Pei Qian turned his attention to the system reward.

Every system reward seemed quite useful.

Previous rewards included:

Increasing values by 10% during settlement, significantly boosting income;

Modifying rules and opening a charity quota, allowing Pei Qian to mindlessly eliminate a portion of system funds;

Allowing one project to span two settlement cycles, giving Pei Qian a good method for rushed spending.

What would this system reward be?

[Mysterious Reward: One-time Special Task for the Cycle]

[Collect upon entering the next cycle]

The system’s light screen continued to display.

[Next settlement time: 6 months later]

[Replenishing system funds, target amount: 20 million]

[System funds 16.23 million being replenished…]

[System funds replenishment complete.]

[System funds: 20 million + 0.86 million]

[Fixed assets: Mingyun Villa residential property (8.61 million)]

[Personal assets: 920,000]

[This cycle’s special task: The sea of learning has no shore, learning never ends. A true business genius, no matter how smoothly their career is sailing, must never abandon learning. The host can invest part of the initial system funds in themselves to acquire knowledge, with a maximum spending of up to 8% of the initial system funds. After completing the courses, the host can choose to freely reduce or increase a certain amount of system funds at settlement. This amount = 8 times the investment spent.]

[Note 1: Whether the host completes the courses depends on the system’s judgment of the host’s knowledge improvement. There is no limit to the number of courses, but the host’s abilities are limited, so it is recommended to attempt only one course at a time.]

[Note 2: The system funds reduced or increased at settlement are virtual and only affect the conversion value.]

[Note 3: If courses available on the market cannot meet the requirements, the host can hire someone to teach them, but tuition must not exceed reasonable limits as determined by the system.]

This long string of information made Pei Qian a bit dizzy.

First, the next cycle would be six months, a bit longer than Pei Qian had expected.

Short cycles and long cycles each had their advantages.

Short cycles meant quick settlements and seeing returns sooner, but the limited time meant many time-consuming projects couldn’t be done, which was rather restrictive.

Long cycles meant being able to invest more money in larger projects with higher expenses, but settlements were slower.

Considering the construction timeline for the Thriller Lodge, Pei Qian felt that six months was acceptable—longer was better than shorter.

As for the initial fund limit of 20 million, it was lower than Pei Qian had imagined, but compared to the previous cycle, it had already doubled.

Obviously, the higher the initial system funds, the lower the difficulty of losing money—the system wasn’t stupid.

Pei Qian began to study this cycle’s special task.

The statement “A true business genius, no matter how smoothly their career is sailing, must never abandon learning” made Pei Qian feel somewhat offended, because he neither hoped for his career to sail smoothly nor had he abandoned learning…

He had occasionally attended classes seriously and passed the final exams entirely on his merit—how could anyone say he’d abandoned learning!

But the system seemed to have another set of evaluation criteria for this.

The system’s rules were very clear: Pei Qian could take up to 8% from the initial system funds, currently 1.6 million, to invest in himself—in other words, to pay tuition fees.

The system didn’t restrict what he could study.

At settlement, the system would determine how much he had learned. If the system was satisfied with Pei Qian’s learning outcomes, it would reward him with the ability to reduce or increase a certain amount of system funds at settlement.

Suppose at settlement, Pei Qian had 22 million in system funds, which would be considered profitable. If Pei Qian had previously spent 1 million on tuition and learned the corresponding knowledge, then he could reduce 1 million × 8 = 8 million.

The actual system funds would still be 22 million, but the system would calculate the conversion based on 14 million, which would then be judged as a loss.

Originally with 22 million, Pei Qian could only convert 2,000 yuan, but now he could convert 600,000.

However, there also seemed to be some pitfalls in this regulation.

First, Pei Qian could decide how much tuition to pay, up to a maximum of 1.6 million, but even for those so-called executive programs, tuition was at most several tens or hundreds of thousands. Where would he find courses costing 1.6 million?

If he enrolled in multiple courses simultaneously but didn’t have time to study, he wouldn’t meet the system’s requirements, so that would be useless.

Moreover, how much knowledge would he need to acquire to fulfill the system’s requirements? There didn’t seem to be a clear standard.

“It seems that to spend more money while completing this task, the best option would be to specially hire a truly capable professor or a top expert in a certain field, pay them well, and then spend more time studying seriously. This would maximize my chances of success.”

“But what should I study?”

“Management? Economics? Finance?”

“Learn some management and then do the opposite to ensure I lose money successfully?”

“Learning some economics should also help me lose money.”

“However… these choices seem a bit too confident…”

“As a liberal arts student who hasn’t even studied advanced mathematics, trying to learn these courses might lead to immediate burnout. If I struggle through six months of theory and still don’t understand anything, and the system determines I haven’t passed, wouldn’t that be a waste of effort…”

“Well, there’s no rush. Let me think about it more.”

Pei Qian felt this special task was very important and couldn’t be approached hastily—it needed careful planning.

He needed to ensure he could learn effectively while also spending more on tuition.

If it could also help with losing money, that would be even better.

…

…

April 1st, Friday.

