Chapter 946: Chapter 946
With the last word typed, Ini raised her head, leaned back in her office chair, and comfortably stretched.
Her gaze drifted to the few colleagues still buried in their work around the small office.
This cramped main office, with its simple desks, employee-brought computers, and a small office for the boss and chief editor partitioned off in the corner, was all there was to their small publication’s workplace.
Among all the colleagues here, only two or three older ones were permanent employees; the rest, like Ini, were interns.
Normally, a company wouldn’t have so many interns.
Everyone knew the boss employed so many interns simply to get the most work done for the lowest wages.
Once the internship ended, one could either accept the boss’s pay cut and become a permanent employee with extremely low wages, like those few ’permanent employees.’
Or be fired by the boss for allegedly being incompetent, and then he would lure new interns with offers of high wages.
By the end of her first month here, from her colleagues’ ’sharing,’ Ini had figured out the scheme.
But she had no choice, even such a low-paying internship was hard to come by these days; she couldn’t afford to lose this job.
Many ’colleagues’ in the office, like her, had no choice but to stay, some even ’volunteered’ to extend their internships.
Even so, Ini’s situation was slightly better than many of her colleagues, as her parents could still support her a bit, and she didn’t have much credit card debt.
From what she knew, many of her colleagues had at least five credit cards, struggled with debts from various credit companies, and some even owed salary loans with weekly interest rates of 7 to 8 percent, skyrocketing to 400% annually.
Those few skinny ’permanent employees’ also bore hefty mortgages.
They couldn’t afford, nor dared, to lose this job.
Just as Ini was stretching, a loud noise came from the office corner; the previously closed glass door of the small office in the corner was abruptly pushed open.
A short, corpulent man with gold-rimmed glasses looked at Ini, who was sitting in her chair, "Ini! Is your new article ready?! What time is it now, when did I tell you to send it to me?"
"Right away! Right away!"
Ini jolted in fright and immediately sat upright.
Her eyes quickly scanned the text on the screen, briefly checking the order of the text and the images and videos included.
Then she quickly scanned it with the company’s AI proofreading software to make sure there were no issues with copyrights, order of text, or typos, before sending the file to the boss through the company’s office software.
"Sent, sent, boss, I’ve sent it to you."
As she dropped the file into the input box, Ini quickly raised her hand and spoke hastily.
"If I catch you slacking off again, you’ll lose today’s wage!"
The stout man huffed angrily, then glanced around at the nearby employees who had heard the noise and were cautiously peeking over, and yelled, "What are you looking at? Don’t you have work to do? If today’s tasks are not finished, you’ll stay and finish them before leaving!"
The nearby employees shrank back and quickly averted their gaze.
The stout man snorted coldly, took a step back, and closed the door.
Seeing that the boss had already received the file in the office software relieved Ini.
The boss would need a few minutes to review the file.
She looked up and glanced at the document editing software, quickly pressing a key to switch to a browser window.
A myriad of news and short video feeds instantly filled her view.
Her gaze swept over these pushes, which were tailored to her personal preferences by the browser’s development company.
Among them, the hottest was tagged with #Mayor’s Speech#.
In the search bar’s local trending list, ’Mayor’s Speech’ was ranked first in Yilan City, proving that the speech was widely circulated and followed by many, not just visible within the mayor’s small circle.
As someone who had previously searched content related to Mayor Lin En, Ini was pushed more related news.
Ini’s gaze scrolled through the dazzling array of news, some of which showed in gray, indicating she had already viewed them.
It was because of these contents that she knew of the riot and attack in front of the White Jasmine Palace and had urgently called Liz to check on her.
Fortunately, Liz was still alive.
After scanning the pushes again, Ini clicked on an article titled ’Mayor’s Speech Transcript’.
Though the pre-event hype for the mayor’s speech was intense and Ini was genuinely interested, she hadn’t yet seen the entire content of the speech or the replay video.
From last night until this morning, except for the times around her call with Liz and her recent stretching, she had had almost no rest, continuously working on her article.
With her click, the article about the content of the mayor’s speech appeared before her.
The article was devoid of anything else but the text of the mayor’s speech, simplicity in both its layout and the authorship: White Jasmine Palace, the official account of the Mayor’s Mansion.
This was an official speech transcript from the Mayor’s Mansion.
Within just a few hours after the speech ended, the article had already gathered over one hundred thousand reads.
Ini’s eyes moved over the speech transcript.
The speech was brief and the format straightforward as Ini silently read through each sentence.
Those lines of concise, powerful text seemed to possess a magical charm that slowly drew out her emotions as she muttered to herself.
Her parents, Liz, the eleven-year-old boy Jerin who worked night shifts, all flashed across her mind.
The densely packed Low-rise District and the people coming and going in this dilapidated area outlined in her memories.
Just then, Ini suddenly noticed in the glasses of the colleague directly across from her, the image of an elderly person with graying hair.
He seemed to be watching a replay of the mayor’s speech as well.
However, the colleague across hadn’t turned on the sound, just watching with subtitles, as playing it aloud could easily draw the boss’s fury.
Realizing something, Ini looked up again and took another glance around at the quietly working colleagues.
The small office was as silent as ever, the overlapped skyscrapers outside the window, and the bustling pedestrians hurried by—all was eerily quiet.
Under the oppressive silence, it seemed as though something intangible were slowly spreading.
