Liu Jun was already angry, and hearing Shen Huadong’s provocation like this, he slammed the table and stood up, “Fight inside or go outside to fight?”
Shen Huadong jumped up excitedly, pulled out two hundred yuan and slapped it on the table, and the two of them stormed out together. Winding down the restaurant stairs, Shen Huadong really couldn’t contain himself and said excitedly: “I’m so happy, I’ve been dying to fight. Liu Jun, you’re not allowed to make excuses about not keeping up and slip away with oil on your feet, you… You ride in my car.”
Liu Jun was stunned upon hearing this, and only understood after turning it over in his mind, “No wonder… damn, I begged the taekwondo instructor to fight, begged several times before getting agreement…”
Shen Huadong was even more astonished, “You… you’re a martial artist?” Shen Huadong began to regret at this point, but the hostess had already said “Welcome back again” and opened the bright glass door for them both. Outside was pitch black. Shen Huadong was caught between a rock and a hard place, helpless, and could only bite the bullet and walk outside.
Liu Jun heard the weakness in Shen Huadong’s words, and his bad mood all evening finally began to clear up. But before he could feel slightly happy, suddenly a strong light flashed before his eyes, seemingly a camera flash, and the two people who had just walked out of the light immediately became blind from the brightness. Then chaotic noise arose all around, all women’s screams, accompanied by an attack of cream cakes. “Wow, A’San’s birthday wish was so effective.” “She just wished for handsome guys to fall from the sky, and in less than a minute, two fell at once.” “Handsome guys, let’s go karaoke together, today is A’San’s birthday.” … Amid the chattering, came a final decisive voice: “I don’t like either of these two A’Sans, too creamy.”
Having just adapted to the darkness and busily wiping cake from their faces, Liu Jun and Shen Huadong heard the last sentence and were both shocked and angry, but had no choice but to not fight back or curse back, because in front of them were seven or eight giggling, swaying women, all young drunk women, a bunch of different shapes and sizes, and it would be dishonorable to defeat them. The two could only mutter a few words, consider themselves unlucky, and walk away keeping three feet of distance. But those women wouldn’t let it go, and one woman said with slurred speech: “A’San is right, two big men with no resistance at all, stickier than the cream on the cake.”
Before getting into his car, Liu Jun glanced at A’San and saw she was a slightly plump girl with a blessed face, round eyes, and a small mouth in a smiling face, wearing a paper crown on her head, probably given by the cake shop, looking quite silly and comical. Shen Huadong stood outside Liu Jun’s car and said gloomily: “I want to compete with them on who’s more ridiculous.”
“These days, everyone lives tired lives, men rely on fighting, women rely on drinking, to vent it out, tomorrow they go to work looking proper again. Do you still want to be ridiculous?”
Shen Huadong quickly said: “No, no, I won’t be your punching bag. Why didn’t you say so earlier…”
“Good, so you’ve calmed down, right? Then let me ask you, why do you and your predecessor, Yang Xun, successively covet my products? Don’t you know how difficult it is to develop a series of products? It’s not what you laymen imagine – just drawing a few blueprints in an office. We need years of accumulation, murdering countless brain cells, these are all huge investments you can’t see…”
“But everyone thinks that this series of products in your hands is like a piece of gold held by a child. And our research and discussion results show that we need this product series; this series is big enough for our Shi Yiji to survive. On the contrary, your small enterprise with such small production capacity…”
“Bandit logic! Do you think that in the current legal environment, you’re not that child holding gold?”
“I’m confident I’m not. I will introduce advanced confidentiality management.”
“I can make you that child.” But their conversation was interrupted again by that group of drunk women, who came carrying cake boxes to apologize and invite the two to drink and make amends. Liu Jun saw something was wrong, quickly revved the engine, and scurried away like a mouse, leaving Shen Huadong to brave the spider’s web alone. Shen Huadong saw that the drunk women were unreasonable, and before he could retreat to his car, he used his flying legs to chase after Liu Jun’s car. Liu Jun had no choice but to let him get in the car, and the two finally escaped the drunk woman’s entanglement.
Seeing that Shen Huadong hadn’t spoken for a long time after getting in the car, Liu Jun went straight for the jugular, “The workers at Shi Yiji are hard to manage, aren’t they? Have you tasted the bitter fruit?”
“Sigh, when I tell my old man about it, even he doesn’t dare believe it. The veteran workers who came from state enterprises are too arrogant.”
“I’ve seen it. Those people were originally big brothers within the system, they’re not used to having a boss above them. Two years ago, when I saw Yang Xun’s attitude toward managing those people, I was amazed at the time and viewed Yang Xun’s management methods as negative examples. Only now do I understand that most of the time, Yang Xun’s methods were the most effective. I occasionally use them now, too. But management requires both kindness and authority. Yang Xun leaned toward authority – workers didn’t dare say a word in front of him, but complained bitterly behind his back, jumping ship whenever they had the chance. I’m still looking for that balance between kindness and authority, hoping that the corporate culture and centripetal force I experienced in German companies can be transplanted to my Tengfei.”
