Chapter 67: Yun Ji Backs Down

Seeing Zhao Shanshan hesitate instead of immediately agreeing,

Li Xiao’s opinion of her silently improved.

Her family background was quite ordinary, but she knew how to be modest, which showed she had a good upbringing.

Li Xiao:

"I have nine whole Pine Needle Crabs, and each one weighs over two pounds."

"The four of us can’t possibly finish that much."

"Besides, you’re already here. It wouldn’t feel right to send you home by yourself."

With both Li Xiao and her boyfriend insisting, Zhao Shanshan felt it would be rude to refuse again.

So, she gave a shy smile and nodded.

"Alright then, I’ll join you."

Soon, their second class was over.

The group hurried to the parking lot. Zhao Shanshan was stunned when she saw the imposing GLC.

She’d heard from her boyfriend that Li Xiao’s family was wealthy and that he was very generous.

During their earlier chat, she’d heard Li Xiao say he had a car, but she had just assumed it was an ordinary one for getting around.

She never expected it to be a luxury car like a Mercedes. While she didn’t know much about car models, she recognized the Mercedes logo.

Zhou Yu eagerly explained to his girlfriend:

"What do you think? Gorgeous, right?"

"Brother Li just got it yesterday. Huang Zhiyuan said that with everything included, the car cost nearly 600,000."

Hearing the price, Zhao Shanshan gulped.

Both of her parents were regular workers, with a combined monthly income of just 10,000 yuan.

This car was nearly 600,000. That meant her parents would have to work for 60 months, without eating or drinking, just to afford it.

She nodded, completely flustered.

"It’s beautiful. Of course it’s beautiful. How could a car worth over 600,000 not be beautiful?"

As they spoke, the group settled into the car.

Li Xiao’s apartment wasn’t far from the university. A dozen or so minutes later, the car was parked in the underground garage, and the five of them headed up to the apartment, chatting and laughing.

The five of them entered the apartment.

Li Xiao originally planned to let the other four entertain themselves on their phones or with the game console.

After all, in his opinion, preparing the Pine Needle Crabs wasn’t particularly difficult.

He was more than capable of handling it by himself.

However, the other four quickly rejected his offer.

None of the four were fools, not even the normally straightforward Zhou Yu.

There’s an old saying: accept a gift and you’re in their debt; eat their food and your words become soft.

Nine Pine Needle Crabs... even at 600 yuan per crab, the cost of the ingredients alone was nearly 6,000 yuan.

Since Li Xiao was treating them to something so expensive, there was no way they could just play dumb and let him do all the work while they relaxed and played games.

Seeing that they were all insistent on helping, Li Xiao felt a bit resigned, but he didn’t refuse their kind gesture.

Seeing the four of them stubbornly staying in the kitchen, he thought for a moment and quickly came up with a plan to divide the labor.

Zhao Shanshan was a girl and considered more nimble-fingered, so Li Xiao assigned her the task of carefully washing and sorting the garnishes, like ginger and green onions.

His other three roommates were each tasked with scrubbing a few of the Pine Needle Crabs.

Li Xiao casually unwrapped a few new toothbrushes and tossed them to his three roommates to help with the scrubbing. Meanwhile, he went to one side to set up and adjust the tripod for his camera.

He opened his phone, logged into Douyin, and was very satisfied to see the clean interface.

Earlier that afternoon, after Zhou Shishi had signed her employment contract, he had set up a sub-account and handed over the credentials to her.

All the useless private messages had already been handled by Zhou Shishi.

She’d blocked the ones that needed blocking and replied to the ones that needed a response. The "99+" notifications in his inbox had been completely cleared by her in just half an afternoon.

And she had managed all this while also helping to ship out packages. Her efficiency was remarkably high.

Li Xiao was just thinking he should praise his assistant for her efficiency when he saw that Zhou Shishi had already sent him a WeChat message.

[Boss, while I was going through the DMs, I found a particular one that I think you need to see.]

Li Xiao glanced down and saw a screenshot attached.

[Yun Ji Wonton Noodles: Hello, Mr. Li. I am Yun Hongquan, the owner of Yun Ji Bamboo-Rising Wonton Noodles.

Due to some past misunderstandings that led to a great deal of conflict between us, I would like to extend my sincerest apologies to you.

We have realized our mistake. This morning, we changed all the menus in the shop, switching from Bamboo-Rising Noodles to Wonton Noodles.

Furthermore, we’ve already spoken with the advertising company, and the main sign will also be changed to ’Wonton Noodles’ tomorrow.

My entire family depends on this small shop to make a living. I’m begging you, Mr. Li, please be merciful and let us off the hook. We truly know we were wrong.]

After reading the apologetic direct message, Li Xiao raised an eyebrow.

He had thought the owner would be a tough nut to crack; he didn’t expect him to give in so quickly.

Seeing the man’s reasonably sincere words, Li Xiao thought for a moment and decided to let him off the hook.

To be honest, their mistake wasn’t some unforgivable sin.

If they hadn’t immediately hired two other streamers to challenge him right after his own broadcast, and deliberately hired an army of trolls to harass him in his comments and live chat, he wouldn’t have bothered.

Now that the owner recognized his mistake and was actively correcting it, Li Xiao certainly had no desire to pursue the matter relentlessly.

Everyone makes mistakes. As long as they were willing to fix them, that was good enough.

He didn’t reply to the man directly, as that could easily give the other party something to use against him.

After a moment of thought, Li Xiao quickly came up with a solution.

The reason the owner had backed down so quickly was mainly due to the powerful deterrent effect of the negative review videos shot by the food bloggers he’d hired.

That being the case, all he had to do was get the bloggers who had already uploaded their videos to delete them, and tell those who had filmed but not yet published to not release them.

The internet has a short memory. As long as nobody brought it up, the whole incident would be forgotten in no time.

And when the owner saw that he had the videos taken down, he’d get the message—as long as he wasn’t a complete fool.

With that in mind, he opened his contacts and found the bloggers.

The bloggers who hadn’t yet published their videos were simple to handle; he just paid them the final balance of their fee and told them to cancel the release.

As for the bloggers who had already published, dealing with them wasn’t much trouble either.

Li Xiao sent each of them another 100-yuan red packet, and the recently posted negative review videos instantly vanished from the internet.

He did a quick search to confirm that the videos were gone from the platform, then nodded in satisfaction.

The whole affair had been a commotion for a few days, but now it was finally, satisfactorily resolved.

By the time he finished handling this, the cleaning work of the other four was also coming to an end.

After glancing at their progress, Li Xiao opened the Douyin app and started his live stream.