FLBCP: Chapter 8

“Almost.” Yao Bai saw that Zhao Yao was a bit interested in Pei Mingzhan and continued, “He is hanging on the hot search and his fans are anxious to death.”

“Is it a black hot search?” Zhao Yao wondered.

“Brother, you know about that too?” Yao Bai was surprised. “It isn’t a black hot search. If he was being blackened right now, his army of fans could spray the sunspots to death with a mouthful of spit.”

“What is that?”

Zhao Yao’s public relations department always paid attention to various public opinion tendencies on the Internet. Weibo was an important platform and the hot search was a very high exposure list. Zhao Yao paid attention to this and naturally understood one or two things. Stars often went on the hot search because it was an excellent exposure position but the exposure could be good or bad.

“Wasn’t there a rumor on the Internet last time that Pei Mingzhan was going to quit the circle? The fans never believed it and thought it was gossip.” Yao Bai clicked on the hot search to show Zhao Yao. “Then Pei Mingzhan’s previously endorsed products were terminated and the fans have just noticed that he really intends to withdraw from the circle.”

Zhao Yao looked at it but didn’t have any interest. Then he took Yao Bai’s phone and started to look at the Weibo of these bloggers. Yao Bai became interested due to Zhao Yao and started to talk about gossip in the entertainment industry.

Yao Bai had come to help Zhao Yao as soon as he graduated. It hadn’t even been a year since he was Zhao Yao’s assistant. They were friends but he rarely mentioned these things at work. Then recently, he became interested in things outside of work. Not only did Zhao Yao start to study the relationship between men and women but he also started to pay attention to some entertainment news. Yao Bai developed the courage to talk to Zhao Yao about these things.

“I read an article about the guests of the blind dating show you were watching a few days ago.” Yao Bai said. “A paparazzi filmed the male guest suspected of cheating in marriage. I just watched the breaking video.”

Zhao Yao responded with a few words but his eyes were on the phone.

It had to be said that the bloggers that Yao Bai recommended had a pretty good perspective. They were very different from the reference books he read but their point of view wasn’t unreasonable.

“The man probably can’t recover. I heard that his original company has been having trouble with the flow of money recently. There are many projects that aren’t being broadcasted and they are already contacting people to take over.” Yao Bai felt wistful. “When I was in high school, I often heard my star chasing friends say that Huihua was a big company in the entertainment industry. I never thought it would fall to this point. It is a pity.”

Huihua?

Zhao Yao heard this and suddenly remembered something. “Are you talking about Chen Xi’s Huihua Culture?”

Yao Bai asked, “Yes. Brother, do you know Chen Xi?”

Zhao Yao knew Chen Xi due to a matter in his previous life. After Zhao Yao took over the Zhao GRoup, he had entertainment companies under him but they weren’t as developed as the old companies. Huihua’s Chen Xi was a famous entertainment powerhouse in the circle and Zhao Yao had met him twice because of business.

At that time, Huihua had developed into one of the largest companies in the industry. He heard that Huihua had encountered a crisis in the past. Just when they were unable to sustain it, they received a helping ticket from a rich second generation.

After that, Chen Xi tried to turn the tide and the previously suppressed dramas were broadcasted one by one. The company that was on the verge of bankruptcy came back to life and became a famous large company in China.

Zhao Yao thought, ‘It turns out the crisis that Huihua encountered is this…’

Yao Bai chattered. “I heard about Huihua’s matters last time from some people. It seems the situation was caused by the wrong decision making of the company’s senior management…”

Zhao Yao wondered, “Is anyone taking over the Huihua matter?”

“Who would take it over? Isn’t it just wasting money?” Yao Bai explained, “Huihua’s senior management isn’t very good, apart from Chen Xi. The artists of the company have terminated their contracts and left. A few first-tier stars were poached directly. Everybody is hitting it when it is down. There are only a few people who are looking forward to Huihua’s collapse to take a piece of the pie.”

