"He said that since the prayer beads had left Vajra Temple, it meant their fate with the temple was exhausted, and once that fate was severed, there was no need to force a continuation. He only hoped that the beads, which had been steeped in the spiritual essence of the eminent monk Hongyi for half a lifetime and had absorbed decades of incense and scriptural chanting, would be treated with kindness by someone with a karmic connection to Buddhism. Though the monk's prayer beads were not divine artifacts, they were unmatched in calming the mind and keeping all evil and malevolent spirits at bay."
He had forgotten that Ye Chen and the stall owners were still standing nearby.
Lu Cheng spoke on, his expression solemn and earnest.
Finally, he concluded, "Master Hongyi's prayer beads cannot be measured in money. In the eyes of most people, they are just an ordinary string of beads, but to the old leader, they are priceless. He has been searching for them all these years, but alas, the fate was never there!"
"Boss! Fifty thousand! Fifty thousand, sell these beads back to me!"
Just as Lu Cheng's voice faded, the stall owner cried out anxiously to Ye Chen, filled with deep regret.
He didn't harbor the slightest suspicion that these people might be in cahoots.
Right now, he was consumed by bottomless regret!
He never imagined that the story he had completely fabricated would turn out to be true.
These prayer beads really had belonged to an enlightened master, and that patina really had been smoked into the wood by decades of incense smoke!
If he had known this, forget twenty thousand—he wouldn't have sold them for two hundred thousand!
Because with just the name of Master Hongyi attached, the item was worth far more than two hundred thousand!
"My friend, three hundred thousand. Sell it to me, deal?"
Right on the heels of the stall owner's cry, Zhang Jingshan chimed in eagerly.
Based on what Lu Cheng had just said, if he could secure this string of prayer beads as a birthday gift for the Elder, the significance would be nothing short of monumental!
Uncharacteristically, Lu Cheng did not try to stop Zhang Jingshan.
Had it been any other item—no matter its actual value—he would have stopped Zhang Jingshan from buying it, because it was something the old leader had requested.
But these prayer beads? He didn't want to stop him, because they represented a regret that the old leader had buried deep in his heart for all these years.
Ye Chen automatically tuned out the stall owner.
He furrowed his brow slightly.
Three hundred thousand?
In his past life, that gambler had sold them for four hundred and eighty thousand!
The buyer in front of him clearly wasn't the person who had purchased the prayer beads in his previous life.
Was he really going to sell them so cheaply?
"Sell these prayer beads to me, and consider it a personal favor owed by Zhang Jingshan. How about that?"
Seeing Ye Chen frown, Zhang Jingshan naturally caught the subtle hesitation in his demeanor and immediately pressed on.
Little did he know that Ye Chen, who had been on the verge of rejecting the three hundred thousand offer, froze the moment he heard the name Zhang Jingshan!
Zhang Jingshan?
Why did that name sound so familiar?
Instantly, fragments of memory rapidly pieced themselves together in his mind!
Inside the vice president's office at the e-commerce company where Chen Yinuo worked.
Chen Yinuo walked in, looking nervous.
Before she could even speak—
Bang!
Wang Tao, the thirty-something corporate vice president, yanked at his tie and slammed his palm down onto the desk.
"Chen Yinuo! What the hell is wrong with you? Do you even want this job? I asked you to take our products and pitch them to Yuntian Network for promotion, so why is the product they're promoting now our competitor's? Is this what you call professional competence?"
Wang Tao barked furiously.
Previously, his attitude toward Chen Yinuo was undoubtedly the best in the entire company.
Of course, the reason it was so good was obvious—ulterior motives, pure and simple.
Even without a speck of makeup, Chen Yinuo's looks were still the finest in the company.
More importantly, word had it that this woman's husband was an utterly hopeless, worthless good-for-nothing, which naturally made the high-ranking vice president drool over her.
Yet no matter how hard he tried to curry favor, Chen Yinuo consistently avoided his private invitations, turned a blind eye to his thinly veiled ambiguous advances, and even deliberately kept her distance from him.
When someone cannot have what they desire, they naturally turn to making life difficult for them!
"President Wang, Yuntian Network chose our competitor's product because their quote was ten percent lower than ours!" Chen Yinuo said, feeling wronged.
Smack!
Wang Tao slammed his hand down on the desk again.
"If our promotional quotes are higher than the competition's, what does the company even need you for?! Yuntian Network has been cooperating with us for over half a year—how did negotiations fall apart the moment the task was handed to you? I'll give you one last chance: if you can't secure the promotional contract with Yuntian Network, pack your things and get the hell out!"
He grabbed a contract he had prepared earlier and hurled it across the desk.
The sheets of paper fluttered through the air and scattered all over the desk right in front of Chen Yinuo.
"Undergoing... Yes, President Wang."
