“Mr. Pei, which project should we promote next month?” Meng Chang asked proactively.

Pei Qian nodded slightly. Hmm, this Meng Chang wasn’t bad—he was becoming more proactive and getting better at following his lead.

It seemed that his incentive measures were having a good effect.

However…

Pei Qian hadn’t really thought about which specific project to promote next month.

Because the settlement was coming next month, most projects had already been completed and settled. Even those that weren’t finished yet were mainly in the final stages.

It wasn’t that these projects couldn’t use promotional resources, but the timing was peculiar, and Pei Qian was worried that things might be too complicated to control.

Normally it wouldn’t matter if he messed around a bit. Even if things went wrong and they made a huge profit, he could still find ways to spend all the money before settlement, leaving room for remediation.

But with only one month left until settlement, what would happen if things went wrong again?

Wouldn’t all his efforts throughout the entire cycle be wasted?

But it wasn’t appropriate to have Meng Chang stop now either. After all, the advertising and marketing department was now a key department helping Pei Qian burn money. With Meng Chang’s help, the settlement for this cycle should go more smoothly.

After considering for a moment, Pei Qian suddenly had a bright idea.

Right, there was a project that was perfectly suitable!

The charity project for this cycle!

Previously, Pei Qian had already decided how to spend the charity budget for this cycle: directly providing supplies to impoverished primary schools in Handong Province—a bag of milk and an egg for each student every day, and giving necessities like rice, oil, fish, meat, and vegetables to poor students during mid-term and final exams.

Improving academic performance might be difficult since students’ diligence and learning abilities varied, and the most important factor for improving performance was having good teachers, which were a scarce resource that was insufficient everywhere.

But providing these basic living supplies would at least ensure that impoverished children could eat well, maintain nutrition, and grow up healthy. This was a type of low-investment, high-return charity.

Of course, the “high return” here didn’t refer to economic benefits but to the children’s growth.

So far, this matter had been mostly taken care of. Both the schools and the food suppliers had been carefully selected. Tenda Group acted as the funder and intermediary, connecting the two parties while also supervising and guiding.

Of course, the coverage wasn’t particularly extensive yet, but the charity budget would continue to increase in the future. The better Tenda developed, the more charity funds there would be.

Using this charity project for promotion shouldn’t have any serious consequences, right? It definitely wouldn’t affect the settlement, right?

Pei Qian felt there was potential here!

But thinking about it carefully, there were still two issues that needed to be resolved.

First, in the system’s judgment, charity and business were two completely different domains that naturally followed different rules. The promotional budget couldn’t be burned unlimitedly on charity; there were many restrictions.

Otherwise, burning money would be too simple—just set up a charity and then pour promotional funds into it endlessly, and that would be it?

There were ways to solve this. Either burn less money or find a way to blur the nature of the charity to bypass these restrictions.

The best approach would be to make it half-charity, half-business in nature, essentially splitting it in two.

On one hand, it would retain its pure charitable characteristics, allowing charity funds to be mindlessly poured in. On the other hand, it would have some commercial attributes, allowing them to exploit loopholes in the system’s rules and burn a lot of promotional funds to achieve the goal of spending money.

Of course, this led to the second problem.

After burning promotional funds, would it suddenly start making huge profits? How could they add commercial attributes while ensuring it wouldn’t make money? This was a big issue.

And even if they achieved this, there would still be risks.

What if the promotion was too successful and the influence of this project spread across the country? That would inevitably greatly enhance Tenda Group’s reputation!

This was something Pei Qian could say he’d suffered greatly from, almost to the point of being annoyed to death.

Tenda’s established reputation was so powerful that this influence extended to every aspect of the entire group. Every time they entered a new field or developed a new product, under the blessing of this reputation, it would become “the focus of attention” and “highly anticipated,” making it impossible to maintain a low profile.

Combined with the strange luck that somehow always made their products successful, it was like adding fuel to the fire, leaving Pei Qian badly burned all over.

So, even if they changed the nature of this project and bypassed the system’s rules, they still needed to be careful and try to make the promotional plan as ineffective as possible.

In other words, they needed to “do good deeds without seeking recognition.”

To be honest, this was very challenging.

Previously, Pei Qian had donated all his charity funds to his alma mater but very discreetly, without burning any promotional funds, and this was precisely the reason.

Not promoting it was the safest approach.

But now, for the sake of settlement and to explore more ways to spend money, Pei Qian decided to take a risk and give it a try.

Pei Qian briefly explained the charity plan to Meng Chang and then said, “Next month, I want you to create a promotional plan for this charity project, but there are two requirements.”

“First, I hope to slightly change the nature of this charity plan, making it no longer a purely charitable activity but one with some commercial characteristics.”

“But I don’t mean to make it profitable. You can understand the ‘having commercial characteristics’ as a purely conceptual action without any economic demands, and base your considerations on that.”

“Charity remains its primary goal, ideally accounting for over 90% of its nature. Even if there’s a tiny possibility of commercial success, it shouldn’t affect the charitable aspect itself.”

