Following that, the negotiation progress for the Kunpeng-Huawei merger suddenly accelerated.

Qinghui and Huawei secured the CEO position, while Panhai and Kunpeng locked down absolute veto power along with several other strategic concessions. For instance, the joint company would be named “Kunpeng-Huawei” rather than “Huawei-Kunpeng.” Furthermore, the post-merger equity distribution was adjusted slightly in Kunpeng’s favor rather than a flat 50:50 split—a deliberate move designed to create the illusion that Kunpeng was the acquiring entity to soothe the egos of Kunpeng’s workforce. In the end, employees on both sides would walk away believing their own firm had come out on top.

By the second round of negotiations after yielding the CEO seat, both sides arrived flanked by their respective legal, financial, and auditing teams to begin drafting the framework agreement.

Panhai’s investment department operated with extreme professionalism, and from that point onward, Jing Hong never intervened in the merger process again—knowing that if a critical decision required his executive input, Zhao Hanqing would report it to him directly.

As the negotiations deepened and word of the impending Kunpeng-Huawei merger leaked to the public, industry insiders couldn’t help but marvel: “Kunpeng and Huawei spent years tearing each other apart, and the ultimate result is that each of them just gained an extra father!” “Exactly! Kunpeng gets Qinghui as a father, and Huawei gets Panhai as a father. They used to answer to only one patriarch, but now both sides have two!”

The next time Jing Hong encountered the name “Qinghui,” it arose from a relatively minor corporate matter.

A prominent heavyweight in the field of Artificial Intelligence had recently returned to China from the United States, seeking to spend his twilight years in his home country—a classic case of a fallen leaf returning to its roots. Currently, Panhai, Qinghui, the remaining two titans of the “Big Four,” along with elite institutions like Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Fudan University, were all aggressively courting the scholar, aiming to recruit him as a full-time academic, a strategic consultant, or at the very least, a visiting professor.

On a particular day, the General Manager of Human Resources reported that, due to Qinghui President Zhou Chang’s personal connections, Qinghui currently held the leading position. She noted that Professor Hong had initially refused to consider Panhai Group entirely and was on the verge of signing a contract with Qinghui. However, leveraging her own sheer sincerity, she had successfully persuaded Professor Hong to at least visit Panhai’s campus to tour their AI division, review their live AI products, and meet the head of Panhai’s AI framework. She also intended to showcase Panhai’s internal machine learning infrastructure and their massive, proprietary machine learning training repositories. Eager to finalize his decision quickly, Professor Hong had scheduled the campus tour for 3:30 PM that very afternoon.

Furthermore, the HR General Manager had managed to secure a commitment from Professor Hong to sit down for a face-to-face meeting with Jing Hong.

“Excellent.” Jing Hong scanned his schedule. “Set it for 4:00 PM. I’ll clear my schedule.”

A faint smile crossed his lips inwardly. The HR General Manager possessed true corporate wisdom. If the professor still chose to decline after a personal intervention from the CEO, the failure could no longer be attributed to the HR department; it would become Jing Hong’s personal shortcomings, ensuring the blame could never be pinned on her. If the CEO couldn’t close the deal, she certainly couldn’t be expected to. Nonetheless, she had executed her duties flawlessly, and deploying the highest-ranking executive demonstrated the appropriate level of respect for Professor Hong.

“I will personally showcase Panhai’s competitive advantages to win Professor Hong over,” the HR General Manager added. “However, my personal assessment is that Professor Hong’s mind is already heavily set on Qinghui. The deal is practically finalized, and this afternoon’s tour will be incredibly difficult to overturn. It appears Professor Hong merely agreed to the visit out of sheer courtesy because he found it awkward to reject me outright. This ‘brief look’ seems highly perfunctory, scheduled for this afternoon likely as a formality before he delivers his final rejection.” She was simultaneously analyzing the landscape while providing Jing Hong with a graceful out.

“Awkward to reject us outright?” Jing Hong caught the specific nuance. The hand flipping through the dossier paused as he pondered the detail for a moment. “As expected of an intellectual; he’s incredibly thin-skinned.”