Fighting back the tears pooling in her eyes, Chen Yinuo bent down and picked up the scattered contract pages one by one.
When she finally walked out of the office clutching that contract with its microscopic chance of success, the reddened eyes could no longer hold back the tears streaming down her face.
A tyrannical, demonic husband.
Parents whose disdain she had endured to the fullest.
A superior deliberately targeting her to get her fired.
We are all born human—why must her life be so bitter?
If not for considering her mental anchor, Ye Youyou, she genuinely would have preferred to end it all and die right then and there.
Because living... was simply too exhausting!
Antique City.
In the span of just a few fleeting seconds, those past memories vividly and clearly reemerged in Ye Chen's mind.
Zhang Jingshan.
Though he had never crossed paths with this name in his past life, he was far from a stranger to it!
He had a grandfather who was a former Jiangzhou municipal party secretary.
He had a father who was a construction company chairman.
He was the founder of Yuntian Network, a company that would soon sweep across the entire internet.
Yet none of these family backgrounds were what triggered Ye Chen's memory.
What made Ye Chen remember this name was a trending search topic from his past life.
It all started with a female live-streamer!
Specifically, a live-streamer signed under that very same internet company!
In the video that went viral across the entire internet because of that trending search, Ye Chen clearly remembered Zhang Jingshan forcing himself upon the live-streamer amidst her half-hearted resistance, completely unaware that the woman had long since installed a hidden camera at home to record the entire ordeal.
Ye Chen didn't know what drove that live-streamer to resort to mutual destruction by leaking the video to the internet.
But he knew that it was precisely that mutual destruction which destroyed not only Zhang Jingshan, but also dragged his father down with him. Because of that so-called "rape" scandal, the various skeletons in the Zhang family closet were unearthed—including revelations that his father's construction company had cut corners on municipal public welfare projects!
Just as the father and son were plunged into a public relations crisis, misfortune compounded misery: the straw that broke the camel's back duly arrived. Due to negligence on a construction site managed by the Zhang family, an accident occurred, and several workers tragically died on site!
This completely pushed the family toward an irredeemable abyss. The Elder of the Zhang family vomited blood from sheer rage and passed away mere months later.
Zhang Jingshan and his father were sentenced to prison, Yuntian Network went under, and they became public enemies reviled by hundreds of millions of netizens.
A brilliant family legacy was thus destroyed in an instant, swallowed up by public opinion.
Yet the most heart-wrenching part was this:
It was only several years later that the Zhang family's name was finally cleared.
Zhang Jingshan's "rape" had been orchestrated—a deliberate framing.
As for the construction company's corner-cutting, it was actually the fault of project managers who had paid lip service while defying orders behind the scenes, secretly substituting materials to line their own pockets without the knowledge of Zhang Jingshan's father.
As for the fatal construction site accident, there was nothing to debate—it truly had been an accident caused by carelessness during construction. But given the public opinion crisis the Zhang family was facing at the time, it naturally became the straw that broke the camel's back!
Pity that when these official findings were finally made public, several years had already passed...
Thinking of this—
Thinking that Zhang Jingshan intended to give the beads to his grandfather, the former party secretary who had remained incorruptible his entire life—
Ye Chen decided not to haggle over the price any further.
He didn't care about making an extra hundred thousand or so; after all, there would be plenty of gold-mining opportunities ahead, and three hundred thousand was more than enough to plug the hole left by his usurious loans.
"Fine. Although the value of these prayer beads is surely well over three hundred thousand, I can't be bothered to drag this out. Three hundred thousand it is!"
Nodding, Ye Chen spoke.
However, he had no intention of warning Zhang Jingshan about the impending crisis.
Leaving aside whether the other party would even believe him, given their chance encounter, he felt no need to meddle in such idle business and invite unnecessary trouble upon himself.
Let's just hope this string of beads, steeped in supreme Buddhist karma, could alter the trajectory of the Zhang family...
"Great! I'll transfer the money to you right now!"
Zhang Jingshan laughed heartily.
As he reached for his phone, he suddenly realized that in his haste to come out, he had forgotten not only his phone, but his wallet as well!
"Jingshan, what's wrong?" Seeing Zhang Jingshan suddenly freeze, Lu Cheng asked with a puzzled look.
Three hundred thousand to buy this string of prayer beads might look like being taken for a ride to anyone else, but placed in the hands of the old leader, it was an absolute steal of a lifetime!
Why was he hesitating now?
"Uncle Lu, I forgot my wallet and my phone!" Zhang Jingshan looked at Lu Cheng, looking quite embarrassed.
"Ah? This..." Lu Cheng was stunned.
"Uncle Lu, do you think you could—"
Before he could finish, Lu Cheng cut him off as if reading his mind. "Don't look at me. I've only got a few tens of thousands total in my passbook, and it's back at home! Why don't you give your dad a call and have him send someone over with the money?"
