Several urgent matters requiring his decision had piled up at “Ping’an Xile.” After accompanying Grandma for a few days, Chen An made a trip to the company and held back-to-back meetings with different people. In the evening, he had Tang Xin book him a plane ticket to Shenzhen.

He’d been thinking about a project there and had originally planned to go see it in person a few days ago, but with recent continuous complications, it had been delayed.

During this period, Cheng Lele hadn’t called him again, but every day he could receive her daily work reports. The recipient was Supervisor Huang from Tongda, and he was copied. It should have been a requirement from Tongda’s side. A full page of Word document, not padded—all substantive matters. She was a doer.

The girl who used to wheedle out of even washing dishes was now organizing all the staff to personally clean the theater halls.

The Word document pages she sent had also been properly formatted. The header had the company name and phone number at the top, with a document number on the right. One end of the footer had the page number, while the other had QR codes for the official WeChat and Weibo side by side. In the center of the page was a very light watermark in elegant colors, displaying the Xingchen Cinema logo.

It finally looked somewhat like a proper operation. The handover materials the previous manager had sent over were unwatchable. Chen An suspected they’d been sent from a small street grocery store. Apart from proving the person could type, it showed no professional competence whatsoever.

Chen An took out his phone and scanned the official Weibo.

The most recent update was posted at one in the morning today. It uploaded a photo showing a group of employees sitting at the entrance, each smiling brilliantly, making various hand gestures. Cheng Lele, sitting in the center, had her long hair piled on top of her head, wore the same uniform as the employees, with a black apron in front, her left and right hands draped over the shoulders of those beside her, looking energetic and motivated. The caption read: Clean the house properly to welcome guests. Today’s cleaning completed [Yeah][Yeah][Yeah]

It seemed that after making an example of some, she’d also handled relationships with the remaining people well.

She was no longer the little girl who’d pout and cry, “What will I do without older brother?”

Chen An locked his screen. The taxi brought him into an urban village in Shenzhen. October in Shenzhen was still peak summer. The taxi couldn’t drive in, so Chen An walked a stretch under the blazing sun. A guy in a black T-shirt and glasses, wearing flip-flops, came slapping over.

“Sorry, we should have gone to pick you up. A bug appeared in the game just now, couldn’t get away temporarily.” The young man said guiltily.

“It’s fine.” A thin layer of sweat formed on Chen An’s back. As he walked, he asked, “You are—?”

The guy said, “Oh, I haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m the person in charge of Hanbai Games, Dong Ping.”

With that, Dong Ping led Chen An into a six-story building. The urban villages here were all old buildings privately constructed years ago, with almost no gaps between buildings—a depressing sight.

Dong Ping’s team was on the third floor. As soon as the door was pushed open, there was a statue of Guan Gong with a red light, and next to it were figurines of the game protagonist Dong Ping had designed.

Chen An was startled. Dong Ping smiled. “For peace and safety.”

After Dong Ping’s game was released, the data for new users, daily active users, and retention rates were dismal. Dong Ping was a talented young man. His family had sold their house and burned money letting him do what he wanted to do, finally reaching the end of their rope. Dong Ping still hadn’t given up. After going around looking for investment and failing to attract anyone, he’d eventually found his way to Chen An.

Chen An had played the game. The experience was good, just that the marketing and promotion hadn’t kept up, and some details weren’t polished carefully enough—probably also due to lack of funds.

He wasn’t very confident about this game’s prospects. Originally, for such a small project, he could have just sent his investment team to take a look, but he wanted to meet Dong Ping in person. If he invested, it wouldn’t be for the project, but to invest in Dong Ping as a person. Ping’an Xile had grown from small to large thanks to a bit of luck, and also thanks to countless small but beautiful projects, and even more thanks to his grasp of people.

He’d always been very accurate at reading people. Where he’d been most off the mark was with Cheng Lele.

It happened to be mealtime. The few employees scattered to eat. Chen An said “Let’s eat together,” and Dong Ping took Chen An to eat Longjiang pig’s trotter rice at the entrance of the urban village.

Chen An could see why Dong Ping had never managed to attract investment.

He hooked over a chair and squeezed together with Dong Ping at one table. Without discussing the game itself, he casually chatted about his views on the future of gaming and also asked about his life. In the meantime, his phone vibrated. Chen An glanced at it—it was an email from Cheng Lele. Subject: This Month’s Expense Budget.

He opened the attachment and quickly looked through it.

A large spreadsheet at a glance. The items were clearly analyzed, the format clear and consistent, from equipment maintenance fees to marketing costs, everything was there. Under each expense item were detailed notes, from large items like replacing the popcorn machine to small items like purchasing a security lock for the main door. It looked like just one sheet, but it was very labor-intensive. Cheng Lele had probably also been working around the clock without much sleep.

Chen An looked at the final budget figure—a bit over one hundred and twenty thousand.

She was asking him for money.

Chen An put away his phone and directly asked Dong Ping, “How much do you need?”

Dong Ping actually didn’t even know which company Chen An was from. When he’d received the phone call, he’d mentioned it was introduced by a friend at Juli. After meeting, Chen An hadn’t given him a business card. Dong Ping worried that he might have given one before and didn’t have the nerve to ask directly. He also wasn’t good at subtle probing, so he just introduced his work blindly.

During this period, he’d approached too many investors. Even he himself had forgotten who was who. Most investors were still quite polite, saying “good” when meeting, then turning around with no more messages. Some were more arrogant and wouldn’t even give him a meeting opportunity. Chen An was the first to personally come over to look. He’d thought it was just lip service before and only dared to believe it when the person arrived at the airport.

For someone to run over to see him like this, the other party probably wasn’t from a big company, but even mosquito legs were meat.

He didn’t dare squander this last bit of hope. Tentatively, he held up five fingers. “Five hundred thousand.”

Chen An thought, what can you do with five hundred thousand? Pay the wages owed?

He put down his chopsticks and said, “I’ll invest five million for you first, and add more later if needed. By the way, I’ll recommend someone who properly does game marketing and promotion. Talk to him—whether you use him is up to you. Also, customer service is indeed too weak. Think about how to handle it. If you can’t figure it out, get a professional to do it. I suggest you still need to find an operations partner so you can focus on content. This person needs my approval. Email me when you have progress.”

After speaking, he took out a business card and said, “I thought you might have forgotten my email.”

Having been exposed, Dong Ping excitedly and bashfully received the business card with both hands. Upon seeing the company name on it, he nearly took an arrow to both knees and wanted to kneel down and call him boss.

It was actually “Ping’an Xile”! That “Ping’an Xile” that had gained fame five years ago by jointly investing with Changshu Capital behind Guan Luning, cultivating two unicorn companies in India and domestically!

Dong Ping himself was a genius, so after seeing an industry insider who was low-key and mysterious yet similar to him in age, he said with surging passion and great encouragement, “Mr. Chen, we definitely won’t fail your expectations and will strive to become the next MGM.”

MGM was a big data company Chen An had mainly invested in a few years ago—one of the representative works of “Ping’an Xile” in the technology direction.

Chen An put his arm around his shoulder. “Just be yourself. Also, call me Chen An.”

“Isn’t that inappropriate?”

“My assistant also calls me by my name directly. I don’t like friends calling me Mr. Chen, including in the workplace.”

Dong Ping nodded dumbly. “Then you can also call me Dong Er. When my employees are annoyed with me, they call me Dong Er. After calling it repeatedly, it became a habit.”

Chen An smiled and nodded, opening his phone to reply to another person’s email.

Just one sentence: “I’m only giving sixty thousand.”