“Second, the commission for this promotional plan will be calculated as before, with the premise of spending as much promotional funds as possible, but with some changes in the details: what I need is for the promotional effect to be as good as possible in the impoverished rural areas covered by the charity plan, while on the internet and in unrelated fields, it’s best if no one knows about it.”

“So, do you have confidence in completing this task?”

Meng Chang’s first reaction was confusion.

What, what, what? What was all this?

Wasn’t this charity plan already quite comprehensive? Providing nutrition to children in impoverished primary schools was a good thing!

The suppliers and schools had already been contacted, so why not just implement it directly?

Why were there two additional requirements? Wasn’t this overcomplicating things?

Looking at these two requirements again—the second one about the promotional effect was understandable, but the first requirement was a bit strange.

Charity is charity, and business is business. Why did charity need to have some business characteristics? And charity was still the primary goal, without any consideration for whether the business aspect was profitable or not.

Wasn’t this somewhat contradictory?

It was truly impossible to fathom what Mr. Pei was thinking!

But after a brief moment of confusion, Meng Chang became excited.

Although he hadn’t figured out Mr. Pei’s true intentions yet, he sensed something: Mr. Pei valued him more and was further increasing the difficulty of the tasks assigned to him!

This task was worth digging into.

Moreover, upon hearing that he would be promoting a charity project, Meng Chang naturally made some associations.

During his last visit, Mr. Pei had already hinted that Meng Chang must follow the righteous path. If he repaid his debt prematurely by taking the wrong path, he would be expelled from Tenda.

Just half a month later, Mr. Pei asked him to promote a charity project.

Was this a coincidence?

No, how could it be a coincidence! This was almost an explicit indication!

Clearly, Mr. Pei had likely already guessed that he was making extra money through various means, and this was giving him a chance to make amends!

Previously, Meng Chang had considered whether to give away some of this ill-gotten wealth and do some good deeds within his means.

On one hand, it would ease his conscience; on the other hand, if Mr. Pei discovered it later, he might show leniency considering the money was used for good causes.

But while working on the promotional plan for “Ghost General 2,” Meng Chang had been thinking about this for half a month and still couldn’t come up with a good idea.

There were many channels for charity, but it was hard to say which approach Mr. Pei would approve of.

Now it was all settled—Mr. Pei had arranged everything!

It seemed that he had underestimated Mr. Pei.

Meng Chang had previously harbored a fluke mentality, thinking that Mr. Pei probably didn’t know about his extra earnings through Fan Xiaodong, but now he realized he was terribly wrong.

Mr. Pei was just saving him face by not directly exposing it.

This task was an indirect way to guide him back on the right track.

As for how Mr. Pei knew…

Meng Chang didn’t believe Fan Xiaodong was a mole, nor did he think Mr. Pei could be so well-informed.

The most likely possibility was that Mr. Pei understood Meng Chang’s character too well and knew he would inevitably come up with some tricks beyond the commission.

These thoughts quickly flashed through Meng Chang’s mind, and then he nodded and said, “Alright, Mr. Pei, I’ll do my utmost to accomplish this!”

“By the way, Mr. Pei, the video from the sales department has been produced, and I’ve forwarded it to you.”

“Oh? Very good, I’ll watch it shortly,” Pei Qian nodded, very satisfied with Meng Chang’s work.

Finally, he could confirm the mole who would suffer along with Tian Heigou!

These two people—one creating content and one editing videos—had jointly created Master Tian’s account. Neither could escape!

Meng Chang didn’t linger any longer and turned to leave.

…

After leaving Mr. Pei’s office, Meng Chang pondered the deeper meaning of Mr. Pei’s assigned task as he walked toward the advertising department.

“From the standpoint of a charitable activity, it’s already very comprehensive.”

“So why add some business elements? And why is the primary goal of these business elements not to make a profit? It’s very strange.”

“What is business?”

“From a very utilitarian perspective, business is about figuring out how to make money. But this certainly isn’t Mr. Pei’s concept of business.”

“Mr. Pei’s understanding of business must have a more serious, positive meaning.”

“Business involves the buying and selling of goods, the circulation of money, various economic activities. By extension, business is the process of creating exchanges and connections between different economic entities. The significance of business lies in optimizing resource allocation, better coalescing the productive forces of different individuals, and thereby better promoting social development.”

“So what advantages does business have over charity that make Mr. Pei insist on adding business elements to charity?”

“Hmm… I’ve got it.”

“Cohesion and driving force!”

“If this activity were merely a very simple charity event, then only Tenda and Mr. Pei would be making an effort. Other companies would have no motivation to participate, and the impact generated would inevitably be very limited.”

“But business itself is something with cohesive and driving force. If we can make this charity activity have business elements, then we can attract other companies to jointly participate in this charitable cause, helping more people and achieving better results!”

“Mr. Pei’s intention is to get more companies or individuals involved, leveraging the attributes of business to gather greater strength. Correspondingly, Tenda will certainly provide some returns.”

“Considering it this way… is Mr. Pei hinting that I should take the lead?”