Chapter 31 What Grows in the Mud ( Mr. Wu)( MR. Rei)
Across town, atop a glass-paneled tower that caught the sun like a blade, Mr. Wu stood in his office wrapped in silence and cherry wood.
The walls were lined with lacquered bookshelves, heavy with leather-bound volumes and heirloom scrolls. A bronze crane sculpture perched near the fireplace. Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched behind him, drinking in the city’s pulse like it belonged to him. Thick rugs swallowed footsteps. Even the air smelled expensive aged cedar, ink, and something faintly floral, like jasmine after rain.
Behind him, his assistant stepped in quietly.
“The meeting with Lotus and Joy has been confirmed for Friday at 11 AM,” she said.
Mr. Wu didn’t turn. He simply nodded once; eyes fixed on the skyline like he was watching something beyond the horizon.
“I had a dream last night,” he said softly, more to the glass than to her.
“About Charls.”
His voice dropped into memory.
In the dream, he was back at the old house—Charls’s house. The one with creaky stairs and jasmine vines that curled like question marks.
He’d walked up the gravel path, unfamiliar shame sitting in his chest. The door stood open—just a crack—but no one greeted him.
Until a voice behind him murmured,
“I haven’t seen you in a while.”
He turned.
It was Charls older, softer, but sharp as ever.
“You embraced the Empire,” the old man said, no judgment in his tone, only observation. “But since you been away… the door’s stayed open.”
Wu stepped closer, but the dream shifted.
Black eels slithered out from under the floorboards. One by one. Wet and silent. They slid through the crack in the door like they had keys.
He turned to ask Charls what it meant—
But the house faded.
And then… his mother’s voice. Disembodied, floating through fog.
“What grows in the mud…?”
The memory snapped as the office door opened.
Mr. Rei strolled in without knocking, as usual too familiar, too powerful to care about protocol. He dropped into the leather chair opposite Wu like he owned it.
“Your assistant’s too polite. She offered me two sugars this time.”
Mr. Wu didn’t respond immediately. He turned from the window, poured himself a slow cup of tea from the jade pot on the tray, then looked at Rei across the rim of his porcelain.
“What’s beautiful… but grows out of mud?”
Mr. Rei tilted his head. Smirked.
“A lotus flower,” he said without hesitation.
Mr. Wu nodded. “I had a dream about Charls. About his house. And eels slipping out the door like secrets.”
Rei raised an eyebrow. “Ominous. You think it means something?”
“I think it means we’ve built something powerful,” Wu replied, “but hollow. We’ve been building walls business, image, dominance. But we’ve forgotten how to open the door.”
“To what?”
“To community. To legacy. To truth.”
He set the teacup down. “Charls stood for something. And we’ve lost it.”
Rei leaned back, finally intrigued.
“And you think Lotus his granddaughter is the key to bringing it back?”
“I know she is,” Wu said. “She’s raw but rooted. She’s been through the mud and didn’t rot. She grew.”
Mr. Rei chuckled softly. “Then let’s hope they don’t know what they’re worth yet. That kind of fire doesn’t come cheap.”.”
Wu gave a rare smile. “She won’t be bought. But she might be invited.”
Rei took another sip, eyes narrowing. “And the other one Joy, right? The tech prodigy everyone keeps whispering about but nobody new her identity and name ?”
Wu’s smile deepened. “Thorne found out she was the only apprentice ever taken under Rune Calder. The Rune Calder the reclusive engineer who wrote SIM-KHA, the only stable adaptive program still running across seventy-two percent of the tech world. Every corporation’s foundation code traces back to that algorithm, whether they admit it or not.”
Rei sat up a little. “That Rune Calder? I thought he vanished before opening another company.”
“He did. But in his final years, the one who ran his operations wasn’t a CEO it was Lotus. Charls’s girl. She handled the administration of Calder’s first private firm while Joy wrote code in the back office. Two girls, barely out of high school, building a framework half the Empire runs on.”
Rei whistled low. “So we’re not meeting some small-time entrepreneurs we’re meeting the architect’s heirs.”
Wu’s gaze flicked back toward the window. The city below gleamed like circuitry. “Exactly. We built empires out of their blueprints. Now the original minds are walking back through the door.”
Rei stood, adjusting his cufflinks. “Alright then. Let’s meet the flower