“Glad you know your mistakes. To err is human, to correct is divine!” Huang He said with a grin.
“Hmph!” mm, still brimming with anger at Huang He, thought back to their previous exchanges. “Huang He, tell me the truth. Did you deliberately guide me into making these mistakes?”
“How dare you accuse me without any basis?” Huang He widened his eyes, feigning innocence.
“Alright, then I’ll rephrase. Did you pull the strings behind the scenes for Yibei and this collective lawsuit?” mm asked again.
“Why should I answer those two questions for you?” Huang He retorted.
“If I can make you understand how I lost, I’ll agree to cooperate with you in taking over the entire xxxx!” mm stated decisively.
“Yibei has nothing to do with me. They sprung up on their own, outside of my plans. I never expected them to pull off such a stunt. As for the advertising and logistics cooperation, they approached me themselves. This matter has nothing to do with me; it was entirely an accident!”
“And the collective lawsuit was initiated by these over a thousand merchants. I merely lent them a hand. They were originally merchants on the Jiangnan Mall platform. After suffering significant losses on your platform and hearing about your company’s cash flow problems, they were worried about not getting their money back. So, they banded together to file a collective lawsuit.”
“Therefore, I proactively contacted them and offered Jiangnan Mall’s free legal services. All they had to do was cooperate with our lawyers’ requests to ensure they recovered their overdue payments!” Huang He said calmly.
“So, you’re the mastermind behind this after all!” mm gritted his teeth. This devious Huang He had foreseen his every step into the abyss and had prepared a killing blow: uniting these merchants to sue him.
He knew these merchants would be unwilling to go through the time-consuming and arduous legal process on their own. He hadn’t anticipated that Jiangnan Group would proactively provide legal services, help consolidate these merchants, and initiate a joint lawsuit.
This would only cost a few hundred thousand yuan but could create a tidal wave. Huang He had indeed planned everything in secret.
However, mm remained unconvinced. He snorted, “Though, I must admit, I’m also indebted to those fools at Yibei for helping you. If not for their actions, which caused me to refund a large number of users and continuously shrink my cash reserves, I could have stabilized the situation.”
“As for the court, as long as I can still make payments, they won’t touch me. That way, I can’t lose!” mm said through clenched teeth.
All this was Yibei’s fault for leading him to this predicament.
mm successfully shifted his hatred towards Yibei.
“Well, it actually wouldn’t have mattered whether Yibei was involved or not; your capital chain was going to break within these few days anyway,” Huang He glanced at mm and said.
“Why?” mm was taken aback and then asked.
“Actually…” Huang He licked his lips. “Your ‘Money-Making Treasure’ attracted a total of 2.4 billion RMB in funds, right? 1.4 billion of that was deposited by me!”
“What?” mm’s body trembled violently. “That’s impossible! Of that 2.4 billion, 1 billion was there before the promotion started, and the remaining 1.4 billion was deposited after the promotion. Are you saying that all of this 1.4 billion was yours, and no one else deposited a single cent into ‘Money-Making Treasure’?”
“Let’s put it this way. Out of the latter 1.4 billion, only 200 million was my money…” Huang He said with a smile.
“You… you… you mean to say that the 1 billion accumulated in ‘Money-Making Treasure’ before the promotion started was all deposited by people you sent?” mm’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“That’s right! To make this money appear as normal as possible, I specifically had people deposit it gradually over two months. Depositing tens of millions every day, over time, it accumulated to 800 million.”
“Old Ma, you don’t honestly believe that you could attract 1 billion in deposits in just a few months relying on a small platform like Haigou.com, do you? If someone really wanted to invest like this, wouldn’t depositing it in a bank be safer?”
“So… as early as a few months ago, when I first established ‘Money-Making Treasure,’ you started plotting against me!” mm felt a sharp pain in his heart.
Upon learning this truth, mm felt it was even more painful than his company going bankrupt, because it meant he had been manipulated by Huang He from beginning to end, all while remaining oblivious.
“You deliberately deposited large sums of money to make me believe ‘Money-Making Treasure’ was a good project, giving me ample funds to believe I could contend with you. Ultimately, you forced me to make mistakes step-by-step, leading me to this situation. Was all this calculated by you months ago??” mm stared intently at Huang He.
“You can’t say that, because I wasn’t sure how you would operate ‘Money-Making Treasure.’ Your ‘Money-Making Treasure’ was an excellent business. If you had solely focused on using ‘Money-Making Treasure’ to lend to ‘Youqianhua’ and then used ‘Youqianhua’ to recoup the money from ‘Money-Making Treasure,’ it would have formed a perfect cycle with virtually no risk, only being somewhat unethical.”