She lowered her head and continued to look at the screen before her, then she reached out and clicked the link to the homepage of the speech’s publisher.
The page on the screen flickered briefly, and she was taken directly to the homepage of the official White Jasmine Palace website.
Ini had visited this interface before and usually, upon entering this page, there was a large poster that almost filled the screen, flanked by some news updates.
But now, that large poster had been replaced by a semi-transparent, blurred background image of the White Jasmine Palace.
In front of this background image was a video window centered on the screen, currently replaying the mayor’s speech.
On either side of the video window were several card tabs, each labeled with the name of a "bill".
Ini moved the cursor to the most prominent card labeled "Medical Security Law".
The moment her cursor hovered over it, the card expanded, displaying new content.
This briefly outlined the contents of the "Medical Security Law," including "mandatory employee health insurance purchases," "city government-led establishment of cheap basic medical insurance for residents," "restrictions on medical price increases," and "city-government-funded basic healthcare hospitals."
It then stated the purpose of the bill: to reduce medical expenses for the public and control high medical prices.
Up to this point, the content of the expanded card still seemed normal; many legislators and mayors had done such "bill explanations" before to garner more public support.
However, the content below made Ini slightly stunned.
The following text described the resistance the bill faced within the city council and the voting situation, then explicitly stated that it was the Welme Medical Consortium and Stars Pharma leading the Consortium Alliance that obstructed the passage of the bill in the city council.
Furthermore, the text detailed how they had made large "donations" to certain council members to coerce them into opposing the bill.
The entire introduction, except for not revealing the names of the council members who accepted the donations, explicitly provided the time and place.
Ini paused for a moment, then went back and checked the webpage to confirm it was the official website of the White Jasmine Palace.
Then she opened the same tab again and read through its content carefully.
Although many people had speculated that council members would accept donations from the consortiums, then use the power granted to them by the Yilan people to help the consortium pass bills.
But no one had ever confirmed this, and even if someone tried to, it all came to nothing, or they were silenced forever.
Now, these harsh and stark truths were blatantly displayed before everyone.
Ini immediately began to open other tabs, and nearly each tab under the bills involved related consortium influencing the city council, even detailing how they were involved.
The more Ini read, the more shocking it became.
In a daze, she suddenly realized a fact; Yilan people could not get their city council to pass legislation, deciding the laws of Yilan City, but the consortium could.
Her browsing, however, did not continue smoothly, as she hadn’t been able to finish reading all the tabs when a red "Danger" pop-up appeared.
Subsequently, the browser automatically closed the webpage of the White Jasmine Palace official website.
She attempted to revisit through the browsing history, but the browser instantly displayed a "Dangerous Website" popup, indicating that the site had been reported by many people and banned from access.
The official website of the Mayor’s Mansion of Yilan City had become a dangerous site?
She blankly closed the browser and switched to a few others, all of which flagged the website as dangerous and prohibited access.
Eventually, she switched on her wristband and chose a browser developed by a small company, which allowed her to successfully revisit the White Jasmine Palace official website.
By that time, she had lost interest in viewing the tags.
She shifted her gaze back to the computer, opened the original browser, and returned to the homepage.
Her homepage had been refreshed with a flood of new information, but the content related to "Mayor’s Speech" had reduced to a fraction, and its ranking on the hot list dropped from first to "third".
Ini no longer paid attention to these, and instead, she opened the search bar and looked up content related to the "Medical Insurance Legislation".
Soon, a popular short video caught her eye.
The blogger of the video employed a very professional approach to analyze step-by-step which politicians had received donations concerning the Medical Insurance Legislation.
The video received a lot of comments, and its popularity was surging at that moment.
Ini quickly skimmed through the video and then opened the comments section.
Before she could take a closer look, the screen flickered and turned into a pitch-black background with only a pop-up window displaying "This video has been concealed by the original author."
Watching the dark background automatically close and switch to the next video, Ini took a deep breath.
She quickly exited the browser, switched to another video app, and searched for the same keywords, successfully finding the video that had been "concealed" now reposted.
This repost had just been released, clearly having been reposted immediately after the original had disappeared.
Exiting the video app, Ini paused and stared at the blurry reflection of herself on the screen.
She felt her heart beating slightly faster, intuitively sensing that she was witnessing history at that moment.
In a smokeless internet realm, an invisible war had already begun.
Right then, her desktop work application flickered, and her boss sent a new message,
["Ini, what you wrote this time was good, really good, but are the rights to these photos fully cleared? I hope for some good news."]
Ini sent over a contract with an electronic signature.
The boss received the file, and quickly replied, ["Exclusive publication rights? As long as we publish it, they can’t sell it to anyone else, not bad, Ini, you’re very good, very talented, I’ll make you a permanent employee."]
Looking at the chat history, Ini paused and typed out a "Thank you, Boss."
Then hesitated, deleted those words, and quickly typed, ["Have you reviewed the press release? Can we publish it now?"]
["Of course, it’s all set up now. Ini, your concern for the company pleases me, you’re a talented young lady,"]
The boss immediately responded, ["I have bought a lot of advertisements, just you watch, we’re going to make a killing."]
Ini didn’t reply directly but put down her device and looked at the press release waiting to be published, staring at the Floating Warplane charging towards the flames in the article.
In reality, she was vulnerable, a single bullet could kill her, but on the battlefield of news, she was a professional.
In the silent stillness, the soundless flames continued to burn fiercely.