Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

April 7th, an ordinary Sunday.

At 10:00 AM, Qian Du officially announced it would acquire PPS for 370 million US Dollars, merging it with iQiyi to strengthen its video business layout.

Half an hour later, Ofo bikes disclosed its recent progress for the first time: it had deployed a cumulative total of 600,000 shared bicycles and 100,000 shared electric-assist bikes across the East China, Central China, and Southern China regions, with monthly revenue exceeding 60 million yuan.

Immediately after, the head of Sunning, Zhang Jindong, proposed taxing online stores, a move that sent him to the top of the trending charts as hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized merchants cursed him out.

Meanwhile.

Pre-orders for the Senlian Star Shining Card had already surpassed four million!

The business model of a directional data-free internet card had become an overnight sensation in the country!

Copycats, as numerous as fish in a river, were popping up everywhere.

After returning to Xucheng, Chen Yansen was busy with the architectural design of the server operating system while also pushing forward the R&D progress of the Celestial Craft A100 Chip with Mike, Wu Shengyu, and the others.

At the same time, Apple was also developing a 64-bit architecture mobile processor based on the Orange Z1 Instruction Set.

The Huake Science Association, Hisilicon, and Tiangong Technology all kept quiet, and Apple, naturally, didn’t leak a single whisper of this news either.

The jump from a 32-bit to a 64-bit processor architecture would result in a quantum leap in data processing capability, bringing higher computing efficiency, stronger memory support, and lower power consumption.

In short, its performance would be dramatically improved.

From the very beginning, the Celestial Craft A100 was positioned as a 64-bit architecture. In Chen Yansen’s eyes, optimizing the CPU architecture, instruction set, and hardware structure wasn’t a difficult problem to solve anyway.

He wasn’t concerned about whether Huawei, ZTE, and Apple could figure it out.

After all, the Orange Z1 Instruction Set was just the initial version. In the future, he planned to iterate on it, creating 2.0, 3.0, and even a MAX version.

As for baseband chips, he had poached a group of people from Qualcomm and Huawei. After they had achieved a preliminary grasp of the radio frequency and analog-to-digital conversion technologies of the Balong, RF360, and WTR1625L, Chen Yansen decisively activated his [Planck Clock] talent. The technological barriers for this stuff were much higher than for CPUs and GPUs. On top of that, European and American semiconductor companies had built formidable patent defense walls.

Even he wasn’t confident he could bypass the patent restrictions and develop a brand-new baseband chip from scratch in a short time.

Therefore, his first choice was to cooperate with either Huawei or Qualcomm. Once he possessed a certain number of high-value communication patents, he could use cross-licensing agreements to break through the industry barriers and technological blockades in one fell swoop.

The next day, Zhou Shouzhi finally returned to Xucheng after a half-month-long business trip.

The trip was a resounding success. He had finalized cooperation plans with five carriers in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany in one go.

Unfortunately, due to considerations about the application ecosystem, the local carriers wouldn’t accept Orange Mobile Phones running the Aurora Future OS.

Chen Yansen could understand their position and didn’t take it to heart.

He believed that one day, Aurora Future OS would be launched in the global market.

A temporary setback was nothing. Changing users’ habits would always take time.

He could afford to wait. He was in no hurry.

The following week passed quickly. Chen Yansen supervised projects during the day and researched the force, angle, speed, and depth of... ’lock-picking’ at night. In the blink of an eye, it was April 12th.

By this time, total sales of the Star Shining Card had reached eight million.

In just twelve days, Senlian Capital had leveraged its omnichannel resources, which generated over a hundred million impressions daily, to turn the Star Shining phone card into the year’s blockbuster product.

The central and forward-distribution warehouses in places like Yanjing, Jinmen, Qin Island, Hu City, Jinling, Jiang City, and Lujiang were already piled high with the first batch of Star Shining Cards.

Early in the morning, Kuai Pao Deliverymen and Cloud Speed Couriers were already online. Each would receive ten delivery orders to bring the Star Shining Cards to customers’ hands, who would then activate them over the phone.