Yet Zhang Jingshan stubbornly refused without a second thought.
"No way! I'd rather ask anyone in the world than him!"
Lu Cheng said, "Then what are we going to do?"
Zhang Jingshan looked over at Ye Chen, speaking with awkward reluctance, "My friend, do you think you could come back with me to get the money? Or... how about you give me a bank card number and I'll transfer it to you later?"
As he said these words, Zhang Jingshan couldn't help blushing.
After all, how foolish would the other person have to be to agree to something like that?!
Just as Zhang Jingshan expected.
Ye Chen shook his head.
Yet what followed caught him completely off guard and left him in utter disbelief.
"Forget it, I don't have my bank card with me, so I can't give you a card number! How about this: you go back, get the money ready, and give me a call when you're done. I'll just come over and pick it up directly. Saves everyone the trouble!" Ye Chen said.
Uh...
As soon as these words left his mouth—
Not only were Zhang Jingshan and Lu Cheng dumbfounded—were there really people this easygoing in the world? Weren't they afraid that once he took the goods and left, they'd renege on the debt and refuse to pay?
Meanwhile, the stall owner who had just sold the prayer beads to Ye Chen, along with the surrounding stall owners, felt their lips twitching uncontrollably.
This guy... this guy had to be an absolute idiot, right?
A cool three hundred thousand! Once the guy took the item back, how could he possibly still pay up? In this vast world, where on earth would you ever find someone like that again?!
Yet how could they possibly know what was running through Ye Chen's mind?
With Zhang Jingshan's background, how could he possibly default on a mere three hundred thousand?
Especially since he was buying it for his grandfather, the former municipal party secretary...
"You trust me just like that? Aren't you afraid I'll welsh on the debt and not pay?" Zhang Jingshan asked in stunned disbelief.
"You don't look like the kind of person who would welsh on a debt!" Ye Chen smiled.
"Uh..."
Was that reason flimsy?
There was nothing flimsier than that!
So much so that Zhang Jingshan couldn't help feeling that the fellow in front of him was utterly lacking in common sense!
"Uncle Lu, do you think that guy is just simple-minded or completely lacking in street smarts? Though looking at him, he doesn't seem like the honest, submissive type either!"
Carefully cradling the string of prayer beads, Zhang Jingshan—who ultimately hadn't brought Ye Chen back to collect the money—walked shoulder to shoulder with Lu Cheng out of the Antique City.
"Jingshan, the value of those prayer beads is far beyond three hundred thousand! Or rather, he knew the value was far more than three hundred thousand," Lu Cheng said with a deep, contemplative tone.
"Huh? Then why did he sell them to me?" Zhang Jingshan asked in bewilderment.
"Judging by his micro-expressions, he had no intention of selling them at first. But I noticed he only changed his mind after he heard your name!" Lu Cheng said.
Zhang Jingshan grew even more baffled. "I don't know him! In my memory, there's no such person at all! And you're saying he changed his mind just because he heard my name—what is he even after?"
"That's true too!"
Lu Cheng shook his head with a chuckle, his thoughtful expression fading as he said, "Maybe he's heard of your name, knows you're the old leader's grandson, and knows you're the boss of Yuntian Network, so he's dead certain you wouldn't short him on a paltry three hundred thousand!"
"That actually makes sense!"
Zhang Jingshan laughed. "Well, whatever. Better hurry back to the company and get the money ready for him first. What kind of era is this that he's making me rustle up physical cash? Online transfers are so much more convenient; this feels like some shady black-market deal!"
Zhang Jingshan moved fast.
Mainly because, for someone of his standing, owing money to an ordinary working-class citizen felt thoroughly uncomfortable, and he was also worried the guy might start overthinking things.
Less than two hours later, he called Ye Chen and told him to come over to Yuntian Network to pick up the cash.
"Mr. Ye, the money is ready. Is it convenient for you to come over to Yuntian Network Company to pick it up? Right, 167 Middle Jiangzhou Avenue. Or if it's inconvenient for you, that's fine too—just give me an address and I'll have someone send it over to you. How's that?" Zhang Jingshan said politely over the phone.
"No problem, it's convenient. Yuntian Network Company, right? I'll head over right now!" Ye Chen said.
"Alright then, sorry to trouble you to make a trip!"
Back at the Antique City.
After parting ways with Zhang Jingshan and Lu Cheng, Ye Chen had kept wandering around the stalls, hoping that with the insights accumulated from his past life, he might pick up another bargain. When that yielded zero results, he simply abandoned the idea of treasure-hunting upon receiving Zhang Jingshan's call.
He stepped outside, waved down a taxi, and hurried toward Yuntian Network Company.
