Then she answered, her tone quiet but certain.

"Deeper than the original story ever mentioned."

Su Wan tossed the stack of notes back onto the table. "This is laundered money."

The bundles scattered slightly across the polished surface, the tiny coded markings near the serial numbers now clearly visible under the overhead light. Nothing about the cash felt ordinary anymore. It belonged to a much larger, far more dangerous system.

"To secure it properly, we would have to clean every trace attached to it," she continued calmly, "or give it up entirely."

Mo Chen exhaled heavily as he picked up another stack and examined the markings more closely. "And the worst part is that with coding like this, we’ll eventually get tracked no matter what."

Li Chen’s expression tightened. They all understood the implication. The symbols likely linked to laundering routes, internal handlers, transfer chains, or operational sectors. If any of the marked notes resurfaced incorrectly, someone inside the network would notice.

"What do we do?" Li Chen asked, unease evident in his voice for the first time.

Su Wan remained silent for several moments, her gaze moving across the money spread over the table. Then she spoke.

"If we dive deeper into this carelessly, we’ll only attract more problems." Her fingers tapped lightly against one of the marked bills. "This level of organization almost certainly has government protection somewhere in the chain. Not openly, but enough to keep the system running for years."

Li Chen frowned. "So we throw it away?"

"No." Su Wan picked up another note and turned it slowly under the light. "We damage the bills. Nothing excessive — just enough for the banks to classify them as damaged currency."

Understanding dawned on Mo Chen’s face. Damaged notes followed a completely different process. Once deposited through legitimate channels, banks removed them from circulation and sent them directly to central reserve for destruction and replacement. The original tracking chains would break, the laundering patterns would disappear, and the coded markings would vanish from the system entirely.

Li Chen’s eyes sharpened. "And when replacement currency is issued..."

"We become clean of the original trail," Su Wan finished calmly.

There might still be some scrutiny for depositing large amounts of damaged notes, but it was far less risky than holding clearly coded laundering money.

Mo Chen leaned back and let out a faint breath of disbelief. "You really think like a criminal sometimes."

Su Wan’s lips curved into a faint, almost imperceptible smile.

"No," she corrected softly. "I think like someone trying to survive people far worse than criminals."

The room fell silent once more. Somehow, that statement sounded far more dangerous.

Su Wan looked at the stacks of cash spread across the table. "We can’t let all these funds go to waste when we actually need the money."

The office fell quiet except for the soft rustle of notes beneath their hands. All three of them understood the same truth: money and power had always been inseparable, and right now they needed both.

Li Chen exhaled slowly, then nodded. "Alright. Let’s do it."

The atmosphere in the room shifted at once. Any remaining hesitation vanished.

They got to work.

The marked bills were separated into piles while Mo Chen retrieved scissors, ink pens, water, and several other office supplies from the nearby cabinets. Su Wan picked up the first coded note, examined the hidden marking under the light, and carefully cut through the section containing the symbol without damaging the rest of the bill.

The placement of the codes had been deliberate — small enough to escape casual notice, yet consistent enough for internal tracking. Whoever had designed this laundering system had done so with intelligence, which only made the situation more dangerous.

"Don’t make the damage uniform," Su Wan instructed calmly as she set the altered note aside. "Randomize everything. Different cuts, different stains, different damage patterns."

Mo Chen understood immediately. "If they all look identical, the banks will suspect intentional destruction."

"Exactly."

The three of them worked in focused silence. Some bills were lightly torn near the edges, others received small water stains or scattered ink drops to disguise the removed coded sections. Nothing excessive — just enough to make the currency appear accidentally damaged through ordinary handling.

"Make them look attacked," Su Wan murmured while cutting another coded corner. "Storage damage, spills, tearing... an accident."

The office filled with the quiet sounds of scissors cutting paper, notes shifting, ink caps clicking, and bundles being reorganized.

Mo Chen glanced at the growing piles with unease. "This feels insane."

Li Chen gave a dry breath of amusement without looking up. "We stole hidden laundering reserves from politically connected criminals. We passed insane hours ago."

Su Wan remained focused on the bills in front of her, but her thoughts drifted elsewhere. The situation kept expanding the deeper they went. What had begun as survival inside the Lu Residence had grown into inheritance struggles, hidden money, underground projects, skin maps, secret mines, laundering systems, and now coded currency networks. Everything seemed connected beneath the surface.

Several hours passed as they steadily transformed the money into damaged currency that could later be processed through legitimate replacement systems. By the end, the table looked chaotic: stained notes, partially torn stacks, clipped edges, scattered ink marks, and reorganized bundles drying under the office ventilation.

Yet every hidden tracking code had been removed.

Mo Chen leaned back and rubbed his eyes. "If this works..."

"It will," Su Wan replied calmly.

Her gaze then lowered to the remaining untouched bundles. Despite everything they had already processed, a frightening amount of money still remained.

-------

Back at the Lu Residence, the atmosphere in the dining hall had grown unbearably tense long before anyone realized something was wrong.

The silence after Su Wan’s departure lingered heavily. Servants moved carefully around the long table, speaking only when necessary, as though the entire residence had become unstable overnight. Old Master Lu continued reviewing documents beside his tea while Lu Shaohan sat near the center of the table, his attention split between the reports on his tablet and the mounting pressure surrounding the household. The three pregnant women sat further down the table, noticeably quieter than usual. None of them looked comfortable anymore.