The mining cart reached the bottom level with a metallic screech, brakes engaging hard enough to send sparks flying. Zhāng Wěi was already mid-rant before his feet hit the ground, gesturing wildly at the three security guards who'd accompanied him down.
"Useless! Absolutely useless! I pay you to secure the mine and what happens? My entire workforce abandons their posts, steals company property, and walks out with what I'm hearing is over forty kilos of premium rose quartz!" His face was red, veins standing out on his neck. "Your job, your ONE job, is to check the exits, to make sure nothing valuable leaves this mine without my explicit authorization, and you just let them waltz right past you!"
One of the guards tried to respond but Zhāng Wěi cut him off.
"I don't want to hear excuses! Do you have any idea what forty kilos of rose quartz is worth? That's years of profit! That's my retirement fund! That's—"
He stopped mid-sentence, his flashlight beam sweeping across the tunnel entrance and catching Tòumíng's figure standing in the opening.
Tòumíng immediately started shaking. He let his knees wobble, let his hands tremble visibly, let his eyes go wide and glassy. The effect wasn't hard to achieve considering he actually felt like shit, but he added theatrical elements. A slight whimper. A stumble backward like he was afraid of the approaching men.
"Tòumíng?" Zhāng Wěi's anger transformed instantly into concern, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. He rushed forward, hands reaching out to steady the younger man. "What happened? Are you okay? I told you to take the day off, what are you still doing down here?"
The words came out broken, stuttering, perfect victim delivery. "I-I found it. The quartz. It was... it was over fifty kilos, boss. Maybe more. The biggest vein I've ever seen."
Zhāng Wěi's eyes lit up with barely contained greed. "Fifty kilos? Where? Show me!"
"The rest of them..." Tòumíng let his voice crack, squeezed out what he hoped looked like genuine tears. They came easier than expected, probably because he was genuinely devastated about the lost quartz, just not for the reasons his boss would assume. "Everyone wanted to keep it quiet. Wanted to steal it all and not tell you. But I... I thought you should know first because you're like... the super duperest best boss ever."
Cupid's voice in his chest was laced with morbid amusement. "Oh my god. You're really selling this. The trembling lip is a nice touch."
"But they..." Tòumíng continued, letting more tears fall. "They attacked me. Beat me up while I tried to defend the vein. I told them it belonged to the company, that we had to report it properly, but they just kept hitting me and mining and stealing and then they left. They all left and took the quartz with them."
Zhāng Wěi's expression cycled through several emotions in rapid succession. Rage at the theft. Frustration at the loss. But underneath it all, a calculating gleam as he processed what Tòumíng was saying. One loyal worker. One witness who'd supposedly tried to protect company property. One person he could trust.
"You tried to stop them? Alone? Against how many?"
"I... I don't know. Twenty? Thirty? Everyone who was working the upper floors came down when they heard about the find. It turned into a riot." The words were coming easier now, the lie building momentum. "I'm sorry, boss. I tried. I really tried but there were too many and I'm not strong and they had pickaxes and—"
"Shh, shh, it's okay." Zhāng Wěi patted his shoulder, the gesture almost paternal if you ignored the way his eyes kept darting toward the tunnel behind Tòumíng. "You did good. You did the right thing. Where's the vein? How much is left?"
"That poor performance deserves an award," Cupid murmured. "The crocodile tears are just magnificent. I'm genuinely impressed and also slightly disturbed."
Tòumíng pointed shakily toward the exposed section of rose quartz, still glittering in the beam of multiple flashlights. Zhāng Wěi's breath caught, his face going slack with wonder and avarice. He practically shoved Tòumíng aside in his rush to get closer.
"Oh. Oh my god." His hands ran over the crystal surface, fingers trembling. "It's real. It's actually real."
Tòumíng's heart dropped into his stomach. The five-pound chunk hidden in his pants suddenly felt enormous, obvious, impossible to conceal. He bit his tongue hard enough to taste blood, keeping his expression carefully neutral as his boss examined what remained of the fortune Tòumíng had literally died finding.
Zhāng Wěi spun toward the security guards. "Get this out. All of it. Carefully! Don't damage the crystals. I want every gram accounted for."
The guards moved in with their equipment, professional and efficient. They worked in coordinated silence, using proper mining techniques to extract the remaining quartz without shattering it. Chunk after chunk came free, each piece examined and carefully placed in reinforced containers.
Ten minutes later, they'd harvested everything that remained accessible. Zhāng Wěi produced a portable scale from his bag, the kind that could measure down to the gram. He weighed each piece meticulously, his lips moving as he calculated the total.
"Ten point three kilos." His voice was tight with barely suppressed emotion. "Still a fortune, but nowhere near fifty. Those bastards really did make off with most of it."
He reached into another pocket and pulled out a small pick hammer, purpose-made for breaking precise amounts of crystal. The smile that spread across his face was pure greed, undiluted and shameless.
"But we can't let good work go unrewarded, can we?"
He broke off three pieces, roughly one hundred grams each, and handed them to the security guards. "For your help today. Don't spend it all at once."
The guards accepted the pieces with practiced neutrality, probably used to this kind of performance from their boss.
Then Zhāng Wěi turned to Tòumíng, his smile widening. He broke off a larger chunk, carefully measured it on the scale, and adjusted until it read exactly four hundred grams.
"For you, my loyal employee. My brave defender of company property." He pressed the chunk into Tòumíng's hands with exaggerated ceremony. "Four hundred grams of premium rose quartz. That's worth at least forty thousand yuan, maybe more if you find the right buyer. You've earned it."
Tòumíng stared at the crystal in his hands. Four hundred grams. Out of over fifty kilos. Less than one percent of what he'd found. Less than ten percent of what his boss had just collected. A pittance disguised as generosity.
"Thank you, boss," he managed through gritted teeth. "You're too kind."
"I take care of my people, Tòumíng. Always have, always will." Zhāng Wěi patted him on the head like he was a particularly well-behaved dog. "Now, you've had a traumatic experience. I want you to take tomorrow off. With pay! See? I'm not one of those heartless employers. You rest up, recover from your ordeal, and we'll see you back here the day after tomorrow ready to work."
The guards were already loading the containers onto the cart, over nine kilos of rose quartz that would make Zhāng Wěi a wealthy man. Wealthier than he already was, anyway.
Tòumíng's eye twitched. He leaned back slightly, his lips barely moving as he muttered, "Can you take over my body and kill this guy?"
"Fuck no," Cupid responded immediately. "I already used True Death today and look how that turned out. Besides, he's your boss. You kill him and you lose your job, and you need this job. Play the long game."
Zhāng Wěi climbed into the cart, settling himself among the containers with obvious satisfaction. The guards joined him, the combined weight making the cart sit lower on its suspension.
"Remember, Tòumíng! Tomorrow off, with pay! Don't spend that four hundred grams all in one place! And when you come back, we'll have a nice talk about a possible promotion. Can't let talent like yours go unrecognized!"
The cart began its ascent, wheels catching on the rails and pulling them upward. Zhāng Wěi's laughter echoed down the shaft, mixing with the guards' polite chuckles and the mechanical screech of metal on metal.
Tòumíng stood alone in the tunnel, one hand clutching his "generous reward" of four hundred grams, the other unconsciously adjusting the five-pound chunk hidden in his pants that his boss had somehow completely failed to notice.
The sound of the cart faded into the distance, leaving only the oppressive silence of the deep mine and the steady drip of water from somewhere in the darkness.