Chapter 253 - 197: Pocket Rocket

Little did she know, she had helped Yang Hui earn over two million yesterday. Otherwise, he really wouldn’t dare to spend so extravagantly right now. He wasn’t sure when he’d be able to leave Futong Commerce. Although he felt things with Li Yang were about to come to a head, nothing was certain until he got the official notice.

According to the system’s rules, he could resign after his probation period ended and it would still count as being unemployed, but that would take three months—far too long to wait. By partnering with Serene to establish a new company, he had essentially taken an advance on the thirty million in unemployment funds he expected to receive after leaving Futong Commerce. So, for now, he still had to be a bit conservative with his spending.

When Xiaolang heard Yang Hui call the car a "little beater" and mention replacing it in a while, his hand trembled, and he filled out the form incorrectly.

"I’m sorry, President Yang. I’ll fill out a new one."

He waved his hand to show it was no big deal. ’Xiaolang is still so young, a little clumsy,’ he thought with the composure of a seasoned veteran. In reality, Xiaolang was actually a few years older than him.

「Futong Commerce」

Dan Biao walked out of Li Yang’s office, having been chewed out yet again. Ever since taking over the NLB brand, he got yelled at about as often as he ate. If this kept up, life would be unbearable.

Recalling Li Yang’s latest demand to force Yang Hui to negotiate a rent reduction, Dan Biao felt Li Yang was going too far. Wasn’t this a classic case of rewarding merit with punishment? Yang Hui had made such a huge contribution to the company, yet instead of a reward, he was being relentlessly squeezed, forced to use his personal connections to create extra value for the company.

He even found himself thinking, ’Why would someone like Yang Hui stay at Futong Commerce? With his abilities, wouldn’t any other company treat him like an honored guest?’ If it were his own company, Dan Biao knew that if Yang Hui could generate an extra million for him each month, he’d be willing to split it fifty-fifty. He’d even give him more, since he’d still be profiting. He couldn’t understand Li Yang. Perhaps it was a case of being too close to the situation to see clearly, or maybe it was just Li Yang’s selfish, greedy nature and his self-centered worldview.

He didn’t know what the sales figures were for the Xinyue Square store yesterday. Li Yang had lost too much face to ask NLB’s headquarters every day; it was too humiliating. The Wanlong Commerce store had only sold 3,000 yuan’s worth yesterday. Today, Zhang Li had been ordered to stay at the shop all day to find the cause and implement immediate changes. Li Yang had declared that if the store couldn’t hit 300,000 in sales this month, Zhang Li shouldn’t even bother coming into the corporate office. He was to stay at the shop until the numbers recovered.

Dan Biao thought this was a scumbag move. Zhang Li was a department manager, and Li Yang was making him do the work of a store manager. What about his Erke team? The Erke brand’s performance, which had been declining for days, was already dead last among all the company’s brands in both year-over-year and month-over-month comparisons.

Because of this issue, Li Yang had chewed out both Dan Biao and Zhang Li again, saying they didn’t know how to manage and were doing a piss-poor job. Dan Biao was so angry he wanted to start cursing. ’How was I supposed to manage anything?’ he fumed internally. ’You, Li Yang, arranged everything. Everyone followed your methods. But when the results are bad, you make your subordinates take the fall.’

He gave Yang Hui a call. Yang Hui hadn’t come in that morning, having already requested the time off from him.

At that moment, Yang Hui had just finished the paperwork and was picking up the car with Shen Meng. When he received Dan Biao’s call, he stepped aside to answer.

"A Hui, can you do me a favor? Try to negotiate some of the other projects at Xinyue Square. Even if you only land one, it’ll be enough to report back to President Li."

Yang Hui laughed. "Do I owe him something? Or does Xinyue Group owe him something? Tell him if he brings up rent reduction again, Xinyue Group will drop the Airex brand entirely."

Dan Biao froze. That was exactly the kind of thing Xinyue Square would say. In the past, when they had tried to negotiate pulling a store, the other party had simply retorted, "Then pull all of them out." But things were different now. Yang Hui had given the company so many pleasant surprises and so much potential that they had forgotten Xinyue Square was not to be trifled with.

"Sigh... If President Li heard that, he would lose his mind."

"If he’s going crazy, he should go to a hospital. What’s that got to do with me? Look, President Shan, I took the morning off for a reason. Please don’t call me to discuss matters outside of my job description."

His attitude was clear: he would definitely do his own job well, as his professional reputation was on the line. Anything beyond that depended on his mood. The previous times he had used his personal connections, it was for the sake of his teammates’ incomes. As for Li Yang, he completely disapproved of the man; there was no way he would ever help him.

Furthermore, what Dan Biao didn’t know, Yang Hui knew perfectly well: Li Yang was acting this way entirely because Yang Hui was the boss of Yanghe Commerce and hadn’t given him a cut of the profits. This was just Li Yang’s way of lashing out. ’Who does he think he is?’ Yang Hui was actually afraid that Li Yang wasn’t going crazy *enough*. He was waiting for the day Li Yang completely lost it and tried to drive him away, just like he had with Xia Jie.

Dan Biao hung up. Yang Hui’s attitude was no surprise; he was already used to it. At least he had made the call, which counted as fulfilling his obligation to Li Yang.

He sent a message to the operations manager of the Xinyue Square Store to ask about NLB’s sales from yesterday. When he learned the total had reached 62,000, Dan Biao leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath. "What a monster!"

Futong Commerce’s poor NLB performance wasn’t limited to the Wanlong Square store; several of their out-of-town stores were also doing badly. Thanks to Xinyue Square’s wall-to-wall "battle report" style promotions over the past few days, the entire landlord-side business community now knew just how monstrously successful Yanghe Commerce’s NLB store was.

Over the past few days, general managers from various malls had called Li Yang to question why Futong Commerce’s performance was so poor. They lamented what a waste it was for such a good brand and expressed hopes that Futong would improve its operational quality. Li Yang’s face had been metaphorically slapped swollen by the criticism. Rumor had it he had even stopped attending business gatherings, terrified that someone might bring the topic up.