The other man changed his tone and turned to greet Su Man. “Hi — I’m Xu, first name Ye. Single character. Restaurant manager and Lu Yuwen’s business partner. Very happy to meet you.”

Su Man replied, “My name is Su Man… nice to meet you too.”

“Knowing that Lu Yuwen has someone with him, I feel better.” The man on the other end of the video said with easy relief. “He sent me a message saying he was sick, and then his phone was totally unreachable, all my messages went unanswered — I was almost ready to call the police.”

Lu Yuwen laughed softly. “Please don’t go casually striking up a conversation with the woman I have in mind.”

Xu Ye paid him no attention whatsoever and asked Su Man with great enthusiasm, “How did you two meet? Did he get a ticket? No, wait — Lu Yuwen doesn’t drive and hasn’t bought a car. So was it his driver who was caught for a traffic violation? Miss Su, you need to be careful with this man. Don’t let that polished, refined, model-citizen exterior fool you — he’s actually quite cunning. Incredibly petty, too! Tight-fisted!”

Lu Yuwen was caught between laughter and exasperation. Sick as he was, he didn’t have the energy to fight back, so he could only ask helplessly, “Xu Ye — what did you actually need to reach me for?”

“All right, all right. To the point.” Xu Ye said, “You remember you had me go out and pitch for investment? Right now the restaurant’s profitability isn’t in question, but if we suddenly pull out a large sum of money to open a new location, it would still be very tight. I was still trying to figure out what to do if I couldn’t line up investors — I was going to have to go begging the bank for a loan. Then out of nowhere, sheer luck — a customer came in, heard that the restaurant owner was you, and insisted on putting up investment money. Lu Yuwen, you really are something — you have friends this wealthy and you never mentioned it. Instead you made me go out and pitch for investment. Wasn’t that completely pointless?”

Lu Yuwen asked, “…Was it Boss Wang?”

Xu Ye shook his head. “Not surnamed Wang.”

Lu Yuwen: “Then… Boss Cai?”

“Also not Cai!” Xu Ye muttered. “I can tell you really are sick — can’t even remember your own friends. Their name is Tan Xiao. The name’s distinctive enough — how did you forget?”

Lu Yuwen froze, genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know him.”

“You don’t know him?” Xu Ye was also taken aback. “You don’t know him, and yet he’s putting up fifty million in one go?”

Lu Yuwen was stunned.

Investment is a serious undertaking.

To successfully bring in investors, they typically have to prepare extensive documentation covering every aspect of the restaurant’s operations — because the goal is to convince investors of their capabilities and make them confident the profitability targets can be met. To put it plainly, the point is to make someone believe that the money going in will yield returns, and soon.

Otherwise, who would be willing to throw their money into a void?

And investment doesn’t come in all at once. It usually arrives in stages — the restaurant has to be performing well before the next stage of funding is committed.

Yet here, out of nowhere, had appeared an investor they had never worked with — had never even met — willing to commit fifty million in a single shot?!

Where had this extraordinarily deep-pocketed benefactor come from?

Either they had an exceptional eye — or they simply had more money than they knew what to do with.

Lu Yuwen felt the latter was far more likely.

“Make the arrangements when you can, and we’ll meet with them in person,” Lu Yuwen said, thinking it through slowly. “They’ve shown a great deal of good faith — we can go into more detail about the new location with them.”

Xu Ye laughed. “If they found out you opened a new branch to chase a woman, do you think they’d change their mind and pull the investment back?”

Su Man: “…”

Lu Yuwen closed his eyes briefly in resignation. “All right… let’s talk another time. I’m tired.”

Xu Ye had no filter: “You’re worn out after just a few minutes? Showing a lack of stamina in front of the lady — watch she doesn’t take a poor view of you.”

Su Man quietly turned her head to the side and pretended to admire the view…