We really must go and join in the fun.

2:30 PM.

20th floor of the Beijing Global Trade Center, Deep Space Technology Headquarters.

The front desk area was incredibly busy. A new intern named Jiang Ke, who just joined today, was being ordered around by the administrative supervisor to copy documents and make coffee, spinning non-stop like a top.

Chen Zhi sat on the leather sofa in the CEO's office, legs crossed, checking the company's recent updates.

The office door was pushed open.

Pei Ningxue walked in, holding a thick stack of meeting minutes.

"Stop playing around." Pei Ningxue walked over to the coffee table and tossed the documents in front of Chen Zhi. "The people from Melody Beat will be downstairs any minute."

Chen Zhi sat up straight.

"These big tech companies sure move fast." Chen Zhi stretched lazily. "We just talked on the phone yesterday, and today they're already knocking on our door."

Pei Ningxue looked at him, her gaze sweeping over the dark circles under his eyes.

"How could they not be fast?" Pei Ningxue scoffed coldly. "Zhang Yiming dreams of investing in Deep Space. As for you, Mr. Chen, you've been 'busy' outside for a few nights. Do you even have the energy to deal with that old fox today?"

Chen Zhi coughed dryly twice.

"What are you saying, Ms. Pei?" Chen Zhi shamelessly reached out to hold Pei Ningxue's hand. "Aren't I working myself to the bone for the company? As for dealing with them, with you, my capable better half, keeping an eye on things beside me, what do I have to fear?"

Pei Ningxue's ears turned slightly red. She rolled her eyes at Chen Zhi. "Stop being so glib. Zhang Yiming is personally leading the team this time; he's definitely not here just for a casual chat. You'd better be on high alert."

Just as they were talking, the landline on the desk rang.

It was the front desk. They had arrived.

Chen Zhi stood up, straightened his clothes, and led Pei Ningxue out.

Just as they reached the elevator lobby, they saw a group of people walking out of the elevator.

The man leading the group was wearing an extremely ordinary gray short-sleeved T-shirt paired with dark casual pants. He wore black-rimmed glasses and had a slightly receding hairline. If he walked down the streets of Zhongguancun, he would absolutely be mistaken for an ordinary code-monkey programmer.

But this man was currently one of the most prominent big shots in the domestic internet circle—the founder of Melody Beat, Zhang Yiming.

"Mr. Zhang." Chen Zhi went up to greet him, taking the initiative to extend his hand.

Zhang Yiming walked over quickly, grasped Chen Zhi's hand with both of his, and looked him up and down. A flash of undisguised surprise crossed his eyes.

"Mr. Chen, you truly are young and promising," Zhang Yiming exclaimed. "Before coming here, I imagined you'd be young, but seeing you in person, it's still unbelievable. I didn't expect you to be this young. This world really does belong to you young people."

Chen Zhi grinned and casually replied.

"Haha, you bet."

The smile on Zhang Yiming's face froze.

He was stunned for a moment.

You bet?

Bet on what?

The several Melody Beat executives following behind Zhang Yiming also looked at each other in dismay.

Standing diagonally behind Chen Zhi, the corners of Pei Ningxue's mouth twitched. She wished she could pretend not to know this guy.

Zhang Yiming, after all, was someone who had seen his fair share of storms. His mind worked quickly, and he immediately laughed it off to smooth things over.

"Young people just think differently," Zhang Yiming said with a laughing shake of his head. "No wonder you could create something as disruptive as Moss."

He paused, a hint of complaint in his tone. "But Mr. Chen, you sure are busy. I had my assistant try to schedule an appointment with you several times; it really wasn't easy to get to see you."

Chen Zhi was complaining frantically in his head.

How could I not be busy?

Just acting as the boyfriend for Melody Beat's future splash-screen spokesperson has already taken up a massive amount of my energy. I still have to find time to go back to school for classes, and I have to prevent my own backyard from catching fire with all this drama.

"Haha, it's a startup, you know. Everything is just getting off the ground, so there are a lot of things to do and it's quite busy."

The group moved to Deep Space Technology's largest conference room.

Jiang Ke walked in carrying a tea tray and poured tea for the big shots. She kept her head down the entire time, behaving perfectly by the book, not even daring to steal a glance at Chen Zhi. After pouring the tea, she quickly retreated.

Zhang Yiming took a sip of tea and began to follow the conventional commercial negotiation routine, first trying to build a rapport.

"Actually, back when Moss first came out and held its closed beta livestream on the Melody platform, I noticed you guys."

Zhang Yiming put down his teacup, his tone filled with deep regret. "At the time, I had someone contact you, wanting to be the first to invest in Deep Space Technology. I didn't expect us to still be a step too slow. What a pity."

According to normal business flattery logic, Chen Zhi should politely say something like, "Not at all, there will be other opportunities to collaborate in the future."

But Chen Zhi did no such thing.

He leaned back in his chair, waved his hand, and directly interrupted Zhang Yiming's spellcasting.

"It's not a pity, not a pity at all," Chen Zhi looked at Zhang Yiming, his tone sincere. "You guys did call back then, but I had them hang up directly. We just didn't answer your calls."

The conference room instantly went dead silent.

The eyes of the several Melody Beat executives widened like saucers as they stared in disbelief at this college freshman sitting at the head of the table.

The tip of Pei Ningxue's pen, which was taking notes, suddenly paused. She looked at Chen Zhi like she was looking at a psychopath.

Who talks like that?!

The boss of a tech giant worth hundreds of billions is exchanging pleasantries with you, and you just directly smash the steps he built to save face?

The muscles on Zhang Yiming's face twitched uncontrollably.

