Thirsty Skin - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 – 【Well done!】

The next day, Zhou Yuang and Lin Wan went on a business trip, and Nie Xiaolan took the interns to do due diligence. The others were interviewing, attending meetings, and looking at projects. Zhu Chizhou was the only one left in the huge investment department.

When he arrived at his workstation in the morning, he spent half an hour reading industry news, replied to a few emails, and then opened the project materials to study. After studying for less than five minutes, he felt extremely bored, and every word on it could not arouse his interest.

He leaned back in his chair, glanced at the empty director’s office, took out his cell phone and started to slack off.

He opened WeChat, changed Lin Wan’s nickname first, and then joined his small group of friends.

Zhu Chizhou: 【Who will accompany me to lift weights in the afternoon?】

Ji Xun: 【Picture】

Ji Xun: 【My little star is on camera today, isn’t he handsome?】

Zhu Chizhou: 【Not as handsome as me, next one.】

Ji Xun: 【Bring me the little balls.】

Zhu Chizhou: 【Get lost.】

Yan Lu: 【I’m going to bed, good night.】

Yan Lu was in a different time zone compared to them, Zhu Chizhou replied: 【Good night.】

Zheng Zexun: 【I can accompany you, but you have to wait until I sober up.】

Ji Xun:【How much the hell did you drink last night?】

Zheng Zexun: 【Picture】

Zhu Chizhou clicked on it and saw three bottles of Feitian Moutai mixed in among the beer bottles on the table.

Zhu Chizhou: 【Awesome.】

Ji Xun: 【You’ll drink yourself to death sooner or later.】

Zhu Chizhou: 【You should continue to sober up.】

Ji Xun: 【@Zhu Chizhou, what time will you go this afternoon?】

Zhu Chizhou: 【I’ll get off work at six o’clock.】

Ji Xun asked curiously: 【Huh? No overtime today?】

Zhu Chizhou: 【Chibi Maruko-chan is not here today.】

Zheng Zexun: 【Who is Chibi Maruko-chan?】

Ji Xun: 【Hahaha, Chibi Maruko-chan is Zhu Chizhou’s nemesis.】

Zhu Chizhou felt upset and turned off his phone and threw it back on the table.

Suddenly, there was a ring and the phone in the director’s office rang.

He stood up and fulfilled his duties as an assistant to help Lin Wan answer the phone.

He was a little surprised by the person who called. It was Li Yanli, the sex toy maker.

When he saw Li Yanli’s reaction that day, he thought that this project would not have any follow-up.

Li Yanli said that he wanted to come over to see Lin Wan, and seemed a little anxious.

Zhu Chizhou didn’t know why Lin Wan didn’t give Li Yanli his cell phone number, so he had to ask him to help contact Lin Wan, then hung up and called Lin Wan.

After dialing the number, there was a beep on the other end indicating that the call was being answered. Zhu Chizhou felt a little nervous for some reason, and his heart was beating fast for no reason.

After several beeps, no one answered the call. Zhu Chizhou put the phone away and was about to hang up when the call was connected.

Lin Wan’s voice sounded even more emotionless than usual on the phone: “Go ahead.”

Zhu Chizhou reported: “Mr. Li from Ri’an Xinke said he wanted to come over and talk.”

Lin Wan seemed to have forgotten, “Ri’anXinke?”

Zhu Chizhou reminded him: “The sex toys company.”

After he said that, his heart began beating a little faster, but fortunately the phone signal would not transmit his heart rate.

He held the phone, trying to slow down his breathing, and then heard Lin Wan ask, “When is he coming?”

Zhu Chizhou: “He said he wanted to come over today, and I said you were on a business trip.”

Lin Wan was silent for a moment, and then heard a soft breathing sound. “Let him come today.”

Zhu Chizhou asked: “Hold a conference call?”

“No,” Lin Wan said, “Talk to him.”

Zhu Chizhou was surprised. He had never met the founder alone before: “Me? Alone?”

Lin Wan’s tone was flat: “Why? You’ve been with me for half a year, do you think you can’t handle it alone?”

‘What do you mean I followed you for half a year???’