At noon, while eating lunch in his office, Chen Yansen scrolled through Toutiao and came across a user’s shared experience.

”The Star Shining Card is freaking awesome! I topped up 300 yuan right away. Data outside the plan is only 1 yuan per 800MB. It’s so damn satisfying for watching videos on Toutiao. I used to have to watch videos in 360p, but now I won’t watch anything less than 1080p!”

Users in the comment section quickly followed up: ”Bro, is it really that smooth?”

”Don’t get too cocky. Take it easy, they throttle your speed after 40GB!”

”40GB a month... as long as you’re not using data to watch movies all day, you probably won’t even use it all.”

”What movies? Bro who posted above, care to share the source?”

After that, the tone of the thread went completely off the rails, with everyone trying to sell illicit videos.

Chen Yansen double-tapped the screen, took a screenshot, and sent it to Liang Bo.

Some minor issues seem like no one’s business, but they can be fatal if they’re cracked down on.

”Yes, Boss. I’ll handle it immediately.” Liang Bo replied instantly. Even though Chen Yansen had only sent an image, he immediately understood his boss’s intention.

Chen Yansen remembered clearly that in a few years, a news app similar to Toutiao would be put on the ”315” consumer rights chopping block for condoning improper ads from black and gray industries.

As a result, in less than two years, its daily active users plummeted from over 60 million to just over 20 million, and the number of employees dropped from over 7,000 to just over 1,000.

Although with Senlian Capital’s hard power, it was unlikely to be targeted, proactively banning inappropriate content was still beneficial for the company.

At that moment, Chen Yansen conveniently ignored all the short videos on Mimo featuring... ’big headlights.’

As time went on, the first batch of Star Shining Card users began enthusiastically promoting the benefits of the directional data card to their friends, relatives, and classmates on Weibo, their social media feeds, and the Xiaonei Network.

There was so much organic word-of-mouth promotion!

The sales pace for the Star Shining Card had originally started to slow down, but with the strong recommendations from users, sales began to climb again.

At 8:00 PM that night, sales officially broke the ten million mark!

Ye Qiuping was holding a celebration party with the project team in the conference room, so she invited Chen Yansen to join them.

”You’ve all worked hard!”

Chen Yansen said with a sincere smile.

This simple word of thanks sent a thrill through the sixty-plus members of the Star Shining Card team.

They all knew that given the big boss’s style, a hefty bonus was practically guaranteed.

As expected, Chen Yansen wasted no time and got straight to the point: ”For the Q2 quarterly bonus system, we’ll start by adding a 0.3 multiplier. If total sales break 20 million cards before the end of June, we’ll add another 0.3. This will continue, with no upper limit.”

’President Chen knew full well these lovable little bastards couldn’t be bothered to listen to him talk about the project’s vision.’

’Cash is king!’

’Employees work their asses off because they want a bigger reward.’

’If he didn’t show his appreciation, the number of people slacking off throughout the group would only increase.’

”Thank you, Boss!”

”We love you, Boss!”

”Long live the Boss!”

Though there were only a few dozen people, their cheers were as loud as a crowd of hundreds.

’It feels so good to be rich! This is the power of money!’

A slight smile played on Chen Yansen’s lips as he thought to himself.

Ye Qiuping raised her hand and then pressed it down. Everyone immediately fell silent, a clear testament to her authority within the team.

”Next, we still need to leverage third-party channels to build a more comprehensive sales network...”

Ye Qiuping began to speak, first reviewing and summarizing their work from the first half of April before starting to lay out the promotion and sales plan for the latter half of the month.

Chen Yansen slipped out of the conference room. He glanced at his watch—it was exactly 8:30 PM. He headed straight out, ready to call it a day.

He had just walked out of the first-floor lobby of Building 9 when he heard the sound of suppressed sobs coming from a corner.

’Who’s that? Wailing like that in the middle of the night?’

Chen Yansen frowned slightly and walked unhurriedly toward the sound of the crying.

By the campus fence, he saw a young man in his early twenties squatting, an Orange Pay ID badge hanging around his neck.