“So, at that time, I wasn’t thinking of using this money to scheme against you. I just thought that if you made a mistake in the future, encountered funding issues, and couldn’t resist using the funds in ‘Money-Making Treasure,’ I could then withdraw all of this capital at a critical moment.”
“If you gave me this money then, your capital chain would break. If you didn’t, I could sue and also break your capital chain.”
“I originally thought this move would take several years to come into play. Even if your ‘Money-Making Treasure’ grew larger in the future, with its capital pool exceeding tens of billions of RMB, this move would have been meaningless.”
“I just didn’t expect you to become so audacious within just a few months!” Huang He’s words left mm completely frozen.
But Huang He continued, “It’s not just ‘Money-Making Treasure.’ Of the 9 billion RMB in orders you sold this time, about 2 billion were also mine.”
“And out of your 100,000 stores, about 10,000 were opened by people I arranged.”
“I used my money to buy 2 billion worth of goods from my own stores. Although this would incur significant shipping costs, the subsidies I received from you would essentially cover these costs, so I’m neither profiting nor losing.”
“Although you returned 1.2 billion of these 2 billion, you still held onto the remaining 800 million.”
“This means I hold tens of thousands of victimized consumers and tens of thousands of victimized merchants. I also hold your 800 million in debt, plus the 1.4 billion from ‘Money-Making Treasure,’ totaling 2.2 billion!”
“If all 2.2 billion were activated simultaneously, do you think your company could survive? Could it afford this amount?” Huang He’s words pierced mm’s chest once more. mm was completely speechless. After leaning back on the bed in silence for a long time, he finally said, “So that’s how it is. I could never have won against you. You had me completely cornered!”
“It’s not entirely like that. If you had conducted your promotions honestly, reduced the subsidies, and proceeded at a more stable pace, I wouldn’t have been able to bring you down. After all, I genuinely gave you that 2.2 billion. There’s no one else in the world who would spend over 3 billion RMB in total to set up such a scheme. Your loss is not unjust!” Huang He chuckled.
“Indeed. The esteemed Boss Huang spent over 3 billion RMB in total to set up this scheme for me. My loss is truly not unjust!” mm suddenly laughed, his mood inexplicably improving.
“So, after you take over xxxx, do you have the capability to handle these over 4 billion in funds?” mm suddenly asked.
“I should be able to. The higher-ups have agreed that your ‘Money-Making Treasure’ and ‘Youqianhua’ can be retained, but they will be subject to strict supervision and control. It’s precisely because of this that I am the only one allowed to operate this product; entrusting it to others would be too risky.”
“Oh, and all online lending products will be prohibited in the future. Not everyone is as brave as me to take over at such critical moments!” Huang He said with a grin.
“Damn it!” mm couldn’t help but curse. With just this one remark, Huang He had won big time!
“Not only that, but your 4 billion won’t be much of a loss either! You currently owe a total of 4.6 billion. Your company accounts have 500 million remaining, and another 2.2 billion is mine. This means I only need to find a way to deal with the remaining 1.9 billion in external debt.”
“But this 1.9 billion in external debt isn’t much. It’s just that your entire cash flow chain has been frozen, making it impossible to repay this 1.9 billion. As long as I inject a sum of capital to get the company running again, not only this 1.9 billion, but the entire 4 billion plus capital chain can flow again. So, the debt I might truly have to bear is only about 300 to 400 million.”
“Although this amount is still a considerable loss, the foundation you’ve left me with in xxxx is quite good. Merging it with Jiangnan Mall and operating it properly for another 1-2 years, this money should be recouped!”
“After all, the biggest achievement of your promotion this time is that it has helped the entire e-commerce industry acquire nearly 3 million new users. These people who never shopped online before have now experienced online shopping, gained experience, and learned how to shop online. This is the most important thing. If possible, I would even be willing to spend 3 billion to buy these 3 million users. Because I will eventually be able to earn money from them in the future.”
“…” mm felt a surge of blood rush to his head, and then he said dejectedly, “You’re thinking too optimistically. You’ve likely forgotten that Yibei, your competitor, has also risen. Backed by Yibei Group, with capital exceeding 70 billion USD, your methods of defeating opponents by manipulating capital chains are useless against Yibei, because you cannot break their capital chain!”
“Yibei will soon become the new GOUHUASUAN platform. You still have a fight ahead of you!”
“Hmm… you don’t know?” Huang He asked with some surprise after hearing mm’s words.
“Know what?”
“Yibei has announced its response to the national call to reduce online shopping risks, so the promotion has been halted and will not proceed!” Huang He said, and couldn’t help but laugh. “Scared off by such a trivial matter. Truly a petty person, not worth mentioning.”