He had navigated the business world for so many years, crossing swords with countless investors and entrepreneurs. He had met arrogant ones and cunning ones, but he had truly never met someone who played so completely against the rules—killing the conversation the moment he opened his mouth.

Is this kid genuinely arrogant, or is he just missing a screw in his head?

But a top-tier boss's psychological fortitude was obviously no joke.

Zhang Yiming took a deep breath, forcefully swallowing his speechlessness, his facial expression management absolutely impeccable.

"Mr. Chen... is truly humorous," Zhang Yiming squeezed out a few words dryly.

"I try." Chen Zhi didn't plan to continue torturing the other party and cut straight to the chase. "Mr. Zhang personally led a team here today, so I assume it's not to catch up on old times. If you have any collaboration plans, just say it."

Zhang Yiming also dropped the pleasantries, leaned forward slightly, and entered negotiation mode.

"Since Mr. Chen is a straight shooter, I'll be direct."

Zhang Yiming folded his hands on the table. "Mr. Chen rejected our proposal on the phone yesterday to trade investment for underlying algorithm authorization. I can understand that; Deep Space Technology doesn't lack money right now. So today, I'm here to talk about ecosystem integration and traffic exchange."

The assistant behind him immediately handed over several copies of the collaboration proposal, distributing them to Chen Zhi and Pei Ningxue.

"Melody Beat currently possesses the largest and most active short-video user base in the country," Zhang Yiming threw out his chips. "Our daily active user data, user behavioral logic, and video tag libraries are all ready-made gold mines. For Moss to evolve, it needs massive amounts of data to be fed into it. And we happen to have that data."

Zhang Yiming stared at Chen Zhi. "I want all Melody Beat products to have access to Moss's API interface. In exchange, we will open up a portion of our core databases to Deep Space Technology and provide extremely high-priority traffic exposure."

Chen Zhi flipped through two pages of the proposal in his hand and casually tossed it onto the table.

He had to admit, Zhang Yiming had an extremely sharp eye.

While other auto companies were still fighting tooth and nail over a sliver of the autonomous driving market, Zhang Yiming had already recognized Moss's terrifying potential in the fields of content generation and distribution.

"An open database?" Chen Zhi smiled. "Mr. Zhang, you're painting quite a big picture here. If you're willing to provide desensitized data, I'm certainly happy to accept it. But there's no such thing as a free lunch. What do you want in return?"

"We need Moss to help us reconstruct our recommendation algorithms."

Zhang Yiming made no attempt to hide his ambition. "At the same time, we need Deep Space Tech to provide exclusive technical support in automatic video generation, special effects rendering, and smart customer service modules."

Chen Zhi turned his head and glanced at Pei Ningxue.

Catching his drift, Pei Ningxue opened the laptop in front of her and spoke in a cool, clear voice.

"Mr. Zhang, based on Melody Beat's current daily active user count, if your entire system integrates Moss, the daily API call volume will be an astronomical figure."

Pei Ningxue looked straight at Zhang Yiming. "Our current server bandwidth and computing power costs are extremely high. If we are to provide exclusive technical support, it means we would have to allocate a dedicated computing power line specifically for you."

"That sounds like your problem." Zhang Yiming was, after all, the helmsman of a corporate behemoth; he had to look out for his own interests.

Chen Zhi stroked his chin.

Using Melody Beat's massive trove of user behavior data to train Moss... with that kind of data, Moss's evolution speed would skyrocket exponentially.

"Deal," Chen Zhi made the final call. "But the specific ratio for the traffic exchange and the ad exposure slots will be up to us."

Over the next hour or so, the two sides engaged in a fierce tug-of-war over the details of the partnership.

The team Zhang Yiming brought was clearly well-prepared, laying out all the data metrics and contract clauses with absolute clarity.

However, Pei Ningxue demonstrated a terrifying level of professional competence. Tossing around various technical and financial jargon with ease, she forcefully scraped a thick layer of profit right off Melody Beat's margins.

Zhang Yiming looked at Pei Ningxue, a flash of genuine admiration in his eyes.

"Mr. Chen, you are truly a lucky man," Zhang Yiming sighed. "With such a capable CFO like Ms. Pei assisting you, Deep Space Tech is destined for greatness."

Chen Zhi cheerfully accepted the compliment. "Of course. Just look at who hired her."

Under the table, Pei Ningxue viciously kicked Chen Zhi's leg.

The agreement was tentatively finalized, leaving only the legal departments to iron out the finer details.

Zhang Yiming stood up and took the initiative to extend his hand. "Mr. Chen, a pleasure doing business with you."

"The pleasure is mine." Chen Zhi shook his hand.

"To celebrate us reaching an agreement, I'll play host tonight. Shall we grab a casual dinner together?" Zhang Yiming extended the invitation, appearing to be in very high spirits.

Chen Zhi was just about to find an excuse to decline, as he had planned to head back to his dorm and catch up on some much-needed sleep tonight.

But Zhang Yiming immediately followed up with another sentence.

"It just so happens that our company is planning to sign a top-tier celebrity to be the first full-platform splash-screen spokesperson for Melody Beat."

Zhang Yiming smiled and said, "I've arranged to have dinner with her manager tonight. You must have heard of this superstar as well, Mr. Chen. It's Lin Wanwan, who just won the championship on 'The Singer'."

Chen Zhi's movements suddenly froze.

The air in the conference room seemed to stop flowing entirely at that very moment.

Sitting next to him, Pei Ningxue's hands, which had been neatly organizing the documents, instantly stopped.

She slowly raised her head, her beautiful eyes staring straight at Chen Zhi.

The corners of her lips curled up into a faint, knowing half-smile.

"Oh?"

"Lin Wanwan, huh... Mr. Chen, we absolutely must go and join the fun at this dinner party."