Chapter 281
Half an hour later, in the hotel's business suite.
Li Sinan threw her briefcase onto the sofa, pulled out a chair to sit in front of the computer, took out her phone, and started making calls.
Even a fool would know that something was wrong. They had a great discussion yesterday, but the sudden hostility today meant someone was definitely playing tricks behind the scenes.
She just didn't know if the sabotage was coming from inside the mobile phone manufacturers or from the outside.
In less than thirty minutes, the intelligence she asked for came back.
Li Sinan hung up the phone, her face ashen.
"I found out what happened."
She looked at the legal counsel and assistant standing to the side, her voice ice-cold.
"Last night, the executives from the WeChat business department of Penguin Group took their team and visited the heads of these top mobile phone manufacturers in Shenzhen one by one."
The legal counsel was a bit surprised.
"Penguin?"
"How did they move so fast?"
"Not just fast, but ruthless."
Li Sinan rested both hands on the desk. "Penguin directly threw out double our pre-installation buyout fee. Moreover, they added extremely harsh exclusivity clauses."
"What clauses?"
"As long as the WeiLiao icon doesn't appear in the manufacturer's factory pre-installed list for new phones, the pre-installation of all popular software under Penguin can be negotiated. They even promised to give the manufacturers a cut of WeChat's splash screen advertising revenue."
The little assistant couldn't help but curse out loud after hearing this.
"With Penguin's massive size, they're actually playing such dirty tricks?"
Li Sinan didn't reply.
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down.
Penguin's scale was right there; a budget of one billion was no joke.
The other party was dead set on completely blocking WeiLiao's path to survival across all channels.
She picked up her phone and dialed Gu Ran's number directly.
Qinglin University, boys' dormitory.
Gu Ran sat at his desk, lines of code running across his computer screen.
His phone vibrated. He glanced at the caller ID and pressed the answer button.
"Boss, we have a situation." Li Sinan spoke extremely fast, revealing an unconcealable anxiety.
She reported everything in detail: Penguin swooping in overnight, wildly throwing money to buy out the channels, and the manufacturers collectively making excuses and delaying.
"Boss, Penguin is trying to pull the rug out from under us. Once the hardware pre-installation channels are monopolized by them, the results of our offline promotions will be greatly discounted."
"I request to immediately take the team and stake out the manufacturers' buildings again."
"We can appropriately yield some profit margins, or even waive the early-stage revenue sharing. I'll make a few more trips and fight to the death to snatch the contracts back."
The other end of the phone was quiet for two seconds.
There was none of the anger or anxiety that Li Sinan had expected.
A very light chuckle came from the receiver.
"Ms. Li, what are you anxious about?"
Gu Ran's voice was steady, carrying a certain lazy tone.
Li Sinan froze.
"Boss, Penguin threw double the money and set up an exclusivity agreement. If we don't act now, we'll really be out of the game."
Gu Ran's slender fingers hit the Enter key.
"You're wrong. Did the manufacturers directly reject you today?"
Li Sinan recalled President Wang's words: "No, he said the internal processes weren't finished and they needed to consider it for another two days."
Gu Ran picked up the water cup by his hand and took a sip.
"That's exactly it."
"If Penguin's conditions were truly impeccable, they wouldn't have even let you in the door today. They would have just notified you that the cooperation was canceled. Why would they leave a loose end and make you wait for news?"
Li Sinan's brain worked rapidly, faintly grasping a clue.
"You mean..."
"Penguin has money, that's true. But does Penguin's half-finished WeChat have a voice call function?" Gu Ran hit the nail on the head.
Li Sinan blurted out, "No!"
"When hardware manufacturers sell phones, ultimately it's to provide users with the best experience. A defective product that doesn't even have a voice function and can only send text and pictures, even if Penguin pays them to take it, can the manufacturers install it in their phones and use it as a core selling point?"
Gu Ran's words completely tore away the facade of the business game.
"Them stalling you today isn't because the processes aren't finished at all. They are using Penguin's quote as a bargaining chip to wait for a better price."
