Rebirth of the Godly Prodigal

While Hong Dali was happily buying a toy factory and preparing to waste his family’s fortune, at the same time, in the Diamond VIP room on the top floor of Ye Lai Xiang Nightclub, just outside of Tianjing West Fourth Loop.

Hong Weiguo, Mu Tie, and Liu Yihui, the three major players of the Internet, were seated together for the first time.

It would not be exaggerating to say that at least fifty percent of the Internet resources were in the hands of these three.

The search engine that belonged to Hong Weiguo had a daily IP hit count of 800 million. Turkey Messenger software had at least 650 million active users within the country. Mu Tie, the CEO of Jianbao Website, had on hand fluid capital amounting to 200 billion!

The three of them were seated together now trying to figure how best to take over a bigger share of the Internet because of the super prodigal Hong Dali. This was a matter Mu Tie had mentioned previously, the Mu Family big plan!

Mu Tie, who was seated on the sofa, smiled and looked at Hong Weiguo seated next to him. “Old Hong.” He chuckled. “You really treat your Dali well… Once you heard that it would be advantageous to him, you came without a second thought. Even I am seeing you in a new light now, keke.”

Hong Weiguo laughed heartily. “I only have this one precious son. Who would I be nice to, if not him?”

Liu Yihui, who was seated to one side, quipped up. “I quite like Dali. He is kind and treats the people who get along with him well. I also hear that he’s quite the animal lover. That’s a rare trait.”

Hong Weiguo beamed with pride. “That, our Dali is not just anybody. He’s great! Oh, Old Tie, I think you are not aware? Dali got me some jade some time back. It’s quite good! I feel more vitalized after smoking from this pipe!”

Liu Yihui said. “The health of the Old Master at my house has been improving recently. His stomach doesn’t hurt after eating anymore. After he used the pair of health balls Dali gave him, the doctor said his cancer cells have stopped spreading when he went to the hospital for check-ups. It’s really rare for that to happen.”

Mu Tie nodded. “Haha! Not bad, it seems both of you think highly of Dali. In that case, there will be no problems with the plan I mentioned?”

Hong Weiguo nodded and said, “No problem. Internet resources are a big chunk of cake that cannot be swallowed by just one person. Right now, our businesses have reached their peak. When two tigers fight, one is sure to be wounded. Unless we merge, if we were to further expand, we would just be hurting each other. You do have a point. Our Dali is not good at much, but he does have some good ideas!”

Liu Yihui agreed. “Yes, I agree with that! At least, up till now, I have not heard of any of Dali’s ventures losing money. If we develop his ideas properly, there are big profits to be had!”

Mu Tie said, “That’s settled, then. Each of our families shall invest two billion each to test the market, what do you think?”

Hong Weiguo agreed immediately. “No problem. I support that.”

Liu Yihui nodded too. “Same.”

This meeting between the three major players to carve a bigger portion of the Internet resources for themselves ended just like child’s play, with all three coming to an agreement.

Since everything was decided, Mu Tie said without hesitation, “Old Hong, does Dali have any good ideas lately? Tell us about them and see if we can further develop them?

Hong Weiguo thought about it and said, “Good ideas? There is a one, actually, about making a smartphone reading app. Dali said that it’s too troublesome to load webpages with a mobile phone, so he wants to make a mobile phone application that can consolidate all the reading resources. His Zhong Dian website is doing well. The content is varied with many short stories and novels. I think it’s a good idea.”

“Smartphone reading app?” Mu Tie rubbed his chin and gave it some serious thought before hitting the table with his hand. “I think it will work! Smartphones are common now, and many people enjoy reading novels in their free time. This will be a good direction to expand in. The important thing is that smartphone technology is getting more advanced. It will be a good thing to get the client out early so as to corner as much of the market as possible. Haha, Old Hong, if I did not come here today, you would have monopolized that big slice of cake!”

Hong Weiguo waved his hand nonchalantly. “What are you saying? Since we are going to work together, we must do it sincerely. If I were to try to keep everything to myself, how will we work together?”

Liu Yihui said slowly, “Yes, all of our websites can simultaneously start advertising the mobile reading application once it’s ready. The future will be great! The capital is small, but the returns are high. Haha, it was totally worth it to let Dali have that one percent.”

Now that the initial plans were laid out, Mu Tie immediately started calculating. “Heavenly State has a user base of nine hundred million now. The number of users who connect using smartphones has exceeded four hundred million. If there’s just five percent of this four hundred million, that’s twenty million, who read novels, and if each of them spends ten yuan a day, the monthly income will come up to two hundred million. That’s 2.4 billion in a year. After accounting for operating costs and other overheads, even if we were to take fifty percent of that amount, the annual earnings still comes up to 1.2 billion. This project is workable!”

