After that, Med-Ferry kept pressing Fanhai Group, asking whether they would match Qinghui’s offer and stating that Fanhai’s current offer undervalued Med-Ferry. Following Jing Hong’s instruction, Zhao Hanqing simply replied, “We’ll think about it,” “We’re still considering it,” and “We need a little more time.”

After stalling for a while, Jing Hong finally felt that the timing was just about right.

Jing Hong asked President Shen of Goldman Sachs to act as a middleman, saying he wanted to arrange a meeting with Zhou Chang. Zhou Chang seemed quite surprised by Jing Hong’s invitation, but in the end, both sides settled on a time.

“Where do you want to meet?” the Goldman Sachs president asked Jing Hong.

“Let’s just do Qinghui,” Jing Hong said. “I’ll head over there. President Zhou is surely a very busy man with a schedule packed tighter than a drum. Since it was my side requesting the meeting, I’ll try to waste as little of President Zhou’s time as possible.”

“…Alright.” The other party asked again, “Roughly how long will you need?”

Jing Hong smiled: “Five minutes should be enough.”

…………

On the morning of the meeting, Jing Hong walked into his walk-in closet and hesitated briefly before finally pulling out a navy-blue British-style three-piece suit, a white shirt, and a champagne-colored tie.

Once fully dressed, Jing Hong opened a drawer, glanced at the watch winder, and selected a watch.

Jing Hong was usually quite casual; at Fanhai, he dressed in standard business casual—a pair of suit trousers, a shirt, and a business-style Apple Watch on his wrist.

An outfit like today’s was a rare sight.

When the time came, Jing Hong’s driver dropped him off at the Qinghui Building. Following prior arrangements, the driver identified himself, entered the parking garage, and drove all the way to the exit of Zhou Chang’s private elevator—where Zhou Chang’s assistant would be waiting for them.

Jing Hong arrived a bit early, so he told the driver to find a spot to park on his own first. The parking garage for Qinghui’s executives closely resembled the one at Fanhai, filled with overnight luxury cars—some draped in car covers, others bare. Quite a few executives couldn’t fit all their cars at home, so they parked them at the company. The vast majority of executives at IT companies pinched pennies wherever they could, refusing to spend an extra dime—parking spaces in residential compounds were outrageously expensive, so buying one was enough, while the company parking lot was free.

Glancing at his watch, Jing Hong saw that the time hadn’t arrived yet. He didn’t contact Qinghui either, choosing instead to stand alone outside the elevator, waiting quietly.

Jing Hong rarely brought bodyguards or the like, a trait he shared with Jing Haiping.

Zhou Chang’s father, Zhou Buqun, had a fleet of bodyguards around him wherever he went. A financial journalist from a certain TV station had once captured the grand scene of Zhou Buqun morning jogging—Zhou Buqun running in the middle, flanked by six bodyguards running alongside him: two in front, two behind, and one on each side, all stepping in remarkably neat unison.

At the time, another financial journalist had asked Jing Haiping: “Do you usually bring bodyguards with you too?” Jing Haiping had let out a soft snort and said: “No. I haven’t done anything to weigh on my conscience.” The implicit meaning was that Zhou Buqun had done plenty of shady things.

Of course, instances where Jing Hong acted as a completely solitary figure were also rare. Besides his driver, he usually brought an assistant, though more often than not he was surrounded by a large entourage—whether visiting a branch office or a business partner, a huge group followed him, and an equally large group received him.

Occasionally, however, Jing Hong would bring a few bodyguards just for show, though he didn’t actually expect them to be of any real use.

Jing Hong practiced Taekwondo himself, and back when he was in the US, his house even kept firearms—though at that time, no one knew his father was Jing Haiping.

“…” Jing Hong suddenly remembered that during his time in the US, he had actually run into Zhou Chang once at a shooting range.

Back then, the business competition had just ended not long prior, and he had been deeply impressed by Zhou Chang. Although both were in the Bay Area, one was at Stanford and the other at Berkeley—separated by fifty miles—so they rarely bumped into each other. However, major companies and various events were mostly concentrated around the South Bay area, so Zhou Chang’s appearance was hardly surprising.