The HR General Manager blinked, caught off guard by the fact that Jing Hong’s takeaway focused entirely on the professor’s politeness. “Presumably so.”

Jing Hong questioned further, “Is Panhai currently hosting our AI Talent Research and Study Camp?”

As a premier technology conglomerate, Panhai Group organized an annual AI Talent Research and Study Camp. The camp featured multiple specialized tracks tailored for startup founders, university students, and independent developers, bringing together several hundred participants. Candidates from startups and universities submitted applications, and Panhai selected elite individuals to join the “Panhai AI Talent Initiative,” providing them with structured, high-level training pipelines.

Through these sessions, startups mastered successful business models, corporate management strategies, cutting-edge research methodologies, and trending application sectors. University students gained direct exposure to industrial infrastructure. The initiative allowed Panhai to scout promising startups and top-tier student talent, integrating the best among them into Panhai’s commercial ecosystem through direct investments or recruitment.

The HR General Manager answered, “Yes, this current cohort’s camp wraps up next week.” An initiative of this scale naturally required seamless coordination from the HR department to manage the instructional personnel and resources.

“Perfect.” Jing Hong leaned forward slightly. “Coordinate with the AI Group (AG) immediately. When Professor Hong arrives this afternoon, arrange for the AI elites from the camp to form a welcoming corridor along the main hallway. Instruct them to voice their profound admiration for Professor Hong and express how intensely they anticipate his guidance. Have them say things like, ‘Professor Hong, could you please deliver a lecture for us?’ or ‘We’ve been looking forward to this for so long!’ You can finalize the exact script. Let’s gamble on the fact that intellectuals are incredibly thin-skinned.”

The HR General Manager: “…”

“Your response?”

She smiled subtly. “Understood, President Jing.”

Jing Hong’s management style leaned heavily Western. In one-on-one sessions with subordinates, he commanded an absolute, authoritative presence, yet his demeanor remained approachable, fostering a relaxed operational environment that kept his team from feeling overly anxious. However, every executive remained acutely aware of Jing Hong’s sharp intellect and ruthless execution, knowing full well he could turn cold at a moment’s notice.

At exactly 3:00 PM, Jing Hong instructed his assistant to pull up the live surveillance feed from the AG department’s main corridor to review the preparations.

The moment Professor Hong stepped through the primary entrance of the AI division, a dense crowd of young men and women lining both sides of the hallway burst into a thunderous round of applause! There were hundreds of them present.

Professor Hong was visibly startled by the display.

The President of the Artificial Intelligence Business Group explained smoothly, “We are currently hosting our AI Research Camp. Over on this side are our startup founders—including the founder of ‘XX Aerospace,’ along with the creators of ‘XX Bio’ and ‘XX Robotics’… In short, they represent China’s most promising emerging enterprises. On the opposite side are our elite university students—that young man right there ranks first in Tsinghua’s junior AI class, the one next to him is the top sophomore, and we have the top-ranking students from multiple cohorts at Peking University. Over here is the championship team from the World Robotics Competition, and… I casually mentioned that Professor Hong might drop by the department today, and look at that—haha, they absolutely insisted on gathering to welcome you! They all know that Professor Hong is a global pioneer in the AI sector who has resolved countless systemic bottlenecks.”

“…” Professor Hong’s demeanor grew visibly strained and formal.

The AG President continued his presentation: “Panhai Group’s research camp is the only one of its kind in China. We at Panhai are deeply aware of our profound social responsibilities.”

“President Liu!” a young man spoke up from the crowd. “Will Professor Hong be delivering a lecture for us? Could he offer us some technical guidance? Even a brief direction on our engineering bottlenecks would prove incredibly beneficial!”

“That remains to be seen,” the AG President chuckled. “It entirely depends on whether Professor Hong decides to join us here at Panhai.”

The moment those words left his mouth, hundreds of intense gazes locked onto Professor Hong simultaneously: “Please join us!” “You must come!” “Professor Hong, we beg of you!” “Yes, we genuinely need you!” “We’re practically ready to bow down to you, Professor! Kowtow, kowtow, kowtow!“

A young woman added playfully, “We will wait for you! We’ll wait forever!”

