The Last Free Proposal - Chapter 3
Chapter 3
The final presentation was scheduled for Friday morning at ten o’clock.
Lu Chengyan made a point of bringing me along that day, saying he wanted me to witness the company “landing the biggest deal of the year.” As the car pulled up to the Guanlan headquarters, he was still adjusting his tie in the backseat, his tone almost casual. “Yingzhen, once this deal is done, I’ll promote you to Associate Director. You see, as long as a person is willing to shoulder the burden, their Blessing will eventually come.”
I looked out the window and didn’t respond.
When we reached the conference room, I realized that it wasn’t just the branding and marketing teams present today.
The Procurement Director, the head of Legal, a copyright consultant, and even the group auditors were sitting in the back row.
Lu Chengyan only faltered for a second before quickly regaining his smile and beginning his presentation of the “final proposal.”
He spoke smoothly.
Too smoothly.
He even explained the logic behind the two communication nodes that had stumped Pei Xingyao with a straight face. Because it was the blood and sweat of others, all he had to do was memorize it.
I sat diagonally behind him, my palms slick with sweat.
In the final five minutes of the presentation, Lu Chengyan clicked to the last slide, preparing to wrap up, when Xu Xizhe spoke.
“President Lu, before we officially finalize the bid, we need to perform a copyright verification as per our protocol.”
Lu Chengyan smiled. “Of course.”
Xu Xizhe raised his hand, signaling the technician to switch the large screen to the version information page.
“The initial template for this proposal was first established in May of last year. The original author was Wang Yanqiu. It was supplemented seven times, and the signature records include Pei Xingyao, Qiu Yingzhen, and five others who previously worked for or collaborated with your company. May I ask why, for content completed by so many people, only your company’s name remains on the final signature?”
The conference room suddenly fell silent.
The smile on Lu Chengyan’s face began to stiffen, but he held his ground. “Project proposals are company assets. The output of employees and interns belongs to the company; this is standard practice.”
“Then what about these?”
Xu Xizhe placed a stack of materials on the table.
The first was Wang Yanqiu’s draft for a copyright application from eight months ago.
The second was a royalty-free authorization agreement Pei Xingyao had received before her accident.
The third was a printed page of the Blessing Statistics 2025.
The fourth was a transcript of the recording from yesterday afternoon where Lu Chengyan personally admitted that “freeloading is a Blessing.”
Lu Chengyan’s expression finally changed, and he whipped his head around to look at me.
His gaze was like a knife, as if he wanted to shred me on the spot.
I didn’t flinch.
I simply pressed the send button on my phone.
In the next second, the email notifications of several people in the conference room chimed simultaneously.
I had set the compressed file Pei Xingyao left behind to be sent as a scheduled mass email. The recipients included everyone from Guanlan attending the meeting, as well as Chengyuan’s finance, administration, and HR departments, and everyone who had been denied credit, payment, or compensation by Lu Chengyan over the past two years.
“Qiu Yingzhen, have you lost your mind?” Lu Chengyan’s voice was hoarse.
“No,” I said, standing up and looking at him. “I’ve just made public the accounts you love to calculate so much.”
He tried to speak again, but the screen suddenly went black.
Immediately after, the page Pei Xingyao had hidden in the template jumped out on its own.
Black text on a white background, so sharp it made one’s eyes ache.
“If you are seeing this, it means you are stealing someone else’s work again.”
Below it, rows of names were listed quietly, like a line of gravestones that had arrived far too late.
Someone in the conference room gasped.
The Procurement Director was the first to speak. “President Lu, what exactly is going on here?”
Sweat broke out on Lu Chengyan’s forehead, but he was still trying to bluff. “A technical glitch. This is just malicious retaliation from an employee. We can handle this internally…”
“You can’t handle this internally.”
The door was pushed open at that moment.
Two people walked in: one was the head of Guanlan’s internal affairs, and the other was from the regional labor inspection bureau.
I recognized the latter because Xu Xizhe had taken me to file a formal report last night.
The internal affairs head placed a folder on the table and said expressionlessly, “Lu Chengyan, your company is suspected of fabricating labor relations, maliciously transferring copyright risks, withholding labor compensation, and concealing evidence of a safety accident. Today’s cooperation is terminated. Please deal with the investigation team directly from now on.”
Lu Chengyan stood up abruptly, his chair making a harsh scraping sound against the floor.
“On what grounds? An intern died-what does that have to do with the company?”
I stared at him, suddenly realizing I wasn’t surprised by that sentence at all.
This was who he was.
In his eyes, a human life was only measured by its price tag.
Xu Xizhe pushed the final piece of evidence to the front.
“On the grounds of this building maintenance report. A week before the accident, the railing on the east side of the rooftop had already been reported for repair because it was loose. On the night of the accident, you chased Pei Xingyao upstairs and snatched her laptop. You didn’t call the police, you didn’t call an ambulance, and you had the surveillance footage deleted the next day. You can keep claiming you’re innocent, but this time, there’s no one left to keep the books for you.”
