Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

3:00 PM, East Gate 5 of Chaoyang Park.

Just as Lei Yijun was about to get out of the car, Li Wanqiang stopped him with an outstretched arm. ”President Lei, it looks like it’s all reporters over there.”

A dense crowd was packed at the entrance. They had press passes hanging from their necks, cameras in their hands, and video cameras on their shoulders, all waiting for Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun to show up.

The event certainly had buzz, but whether the outcome would be good or bad for Xiaomi and 360 was anyone’s guess.

”The second we get out, I’m afraid all those reporters will swarm us,” Li Wanqiang whispered, his brow furrowed.

Lei Yijun was caught in a dilemma. He hadn’t expected so many media outlets to show up. Now, forget about fighting—even if he just cursed a little too harshly, the reporters would post it all over the internet.

”When you came this morning to scout the location and plan our escape route, you didn’t see these people?”

Lei Yijun frowned and looked at Li Wanqiang.

”President Lei, I was here at five in the morning. Back then, there were only a few old men doing their morning exercises,” Li Wanqiang said with an awkward smile, confessing the truth.

”Let’s not get out yet. I want to see if that Zhou Hongyi even dares to show up!” Lei Yijun mused for a moment, coming up with a compromise.

What he didn’t expect was that Zhou Hongyi was, at that very moment, sitting in a Maybach only about thirty meters away from Lei Yijun’s car.

One of them was at the north end of the intersection by East Gate 5, the other at the south end.

”President Zhou, it’s 3:10. Lei Yijun isn’t here,” Zhou Hongyi’s assistant said, turning his head after observing for a dozen seconds through a pair of binoculars.

”Damn it, he’s all talk!”

Zhou Hongyi curled his lip in disdain. He immediately pulled out his phone and sent a taunting text message: ”I’m here. Where are you? If you’re scared, just go on Weibo and apologize to me.”

”I’m here too. Why don’t I see you?”

Lei Yijun replied quickly.

Zhou Hongyi froze for a second, then snatched the binoculars from his assistant. He stared at the entrance for a while. The reporters were all standing there waiting. Lei Yijun was most likely bluffing.

Still, he now saw the situation clearly. Even if Lei Yijun had really come, the most they could do after meeting was trade a few insults. Were they really going to start a brawl in front of everyone?

Zhou Hongyi was filled with regret. ’I never should have posted the time and place of the fight online,’ he thought. ’Wouldn’t it have been better to just beat up Lei Yijun directly?’

After that, the two continued their war of words via text message. They might have been enjoying their verbal sparring, but the reporters and netizens huddled at the gate were not happy.

Standing outside in the dead of winter was pure misery.

If Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun hadn’t scheduled their fight, who would come here to freeze for nothing?

”These two are real pieces of work. Hyping this thing up and then standing us all up!”

”You’ve got that right! They talked so big online, and in the end, neither of them showed up. Let’s just go home!”

”I’m going on Weibo to curse out these two bastards!”

The netizens and reporters, who had long been waiting anxiously, saw that it was almost 3:30 and there was still no sign of anyone.

How could they not understand? They’d been played by Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun.

”@ZhouHongyi @LeiYijun Hey, fellas, the audience is all here. Where are you two?”

”What, you think it’s funny to jerk us around in this freezing weather?”

”@LeiYijun President Lei, if you dare to show up, I’ll buy 10 Xiaomi Mobile Phones to support you!”

”@ZhouHongyi If you don’t appear, I’m going to refund the Haier W910 I ordered yesterday!”

In the comments sections for both men, there was no shortage of rubberneckers who loved a good drama, fanning the flames from behind the scenes, afraid that the two wouldn’t actually fight.

Just then, three vehicles from the Inspection Institute slowly drove up.

They stopped in front of the reporters and netizens, and a few Inspectors with insignias on their shoulders got out. ”Disperse, disperse,” one said with a grim face. ”You’re not allowed to gather here.”

「Meanwhile.」

Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun each received a phone call. In an instant, they were both getting chewed out so badly they couldn’t even raise their heads. They nodded repeatedly before telling their drivers to leave Chaoyang Park.

The Ministry of Industry and Information and the Hua Country Internet Association were planning to hold the 11th Internet Conference in September and were currently drawing up a list of invitees, which included many overseas internet companies like Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Kaspersky.

If they just let Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun run wild, the image of Hua Country’s entrepreneurs would be completely ruined.

What was the difference between this and a pair of street thugs?

The two of them might not be afraid of losing face, but the big shots above them certainly were!

”President Zhou, that car up ahead looks like it’s Lei Yijun’s.”

Zhou Hongyi’s assistant said, pointing at a BMW business van in front of them.

’So he didn’t get out of the car either. Truly worthy of the name Lei Buqun!’

Zhou Hongyi narrowed his eyes, making a private comment.

With this in mind, he sent a new text to Lei Yijun, choosing a boxing club as their meeting spot.

He was determined to fight Lei Yijun! Nothing anyone could say would change his mind!

「On the other side.」

Chen Yansen rested briefly at his hotel. Around 4:30 PM, he received a call from Liu Zhiping, who invited him to dinner at Jingzhao Prefect.

Besides Liu Zhiping and Cheng Congwu from Gaode Map, Zhang Chaoyang of Sohu would also be in attendance.

Whether the acquisition would succeed depended on how smoothly tonight’s discussions went.

To put it bluntly, this dinner was even more important than tomorrow’s formal meeting.

Chen Yansen readily agreed. After hanging up, he took Song Yuncheng and Gao Weilin and headed straight for the restaurant address Liu Zhiping had sent.

