At the thought of Tian Mo, Pei Qian instantly lost his composure.

This fellow truly matched all the conditions perfectly!

Most crucially, Tian Mo’s surname was Tian, and he was the only manager with that surname.

Previously, when Pei Qian was searching internally for managers with the surname Tian, he had already placed Tian Mo on the high-suspicion list. But at the time, he felt the difference between Tian Mo and Mr. Tian’s character profile was too great, so he temporarily dismissed the idea.

With the appearance of the second video and as Mr. Tian’s image gradually became more defined, Tian Mo’s suspiciousness grew increasingly heavier.

Pei Qian was almost ready to plan the third suffering travel list on the spot.

But on second thought, he realized there were still some questionable points.

First, Mr. Tian’s first video was about the Morning Dew gaming platform, and he seemed to have a certain understanding of the gaming industry.

There were only two explanations for this: either Mr. Tian himself had extensive gaming experience, or he was very intelligent, able to understand everything from one example, with relatively deep insights into various industries.

As far as Pei Qian knew, Tian Mo didn’t have much gaming experience before coming to Tenda, nor did he have a deep understanding of this field, as evidenced by his game-playing experience at the store.

Someone who spent several days in “Return to Shore” without leaving the starting village didn’t seem like the former.

And judging from Tian Mo’s past struggles to find employment, he didn’t seem like the latter either.

Secondly, Mr. Tian’s video editing skills were excellent, which didn’t seem like something that could be mastered overnight.

In this respect, Tian Mo didn’t seem particularly skilled either.

Unless…

During his time at Tenda, Tian Mo had suddenly gained insight into the gaming industry and found a partner with superb video production skills to jointly create the “Mr. Tian” account?

Could this partner with excellent video production skills also be hidden within Tenda?

If the Mr. Tian incident wasn’t an individual operation but a group operation, then they needed to be even more vigilant.

It would be simple to send Tian Mo on a suffering trip now, but that would also alert his accomplices.

What if they hid even deeper?

So after much consideration, Pei Qian felt this matter needed to be approached carefully with long-term planning.

However, regarding future matters concerning Mr. Tian, he would definitely keep a closer eye on Tian Mo. Perhaps he could follow the trail and uproot the entire force behind him!

Setting aside the Mr. Tian matter for now, Pei Qian continued to consider the issues with Zhujia Group and Sloth Apartments.

“I never imagined this incident would cause such a commotion. When I initially decided to make ‘Real Estate Agent Simulator,’ I never intended to involve Zhujia Group…”

“Now it seems everyone ‘has long suffered under Zhujia Group.'”

“I originally thought that after the ‘formaldehyde apartments’ incident, major companies including Zhujia Group would show some restraint and make changes, but now it seems I was completely overthinking it.”

“Expecting capital to show kindness is less likely than expecting the sun to rise in the west and set in the east.”

“I never expected that so many people would be calling for Sloth Apartments.”

“But Sloth Apartments’ expansion speed is still too slow. Buying buildings one by one—to cover the entire country, I’m afraid it would be difficult to complete even by the day I’ve lost enough to become the richest man.”

After considering for a moment, Pei Qian called Liang Qianfan and asked him to come over.

By the time Liang Qianfan arrived, Pei Qian had already organized his thoughts.

“Sloth Apartments’ next stage of development needs to be adjusted slightly.”

“While ensuring quality, we should expand to other cities like Slackin’ Internet Café, Slackin’ Takeout, and Headwind Logistics. We don’t need to be limited to just buying buildings; we can also sign long-term rental agreements with real estate developers or ordinary landlords and transform those properties into Sloth Apartments.”

“Regarding pricing, as long as we can maintain minimal profits theoretically, that’s fine. In the short term, the focus should be on expanding scale; whether we make money or not isn’t too important to consider.”

After some thought, Pei Qian felt that maintaining Sloth Apartments’ current state no longer made much sense.

Although buying buildings could burn money, couldn’t the purchased buildings lose money in other businesses as well?

After several instances of contrast with competitors, Sloth Apartments had clearly become the conscientious choice in the rental market, with high attention and reputation, far exceeding its actual scale.

Aside from Jingzhou, tenants in other cities could be said to be eagerly anticipating it.

Pei Qian could understand this feeling very well.

Given this situation, why not change Sloth Apartments’ model, break the restriction of expansion only through building purchases, and use long-term rentals instead?

Of course, compared to buying, long-term rentals also had disadvantages.

For instance, it was easy to get into disputes with the original owners. What if they just wanted to take advantage of Sloth Apartments’ reputation and renovations, then break the contract before operations began?

This wasn’t impossible.

If it were before, Pei Qian might have been troubled by this issue, but not anymore. Liang Qianfan had already developed a set of solutions when signing long-term rental agreements with the merchants at the Snack Market.

The solution was to propose more stringent conditions!

Compared to landlords, tenants were definitely the weaker party.

But Tenda, compared to landlords or even those real estate developers, was no longer the weaker party.

