"Mr. Petrovich, why is the registered address of this equipment company the same as your father's house?"

Petrovich's manager tried to explain: "It might be... a record error, you know, things are all very chaotic right now..."

He Changyi laughed, "Really? A recording error?"

Her smile vanished abruptly, and she asked again, "Then why did the tractor factory purchase production lubricating oil and cutting fluid from the same equipment company at a price 50% higher than the market price, even though your name is listed as the payee in the bank account? Is that also a record error?"

Manager Petrovich was speechless. Suddenly, a clattering sound came from the deathly silent conference room. It turned out that his leg under the conference table was trembling uncontrollably and had hit the chair leg.

He Changyi slammed the report shut and looked sternly at everyone present.

"Do I need to continue reading?"

No one spoke.

He Changyi said, "I originally did not intend to hold you accountable; that's what the alliance should do. But you bunch of parasites have betrayed my goodwill and actually tried to incite the workers to attack me."

The middle-aged factory manager managed to say, "This...this must be a misunderstanding...We have the utmost respect and gratitude for you..."

In He Changyi's gaze, his voice grew softer and softer until it was completely silent.

Yes, yes, they did inform the workers about the factory restructuring, but isn't that a fact? Even if they didn't say anything, wouldn't the new boss have announced the news to the public?

They just spoke earlier, earlier than the new boss's plan, but did they do something wrong?

Are we supposed to let them end up like those idiots at the dairy factory, getting a meager buyout payment and being kicked out of their factory in a sorry state?

Yes, that's their factory!

Why is it that the girl from the Jong-kook region can so easily take away the territory they've cultivated for decades?

She even wants to sell the entire tractor factory!

That's all their money, their equipment, their land!

The middle-aged factory manager mumbled to himself, barely knowing what he was saying.

"This is just a misunderstanding... You're not hurt... This won't affect you at all... You can't do this, we're the ones who know the tractor factory best..."

He Changyi interrupted him rudely.

"Shut up, I don't want to hear it. Go talk to the police if you have something to say."

She turned and left decisively, instructing her bodyguards to keep an eye on these people until the police came to take over, so that she could throw them all into prison for job-related crimes.

Go pick up the soap for her, you parasites.

Manager Petrovich stood up in a fit of rage and yelled at her retreating figure:

"You think it's just us? You've broken the rules! You're everyone's enemy!"

He saw the woman from Zhongguo turn her head and say arrogantly and coldly:

"Then I will defeat all those who dare to oppose me."