167 Middle Jiangzhou Avenue.
At the entrance of Yuntian Network Company.
Chen Yinuo bit her lip and took a deep breath.
She didn't believe for a second that a contract with a quote ten percent lower than the competition had any chance of being renewed.
However—
No matter how illusory that hope might be, she still had to try. Otherwise, getting fired was a minor issue; figuring out how to raise Youyou was the real crisis!
Fueled by the courage born of motherhood, she stepped into Yuntian Network Company!
"Why is it you again?"
The moment she stepped inside, the security guard immediately blocked her path.
His tone was extremely hostile. "Get the hell out of here. Manager Yang gave instructions last time—you've already been blacklisted!"
"I'm not looking for Manager Yang, I'm looking for President Zhang!" Chen Yinuo gritted her teeth and said.
"Looking for President Zhang?"
Hearing that Chen Yinuo was gunning for the big boss, the guard hesitated for a second. "Do you have an appointment?"
Chen Yinuo felt her heart skip a beat, her voice trembling slightly. "No!"
Feeling like he was being played with, the guard barked angrily, "You want to see President Zhang without an appointment? Do you really think President Zhang is someone just anyone can see? Get lost!"
The guard made a move to shove Chen Yinuo toward the exit.
"Oh-ho, tsk tsk tsk, if it isn't Ms. Chen?"
At that moment, a mocking, sneering voice rang out.
Chen Yinuo looked up.
She saw Yang Di, the commercial manager of Yuntian Network Company, stepping out of the elevator.
"Manager Yang!"
Seeing him, the guard grew anxious. "Manager Yang, I'll throw her out right now!"
"No rush. Well, why don't you go back to what you were doing? I have a few words for her," Yang Di said.
Watching the guard walk away, Yang Di turned back to Chen Yinuo with a smirk. "Ms. Chen, I didn't expect us to run into each other again so soon!"
With that, he gestured toward the document bag Chen Yinuo was holding. "Are you here because of the promotional contract again?"
"Yes!"
Chen Yinuo said, "Manager Yang, our company's cosmetic products have always maintained a great cooperative relationship with Yuntian Network. Can't you reconsider extending the contract?"
"Consider? Are you joking with me? Another e-commerce company offered a price ten percent higher than yours—any fool knows how to choose! Do you really take Yuntian Network for a charity house?" Yang Di sneered.
Yet his words didn't stop there.
His expression turned playfully sinister. "Then again... it's not entirely without room for negotiation, though."
"What room for negotiation?" Chen Yinuo asked eagerly.
"Did you forget what I told you last time? Go out for a meal with me, spend a romantic night together, and the contract and everything else can be easily arranged! When it comes to business cooperation, I have the final say. Even if your prices were ten percent lower than everyone else's, I could still make the call. How about it?"
Lowering his voice, Yang Di spoke with surging hormones.
Appraising Chen Yinuo's alluring figure, lustful glints were already flashing in his eyes!
Ever since he first laid eyes on Chen Yinuo, he had already set his sights on her.
Using a contract to coerce Chen Yinuo into submission was a scenario he had cooked up long ago.
As for whether he would actually choose to cooperate and sign the contract if she submitted?
Yes, he would!
Not because he actually had final decision-making power, but because President Zhang had given instructions: as long as Huaxing Trading's cooperation quote was not more than ten percent lower than the market rate, they should stick with Huaxing Trading, with whom they had been cooperating over the past few years.
However, this was considered a trade secret, and very few people knew about it.
It was precisely because of this that he dared to use it to blackmail Chen Yinuo!
"In your dreams!"
Sensing Yang Di's undisguised, naked lust, Chen Yinuo took two steps back, gritting her teeth in fury.
This wasn't the first time she had heard Yang Di say such things.
Back when she came to discuss the cooperation previously, Yang Di had already struck this coercive posture.
Now, this was the second time!
Even though her current job was tied to the livelihood of herself and Youyou—and if the cooperation went through, she would also get a commission—that didn't mean she was going to sell her body to survive!
If she could accept being that base and cheap, given her looks, would she really have suffered so many grievances just for the sake of a job?
Chen Yinuo's cry immediately drew sideways glances from other people in the company lobby.
"I want to see President Zhang! I want to talk to President Zhang. If President Zhang refuses the cooperation, then I'll give up!"
With that, Chen Yinuo headed toward the elevators.
However, a furious and humiliated Yang Di grabbed her by the arm.
Lowering his voice, he hissed, "You cheap bitch, you're refusing a toast only to be forced to drink a forfeit, is that it? Do you really think you're made of gold down there? Letting me fuck you—isn't that a hell of a lot better than your gambling-addict, good-for-nothing husband?"
Smack!
Under Yang Di's words—which had long crossed the line from mere impropriety into outright humiliation—