Li Yada and Bao Xu returned.

Pei Qian had hoped this was an April Fool’s joke, but unfortunately, it was real.

However, having just completed a settlement, Mr. Pei’s mental state was very relaxed, somewhat like a college student’s at the beginning of a new semester—peaceful and happy, with finals far away, free to enjoy himself first.

As soon as Li Yada and Bao Xu returned to the company, they received a warm welcome from everyone in Tenda’s game department.

“Sister Li, you’re back! Did you have fun?”

“Huh, Brother Bao doesn’t seem to have tanned much. Did you use sunscreen this time?”

“Was it fun abroad?”

Faced with everyone’s warm greetings, Li Yada enthusiastically shared her travel experiences, while Bao Xu expressionlessly plopped down at his desk, put on his headphones, and isolated himself from the world.

He never wanted to go out again in this lifetime!

Indeed, for a homebody who dislikes going out, no matter how many times they travel, they still can’t enjoy the feeling.

Seeing that Mr. Pei was also present, Li Yada hurried over to greet him.

“Mr. Pei, we’re back!”

Pei Qian managed a forced smile and nodded.

Hu Xianbin approached Li Yada and proudly said, “Sister Li, mission accomplished! After you left, I continued to implement your ideas, completed the mobile version of GOG, and under Mr. Pei’s finishing touch, it achieved great success!”

Li Yada smiled and said, “I know. I’ve been keeping up with GOG’s situation. I’m proud of you all!”

Indeed, Tenda has now become a very impressive team. Everyone does their part, and it doesn’t matter if anyone is missing!”

“Except for Mr. Pei, of course.”

Pei Qian’s mouth twitched slightly.

Although he strongly rejected and resisted Li Yada’s statement that “Tenda can function without anyone except Mr. Pei,” he had to admit that this seemed to be the truth…

If it weren’t for him, some projects might have made less profit…

Take GOG, for example. The biggest blame clearly lay with Li Yada—who impulsively decided to make a mobile game?

If GOG had honestly stuck to just the PC version, there wouldn’t have been so many issues!

In Pei Qian’s view, even if he took blame, he could only take a small portion—for rushing to spend money on season rewards, which accidentally brought more popularity to the game.

The one with the least blame should be Hu Xianbin, since he was just diligently fulfilling Li Yada’s requirements.

So now that Li Yada and Bao Xu had returned, Pei Qian deeply felt that the next settlement cycle would become more difficult.

After briefly exchanging greetings with everyone, Li Yada looked at Pei Qian again: “Mr. Pei, this experience has strengthened one of my ideas.”

“I want to step down!”

Pei Qian was stunned: “Hmm?”

Li Yada continued, “I believe that the continued success of Tenda’s game department is due to constant renewal.”

“This is a position that greatly values creativity. If one person is responsible for the game department long-term, they will inevitably experience depleted inspiration and rigid thinking.”

“So, I’ve decided to officially hand over the position of executive lead designer to Hu Xianbin!”

Huh? Could this be true?

The primary person responsible for GOG’s success was voluntarily asking to step down?

That’s fantastic!

Pei Qian’s face was about to light up with joy.

Hu Xianbin was stunned and quickly said, “Sister Li, this isn’t appropriate. I just entered the industry not long ago…”

Li Yada smiled and shook her head: “You’ve already proven your ability. Besides, I’ve always felt that my abilities weren’t sufficient for the position of executive lead designer. It was only Mr. Pei’s encouragement that allowed me to unleash 120% of my potential, which led to some success by chance. Now I think this position should be handed over to a more promising young person.”

“As for me, I’ll stay on the project like Bao Xu, enjoying a leisurely life, helping out, and doing odd jobs.”

Pei Qian couldn’t help but marvel.

Look at that level of awareness!

Zhang Yuan, learn from her!

When Pei Qian used the first-place elimination system to remove Zhang Yuan, Zhang Yuan was still reluctant to let go of the Slackin’ Internet Café and ROF assembly business—not a relaxed attitude at all.

Look at Li Yada—she retired without hesitation!

Although Pei Qian didn’t particularly appreciate Hu Xianbin either, given the choice between the two, he felt Li Yada was the more dangerous one.

Between two evils, choose the lesser. Li Yada stepping down as the lead designer was a good thing!

Pei Qian immediately agreed: “Good, no problem. Your salary and benefits will remain unchanged; you’ll just no longer hold the position of executive lead designer. Thank you for your tremendous contributions to Tenda’s game department! You’re getting older, so you should indeed take a good rest.”

Everyone: “…”

Although Mr. Pei’s words were especially warm and touching, what did he mean by “getting older”?

Wasn’t Li Yada only 25 this year?

Looking at Li Yada and Bao Xu’s state, Pei Qian felt that the travel therapy was quite effective.

A perfectly good executive lead designer returns from vacation and immediately becomes a slacker, requesting to step down.

Great!

Let Li Yada retire in the game department, and meanwhile, let the slacker spirit she developed during her travels spread throughout the game department.

Over time, the entire game department would be full of former lead designers thinking only about slacking off…

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?