"Playing both sides and suppressing prices on both ends, this is the most basic trick of businessmen."
Li Sinan's hand gripping the phone tightened slightly, the fog in her heart instantly cleared.
Sure enough, she still needed to learn more.
Switching careers halfway to do business in the internet industry, she was still too green.
However... how could Gu Ran, a college student, be so experienced?
Li Sinan suppressed her doubts and continued asking.
"Boss, what should we do now then?"
"Continue to raise our quote and bid against Penguin?"
"Bid what? We won't add a single cent."
Gu Ran's tone was decisive. "Stop all private contact immediately, and don't bring up any profit-yielding negotiations."
"Do nothing?"
"Right, do nothing."
He leaned back in his chair. "Tell everyone on the team that they don't need to go out for business these next few days. Doesn't Shenzhen have the Window of the World and Happy Valley? Take everyone out to play, eat something good, and the company will fully reimburse the expenses. I'm giving you all a vacation to rest."
Li Sinan was even more bewildered, completely unable to understand Gu Ran's train of thought.
Right now was the most white-hot moment of competition with Penguin, and he actually ordered a vacation for the whole staff?
Even if they didn't make contact, it would be good to at least ask around about Penguin's progress. What use was a vacation?
"But Boss, what if the manufacturers really get dizzy from Penguin's money and sign the exclusivity agreement?"
"They won't."
"WeiLiao's daily active user data is right there, and user stickiness has already formed. Comparing WeChat and WeiLiao, they can still tell which one will let them sell a few more phones."
The phone hung up.
Li Sinan turned her head and found the legal counsel and assistant staring at her nervously.
"President Li, what did the boss say? Are we going to the manufacturers' side to block them now?" the assistant asked.
She took a deep breath, threw her phone on the desk, and her tense shoulders completely relaxed.
"We're not going."
"Huh?"
"The boss said that Penguin's half-finished product without voice features can't satisfy the manufacturers. The manufacturers are waiting for a better price, so we will hold our ground."
After saying that, she closed her laptop. "Notify everyone to pack up. We're going to Happy Valley for team building this afternoon. The company will reimburse us."
The legal counsel and assistant looked at each other in dismay, their faces full of disbelief.
But seeing Li Sinan's confident expression, the team's originally anxious and restless emotions miraculously settled down.
Meanwhile, at Qinglin University.
Gu Ran put down his phone and turned his gaze back to the computer screen.
In the bottom right corner of the screen, an encrypted email popped up.
The sender was the core development group of WeiLiao's technology department.
The email subject had only two words: Testing Complete.
Gu Ran opened the email. Inside was an installation package for a brand new feature.
Penguin thought they could buy out the channels just by throwing money around?
Thought they could copy the voice call feature just by rushing the work overnight?
Gu Ran chuckled lightly. "You're moving too slow. The times have changed."
He moved his mouse and clicked the extract button on the installation package.
The core killer features of the major WeiLiao V2.0 update, Moments video updates and the People Nearby radar search, officially entered the countdown to implementation...
uld barely embark on the path to immortality. Just as he was on the verge of death, his golden finger awakened. No matter whether it was poison, drained blood and vital energy, diminished lifespan, or any other physical debuff caused by paying a price—once midnight passed, everything would be refreshed. From then on, whenever someone asked what kind of person Chu Ran was, the answer was simple: Forbidden arts that other cultivators dared not learn? Chu Ran would learn them. Prices that even demonic cultivators dared not pay? Chu Ran would pay them. Lifespan that even righteous cultivators dared not burn? Chu Ran would burn it. All the blood essence in his body? Take it. Want both his hands and feet? He would cut them off and send them to you. You say he’s finished? He wasn’t built to sit idle. You think he’s gone mad? No—he was simply waiting for midnight. From that day onward, Chu Ran would respect neither Heaven nor Earth, bow to neither gods nor ghosts. He had only one wish: For midnight to arrive a little sooner.
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
