TMCOC CH 3

Chapter 3: Do You Want Cash or a Check? (III)

Du Linghe had been forced more than once to convene a board meeting because of Wei Gaochen. To be precise—he was forced to do so.

Sitting at the head of the long conference table, Du Linghe rested his hands beneath his chin, staring silently at the bickering shareholders before him.

The Du Corporation had dropped by 3%. It wasn’t a small matter.

Although, with the company’s deep financial foundation, this minor fluctuation was still within controllable range, the problem was this group of old geezers who had invested their family fortunes across three generations into the company. Any little tremor was enough to set them off in panic.

To tell the truth, Wei Gaochen was just a convenient excuse. What really irked them was that Du Linghe—so young—had already seized the company’s power. On one hand, they were reluctant to lose their say in major decisions; on the other, these frequent meetings were simply their way of trying to put him in his place.

Du Linghe had barely stepped out of a meeting with Wei Gaochen before he was summoned straight into this one.

“Now that Old Du has fallen ill, the company’s left in the hands of Young Du… sigh, this really won’t do!” Among the ten rich men seated, nine were bald. The baldest of them all shook his head.

“Just look at this latest project! How did we lose to Wei Gaochen again? Do you realize how many billions that is? All thrown into the water!”

Expressionless, Du Linghe thought coldly to himself—His father wasn’t ill, he had retired properly. These old bastards never had anything good to say… And he himself also wanted to know—how had it ended up being Wei Gaochen again?

Back when he first met Wei Gaochen, things weren’t like this. The Wei Corporation hadn’t yet grown into a company that could rival the Dus. They had met at a rather ordinary auction. Wei Gaochen was wearing a cheap suit that was obviously bought off a department store rack, sitting stiffly and uncomfortably in his seat.

He didn’t have the arrogance he showed now—his face was still that of a fresh graduate, clean and unassuming, with only a pair of light brown eyes that carried some liveliness.

No one wanted to sit near someone who reeked of poverty, so the seats around him remained empty.

Du Linghe didn’t care about such things. When he entered the venue, he deliberately chose a quieter, emptier spot to sit down.

And the moment he sat, Wei Gaochen flinched in surprise, then nervously pressed his lips together before shyly offering him a business card.

Perhaps it was because Wei Gaochen looked so pitiful that Du Linghe, who usually never accepted cards from others, broke his own rule and took it.

Wei Gaochen seemed stunned when he saw him accept it—his ears even turned slightly red. To an outsider, it might have looked as though he had just handed over a love letter.

At that time, Du Linghe had simply thought the man was ridiculously effeminate—so foolish that he resembled a lost puppy in an unfamiliar place.

But little did Du Linghe know that the name printed on that card, and the company behind it, would later become the cause of his stomach aches for the next five years.

That day marked Wei Gaochen’s first appearance among the business giants. Everyone had assumed his small company wouldn’t amount to much—but to everyone’s surprise, he made quite the name for himself at that auction.

Even though he was still timid when raising his bidding paddle, Wei Gaochen somehow managed to secure an item at an unbelievably low price, then went on bidding shyly yet sharply, driving the scheming sellers into frustration and fury. In the end, he walked away as the auction’s biggest winner.

As for Du Linghe, who left empty-handed that day—
“…”
A cursed connection^[1].

Even now, Du Linghe repeated that phrase coldly in his mind.

“—Young Master Du!”

The loud voice of a shareholder brought him back from his thoughts.

“It’s fine for young people to be a little impulsive—we can afford a loss like this—but you need to be steady in business!”

The secretary beside Du Linghe frowned, then pulled out the quarterly financial report.

“The Du Corporation’s overall shares dropped by 3%, but profits actually remained stable—and even showed growth. The 3% drop occurred only because we followed the board’s request to switch to a different land development bid.”

He projected the report onto the meeting room’s large screen.

“If the company had followed Mr. Du’s original plan instead of pursuing the Orzhou development project, profits would’ve increased by over ten percent.”

From beginning to end, Du Linghe hadn’t spoken a single word. But his dark eyes swept coldly across every face in the room.

