Although Che Rong was highly skeptical internally, he didn’t dare to show it, and instead asked: “So, Mr. Li, how do you plan to do the promotion?”

After considering for a moment, Li Shi said: “It’s very simple. First, we put up money for traditional advertising according to the standards when Thrill Lodge first opened.”

“Second, we invest in opening more supporting industries around this roller coaster project.”

“Finally, we confirm the specific types and locations of these industries with Chen Kangtuo, and share a small portion of the profits with Tenda.”

“That’s about it.”

“As for your side, I think you could consider opening a store nearby, though you definitely can’t use the Starbird Fitness model. It would be best to create an experience store or merchandise store related to Tenda’s games.”

“Currently, there’s no similar store around Thrill Lodge, so opening one would fill this gap nicely. Of course, the specific layout and business content need to be well-planned.”

Che Rong’s expression turned serious, and he fell into a long silence.

“Wait a minute, Mr. Li, let me think this through.”

“So you’re saying that Chen Kangtuo hopes investors will provide money to promote Thrill Lodge’s roller coaster.”

“And your way of promoting is to pay for advertising costs yourselves, invest your own money to open supporting industries nearby, and then give a share of the profits to Tenda.”

Li Shi nodded: “Yes, this is what drinking the soup means. What’s wrong with that?”

Che Rong scratched his head: “But how is that different from directly giving money to Tenda? You call this Tenda sharing benefits with us??”

“This is clearly us providing the pot, the meat, and all the ingredients, then giving the cooked meat to Tenda, and we just drink the soup!”

Li Shi was so angry his nose almost twisted: “How can you understand it like that? That’s absurd!”

“Have you considered the huge costs Tenda has already invested in this project?”

“These are invisible implicit costs that you can’t see.”

“Without Thrill Lodge, could you make money opening a store in the old industrial district?”

“Did the more than 100 million for building the indoor roller coaster fall from the sky or grow from the ground?”

“Let me put it this way, Thrill Lodge has already planned a subway route, and in the future, it won’t just be a haunted house—it will develop towards becoming a comprehensive amusement park, with increasingly rich content and growing foot traffic.”

“Under such circumstances, opening any store nearby, as long as it’s not particularly absurd, will make money!”

“In this situation, why do you think Chen Kangtuo came to me first instead of finding someone else?”

“If I’m not willing to pay or don’t appear generous enough, do you think he wouldn’t go find someone else?”

“If you still don’t understand, just think about what happened to those shops in the food street that weren’t willing to cooperate with Tenda. I don’t need to say more, right?”

Che Rong couldn’t help but feel somewhat ashamed: “Mr. Li is right. My statement was indeed inconsiderate.”

“How about this: I’ll carefully consider what kind of model to use for a store near Thrill Lodge, utilizing Tenda’s game elements as much as possible.”

“I’ll do whatever Mr. Li says. I’ll just follow Mr. Li and drink the soup!”

Li Shi nodded with satisfaction: “Good. Rest assured, although working with Mr. Pei means you can only ever drink the soup, even the soup from Mr. Pei’s projects is more nutritious than other people’s meat!”

“Now that you’ve already joined us on Tenda’s ship, you need to learn more about Tenda’s business model and understand the rules of cooperation with Tenda.”

“As long as you understand Tenda, you don’t even need to research the market anymore. Just follow behind Tenda, and that’s it! How simple is that!”

Che Rong nodded again, deeply convinced by Li Shi’s teachings.

…

…

December 7th, Friday.

Yangcheng, Tianhuo Studio.

Min Jingchao had just finished lunch and was preparing to enter his break time.

Since the initiation of “Bullet Mark 2,” the development work had been going very smoothly, making Min Jingchao, the lead designer, very at ease.

After all, Tianhuo Studio was a mature game company that didn’t lack money, people, or experience in FPS game development, so everything was progressing smoothly overall.

Of course, the development of certain features in “Bullet Mark 2” encountered some minor setbacks, because Tianhuo Studio’s designers were used to finding a similar finished game to reference before creating their own. Now, given a purely original design, they often felt confused and caught off guard.

But under Min Jingchao’s guidance, these small problems were quickly overcome. Tianhuo Studio’s designers began to gradually adapt to this design mode of freely exercising their imagination, and even proactively offered modification suggestions for Min Jingchao to adopt.

Among these were quite a few constructive good suggestions that greatly improved the game’s detailed experience.

In addition, the entire project team had been adhering to Min Jingchao’s principle of no overtime.

At the beginning, many designers were still not accustomed to this, habitually working until they forgot to leave in the afternoon, and some employees even made the mistake of coming in on weekends when they didn’t need to.

Of course, whether they truly forgot or were afraid of Mr. Zhou holding grudges, so they came to work anyway?

It’s hard to say.

Initially, no one took it seriously—working just one or two hours late or coming in for half a day on the weekend wasn’t a big deal.

Compared to the previous high-intensity 996 development state, this was already quite lenient!

