American Adventure: My Uncle is Don Quixote

Li Wei sat in the car, saying nothing.

"To be specific," Mason said, his breath fogging in the cold air as he held up a finger to list the points for Li Wei, "first, they’ll launch a competing product with nearly identical packaging, taste, and color, but at only one-third of your price."

"Second, they’ll use a promotional budget ten times larger than yours to flood all channels on your launch day—Walmart, Costco, 7-Eleven, every major supermarket chain."

"Sounds like your partners are quite influential," Li Wei said with a small smile. "Can you tell me their names?"

Mason paused for a moment before continuing, "They know you plan to launch on Super Bowl Sunday. So will they."

"So, is it Gatorade?"

Mason’s pupils contracted almost imperceptibly, but the smile remained on his face. He neither confirmed nor denied it.

"Regardless of who it is," he said, "100 million USD is an excellent offer. That’s my personal opinion."

After speaking, he once again held out the folder.

Li Wei didn’t take it.

"Mr. Li Wei," Mason said, a hint of irritation in his voice, "you don’t know who you’re dealing with. I’m a Giants fan. I’m really advising you—"

"No," Li Wei said, the corner of his mouth curling up slightly. "You’re the ones who don’t know who I am."

Mason stared at Li Wei for a long time. His lips moved slightly, as if he wanted to say more, but in the end, he just nodded.

’I guess people who have reached the pinnacle in their field are all firm believers in their own path.’

"I respect your choice," he said. "Some things, once set in motion, are very difficult to stop."

He pulled open the door of the Maybach and got in.

The Maybach’s headlights cut through the dusk as the black car slowly pulled out of the parking lot.

Li Wei started his Koenigsegg again as well.

The Jester’s Skull was floating above his shoulder, chattering away as it relayed the information it had gathered.

[I smell a siege. I smell a conspiracy.]

[I see... damnable, greedy nobles. The old lords are going to crush my master’s sweet little nectar with mountains of aged wine.]

[Wooo wooo... a poor jester... must I find a new master again?]

’Cut the crap,’ Li Wei commanded in his mind. ’Where is this warehouse?’

[Let me see inside that pimp’s brain... It’s a bit fuzzy... but it’s no match for me! My eyes... wait, I don’t have eyes.]

[That’s right, I see it! A warehouse west of the Royal City! They’ve already stored millions of bottles of inferior fruit wine, ready to be shipped to taverns all over the country!]

Li Wei thought about Mason’s words as he drove.

’A scorched-earth strategy.’

It was the most savage, crude, but also most effective tactic in business competition.

To put it simply, it was a classic case of bad money driving out good. By flooding the market with an overwhelming wave of copycat products on the very day of Li Wei’s launch, they would confuse consumers.

The average person walking by wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, nor would they bother to.

They would just say, "What’s so special about this? It’s everywhere."

What’s more, they controlled the distribution channels.

This tactic was perfectly suited for crushing a startup like Li Wei’s, which had far less capital and channel access, in its cradle.

Just as Li Wei was contemplating how to use the intelligence he had, perhaps by having Jin Heon or Don Quixote spread some information to expose Gatorade’s plot in advance, the system suddenly popped up again.

[You have encountered a quest: The Kingdom’s Parasites]

[Quest Description: These old, conservative nobles, like vultures in the dark of night or Dark Elves in the wild, brazenly suppress and attack emerging forces. If you are unwilling to submit to them, they will try to crush you in the cradle. Even if word spreads among the common folk, the peasants and adventurers will bow to their intimidation and dare not speak out.

Unfortunately for them, this time they have encountered you. For you shall wield the blessed sword bestowed upon you by the Princess and personally destroy their conspiracy.]

[Quest Objective: Personally destroy the warehouse they are using to store the inferior wine and cleanse the tainted trade routes.]

[Quest Reward: Free attribute points +0.5]

’A whole 0.5 attribute points in one go!’

’This is a very generous quest reward.’

Li Wei glanced at his skill list.

’Looks like I really do have to make a trip myself.’

He drove the Koenigsegg back to the underground garage of the Fortress City Apartments, turned off the engine, and sat in the car for five minutes.

He replayed every word Mason had said, as well as the intelligence the Jester’s Skull had relayed to him.

After returning to his apartment, he grabbed a black baseball cap, put it on, and changed into an ordinary hooded sweatshirt and cargo pants.

Following the Jester’s Skull’s directions, Li Wei intermittently activated [Silver-Grade: Vision Obscurement] and made his way to New Jersey, near the Linden industrial area south of Newark Airport.

The moment he got out of the car, a biting, cold wind hit him in the face.

It was about to snow.

According to the weather forecast, this wasn’t going to be light snow, but rather the prelude to the third blizzard of the winter.

The sky hung low, the lead-gray clouds almost touching the roofs of the low-slung factory buildings in the industrial park.

’Perfect weather.’

Even though [Silver-Grade: Vision Obscurement] was active, Li Wei still habitually pulled up his hood.

He walked slowly along the wire fence on the perimeter of the industrial park, carefully surveying the area, which could almost be called a ghost town.

During the day, this place might belong to truck drivers and blue-collar workers, but after 10 p.m., aside from the occasional passing truck, Li Wei couldn’t see another soul.