“The main issue,” one of the shareholders said sharply, “is that we lost to the Wei Corporation again, isn’t it? You couldn’t even secure a land bid!”

“So this is all our fault?”

Du Linghe said flatly, “Henry, give it to them.”

The secretary immediately caught on and spoke up, “The implementation of the land project has already been set in motion. What we need to discuss now is how to make up for the losses. Here’s the new proposal sheet—please take a look…”

Before he could finish, another shareholder’s voice cut sharply through the air.

“In the end, it’s all because of that Wei Gaochen! If he hadn’t stirred up trouble, would things have turned out like this!?”

Du Linghe’s brows finally furrowed. He withdrew his hands from under his chin and, for the first time that meeting, straightened up in his seat to look directly at them.

The shareholder who had spoken shrank back a little but quickly found his courage again. “When Old Master Du was running this company, he never got stuck in these kinds of messes! Sure, your father lost interest in the company near the end, but at least he still listened to us! For the past ten years, the Du Corporation grew steadily under his management.”

“But ever since you took over—ever since that Wei Gaochen showed up—the Du family has lost its former glory! I say we should just get rid of him—”

“Director Liu, mind your words.”

Du Linghe’s deep, cold voice cut him off before that dangerous thought could take root.

Yes, the Wei Corporation was infuriating. Because of that man, they had suffered countless losses. But even Du Linghe had to admit it—Wei Gaochen was a genius in business.

When the Wei Corporation first appeared, they were raw and inexperienced. But in what felt like the blink of an eye—just one or two quarters—they had broken into the industry like a rabid dog.

Buying low, selling high; tossing aside anything that didn’t interest him; using the profit margins to acquire even more companies.

It was as if all of this was just a game to Wei Gaochen—as though he stood at the top, laughing down at those who were losing their composure over market shifts.

The Du Corporation’s upper management had already tried multiple times to destroy that man. But Wei Gaochen simply refused to die.

Until one day, when he got into a car accident, was hospitalized, and made the front page of every business headline.

Later, Du Linghe discovered that his own people were behind the incident. That was the first and only time he had ever truly lost his temper at the board.

After that, things quieted down for a while. But lately, these same old men had started scheming again… and Du Linghe saw it all.

“Mr. Du, outside—”

He raised an eyebrow, about to continue speaking, when his secretary—who had stepped aside to receive a message—hurried back and leaned in close to whisper something in his ear.

Immediately, Du Linghe’s already dark expression grew worse. If earlier the room had merely felt like the calm before a storm, now it had turned into Ragnarok ^[2]itself.

“No matter what any of you say,” Du Linghe said coldly, ending the farce, “the only president of this company right now is me.”

“If any of you feel uneasy holding Du Corporation shares, you’re welcome to sell them. The rest can wait until the quarterly summary report is ready for further discussion.”

“Meeting adjourned.”

Du Linghe stood up, ignoring the shareholders who were still arguing, and strode out of the conference room.

He made his way back to his office. But before stepping inside, he saw a familiar female secretary who gave him a polite nod.

“Mr. Du.”

Then he pushed open the door—only to be greeted by a scene that was all too familiar.

Wei Gaochen was standing inside his office, glancing leisurely around as if it were his own. When Du Linghe opened the door, Wei Gaochen turned to him and smiled—utterly at ease, as though this were his territory.

Gone was the timid young man from that long-ago auction. Now he wore a fully tailored suit from the latest collection, and the faint curve of his lips carried a dangerous kind of confidence.

He walked up to Du Linghe—who was almost a full head taller—then reached out and teasingly brushed a finger under his chin. Rising on tiptoe, he leaned in close to whisper by Du Linghe’s ear, his breath warm and soft against the man’s neck.

“Mr. Du, it hasn’t been that long since we last met, has it?”

—His tone was like that of someone speaking to a pet he had let roam free, ready to play with whenever he pleased.

The naïve, nervous Wei Gaochen from Du Linghe’s memories was long gone. And as he stared at the man before him, Du Linghe felt his blood pressure—never low to begin with—shoot straight back up again.

(To be continued…)