Zhu Chizhou was provoked successfully and raised his voice: “Of course I have no problem!”

“Okay,” Lin Wan said, “I think you’ll do fine.”

‘I think you’ll do fine…’

After hanging up the phone, Zhu Chizhou pursed his lips in a daze. This seemed to be the first time he heard a positive evaluation of himself from Lin Wan.

After making an appointment with Li Yanli to meet in the investment department’s conference room in an hour, Zhu Chizhou found the business plan on Lin Wan’s desk and took it back to his workstation to read it.

He saved Lin Wan from drowning that night, and the next day, Lin Wan didn’t come to work, so no one urged him to sort out the meeting minutes. Moreover, his mind was full of “he was so comfortable to hug” for those two days, and he completely forgot about Li Yanli’s project.

‘Oh, right, a notebook.’

He flipped through three notebooks before finding the one he brought to the meeting room on the day of the first meeting. Wow, there was only one page full of circles and crosses, and not a single word of the project’s key points was written down.

Zhu Chizhou: …

Fortunately, he has always had a good memory. While flipping through the business plan, he carefully recalled what Lin Wan had told during the meeting.

Lin Wan is optimistic about Li Yanli’s bionic skin technology, so he should focus on this. However, Lin Wan has also explained to Li Yanli very clearly about the cross-domain technological integration and market prospects of bionic skin, so there was no need for him to repeat it.

During the whole process, he actually noticed that Li Yanli listened very carefully and was not as excited as when they were discussing sex toys. At that time, Zhu Chizhou felt that Li Yanli did not seem very interested. Now that he thought about it, maybe Li Yanli himself had already understood it. He knew what Lin Wan was going to say, so he did not react much.

But bionic skin technology used in more cutting-edge fields is obviously more profitable than sex toys. Why did Li Yanli want to make that thing in the first place?

Is it because he really liked it?

Apart from the question of “Will it hurt to use it”, Zhu Chizhou remembered that when he sent Li Yanli to the elevator, he also heard what Lin Wan said in his mind.

‘You also think it’s a pity to use it as a sex toy.’

‘I hope you can be more honest next time you come to see me.’

In other words, Lin Wan felt that Li Yanli’s original intention was not to make sex toys, but rather to use artificial skin in more cutting-edge places.

And what is the reason why Li Yanli is unwilling to be honest?

Zhu Chizhou followed Lin Wan’s thoughts, went through the details of the entire project, and quickly grasped the key points.

He closed the business plan and threw it aside. He knew how to talk to Li Yanli.

At 1:30 in the afternoon, Lin Wan received another call from Zhu Chizhou.

He was in the car, and it was very noisy outside. He held the phone close to him, holding the receiver with his hand: “How is it?”

Zhu Chizhou got straight to the point: “Li Yanli encountered a bottleneck. The cost of artificial skin could not be reduced, but he was unwilling to use his core technology to cooperate with others, so he wanted to use sex toys to quickly absorb some funds.”

It was pretty much what Lin Wan had expected. He hummed but said nothing, waiting for Zhu Chizhou’s next words.

The boy’s tone sounded obviously excited: “I told him to cut off the sex toy line and focus his energy and resources on the technological innovation of bionic materials, and he agreed.”

Lin Wan’s right cheek was pressed against the phone, and he raised the corner of his mouth silently. He didn’t ask how Zhu Chizhou talked to Li Yanli, but only asked the result: “So, have his concerns been dispelled?”

Zhu Chizhou answered like a veteran: “As soon as we met today, I talked to him about our company’s technical protection measures.”

A project that Lin Wan and Zhu Chizhou were working on previously encountered a similar problem, so Lin Wan thought that as long as Zhu Chizhou could draw inferences from one instance to another, the problem would be easy to solve.

What is important is whether Zhu Chizhou could accurately grasp the key to this project.

Looks like he could.

After hanging up the call, Lin Wan asked Zhou Yuang, who was sitting on the other side of the business car, “Have you noticed that Zhu Chizhou seems to have become smarter recently?”

Zhou Yuang was looking out the window seriously. He turned around and said, “Eh? Hasn’t he always been very smart?”