But Min Jingchao took this very seriously, repeatedly emphasizing that everyone must follow normal working hours, and drove people out every day at closing time.

He didn’t allow anyone to stay even one minute longer in the project team.

Those who felt uncomfortable not working overtime, seeing Min Jingchao’s persistence and that others truly weren’t coming in, gradually became at ease with resting at home.

The initial development efficiency did indeed decrease because of this, but Min Jingchao withstood the pressure and still resolutely refused to let people work overtime.

As for the low development efficiency… well, they could just delay the project. It wasn’t a big deal.

Surprisingly, after a month had passed, the development progress actually started to pick up again, which was quite miraculous.

Up to now, the development of “Bullet Mark 2” had become stable and should be completed and launched on schedule.

Having just finished eating, the drowsiness hadn’t yet set in. Min Jingchao opened Rabbit Tail Livestream on his phone to check out Qiao Laoshi’s stream today.

For working people like Min Jingchao, the one-hour limit didn’t matter at all.

During the morning work hours, he had already hung up the focus mode on his phone for an hour, which didn’t interfere with anything and actually improved work efficiency.

Qiao Laoshi was still the same as before, at the bottom of the entire team.

But Min Jingchao wasn’t focusing on Qiao Laoshi at all—he was focused on the Suffering Travel!

Through Qiao Laoshi’s livestream, many details of the Suffering Travel were more clearly displayed to everyone.

Previously, although there had been promotional videos and documentaries about Suffering Travel, compared to livestreaming, there was definitely still a layer of separation.

Seeing Qiao Laoshi suffering, joyful “2333” bullet comments floated across the livestream.

But Min Jingchao couldn’t laugh at all, feeling only bitterness.

Because Zhou Muyan had said that after the “Bullet Mark 2” project was completed, he would send everyone in the project team on the Suffering Travel!

At that time, Min Jingchao would endure the same fate as Qiao Laoshi. Who could laugh about that?

So, he needed to save himself!

Min Jingchao had already discussed with Sun Xi that as long as the price of Suffering Travel was high enough, Zhou Muyan would feel the pain in his wallet and would definitely cancel this trip or substitute it with another option.

Anyway, as long as they didn’t go on the Suffering Travel, anywhere else would be fine.

But how could they make Bao Xu set the price very high? High enough to make Zhou Muyan feel the pinch?

This required coming up with a suitable rationale.

If it was too obvious and Bao Xu saw through it, not only would they fail to achieve their goal, but they might also get themselves into trouble.

Min Jingchao had been worrying about this in his spare time every day, and even today, he still hadn’t come up with a good solution.

As the second phase of Suffering Travel was already underway and the official website would soon be open for reservations, Min Jingchao was becoming increasingly anxious.

“Can’t delay any longer, must come up with a plan in the next couple of days!”

“Quickly think about what particularly expensive services Tenda has, think about what the pricing standards are, maybe I can get some inspiration.”

Min Jingchao went through Tenda’s current industries, summarized those that were relatively expensive, and tried to find their commonalities.

From what he could see, physical industries like Slackin’ Internet Café, Slackin’ Takeout, and Tuoguan Fitness all met this standard, as did digital products like ROF PC Assembly and Seagull Phone.

But this expensiveness wasn’t mindlessly high—it was because a lot of added value had been incorporated.

Take the Seagull Phone for example: the reason the first generation sold so well despite its high price was that it included many of Tenda’s supporting services. If all these were taken into account, the phone was actually quite cost-effective.

Other industries were more or less the same—the price went up, but the service, quality, and experience also improved.

“So, forcing Bao Xu to increase the fees for Suffering Travel definitely won’t work; it would be suspicious.”

“But if I approach it from the side, explain the pricing rules to Bao Xu, and suggest that he add more supporting services to Suffering Travel, then raising the price would seem reasonable.”

“Yes, this way I won’t expose myself, since Bao Xu doesn’t know that Zhou Muyan wants to arrange Suffering Travel for us.”

Min Jingchao quickly came up with a set of talking points.

Soon, Qiao Laoshi’s training had concluded, and it was noon, time to eat.

The winning group could roast chicken themselves, while the losing group could only eat canned food and various compressed foods.

Although they could eat their fill and nutritional needs were met, it really didn’t taste good!

Needless to say, Qiao Laoshi was definitely in the losing group. Watching the oil sizzling on the roast chicken from the winning group, he was practically drooling, and it seemed like you could almost hear him swallowing his saliva through the phone.

Miserable, too miserable!

The bullet comments were all showing off their own lunches—kebabs, fried chicken, milk tea—which made Qiao Liang’s mental state somewhat collapse, almost making him angry enough to end the stream on the spot.

Since it was also lunchtime break over there, it meant that Bao Xu was also free.

Min Jingchao took a deep breath, went through the talking points he had prepared in his mind once more, thinking about how to achieve his goal in one attempt.

In order to avoid suffering, he must persuade Bao Xu to raise the price!