After figuring out what to say, Min Jingchao dialed Bao Xu’s number.

“Bro Bao, how have you been lately? Are you busy?” Min Jingchao asked cautiously.

“Not bad. A bit busy, but fulfilling!”

“What’s up? Are you thinking of coming to support my work?”

On the other end of the phone, Bao Xu was clearly a bit surprised.

Ever since he had become the person in charge of the Suffering Travel program, these old friends of his had been terrified of him. The frequency of their phone calls had plummeted, as if they were afraid that any contact would remind Bao Xu of their existence and get them assigned to the next Suffering Travel session.

Regarding this, Bao Xu wanted to protest his innocence.

The list for Suffering Travel was all decided by Mr. Pei! He had no part in it!

Of course, if Bao Xu were to create this list himself, it might be even more ruthless. But for now, the blame definitely belonged to Mr. Pei.

Since Min Jingchao had gone to Yangcheng, he hadn’t called to keep in touch, so this call now was a bit suspicious.

Min Jingchao quickly said, “Support your work? Oh no, no, no, Bro Bao, you misunderstood. Actually, that’s not quite right either.”

“It’s like this—my new colleagues at Tianhua Studio are quite interested in Suffering Travel, so they asked me to get some information from you.”

To avoid bringing trouble upon himself, Min Jingchao had to make up some “friends.”

This approach also made things seem more authentic. After all, Bao Xu knew very well that Min Jingchao himself would definitely try to avoid Suffering Travel at all costs. If people from Tianhua Studio who weren’t familiar with the inside story were asking, it would seem more reasonable. This helped Min Jingchao hide his true intentions.

Bao Xu indeed didn’t suspect anything and instead seemed delighted: “Is that so? Feel free to ask anything. Tell those new colleagues of yours that Suffering Travel will be opening for registration soon, and they’re welcome to enthusiastically participate!”

“We’re all familiar with each other, so we can easily work things out. When they come, I’ll definitely give them special attention!”

“Ahem.” Min Jingchao coughed dryly, feeling that Bao Xu had completely transformed after his total corruption—he was like a completely different person.

“Actually, they already know a bit about the daily training content, but what they’re most concerned about now is the price.”

“What exactly is the pricing standard for this Suffering Travel program?”

Bao Xu explained: “Currently Suffering Travel has already worked out a rough pricing plan internally, but it hasn’t been announced publicly yet.”

“When Suffering Travel officially opens, each session will still be two months—one month of indoor training at the base and another month of travel. The accommodations and food will definitely be high quality. Add to that airfare and various travel expenses, professional staff assistance, and some hidden costs like the development of scientific training programs and logistics support teams…”

“Currently, Suffering Travel is all within China, and the fee standard is 35,000 yuan per person. This price comes after Suffering Travel has negotiated agreement prices with relevant merchants and tried to minimize profits as much as possible.”

“However, each session of Suffering Travel goes to different places, so the price will definitely fluctuate. If we go abroad, airfare, accommodations, and other costs will increase across the board, so the price will correspondingly increase.”

“Suffering Travel also has plans to establish outdoor special training bases. If those materialize, the price might be reduced a bit.”

“But generally speaking, it will fluctuate around this price point.”

Min Jingchao pondered thoughtfully: “Hmm, 35,000…”

This price was both expensive and not expensive, depending on how you looked at it.

To say it wasn’t expensive, this was after all a two-month program.

Some European group tours cost around 30,000 yuan for just two weeks.

And for domestic scenic spots, calculating from group tour prices of about 2,000 for 5 days, playing around for two months would cost over 20,000.

Not to mention those particularly exploitative low-cost travel groups—let’s not even talk about them. They all engaged in some form of induced consumption, which was quite a rip-off, and the experience definitely wouldn’t be good.

The food and accommodations arranged by Tenda would definitely be of good quality, and there was also the cost of training content to consider. After all, a personal trainer at a gym would charge two to three hundred yuan per hour, and Suffering Travel taught rock climbing and various wilderness survival skills.

From the price of 35,000, two things could be confirmed.

First, Bao Xu definitely hadn’t considered making more money. The current pricing was purely about breaking even, or not losing too much.

This might be due to Mr. Pei’s instructions, or it might be that Bao Xu himself wanted to lower the price a bit to attract more people to come suffer, fulfilling his unspoken purpose.

Second, the food and accommodation standards were likely taking the high-quality route, but with certain cost-effectiveness in mind—they weren’t mindlessly arranging five-star hotels and such.

After all, it was Suffering Travel—it was supposed to involve suffering.

Bao Xu probably felt that while ensuring good rest for all team members, it shouldn’t be too extravagant, as that would go against the original purpose of Suffering Travel.

In Bao Xu’s own view, this was clearly already a bone-breaking, blood-spitting honest price.

For those who had no interest in Suffering Travel whatsoever, this price was hard to bear.

35,000 yuan—wouldn’t it be better to travel abroad? Why run to some remote mountain valley to suffer?

And there was also a very important factor: time.

Suffering Travel lasted two months—which working professional could take a two-month vacation?

People with plenty of time often didn’t have money and would find the 35,000 yuan fee even harder to bear.

So seeing this price, most netizens would definitely say “excuse me” and leave.

Of course, Min Jingchao wasn’t looking at this price from either of these perspectives.

What he needed to consider was whether the price of 35,000 yuan per person would make Zhou Muyan feel the pain.

Hmm… it might hurt a bit, but it wouldn’t necessarily make Zhou Muyan give up completely.

After all, once the project succeeded, the bonuses distributed by Tianhua Studio to each person might amount to tens of thousands of yuan.