“Do you have to be worn down to be as temperless as you to be considered successful?”
“Provoking me, seeing I have no temper, are you quite pleased?” Liu Jun had restrained himself again and again at the company, feeling less and less like himself, already disliking it, and now being repeatedly pointed out by Shen Huadong as having no temper, he felt suffocated to death, wishing he could fight to show his hot blood.
“I don’t mean any harm, but I want to fight with you, then sit together drinking beer and talking about management experiences. Too bad you’re a martial artist, frustrating. I asked my old man how to resolve that breath swallowed down from endurance, he said he goes to Macau for big gambling, loses hundreds of thousands, and when it hurts enough, he comes home calm and peaceful. It’s the same principle as women going on crazy shopping sprees. I just want to fight, I’ve been suffocated lately, and I have to pretend at the company to be a golden overseas returnee, pretending my foreign MBA is more profound than Director Dong’s local MBA. Damn it, I’m suffocated to death, I want to be a savage. Hey, where is this?”
The underground garage below my home. If you’re willing, come up with me to drink and brag. I’ll call Yang Li, she has quite a set of insights about Shi Yiji management.”
“Her? I heard she sits in the office every day putting on airs and giving orders, only knows how to talk big, and doesn’t dare go to the workshop. Don’t want her, let’s just talk man to man.”
“Much of what she says about experiences, I find useful.” Liu Jun thought about it; there was no beer at home, so he had to immediately turn around and go to the small shop outside to buy alcohol.
The two moved Liu Jun’s sofa to the balcony, each monopolizing one sofa, each getting six bottles of beer, and along with Liu Jun’s well-made scrambled eggs and fried peanuts, they talked endlessly through the night. When dawn was breaking, Shen Huadong finally admitted that his father’s decision to assign him to Shi Yiji for tempering was correct. And Liu Jun’s surface lack of temper was exactly his future direction of development.
After Shen Huadong returned home, although he felt he shouldn’t snatch a friend’s property, he really couldn’t resist the temptation of the product series. Because when Shi Yiji first chose to develop this product series, it was exactly the decision Mr. Wang made based on Shi Yiji’s scale. After friendly negotiations between both parties, Liu Jun soon transferred the technology of the product series he had developed with more than half a year’s effort to Shi Yiji at a price both could accept, and he conveniently did a personal favor by also handing over the product market to Shi Yiji.
When Yang Xun heard this news, he really couldn’t believe this was a decision made by the shrewd Shen Baotian. He was convinced this was the spendthrift behavior of Shen Baotian’s foolish son. If he were still at Shi Yiji, he would fight to the death to resist. He had personally witnessed Liu Jun develop the product back then, clearly saw how much time Liu Jun spent, how many channels he used, how much material he consumed – he could completely calculate the actual R&D cost of this product. If Liu Jun dared to quote him such a price, he would twist off Liu Jun’s head and scoop out his brains to give Liu Jun a good washing. Although Yang Xun knew that Shi Yiji was no longer his property, watching the Shen family spend Shi Yiji’s money recklessly, Yang Xun couldn’t help but feel heartache. But heartache aside, it was no longer his property. Yang Xun now devoted all his energy to developing the Qianjin Factory site, where he would build a hotel. With Yang Li, who was familiar with hotels, cooperating, and his own experience assisting in restaurant management at Haoyuan, the project progressed rapidly.
Building a star-rated hotel was once Yang Xun’s longed-for but ultimately helplessly abandoned dream. Now he had money and could make his dream come true.
Liu Jun invested all the funds from selling the technology into purchasing new equipment.
Liu Shitang was delighted to see his son’s research results easily sold for nearly five million yuan. But seeing his son invest all the money from selling technology into upgrading equipment and purchasing CNC machining centers costing millions each, he felt anxious again. Liu Shitang could only privately comfort himself that over the past year, he had witnessed his son earn in a short time what he could earn in a lifetime, so he should trust his son’s ability. It’s just that Liu Shitang was somewhat worried whether Tengfei might develop too fast, pile up debts, and ultimately be dragged down by debt. What worried him most was not seeing his son’s determination to settle the high-interest private financing. Even though the underground money houses now gave increasingly lower interest rates due to the company’s steady development, Liu Shitang still worried. If his son used all the money from selling technology to pay off loans, and future development used only owned funds and small bank loans, only then could the foundation be considered solid, and only then could he feel at ease. Unfortunately, young people love to charge ahead, love to keep the development string tight, completely ignoring that a too-tight string breaks too easily.
During Tengfei’s product renewal period, Liu Shitang could finally temporarily suspend business trips and return home to rest for a while. Thinking of his car tires repeatedly being vandalized in the residential complex, Liu Shitang decided to sacrifice a night’s sleep and crouch in the car to wait for the culprit.