The desolation made it feel like a scene straight out of an American TV show, and it also caused a long-forgotten thrill to stir in Li Wei’s heart.

Before him should be the warehouse storing the inferior products Gatorade had produced ahead of time. A temporary wire fence had been erected around the perimeter, and two refrigerated transport trucks were parked at the gate.

The enormous warehouse resembled a cyclops crouching in the darkness.

’Who would have thought?’

Li Wei looked at the complex of buildings before him.

’By day, I’m a superstar, the hero of all New York.’

With a light leap, [Sky Stepping (Lv. 1)] allowed him to execute an unbelievable mid-air twist, clearing the wire fence and landing directly inside the industrial park.

’By night, in a place no one knows about, I’m here striking down my business rival.’

As he thought this, Li Wei strolled casually, observing the side of the warehouse complex.

The loading dock, used for large trucks during the day, was now deserted, with only a few forklifts sitting idly by.

Above the loading dock was a side door, which looked like an employee entrance, fitted with a standard electronic keycard lock.

Li Wei walked up to the door and gave it a push—it was locked.

He examined the model of the lock, glanced at the gap between the doorframe and the wall, and then nonchalantly reached out his right hand. His gloved fingers gripped the metal strip at the edge of the doorframe.

With a slight squeeze, he crushed the doorframe out of shape!

As the frame warped slightly, the magnetic lock disengaged, and the door silently popped open a crack.

’From a camera’s perspective, it would just look like the door wasn’t closed properly and was blown open by the wind.’

Li Wei slipped sideways through the opening.

The inside of the warehouse was brightly lit. Even though it was nearly 11 p.m., all the lights were on. Dozens of rows of huge industrial fluorescent lamps illuminated the entire space as if it were daytime.

Standing in the shadows of the loading dock, Li Wei’s first impression could be summed up in two words: towering mountains.

Before him, the main space of the warehouse was at least the size of three basketball courts, stacked two to three meters high from the floor with hundreds of thousands of neatly packed cases of bottled drinks.

Dark, frosted bottles. Sport-style spouts. Matte caps.

’Isn’t this my own product?’

"Fack!" Li Wei muttered to himself. "How can Gatorade be this shameless?"

This was practically a pixel-perfect "homage."

It seemed there was truly no such thing as privacy within the bottling plants of Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Apparently, Pepsi had clearly obtained the raw data from the Coca-Cola bottler long ago and had been preparing for Li Wei’s refusal ever since.

[Oh... the old nobles really put some effort into this. The jars for this inferior wine are almost identical to Master’s.]

[However... it’s just ordinary, low-quality liquid inside. Not a single trace of Magic Power.]

Li Wei ignored it and continued walking deeper down the aisles between the shelves.

He needed to figure out how to deal with these millions of bottles and stop them from flooding shelves all across America.

"NYC-01," "LA-07," "CHI-03"—each code corresponded to a delivery batch for a target city.

When he reached the deepest part of the warehouse, he noticed an iron door labeled "EQUIPMENT ROOM / FIRE CONTROL."

’Wait!’

Li Wei suddenly recalled Jin Heon mentioning in a previous report that the FDA in the United States of America has very strict requirements for storage environments. Once a storage environment is contaminated and deemed a "biohazard risk environment," everything within it must undergo a full remediation process, regardless of whether the products themselves were contaminated. The entire process takes at least eight to twelve weeks.

There were only three weeks left until the Super Bowl.

Li Wei looked up at the fire sprinkler system below the ceiling.

’The weather is so cold right now. It would seem perfectly normal for a pipe to freeze and burst, wouldn’t it?’

’And if water from the sprinkler system soaked the warehouse, forcing the entire shipment to be reprocessed and inspected... that would also seem perfectly normal, right?’

Li Wei reached out, pulled open the door marked "FIRE CONTROL," and walked inside.

The room wasn’t large. Li Wei quickly found the poorly maintained fire alarm control panel.

It was clear the warehouse hadn’t been maintained in a long time. Li Wei lifted the access panel below the main unit. The circuit board inside was covered in dust, and the insulation on several wires was even starting to age and peel off.

Li Wei delivered a light punch, sending the alarm system into a deep sleep.

After dealing with the alarm system, Li Wei walked out of the control room and located the sprinkler pipes running along the wall.

He placed one foot on the wall, and then both.

[Sky Stepping (Lv. 1)]!

He walked straight up to the ceiling, his hair and clothes hanging down naturally.

He paid it no mind and quickly found his target—a drain valve used for maintenance.

Li Wei reached out, gripped the brass drain valve, took a deep breath, and gave it a light tap.

"HSSS—"

A faint hiss of air escaped from the valve, followed immediately by a dark brownish liquid seeping out from between the loosened threads.

Li Wei took two steps back, a pleased look on his face.

Just as he’d expected. The warehouse Gatorade had found to avoid detection was not only poorly guarded, but its fire sprinkler system hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. Stagnant water that had settled for years, mixed with dark red rust particles, gushed out. It sprayed across the empty warehouse, pouring down like a filthy waterfall onto the neat stacks of cardboard boxes below.

That was only the first one.

Li Wei moved across the ceiling, hanging upside down like Spider-Man. Over the next three minutes, he broke four more pipes in different locations.

A total of five black fountains now wantonly contaminated the shelves and cardboard boxes below.