Half an hour later, the car stopped in front of Jingzhao Prefect.

It was a three-courtyard, antique-style siheyuan, facing the Yonghe Palace to the east and neighboring the Imperial College. It was a classic Chinese courtyard design with green bamboo, white stones, and a surrounding stream. Just one look at the decor told you it wasn’t cheap.

Chen Yansen got out of the car. Led by a waiter, he passed a white screen wall, stepped through a narrow gate, and arrived at the door of a private room in the inner courtyard.

Liu Zhiping was holding a teacup, chatting idly with Sohu’s Zhang Chaoyang, letting out hearty laughs from time to time.

”Brother Martin, sorry to trouble you with this. Thanks for making the trip from Shencheng City to Yanjing.”

Chen Yansen walked forward with a smile, interrupting their conversation.

”Charles, I don’t need to give you a long introduction to Chen Yansen. You definitely know who he is.”

Liu Zhiping first smiled at Zhang Chaoyang, then stood up to greet him, pulling Chen Yansen over.

”President Zhang, I’ve heard so much about you. I wanted to greet you at the last Internet Open Conference, but I felt it would be too forward. I’m glad we finally have the chance to meet today.”

Chen Yansen offered polite pleasantries, his words carrying the perfect blend of modesty and sincerity.

As soon as Zhang Chaoyang heard this, he couldn’t suppress the smile at the corners of his mouth.

Somehow, if anyone else had said those words, he probably wouldn’t have cared. But coming from Chen Yansen, they gave him an inexplicable feeling of warmth.

”Actually, I had a similar thought. So I have to thank Martin for creating this opportunity for us to meet.”

Zhang Chaoyang proactively extended his hand to greet Chen Yansen.

”Have a seat and let’s chat first. Cheng Congwu will be here a little later,” Liu Zhiping explained.

Chen Yansen acknowledged this with a sound and waved his hand to show it wasn’t a problem.

”President Chen, the internet says the Orange C2 phone has already sold a million units. Is that true?”

Zhang Chaoyang asked curiously after sitting down.

After all, in less than a year, Orange Technology had broken into the top five of Hua Country’s smartphone shipment rankings with sales of over 10 million units.

”To be precise, cumulative sales are at 1.07 million units, but the order fulfillment rate is only fifty percent. Sigh, our production capacity still can’t keep up.”

Chen Yansen said with a smile, stating the facts.

Liu Zhiping was secretly amazed as he listened, sighing to himself. ’This guy is a real monster. He’s not only a master of the internet, but he can also thrive in physical manufacturing.’

Zhang Chaoyang nodded slightly, a flash of surprise in his eyes.

Sohu, much like Penguin, operated on an asset-light model. He felt from the bottom of his heart that making mobile phones was too slow a way to make money, with too long a payback period.

But he didn’t say that out loud. Instead, he seized the opportunity to praise Chen Yansen’s business acumen, stating frankly, ”If I had met you two years earlier, I would have offered you a million-a-year salary to poach you for Sohu.”

This made Liu Zhiping laugh. He clapped Zhang Chaoyang on the shoulder and said, ”Ma Wenteng offered him a salary in the tens of millions, and this kid wasn’t even tempted.”

Hearing the two of them teasing him, Chen Yansen decided to join in with some gossip. ”President Zhang, I heard that Mr. Ma once approached you, wanting to sell you QQ for a million, but you refused?”

Zhang Chaoyang’s expression stiffened. He shook his head and said, ”Do I look that stupid?”

He paused for a moment, then added, ”Before the turn of the millennium, I had already seen the development potential of instant messaging software. I even developed a program called SOQ at the time, but it just didn’t take off.”

”As for acquiring QQ, I did consider it, but by then QQ’s valuation had already hit 90 million US Dollars. Sohu couldn’t afford it.”

Zhang Chaoyang gave a helpless smile as he clarified for Chen Yansen.

”President Zhang initially wanted to buy QQ’s shares from IDG, but after IDG divested, they sold the shares to South Africa’s Naspers Group.”

Liu Zhiping explained with a faint smile, helping Zhang Chaoyang clear up the rumor.

Back then, IDG Capital had invested in both Penguin and Sohu. Because of this, Zhang Chaoyang had specifically spoken to one of IDG’s co-founders, telling him that if they ever wanted to sell their QQ shares, they could sell them to him.

Who would have thought that IDG would sell the shares directly to Naspers without even notifying Zhang Chaoyang.

”That was a huge loss for President Zhang, then.”

Chen Yansen teased with a smile.

Zhang Chaoyang gave a dry laugh and took a sip of his tea, using the moment to hide his inner embarrassment.

’Who could argue with that?’

In 2012, Penguin’s market capitalization was nearly 60 billion US Dollars, while Sohu’s was just over 1 billion US Dollars.

He, the so-called godfather of the internet, was now famous in name only. When it came to personal wealth, he couldn’t even compare to Chen Yansen.

Meanwhile, Ma Wenteng, the Shencheng University student who had once listened to his speeches, had become an internet titan with a net worth in the tens of billions, a guest of honor wherever he went.

Just as the three were chatting, a middle-aged man in a white shirt and gray suit walked over with his assistant.

”President Cheng, let me introduce you. This is Mr. Chen Yansen, the chairman of Senlian Capital.”

Seeing him arrive, Liu Zhiping stood up to make the introduction.

”President Chen. A pleasure,” Cheng Congwu said dryly.

He couldn’t help but look Chen Yansen up and down. In his view, the young man’s achievements were completely at odds with his age.

In his experience, he couldn’t think of a single young person in their twenties who had amassed a net worth in the tens of billions.