I Am Your Natural Enemy

Wen Yan heard this and curled his lip.

”Remember, don’t listen to that crap. Companies like this, who cares if they’re legit or not.”

”But they are pretty legit. The day they fired her, they immediately paid her compensation. I heard it was tens of thousands.”

”Hm?” Wen Yan lifted his head the moment he heard that.

Fired on the spot just for mouthing off and offending someone—that’s textbook illegal dismissal, isn’t it?

And they even paid on the same day?

Are you kidding me? Is this science fiction?

Forget companies like this—even small-time companies, when they want to get rid of someone, will always force you to resign on your own.

Just firing you like that? If it’s a decent company, wouldn’t HR care about their KPI?

Even if they don’t keep piling on more work until you’re working overtime till midnight and still can’t finish, at least they’d reassign you on paper, right?

Then fire you for ”incompetence”—doesn’t that save a chunk of severance?

A company that pays out compensation so happily, and it’s an entertainment company? Wen Yan had never even heard of such a thing.

Oh, wait, that’s wrong. There is one—in Central Plains County, there’s this so-called model entertainment company that’s the poster child for following the rules.

But under the surface, their streamers even broadcast specifically for the Different Races.

”What’s your classmate’s name?”

Wen Yan asked, took out the phone issued by the Scorching Sun Department, and did a quick search.

Turned out, there really was something about this—this young woman had signed with a Yu State company named Starshine Entertainment to become one of their trainees.

This company has been around for over twenty years, considered one of Yu State’s old-school entertainment companies—and Wen Yan even remembered a few artists who started there.

But in the past decade, it’s completely gone downhill. Ten years ago, it went under for the first time and was sold off; five years ago, sold again; three years ago, a third time, and then again at the start of this year.

Four transfers in a row, each at a lower price than before. By this year, its market value had plummeted to the level of a third-rate small entertainment company.

But the old name still carries weight, good enough to fool some outsiders at least.

Using his own access, Wen Yan checked the records, and sure enough, there was a dismissal record. Reason cited: couldn’t get along with colleagues and management, didn’t fit the company’s ethos—so she was let go.

They knew perfectly well that bullshit reason wouldn’t hold up as legal grounds for dismissal, so they just paid out the specified severance straight away.

Looking at the way this was handled, Wen Yan felt a familiar sense of déjà vu hit him in the face.

Then he searched for more info on this company’s staff—and his brow furrowed immediately.

The current owner of this company died yesterday by the shore at Cape of the Sea.

There are even videos online already, filmed by other tourists.

In the video, the owner hears someone in the distance yelling that a kid’s been swept away; he immediately gets up, confirms he heard right, grabs a life ring, and rushes out at once.

In the end, the swept-away kid floats up with the life ring, gets rescued by others, and is even revived right there.

But the owner disappeared into the waves and, as of now, his body still hasn’t been recovered.

The current theory says the owner was probably dragged away by an undercurrent beneath the sea, drifting out from beneath the safety net not too far from the beach.

With an ocean this vast, unless he floats up by himself, it’s going to be tough to find him.

After all, just a hundred meters out from the shore, the water depth increases rapidly. If the body didn’t surface and ran into some fierce carnivorous fish or something else, and then sank to the bottom...well, good luck finding it—needle in a haystack.

There’s more than one video to prove it. Wen Yan couldn’t spot anything off in them.

Just judging from the footage, the guy really was brave.

But then Wen Yan found another record.

Someone else from the company—his whole family went on a trip for three days, and as soon as they came back, he got run over and killed instantly by an out-of-control dump truck.

The crash investigation results are already out.

Autopsy shows the driver had actually died a few minutes earlier from sudden cardiac death, lost consciousness—and surveillance footage from the intersection backs it up.

The entire accident is recorded both on street cameras and the truck’s dashcam.

And this case even had people from the Scorching Sun Department involved, because at the moment of death, the driver’s resentment was so intense he turned into a ghost and went home that same night, drawing the department’s attention.

Finally, someone from the Scorching Sun Department brought in an expert from Mount Luofu to enlighten the truck driver’s ghost.

That’s when they found out—the ghost was just trying to get home, wanted to dig out the tens of thousands in stashed-away cash he’d saved and forgotten about over the years, to make sure his family got it.

While at it, they asked him about the cause of death. The driver ghost said he’d been feeling unwell, meant to pull over, but was in a rush—hesitated for a minute or two, then suddenly lost it, and, in the end, killed a bystander.

The driver ghost was worried that his family would have to sell the house to pay damages, but after confirming that the company’s mandatory insurance—bought just last year—was still valid, he realized the claim would cover the payout.

And dying suddenly on the job is also covered by insurance—at least his family wouldn’t need to worry too much about getting by.

Once he was sure there’d be no need to sell the house to pay compensation, the driver ghost finally felt relief and dissipated on the spot.

All of this is on the Scorching Sun Department’s records, with the whole process recorded on enforcement bodycams.