Another young man immediately began swaying to a rhythm, singing aloud, “My heart is waiting, forever waiting~” Prompting several others nearby to start swaying along with him.

They were all young, confident, open-minded, and radiating bright energy, filling the entire corridor with laughter and lively banter.

Naturally, there was no shortage of typical, reserved IT professionals standing quietly in the mix as well.

This charged atmosphere persisted right up until Professor Hong was ushered into a private conference room.

Professor Hong spent a full hour touring the AG department.

At 3:55 PM, noting that the timing was precise, Jing Hong stood up from behind his executive desk, fastened his suit button, closed his office door, and strode purposefully toward the floor housing the AI division.

Choosing to walk over personally rather than summoning the guest to his office served as the ultimate demonstration of Panhai Group’s corporate sincerity.

During the face-to-face interview, Jing Hong noted that Professor Hong’s absolute resolve appeared to be wavering.

The scholar raised several technical queries with Jing Hong, and the nature of those questions made it abundantly clear that Panhai Group was very much back in the running.

Jing Hong possessed an exceptionally sharp, persuasive, and highly magnetic delivery, complemented by a professional appearance that naturally instilled confidence in others. As he meticulously outlined Panhai Group’s sweeping strategic ambitions, future operational roadmaps, R&D capabilities, exhaustive resource preparations, and milestone achievements—culminating in the pivotal, high-profile role Professor Hong would command within this macro-framework—it became evident that the professor was growing increasingly conflicted.

Subsequently, around 5:00 PM, through mechanisms unknown, several financial journalists broke the story online, running headlines like: Panhai Group’s Elite AI Camp Gathers to Plead for Hong Xu’s Insertion.

The articles detailed:

“Panhai Group’s Research and Study Camp stands as a premier elite initiative in China, capturing virtually the entirety of the nation’s next-generation AI vanguard. The cohort includes CEOs and CTOs from celebrated startups, top-tier students from elite university AI programs, and decorated champions from global AI tournaments… Furthermore…

According to inside sources, the entire cohort collectively implored Hong Xu to join Panhai Group’s research initiative to provide his invaluable institutional wisdom…”

While Jing Hong hadn’t personally orchestrated the press leak, he was more than happy to watch it unfold.

Since Hong Xu proved exceptionally thin-skinned, adding a little more fuel to the fire was a logical next step. At present, the entire industry and academia were aware that hundreds of young minds—the literal future of Chinese artificial intelligence—were pleading for his guidance. Should Hong Xu decline Panhai’s offer now, public perception would instantly paint him as cold-hearted—someone who turned his back on hundreds of eager students for financial gain or personal convenience. Having spent years contributing to the United States, his stated mission upon returning to China was to give back to his homeland; rejecting the absolute future of the nation’s tech sector would severely undermine that narrative—a consequence he would likely go to great lengths to avoid.

As a pure academic, Hong Xu would never suspect that this sequence of events had been meticulously engineered by Panhai Group from the very beginning.

Meanwhile, across the city at Qinghui Group.

At 7:00 PM, Zhou Chang stepped out of the primary headquarters of Qinghui Group.

Today, he had switched his vehicle, opting for a Rolls-Royce.

With a Bluetooth earpiece secured, Zhou Chang listened intently to an incoming call as he stepped smoothly into the rear passenger compartment.

The call came directly from the General Manager of Human Resources at Qinghui Group, who reported that Professor Hong had suddenly become exceptionally hesitant, requesting more time to reconsider. When pressed for his specific reservations, the scholar remained completely tight-lipped, prompting concerns that they were about to lose him to a rival bid.

At this hour, they hadn’t yet caught wind of the financial press reports and remained blind to the events that had transpired at Panhai Group. Yet, inexplicably, a single name flashed across Zhou Chang’s mind—Jing Hong.

Did that man pull something behind the scenes?

Zhou Chang instructed the HR General Manager to re-establish contact with Professor Hong to ascertain his exact points of hesitation. The manager noted she was already attempting to do so, though the professor’s line remained continuously engaged. Consequently, Zhou Chang agreed that if no update materialized by tomorrow morning, he would intervene personally through private channels to reach out to Professor Hong.