Given Zhou Muyan’s interest in Suffering Travel, the mere price of 35,000 yuan per person would be quite difficult to change his mind.

So, Min Jingchao still needed to find a way to trick Bao Xu into raising this price even higher!

Min Jingchao had already prepared what to say: “Bro Bao, I think… oh no, my colleagues think that this pricing isn’t very good. It’s somewhat dampening their enthusiasm for participating.”

Bao Xu was surprised: “Huh? How could that be?”

“This price is already very low. Not to mention anything else, even just taking a private rock climbing lesson would cost about 200 yuan, right? Although that’s one-on-one, and mine is one-to-many, considering all the logistical support and other expenses, it’s hard to lower the price further…”

Min Jingchao quickly said: “Bro Bao, let me finish. I’m not saying this price is expensive—I’m saying this price is too cheap!”

Bao Xu: “Huh?”

Min Jingchao explained: “Bro Bao, what kind of people are the employees at Tianhua Studio? Although the overall benefits aren’t as good as Tenda’s, they’re not short on money! When a project succeeds, each person gets tens of thousands in bonuses every month. For them, two months of time is much more valuable than this 30,000 yuan!”

“Your pricing of 35,000 is clearly missing the mark on both ends.”

“For those without money, they’re already exhausted enough from working hard every day. Where would they find the leisure or spare money to suffer? For such people, even if you lowered it to 20,000, they still wouldn’t come.”

“For those with money, if they’re willing to spend two months suffering, does it make much difference whether the price is 35,000 or 50,000? The key is to provide them with sufficiently good service so they feel they’ve gained a lot in these two months—something of irreplaceable value.”

“The service you’re providing now might seem fine to ordinary people, but to this group, it’s probably not enough.”

“When they hear that two months costs only 35,000, they immediately think you can’t arrange any interesting special content, that there’s no prestige—they might as well fly to Europe for some photos to post on their WeChat moments.”

Bao Xu was silent for a moment, then tentatively asked: “So you’re saying… we need to raise the price?”

Min Jingchao nodded: “Yes, raise the price! And raise it significantly!”

“I think raising it to 50,000 per person would be appropriate!”

50,000 was no small figure—it was nearly half a year’s salary for many wage earners.

Moreover, after raising it to 50,000, it would create a clear gap between this and the cost of general travel and tourism.

For Zhou Muyan, he could definitely still afford this price, but in his view, the value for money would likely become very poor.

It was like how many people feel when consuming: for the same item, a 500 yuan discount makes it fantastic, but a 500 yuan price increase makes it terrible.

After thinking for a moment, Bao Xu said: “But the service we’re currently providing probably doesn’t reach this 50,000 yuan level.”

“In other words, we need to upgrade the service content a bit? For example, add some more suffering projects?”

Hearing this, Min Jingchao felt a chill.

Goodness, more suffering projects?

This must never be known to have been my suggestion, or I’m finished!

But since the conversation had already gone this far, Min Jingchao could only say: “That’s for you to consider.”

He didn’t really want Bao Xu to “upgrade the service,” but it didn’t make sense to raise the price without upgrading the service.

Bao Xu was silent again for a while, and then, as if he had figured it out, happily said: “Thank you, this suggestion is very enlightening for me. I’ll consider it seriously!”

“Thank those colleagues of yours for me. When they come to participate in Suffering Travel, I can give them a huge internal discount directly!”

Min Jingchao inwardly responded with a “hehe.”

My colleagues? Sorry, they definitely won’t be coming.

Zhou Muyan, seeing such an expensive price, would likely choose other alternatives. At that point, it would be a happy ending for everyone: The colleagues from the “Bullet Hole 2” project team would happily travel with pay, escaping the doom of going to suffer.

“Alright, Bro Bao, you get back to your work. We’ll chat again later.”

After hanging up the phone, Min Jingchao let out a long breath.

Half the mission was accomplished. Next was to find Zhou Muyan to complete the other half.

After the lunch break, Min Jingchao came to report the development progress to Zhou Muyan as usual.

After finishing the report, Min Jingchao pretended to casually mention the Suffering Travel matter.

“By the way, Mr. Zhou, when I was chatting with friends from Tenda earlier, I found out about the price for Suffering Travel.”

Zhou Muyan, who had been looking at a plan, immediately raised his head: “Oh? How much?”

Min Jingchao said: “It should be over 50,000 per person.”

“Ssss…” Zhou Muyan couldn’t help but frown slightly and draw in a sharp breath.

50,000 per person?

That was a bit too much.

Although Zhou Muyan was satisfied with the content of Suffering Travel, spending so much money just to practice rock climbing in a venue and do some wilderness survival?

If he used this money to organize employee travel himself, it seemed they could have a much better time.

Zhou Muyan frowned and said: “It is a bit expensive. I think if the price were around 30,000, it would still be acceptable.”

“Why don’t you… discuss with Sun Xi about changing our plan?”

Min Jingchao was absolutely overjoyed, but he couldn’t show it too obviously and tried to remain calm: “Sure, we’re all fine with that. We’ll follow your arrangement, Mr. Zhou.”

Zhou Muyan said: “Good, then I’ll have someone look into other alternative plans. Whether it’s paid travel or paid vacation, let’s think about it more.”

“And we’re not rushing to rule out Suffering Travel either—after all, the official price hasn’t been announced yet, has it?”

“I definitely trust your information, but the price isn’t finalized yet. There might still be changes.”

Min Jingchao couldn’t help but laugh inwardly. The price would indeed change, but Bao Xu had obviously been fooled by him—if there were changes, the price would only go higher, not lower.

Good! So far, the plan to avoid Suffering Travel was a great success!