Lin Wan shut up and said to himself: ‘How can he suddenly become smart now? He was so stupid before.’

At nine o’clock in the evening, Zhu Chizhou came home after exercising. His parents had already eaten. Aunt Fan was cleaning the house. When she saw him coming back, she shouted loudly: “Xiaozhou is back! Have you eaten yet?”

Zhu Chizhou was almost frightened by this shout.

“No,” he said. “Have something to eat. What do we have at home?”

Aunt Fan said, “Chicken soup, I stewed truffles today.” She gestured exaggeratedly, “A truffle as big as a billiard ball.”

Zhu Chizhou nodded: “Okay, let’s eat some billiard balls.”

Aunt Fan’s loud voice called his parents down, so Zhu Chizhou had his midnight snack alone, with the three of them sitting around him at the dining table.

Zhu Chizhou: …

‘I feel like I’m having my last meal.’

Zhu Chizhou’s father Lei Zhengting started from scratch. He used to be a technical soldier in the army. After he retired, he opened a mechanical repair shop. After marrying Zhu Chizhou’s mother, Zhu Ling, Lei Zhengting’s business grew bigger and bigger. He turned the Tingzheng Mechanical Repair Shop into Tingzheng Group, which is now an A-share listed company with a market value of over 10 billion.

Lei Zhengting asked someone to calculate and found out that Zhu Ling was his lucky star, so Zhu Chizhou took Zhu Ling’s surname after he was born.

Ever since Zhu Chizhou started working at Gengyan Capital, he seldom had time to go home for dinner, partly because of overtime, business trips and social events, and partly because of hanging out with friends.

But Zhu Ling was blinded by maternal love. As long as her son didn’t come home, she thought he was too busy at work.

“See how tired and thin he has become.” Zhu Ling complained to Lei Zhengting.

Lei Zhengting couldn’t say anything good anyway: “He still didn’t accomplish anything.”

Zhu Chizhou remained calm, drinking his soup with his head down without saying a word.

Lei Zhengting continued: “It’s been half a year, and you haven’t done a single serious project, and you still told me that you want to start your own business.”

Zhu Chizhou continued to remain calm. It had only been half a year. Which venture capital firm would let a newcomer take on the responsibility right after joining? Lin Wan didn’t give him a project to work on right after he joined the firm. He took a sip of soup and said to his father, “I took on a project today.”

Zhu Ling: “What project?”

Zhu Chizhou almost blurted out that sex toys, but he choked and said, “Bionic materials.”

Lei Zhengting frowned: “Bionic materials? It sounds like you can’t make much money.”

Zhu Chizhou believed that his father had no idea what bionic materials were, and he said some unpleasant things without hesitation, but Zhu Chizhou still explained it patiently.

Lei Zhengting snorted: “Don’t be fooled by those so-called high-tech concepts. In actual operation, how many of them can really make money?”

“How do you know it won’t make money? Do you understand this? Have you done any research?” Zhu Chizhou explained the market prospects and application areas of bionic materials in a very professional manner that was a bit intimidating.

Lei Zhengting was still dissatisfied, and when he could find no fault, he began to attack him personally: “How can I not know more than you? Don’t just talk big, work hard to earn your money first!”

“What is venture capital? The payback period is at least several years. How can you make money so quickly?” Zhu Chizhou had been poisoned by his father’s repressive education for more than 20 years, but he never tolerated it. If he got angry, he would fight back: “Why invest in private equity if you don’t understand this? Just go buy lottery tickets.”

Lei Zhengting was so angry that he wanted to slam the table. Zhu Ling quickly held him down and argued with Lei Zhengting to protect her son. The two of them started quarreling.

Zhu Chizhou had long been accustomed to it, and treated it as white noise in the background. He finished his soup, stood up and said to Aunt Fan, “I’m full.”

He ran upstairs, took a shower, and two new messages came in on his phone.

It was nearly ten o’clock, and his boss, who was on a business trip, was still arranging work for him.

Chibi Maruko: 【Sign a confidentiality agreement with Li Yanli as soon as possible to exchange business data.】

Chibi Maruko-chan: 【You did a good job today.】