It was as if Lu Chengyan’s final layer of skin had been stripped away; his face turned a sickly shade of grey.
He stared at me intently, then suddenly burst into a laugh-a twisted, ugly sound.
“Qiu Yingzhen, you think you’ve won just because you brought me down? You worked at Chengyuan for four years. You’ve done pro bono cases for the company, and you’ve forced subordinates to pull all-nighters. What’s the difference between you and me?”
Everyone in the conference room turned to look at me.
In that moment, I didn’t want to hide at all.
Because he was right.
I had indeed tacitly accepted all of it, and I had even participated in it.
I took a deep breath, my voice steady as I spoke.
“The difference is that I’m standing here today and owning up to it.”
“I admit I was a coward. I admit I used to lie to newcomers by saying ‘everyone goes through this.’ I admit I kept my mouth shut for the sake of a paycheck even though I knew it was wrong. Until Pei Xingyao died, I never even considered that I was an accomplice.”
“But you’re different. You knew exactly what you were consuming from start to finish. You ate other people’s creativity, you ate their time, you ate their futures, and in the end, you wouldn’t even let the dead rest. You recorded all of it in your Blessing Statistics and actually thought it was a sign of your own talent.”
“Lu Chengyan, exploitation is never a Blessing.”
I looked him in the eye, enunciating every word of the final sentence.
“It’s stealing lives.”
His mouth hung open, but in the end, he couldn’t say a word.
Naturally, that presentation was never finished.
Lu Chengyan was taken away for investigation that same day, and Chengyuan lost its three most important clients within a week. The first explosion didn’t happen on a legal level, but within the industry groups.
The “Blessing Statistics” spreadsheet seemed to grow wings, flying into the phones of countless peers. Some watched the drama, some played deaf, and some hurled vitriol. But even more people began to post their own stories of unpaid fees, deleted credits, and forced signatures on free licenses.
It turned out Chengyuan wasn’t an isolated case.
It turned out so many people had been coaxed by phrases like “I’m giving you an opportunity,” “I’m giving you a platform,” and “Let’s not talk about money yet.”
A voice actress posted her chat logs, saying she had recorded nine versions for Chengyuan, only to be told, “The client doesn’t have the budget right now; we’ll prioritize you next time.” A photographer laid out wedding proofs with the watermarks cropped out, saying he had personally covered half a month’s venue fees for that job. There was even a former planner who had switched to selling insurance; at two in the morning, he replied in the group, realizing that he hadn’t been “not good enough” back then-he had simply been treated as a free, disposable resource from the very beginning.
Pei Xingyao had simply torn away that veil for us, at the cost of her own life.
One month later, the police retrieved and recovered the remaining surveillance footage from the building’s equipment.
The footage wasn’t complete, but it was enough to see clearly.
Pei Xingyao had indeed gone to the rooftop that night to confront Lu Chengyan. She wanted to take back her laptop and the original agreement. Lu Chengyan tried to grab them, and during the struggle, she hit a loose railing and fell over. In the final second before she fell, her hand was still tightly clutching the transparent file bag containing the agreement.
If the railing had been secured in time, if the surveillance hadn’t been deleted, if he had called for help immediately… this story might have had a different ending.
But he did none of those things.
Because in that moment, the first thing he thought of wasn’t a human life; it was the proposal, the contract, and how to scrub the risk away from the company.
In the end, the court did not find him guilty of intentional homicide, but it did convict him of death by gross negligence, tampering with evidence, and multiple counts of labor and copyright infringement.
On the day the verdict was released, Xu Xizhe and I went to visit Pei Xingyao.
The wind was strong at the cemetery. Her smile in the photo was still gentle, just like when she first joined the company and stood by my desk clutching her laptop, asking me, “Sister Yingzhen, can I do even better?”
I placed a copy of the verdict in front of her grave and said softly, “Xingyao, they’ve finally started paying back what they owe you.”
Xu Xizhe stood to the side and set down the white bellflowers he had brought.
On the way back, he asked me what I wanted to do next.
I thought about it for a long time and said I’d start by getting a full night’s sleep, and then I’d settle all those old favors and debts from the past, one by one.
He smiled and tilted his head toward me. “I’m planning to start a small team that specializes in copyright and labor disputes. I need someone who understands the creative chain. Are you interested?”
“Will the salary be paid on time?”
“On time, with a contract, social security, and overtime calculated separately.”
For the first time, I gave a genuine smile.
Later, I really did join him.
We hung a whiteboard in the most prominent spot in the office with our case principles written on it. The first rule was:
We do not accept free trial assignments.
The second rule was:
Credit first, quote second for all creative work.
The third rule was only one sentence:
Exploitation is not a Blessing.
Below that sentence, I added a line in very small print.
Because some people need to be reminded repeatedly:
Don’t use someone else’s life to extend your own luck.