Hong Weiguo said, “I think operating costs will not be that high. We have a relatively large number of advertising portals. They will greatly reduce any associated costs. Other then the development costs, I think two hundred million will cover the annual advertising cost.”

Liu Yihui’s eyes lit up as his train of thought progressed. “This way, it means, the returns for this smartphone reading app are monumental? All we have to do is pay the authors for their works, followed by some fees to get things settled, then what’s left is just wait for the profits to roll in?”

Mu Tie smiled. “It’s not just that. Think about it, if we only put the authors who are on Dali’s Zhong Dian Website on the smartphone reading app, all the other authors will have to join us. The smaller websites will have a hard time surviving. Haha, when that time comes, all the online novels will inadvertently belong to us.”

“Okay! Let’s do it!”

The three of them were all overlords in their own right, and it was almost impossible to say that one had acceded to another. However, through Hong Dali, the three of them could work together. It was a rare occurrence indeed.

This was only their first meeting, and they had already decided on a project that would earn them at least two billion annually. With this sweet taste of success, all three of them subconsciously turned their attention to Hong Dali. They decided to ask him if there were anything else that might be fun…

Hong Weiguo took out his phone and called Ling Xiaoyi. “Xiaoyi, where are you?”

There was an obvious pause from LIng Xiaoyi on the other end of the line. “Old Master, you are looking for me?”

Hong Weiguo chuckled. “Yes, I wanted to ask you what Dali is doing now. I wanted to see if he was up to anything new. I’m discussing with the two now. The smartphone reading app that Dali suggested previously is not a bad idea.”

Ling Xiaoyi glanced at Hong Dali who was happily discussing modifications to the remote control models with the toy designer. She said, laughing, “Young Master? Young Master just bought a toy factory. It’s called Dawn Toy Factory. He and the designer are now discussing how to improve on the appearance of toy models.”

The three CEOs, Hong Weiguo, Liu Yihui, and Mu Tie were speechless. Hong Weiguo asked, stupefied, “Toy… toy factory?! Dali wants to play with model toys now?”

Ling Xiaoyi said slowly, “Yes. Young Master says he plans to make one hundred 1:1 scale model remote-controlled cars and five hundred 2:1 scale remote-controlled aircraft to play with.”

Hong Weiguo hung up in a daze. “O… Okay. You go entertain him.” The entire room was silent for a whole thirty seconds before Mu Tie finally asked, dumbfounded, “Dali bought a toy factory? He wants to play with model toys?”

Liu Yihui asked subconsciously, “This toy factory… does it have a good future?”

The three of them were like children who had suddenly discovered something precious. They huddled in a circle around the little table. Hong Weiguo picked up the teapot. “Pretend this is the toy factory.”

Liu Yihui picked up a teacup. “These are the models Dali wants to produce.”

Mu Tie picked up a tea saucer. “This is the land the toy factory is situated on.”

“Let me check the location of Dawn Toy Factory.” Hong Weiguo turned on his laptop and quickly found the location of Dawn Toy Factory. “Tianjing South District. The land around there… I don’t think they are of much use?”

“Do you think it’s possible the country is planning to develop the South District next?” Liu Yihui held a very deep grudge from his previous venture into land and property. Once he heard that Dali had bought land, this was the direction his thoughts went in…

Mu Tie shook his head. “I don’t think so. The South District is neither far nor near to Beijin City. Even if that area was developed, the value would not rise much. Big Turtle the Black Tortoise is not there. Any developments the country has in the near future is sure to be around West Fourth Loop.”

Hong Weiguo rubbed his chin “That piece of land… What is there to do with just toys? No matter what we try to do with them, I think it would not be ground shaking?”

Liu Yihui fiddled with the teacup in his hands. “If we just sold toys, the profits are not really lucrative. The toy market now is already saturated. It’s just toys like robots, cars, planes, and scale models. There isn’t really much innovation.”

Mu Tie did not think so. “Wrong. I think that’s completely wrong. Think about it, everything else that Dali has dabbled in, have any of them lost money?”

Hong Weiguo and Liu Yihui both shook their heads in unison. “No!”

Hong Weiguo was especially proud whenever this point was brought up. “Our Dali has a good eye. Whatever he dabbles in is a success. He really has not lost any money on any of his projects.”

Mu Tie was convinced. “That settles it! This toy factory must have some secret to it! We can definitely figure something out! If you were to ask me, I say we go big. Let’s buy all the famous toy factories in the country. What do you think?”

Hong Weiguo and Liu Yihui both sat open-mouthed. “Old Tie, you’re serious? Buy them all?!”