Volume 10: Pro and Con
Chapter 8: The Knight and the Evil Dragon (Part 1)
An Baili came out of the classroom, twirling. Wen Hupo had to hold her back, afraid she would accidentally bump into a wall. Lu Li looked at An Baili, who was smiling like a flower, and could roughly guess what had happened.
An Baili hummed a song as she spun in front of Lu Li. “Today is such a beautiful day~ It’s been so long since I’ve had so much fun~ You have no idea, the moment Hupo and I took out our Character Evaluation Books, wow, a golden light flashed, and a dun dun dun dun background music started playing!”
“Is that so?” Lu Li chuckled, taking An Baili’s hand, and then Hupo’s.
“Everyone was dumbfounded. Wow, the main examiner even called the school. After the call, he addressed me with ‘please’ and ‘Miss.’ Gaga, gaga!” By the end, An Baili was laughing like a duck, clearly so pleased with herself she had gone off the deep end.
Lu Li could understand. This poor little thing had probably never been respected by an outsider in her entire life. It was perfectly normal for her to feel this way. He squeezed the girl’s hand a little tighter. He wanted Baili to have this kind of happiness for the rest of her life. Her happiness was actually very simple, but the container that held her happiness was riddled with holes. Now that he had finally repaired this container, he couldn’t let it break again.
Wen Hupo had her usual indifferent expression. Besides the time with the golden kitten, Lu Li had rarely seen anything that could make her lose her composure. Lu Li had a wicked thought: he had to find a chance to open her eyes again.
“Are we going back to Chuanhai?” Wen Hupo asked. “I didn’t put out enough cat food when I left. I’m afraid Lu Li will be hungry.” When she said Lu Li, she usually meant Miss Lu. When she said Outstanding Representative, she meant Lu Li. Lu Li had corrected her a few times, but the golden-haired girl stubbornly refused to change.
An Baili followed her lead. “Lu Li is very smart. She’ll take shelter when it rains, she won’t eat food that’s fallen on the ground and gotten dirty, and she’ll eat when she’s hungry. You don’t need to worry about her.” Lu Li felt this sounded wrong, as if he had become a simpleton.
Wen Hupo also nodded. “It’s just that Lu Li is always in heat. It’s about time she was spayed.”
Lu Li felt there was a hidden meaning in her words, as if she were talking about the cat, but also as if she were talking about a person. And these two girls seemed to be getting along better and better; they were even finishing each other’s sentences. Had something happened when he wasn’t looking?
Lu Li’s face darkened. “We’re not going back yet. We’re going to look at houses first, buy a place, and settle down in Mulan. Then we’ll go back to Chuanhai to pack our things. We won’t be going back to Chuanhai after that.” Fortunately, the housing prices in Shenzhou were stable, and there weren’t many restrictions on buying a house. Otherwise, it would have been quite a hassle for Lu Li to buy a place.
“Okay, let’s buy a house, buy a house!” An Baili felt that today was the second happiest day of her life. The happiest was the day she married Lu Li in her past life. “We have to buy a big villa! I want the biggest room! No, no, I don’t want my own room, I’ll share one with you.”
Buying a house wasn’t something that could be decided overnight. Lu Li planned to look at a few more places, and he wanted to buy a detached house if possible. And the number of rooms… he counted: one for himself, one for An Baili, one for Yameng, one for Hupo, one reserved for Jingyi in the future, and hmm… Chen Jianing could move out of the school and live with them, so she could have one too. Plus a guest room. This would probably cost several million.
Fortunately, the company had funding from Long Di’s side. As a startup, it had a large cash flow, and the bank loan limit was extremely high. Lu Li estimated that the company wouldn’t have any financial pressure for the next two years. The top priority was to expand production capacity, build the reputation of Changle Company, and speed up the frequency of game releases. It would be best to release a customized game every year to form a stable source of income, so that he could further consider future development.
Lu Li had two plans. One was to delve deep into the entertainment field, expanding the business from games to novels, movies, and animation, creating a complete and self-sufficient industrial chain. The other was to use the income from the gaming field to broaden the company’s business areas, with a technology company as the core, to develop high-tech, such as new energy or artificial intelligence.
In that case, he might be only one step away from the powerful clans. He would just need to unite all the vested interests and form a community, and then he would be qualified to stand on the same stage as the aristocratic clans. Even the noblest of aristocratic families needed underlying industries to support a family’s huge expenses; they couldn’t completely cut themselves off from the lower classes. This was also Lu Li’s opportunity.
He had promised Chu Jingyi he could marry her within three years. Three years… could he upgrade a small, unknown company into a business empire in three years?
He calculated the timeline. If he didn’t eat or drink, didn’t sleep, and all his businesses made a fortune and went smoothly, three years should be… just right.
How many three years does a person have in life? And, could things really go so smoothly?
Lu Li sighed. Trying to match the accumulation of an aristocratic clan over several hundred years with the accumulation of a single generation was indeed as difficult as climbing to the sky. The experience of his past life was insignificant in this high-level collision. As the saying goes: an individual is insignificant in the face of the grand trend of the times. All who stand in the way will be crushed to dust under the wheels of the great trend.
Chu Xiaodong had only said that the Chu family had held high office for four generations after the establishment of the constitutional monarchy; he hadn’t said what the Chu family’s status was before that. Lu Li checked online. In the late Ming Dynasty, among the high-ranking officials, five out of ten had the surname Chu. Perhaps he had underestimated the number when he said three years? Should he have said thirty years? he thought with self-deprecation. If in thirty years, the Changle Group developed smoothly and became a pillar enterprise of the country, the kind that the country would regress ten years without, perhaps he could make the Chu family look at him in a new light, just like the Shenzhou Energy Group. Without it, the entire Shenzhou would come to a temporary halt…
Otherwise, why hadn’t anyone dealt with the Yan family for going so mad?
Lu Li’s thoughts ran wild. He and An Baili and Wen Hupo first looked at several villas but didn’t find a suitable one. Then they went to pick out a car, but after looking for a long time, they still couldn’t decide what to buy—because none of the three had a driver’s license. They wouldn’t know who could sit in the driver’s seat after buying one. Lu Li remembered that Chen Jianing had a driver’s license. Should he ask his business partner to be a driver on the side?
If she were to pick a car, she would definitely pick a big, powerful SUV. Small in stature, but not small in ambition. Lu Li remembered Chen Jianing once saying that if you buy a car, you must buy a big one, preferably a “tank car” with wheels higher than your chest. That way, it would look majestic and powerful when you drove it out, and no one would dare to get close on the road.
Lu Li had accompanied her to a car dealership in his previous life. That girl had gotten into an SUV, but she couldn’t even reach the pedals and was so frustrated she bit her tongue.
After a day of wandering with the girls, his feet were sore, but he still returned to the hotel empty-handed. An Baili was exhausted today and fell asleep as soon as she hit the bed. The ever-leisurely Wen Hupo, however, had conserved her energy relatively well. Lu Li and Wen Hupo sat by the bed. He looked gently at the soundly sleeping An Baili. “Baili is like a child.”
“She found the affection she was missing in her childhood in you, so she is willing to act like a little child.”
“Can’t you just not be so rational at a time like this?” Lu Li said helplessly. “It’s very a mood killer.”
“Sorry, I can’t.”
Lu Li’s gaze was fixed on her. In the room, only this man and woman still maintained a clear mind.
“Hupo, what were you washing that morning?” The knight drew his sword.