Hanging up the call, Zhou Chang leaned back against the leather seat, staring out into the passing nightscape.

The vehicle’s interior featured premium Nappa calfskin. The cattle for this specific Nappa leather were raised exclusively on the northern slopes of the Alps, where the unique combination of sunlight and humidity resulted in an environment virtually free of biting insects. Consequently, the hides remained flawlessly intact, completely devoid of surface imperfections. Only a select tier of hyper-luxury vehicles utilized this grade of Nappa calfskin.

Zhou Chang harbored zero concern that elite universities possessed the leverage to steal Hong Xu away; his suspicions rested solely on Jing Hong.

After staring out the window for a while, Zhou Chang’s smartphone rang once more.

Expecting a follow-up regarding the Professor Hong situation, a glance at the screen revealed a different caller entirely.

It was his younger cousin, Zhou Qingyuan.

Zhou Chang relaxed his posture slightly, answering, “What’s on your mind?”

The text-book playboy Zhou Qingyuan chuckled over the line, “Nothing major. I just caught wind of the rumor that your old man has started arranging blind dates for you? Is it the daughter of the Shixi Group? I’m just calling to poke around and watch the drama unfold.”

Zhou Chang let out a dry scoff. “Your intelligence network moves remarkably fast.”

“So, how did it go?”

Zhou Chang remarked coolly, “I didn’t meet her.”

“Why on earth not?” Zhou Qingyuan expressed genuine surprise. “Your father’s logic is sound. A strategic commercial marriage ensures proper alignment of status, eliminating a massive amount of domestic friction. Furthermore, deep corporate ties between the two conglomerates allow both entities to safeguard each other’s market positions.”

“Give me a break,” Zhou Chang countered casually. “Marrying into any of those families is just a disguised capital transfusion. How does that qualify as equal status?”

“You’re holding out for an absolute, flawless match in status?” Zhou Qingyuan countered. “Allow me to gently remind you, brother, that the only corporate entity commanding an absolute, flawless match in status with Qinghui… is Panhai.”

“Panhai?” Zhou Chang’s tone turned slow and deliberate. The memory of a pair of fiercely ambitious eyes flashed through his mind, prompting him to casually loosen his tie knot. “Now that would be remarkably entertaining.”

Zhou Qingyuan gasped, “…Brother, you’re joking, right?”

Zhou Chang countered, “What do you think?”

Relieved, Zhou Qingyuan continued, “Why not just take the meeting? Word is the sole heiress of Shixi Group is exceptionally beautiful, and her background matches yours perfectly.”

Zhou Chang offered a faint, clinical smile. “Would she herself dare to claim we are ‘perfectly matched’?”

Zhou Qingyuan fell entirely silent, caught off guard by the sheer weight of the statement.

It took a long moment before Zhou Qingyuan found his voice again. “Sigh, to be completely candid with you, your father asked me to check in on your progress and talk some sense into you. The old man noted that your management style is far too dominant, whereas the heiress of Shixi Group possesses a gentle, yielding temperament that would suit you well.”

“Gentle, is she?” Zhou Chang remarked smoothly. “Then it sounds even more uninspiring.”

Zhou Qingyuan: “…”

“Fine, fine, I know when I’m beaten; I can’t talk sense into you. I’ll just sit back and watch to see if you can actually unearth someone ‘inspiring’ enough for you,” Zhou Qingyuan surrendered completely. “Though I must say, your old man is incredibly stubborn. If you refuse to see this one, I guarantee candidates number two, three, four, and five are already lined up waiting for you.”

Zhou Chang noted, “He certainly loves keeping himself busy.”

“He has nothing else to occupy his time,” Zhou Qingyuan remarked. “The operations of the corporation have been fully transitioned to you. Looking at the past six months, he can no longer dictate corporate strategy, which leaves him with nothing to manage other than your personal life.”

“A pointless exercise,” Zhou Chang stated evenly. “He can’t manage the corporation anymore. And me? He has even less hope of managing me.”

_

Author’s Notes:

Dropping into President Zhou’s perspective for a moment to give everyone a clear look at him! You can all grab your snacks while evaluating President Zhou!

President Zhou: Infuriated. I will have my revenge.