Since they weren’t familiar, Jing Hong naturally didn’t greet him, only watching for a short while from the entrance of the shooting range.

For some reason, his memory of it remained quite vivid.

Unlike most people, Zhou Chang shot one-handed. Wearing noise-canceling headphones and safety goggles, with one hand casually resting in his pocket, he looked calm and focused. After a round, the target slid over, its central red bullseye shredded to pieces.

After watching for a moment, Jing Hong had moved to another shooting lane.

Just as his thoughts were wandering, Jing Hong suddenly saw a Rolls-Royce drive past.

Zhou Chang’s car—Jing Hong recognized it, having seen Zhou Chang in this vehicle at a business event before.

Jing Hong thought: Zhou Chang just got here? The appointment is for 9:00, and he only arrived at the company at 8:55?

The next moment, the person inside stepped out and slammed the car door. Only then did Jing Hong realize with a slight tinge of surprise that the person inside was not Zhou Chang, but Chris Wells.

Chris Wells, much like Hong Xu, was an academic authority in artificial intelligence in recent years, specializing in ultra-large-scale training models. He was American, but born in Europe. Chris Wells was younger than Hong Xu, capable of taking on higher-intensity work, and compared to Hong Xu, Chris Wells possessed more managerial experience and engineering capability—and engineering meant productization and practical implementation.

Fanhai had considered Chris Wells as well, but hiring him would have meant competing against international tech giants like Google and Microsoft, introducing too many variables. Furthermore, after researching him, Jing Hong felt that Chris Wells held strong academic factional biases, which he worried might negatively impact their technology down the road—sure, you’re the strongest today, but what about tomorrow? Or the day after? It was really hard to say.

Jing Hong had no regrets. After joining Fanhai—or rather, after returning to China—Hong Xu’s energy levels had surged, working over a dozen hours a day. Moreover, Hong Xu shared a common language; if communication was fundamentally blocked by language, even the strongest management capability would see its effectiveness diminished. Lastly, on the engineering side, Jing Hong had recruited a former classmate from his Stanford days whose forte was precisely engineering, and the two were currently collaborating very smoothly.

For Qinghui, however, after failing to compete with Fanhai Group for Hong Xu, securing Chris Wells had become a absolute priority. A while back, Jing Hong had actually heard that Chris Wells had joined Qinghui.

So… Jing Hong thought, Zhou Chang even let the guy drive his own luxury car—he really went all out.

For whatever reason, whether in China or abroad, lending one’s luxury cars, mansions, private jets, or private yachts for someone else to use at will was a cliché tactic, but an extraordinarily effective one. No matter how high an executive’s annual salary was—10 million or 20 million USD—they were still ultimately an employee earning every penny through hard labor, unable to experience the luxurious and lavish lifestyle of capitalists. Frame it that way, and the temptation of “free access to high society” was indeed immense.

Perhaps this was one of the reasons Qinghui managed to win the bidding war against those tech giants.

Chris Wells walked into the elevator with the quintessential look of a tech geek: a white shirt, a V-neck sweater, a gentle expression, and messy, unkempt hair.

Jing Hong waited a bit longer until a “ding” finally sounded in his ears. The executive elevator glided open, and Zhou Chang’s assistant approached Jing Hong upon spotting him.

“So sorry, so sorry,” Zhou Chang’s assistant said. “How long have you been waiting, President Jing?”

Jing Hong said, “I just arrived.”

“Where is your car parked?”

“The driver just grabbed an empty spot.” After a brief exchange, Jing Hong gestured toward the elevator. “Let’s head up. There are two or three minutes left; let’s not keep your President Zhou waiting.”

“Alright,” the assistant said, pressing the elevator button again. The doors smoothly opened wide once more with a soft swoosh.

Zhou Chang was by no means impolite, but he wasn’t overly courteous either, dispatching his assistant downstairs right around the agreed time.

Stepping into the elevator, Jing Hong suddenly realized that this seemed to be the very first time he and Zhou Chang were meeting alone.