Chapter 553: Meeting After Returning

Evening.

Liu Yutong ate dinner on campus and rested in the school dormitory.

Li Xiaohui told her about the situation with the club she’d started.

Currently, Purple Dragon Club had only established a single CrossFire team. However, this team could only compete in minor tournaments, as CF had not yet established a proper professional league system.

The club could only participate in city leagues, World Cyber Games, and other sponsored events. Based on current trends, the club was unlikely to turn a profit for several years and would require continuous capital investment instead.

When Li Xiaohui reached this point, she seemed anxious. She knew that burning company money indefinitely for her hobby didn’t seem appropriate.

After listening to her, Liu Yutong naturally expressed unconditional support, telling her to go ahead without worrying about funding.

Li Xiaohui was deeply moved, practically offering to devote herself to Liu Yutong right then and there.

“Sister Yutong, Fang Haoran and the others have been looking at some other games. They say that sword… sword-something game has real competitive potential. I heard it’s already hosted quite a few tournaments overseas. Though it’s a Warcraft mod, its competitive depth is pretty good.”

“Dota?”

“Yes, yes! That’s the one!”

Li Xiaohui nodded hastily. “There are already some online tournaments in the West. Though the scale isn’t large, the prize pools are much higher than CF city tournaments. I heard some second-generation rich kids in China are organizing private matches with really high prize money. Fang Haoran and his team came in second at an offline exhibition match last week and split a five-thousand-yuan prize.”

“Five thousand? Can amateur tournaments even offer that much?” Liu Yutong asked.

“Yeah, and that was just a small tournament. I heard there’s a boss in Shanghai organizing a much bigger competition where the champion’s prize can reach fifty thousand.”

This prize amount was nothing compared to the tournament payouts of later generations, but it was enough to ignite the passion and motivation of many gaming enthusiasts for now.

“But this game’s mechanics are way more complex than CF. New players have a hard time getting into it, and spectators can’t really understand it either.”

“Sister Yutong, do you think this game has prospects?”

Though Li Xiaohui knew Liu Yutong rarely played games and didn’t share her passion, she couldn’t help but ask for her opinion.

In her eyes, Liu Yutong was simply all-powerful.

Liu Yutong wasn’t a hardcore gamer by any means, but Li Xiaohui had indeed asked the right person—she understood the general trajectory of how things would develop.

For instance, she knew that Dota 2 would give birth to an entirely new professional esports system. She also knew that League of Legends, already in development and expected to launch in the second half of next year, would become the future overlord of the PC MOBA space.

Since Li Xiaohui’s team had already come into contact with it, laying groundwork early wasn’t a problem.

“This project can be pursued. Xiaohui, you should pay special attention to this MOBA genre—its future development potential is enormous.”

Having obtained Liu Yutong’s approval, Li Xiaohui immediately regained her enthusiasm.

“Okay, okay.”

“I’ll definitely pay more attention to it!”

……………..

The next day.

Wanlong Society Group’s temporary headquarters.

Aside from Yun Cheng and Ma Da, who were absent due to work, essentially all available senior executives had arrived.

During this period, Wanlong Society Group had undergone particularly significant changes.

First, the group had newly established a property management company. All future Wanlong Plaza-related business would be placed under its umbrella, with Yun Cheng serving as its head in a concurrent capacity. Additionally, the first Wanlong Plaza would soon open its doors, with the launch date set for October 1st, National Day.

On the physical side, Wanlong Supermarket hadn’t seen major changes. All expansion followed in step with Wanlong Plaza and related industries. However, the supermarket business had opened online shopping channels, supporting multi-warehouse fulfillment—essentially creating an online version of a proprietary supermarket platform capable of instant delivery.

There were currently no plans to develop into a comprehensive online marketplace.

Internet cafe and restaurant businesses were opening new locations in an orderly fashion following the group’s related industries. Meanwhile, the internet cafe business had spun off its milk tea service, establishing a brand-new milk tea brand—Wanlong Tea.

This brand had already expanded to over a dozen locations, essentially keeping pace with other industries. Moving forward, this milk tea brand would consider a direct-operated plus franchise model for broader expansion.

Wanlong Logistics remained steadily developing, though it was still operating at a loss, and its employee headcount had gradually become the highest proportion among all group subsidiaries.

Wanlong Technology’s main focus remained on Wanhui Preferred, which was about to undergo Series B funding. This round’s valuation would exceed two billion.

The reason for such robust valuation, beyond impressive data, was that Yu Xin had explained to investors Wanhui Preferred’s prospects on mobile.

Mobile was already beginning to receive serious attention, especially with the iPhone revolution, allowing some far-sighted businessmen to see that mobile would definitely become an important development direction in the future.

Yu Xin had also proposed the idea of establishing a mobile phone division to lay early groundwork.

Hearing Yu Xin’s proposal, Liu Yutong suddenly had a mischievous thought—what if she brought out the explosively popular iPhone 4’s exterior design ahead of schedule?

Developing phone hardware and software independently in a short time definitely couldn’t keep up with foreign competitors—only assembly was possible—but exterior design could be created in-house first.

If they could release a phone using a pre-registered patented exterior design before Apple released the iPhone 4, probably even Apple would be stupefied, right?

Who’s the copycat then?

They might even be able to hype up this attention and really get the phone project off the ground.

Having thought this, Liu Yutong hardly hesitated before nodding in agreement. “You can establish the company first. Yu Xin, you’ll temporarily serve as head concurrent with your other duties. Staff can be recruited slowly, but you can start by bringing in some exterior design talent.”

“Understood,” Yu Xin nodded.

She then reported another update: the acquisition offer she had made on behalf of Wanlong Group to Degao Maps had made progress.

“Degao has softened its stance, but the asking price is rather high—four billion.”

“Four billion is too much. Maximum is 3.2 billion. If they don’t agree, they can forget about their IPO.”

“Understood!”

Degao Maps was currently planning to go public, but Liu Yutong didn’t intend to let it. She knew very well that this kind of electronic mapping company had limited prospects after going public and would eventually need to align with a capital group to survive comfortably.

Rather than wait, better to take it over early.

If they refused, she naturally had ways to hinder their listing process.

She only needed to explain the pros and cons to those capital firms that had invested in Wanhui Preferred—they would be delighted to create obstacles for Degao Maps. After all, those people were eagerly awaiting Wanhui Preferred’s IPO, and their expectations and regard for Wanhui Preferred far exceeded those for this so-called mapping company.

Especially once they understood how incorporating Degao Maps into the Wanlong Society system could bring enormous benefits to Wanhui Preferred, they would immediately seek heart-to-heart talks with Degao Maps’ founding team to strangle its IPO ambitions in the cradle.

After the morning meeting concluded, Liu Yutong spent the afternoon on document review and fund approvals.

In one afternoon alone, the funds approved by her signature exceeded five billion yuan—truly spending money like water.

Fortunately, the foundation she had built previously was solid enough to support such massive investment.

Just as Liu Yutong finally finished signing off on all project documents, her assistant Su Mansu knocked and entered.

“Boss, Chairman Lin Muyang has invited you to meet at his company. He says he’s brought the person you wanted to see.”

……………..

PS: Let me describe how the author feels after taking medicine while sick: The body is sitting there, but the soul is gone. This medication reaction is really no exaggeration at all.