With Tenda taking the lead, offering relatively generous rent, signing long-term contracts, then uniformly renovating these houses, and finally renting them out at prices higher than the market—

Unlike Zhujia Group’s “Peace of Mind Housing” business, which actually pursued more profits and thus cut corners on decoration materials and furniture, Sloth Apartments would strictly limit profits to the minimum allowed by the system. Even if this price was higher than market-rented houses, tenants would ultimately understand that it was all worth the value.

Of course, with such stringent conditions, most landlords and real estate developers wouldn’t agree.

But that didn’t matter, since Tenda wasn’t aiming to expand and seize the market anyway, so there was no reason to compromise.

Now that the Sloth Apartments brand was famous enough, there was no worry about attracting partners.

Moreover, no matter how stringent the long-term rental conditions were, they were still much more convenient than buying buildings.

Liang Qianfan immediately nodded: “Understood! I’ll arrange people to push this matter forward carefully!”

In Liang Qianfan’s view, Mr. Pei was finally revealing his plan.

After cultivating deeply in Jingzhou for so long, Sloth Apartments was finally entering other cities in such a high-profile manner!

This time, a major discussion about rental models had been stirred up online, Zhujia Group’s stock price had plummeted, and the biggest beneficiaries of this public opinion storm were undoubtedly Chi Xing Studio’s “Real Estate Agent Simulator” and the only conscientious brand in China’s rental market—Sloth Apartments.

Taking advantage of this opportunity to enter other cities was undoubtedly heaven-sent!

It seemed that all of this had been arranged by Mr. Pei. Mr. Pei’s planning was indeed exquisite.

On one hand, he remained patient. When Sloth Apartments achieved initial success, he wasn’t blinded by victory but accurately judged that Zhujia Group had not yet been seriously damaged and needed to continue accumulating strength.

On the other hand, he was decisive, making such a bold expansion plan at the first moment this storm erupted!

Liang Qianfan also felt a sense of passion boiling within him.

He had been dissatisfied with Zhujia Group for a long time!

This time, Sloth Apartments’ advance into other major cities was equivalent to a full-scale declaration of war against Zhujia Group, which would definitely provoke a fierce counterattack from them.

But so what?

Had Tenda ever feared anyone?

Had they heard of the Dayark Group? Even multinational capital had been dealt with submissively by Mr. Pei.

No matter how abundant your capital was, it couldn’t be greater than the people of this land!

Compared to the Dayark Group, what was Zhujia Group?

This type of company that could only bully within its own domain, extracting tenants’ blood and sweat money in China and listing on US stocks, might look like a behemoth, but in Mr. Pei’s eyes, it was probably just a clay chicken and earthen dog, not even worth his personal intervention.

Liang Qianfan happily accepted this task and left.

…

Meanwhile, at Chi Xing Studio.

Lin Wan, Cai Jiudong, and other core members were having a meeting.

“Everyone can take a look at this proposal. Many players have offered suggestions and ideas. After reading them, I suddenly had inspiration and simply created this proposal.”

“Do you think this proposal is feasible?”

Cai Jiudong carefully reviewed the proposal in front of him. Indeed, this proposal completely overturned the previously planned new version.

Originally, the new version was only intended to make minor adjustments to the game content, but this proposal planned for a major functional change.

The cause was that many players had brought their real-life house layouts into “Real Estate Agent Simulator,” which was possible due to the game mechanics of this simulation management game.

But having created such satisfying designs, they couldn’t share them with other players, which was quite frustrating.

So many people were asking for mods or design blueprints online.

Since players had this need, why not create an official function to satisfy them?

Lin Wan had even thought of a deeper layer: since excellent room layout designs could be filtered through player likes, and there were many real existing house types within, couldn’t they go a step further and use this game to provide players with a platform for contact and communication?

Everyone knew that most of the housing resources on the market were now controlled by large intermediary companies.

The control method was also very simple: human harassment.

Landlords had to leave their phone numbers when posting housing resources online, and intermediaries searched for new housing resources every day. Once found, they would continuously call the landlords, hoping to rent the houses from them.

This was the daily work of intermediaries.

Landlords received so many harassing calls that they could hardly receive calls from real tenants, which seriously affected their daily work and life.

The stubborn landlords who insisted on not renting to intermediary companies were, after all, a minority. Most landlords eventually compromised.

But no matter what, the desire of both landlords and tenants to bypass intermediary companies as middlemen had always existed.

This could be seen from the posts on many forums and groups where people spontaneously contacted each other for rentals.

But finding houses on these forums was still too difficult and inconvenient.

What if “Real Estate Agent Simulator” could be turned into a platform that excluded intermediaries and allowed landlords and tenants to contact each other directly?

Not only would it eliminate the interference of intermediary companies, but it would also allow tenants to see various details of the houses directly in the game, saving a lot of trouble.

Of course, achieving this wouldn’t be easy, because intermediaries could disguise themselves as landlords and tenants to infiltrate. Also, when conflicts arose between landlords and tenants, mediation would be needed.

If they wanted to do this, it wasn’t simply about developing a new version; it was equivalent to creating a new industry from scratch.

With Chi Xing Studio’s current manpower and financial resources, it would be very difficult.

So at the end of the proposal, Lin Wan listed two prospective partners she hoped could help complete this model together.

These two partners were Shenhua Real Estate and Sloth Apartments.