It was pitch-black and the light was dim.

Chen Yansen suddenly spoke up. ”Trouble at home?”

Zhang Peng was so startled he fell and landed on his butt. It was too dark to see Chen Yansen’s face, so he assumed it was a colleague from another department. ”Dude, do you walk without making a sound?” he said irritably.

”Maybe you were too engrossed in your crying,” Chen Yansen teased.

Although the man’s sobs were soft and low, Chen Yansen’s hearing, even when suppressed with his Spiritual Power, could still pick them up with perfect clarity.

”...” Zhang Peng was mortified, wishing the concrete would swallow him whole.

A man in his twenties, crying his eyes out... it was truly embarrassing, especially being caught by a colleague.

”Heartbroken?” Chen Yansen glanced at him and asked with certainty.

”Sigh... I guess so,” Zhang Peng said, remaining seated on the ground.

His thinking was that since it was dark and the other guy couldn’t see his face, there was no shame to be lost. He might as well just give up completely.

With a look of disdain, Chen Yansen casually asked, ”I guess so? Don’t tell me you fell in love with a married woman, kid.”

”No, man! You’re way too nosy.” Zhang Peng wanted to get up and slap him.

Chen Yansen saw right through Zhang Peng’s thoughts. ’This crybaby subordinate has quite a temper,’ he mused.

He had been about to say, ”If you’re going to cry, do it at home. Don’t scare your colleagues at the company.”

But just as he was about to turn away, the words came pouring out of Zhang Peng like spilled beans. ”My girlfriend is thirty-three. She’s ten years older than me. I want to marry her, but my dad says I’m crazy.”

”Your dad... isn’t wrong,” Chen Yansen said, stopping in his tracks to offer his ”gentle” comfort.

”Dude, you should just go,” Zhang Peng gasped, so angry he could barely breathe.

He suspected the person in front of him wasn’t even a Senlian Capital employee.

After all, employees hired by Senlian Capital were known to have decent IQs and EQs.

But every word out of this guy’s mouth was like a dagger twisting in his heart.

”Just kidding, trying to lighten the mood. It’s only ten years. I don’t think it’s a problem,” Chen Yansen added.

”You really think so?” Zhang Peng’s eyes lit up, and he instantly felt much better.

”I used to have a girlfriend who was eight years older than me. I actually really wanted to marry her,” Chen Yansen said with a soft laugh.

”Used to? Did you break up?” Zhang Peng pressed.

”She thought I was too poor and married a rich businessman from Hong Kong Island,” Chen Yansen replied.

”Well, you’ve got it worse than me, then. At least my girlfriend loves me,” Zhang Peng said with a chuckle.

”...” Chen Yansen had to physically restrain his right leg to keep from kicking him.

”Alright, that’s enough. Stop crying at the company. Anyone who didn’t know better would think the place was haunted.”

Chen Yansen grumbled with a dark expression, then waved his hand dismissively and headed toward the parking lot.

”None of your damn business!” Zhang Peng muttered. He could tell this guy’s words were harsh, but he didn’t seem to have any bad intentions.

The corner of Chen Yansen’s mouth twitched. He took a deep breath and made a mental note to mind his own business next time.

”Boss.” Seeing Chen Yansen approach, Huang Boxiang quickly opened the car door for him.

”Back to the Delta,” Chen Yansen instructed.

With Lao Huang on the job, Xiaoli also had time to rest. The two worked in shifts, which made things much easier.

”Understood.” Huang Boxiang cherished this job. Heeding Xiaoli’s advice, he was well aware of the importance of speaking little and keeping his mouth shut, saying as little as possible.

Meanwhile.

The Senlian Star Shining Card’s official Weibo account synchronized its sales progress. A total of ten million phone cards sold in just twelve days. The news gave the three major telecom operators quite a shock.

When Penguin and Ah Li heard the news, they instantly felt they had been right to copy the idea!

And Wang Xin, holed up in his office at Meituan Headquarters, hadn’t eaten a single meal all day. He stared at the Group Buy industry report for March, his face etched with worry.