“Then contact the team to make an assessment.” Zhao Yao clicked on the comment under a secrets Weibo and spoke while reading it, “I still have some money on hand to make an investment.”

Yao Bai was taken aback. “Eh? What team? Do we have a team?”

Zhao Yao came back to his senses and remembered he was no longer the Zhao Yao of his previous life. Right now, the only person he could use was Yao Bai and Yao Bai mainly worked as an ordinary assistant. An evaluation was completely outside of Yao Bai’s professional scope. “Forget it. You collect the information and find an outside professional team to evaluate it.”

Yao Bai finally reacted. “No, Brother, do you want to invest in Huihua?”

“I have this intention but it depends on the specific situation.”

He might’ve resigned from the Zhao Group but he still had some shares in the group. Add the money in his card and he had the funds to invest in Huihua.

On the day that Zhao Changshuo came, he also thought about something. It was no problem to live the rest of his life relying on the dividends from shares but money making money was the hard truth. Huihua had a good foundation. It might look down now but the future development couldn’t be underestimated. He wasn’t investing in Huihua as much as he was investing in Chen Xi.

“This Huihua…” Yao Bai didn’t agree but he saw that Zhao Yao’s mind had been made up and had to contact someone to investigate the situation.

***

Zhao Qizhen was furious when he learned that Zhao Changshuo would be the leader in charge of the Qizhen Project. Zhao Qizhen had been unlucky in recent days. He thought he would have more opportunities after Zhao Yao withdrew from the competition. However, the matter of when he played with his friends in the past came out and some people even sent anonymous letters to the company.

Zhao Zhikai had been in contact with him but ignored him after these things happened. Zhao Qizhen wasn’t as well-connected as Zhao Yao. He had only been in the company for a few months and depended on others to push him up. Now that he missed the Qichen Project that was the easiest to get, it would be even more difficult if he wanted to compete with Zhao Changshuo.

The current person in charge of the Zhao family was seriously ill and hospitalized. If there was no accident, his father wasn’t expected to last too long. If it wasn’t for his father’s secretary saying that the chairman intended to use the Qichen Project as a reference project when making the will, he wouldn’t have wanted to spend so much energy on Qichen.

Out of the four members of the Zhao family, the second sister Zhao Ruihong didn’t have the desire to compete. The only people left were Zhao Changshuo and Zhao Yao. During the time when Chairman Zhao was still healthy, he took Zhao Changshuo with him to get familiar with the company’s business. He originally wanted to hand over the company to Zhao Changshuo but Zhao Yao showed better ability when he first joined the company.

Chairman Zhao originally intended to observe them for a while but unexpectedly, he got a sudden serious illness. He had to release a project for the assessment. Those who did well would be able to get a larger share of the family property. The starting point of this project was fair and it was the best opportunity for others in the Zhao family to compete with Zhao Changshuo.

Zhao Qizhen knew that he wasn’t as good as others, let alone Zhao Changshuo. This time, he lost the Qichen Project so competing to get more family property from Zhao Changshuo would only become more difficult.

“You can’t find it?” Zhao Qizhen spoke to the man on the phone. “What do you mean by these things came out on their own? They all popped out during the meeting?”

The man on the phone explained, “The marketing accounts that released it have little to do with the PR team of the eldest young master. These accounts are all paid for jobs and the people of the eldest young master have no contact with them.”

Zhao Qizhen hung up the phone in anger.

***

Zhao Yao chatted with someone after Zhao Yao left about Zhao Qizhen’s matter. Zhao Qizhen knew that the person who released the news at the Qichen meeting wanted to get rid of him but his mind was in the wrong place. He looked for the wrong person.

[EV: I’ve received the news. Recently, Fourth Young Master Zhao has been looking for Zhao Changshuo’s fault. He thinks the news was released by Zhao Changshuo’s team. The hooks I put in were useless. He didn’t find you or he didn’t check your side at all.]

[EV: However, Zhao Zhikai suspects you. He just couldn’t find it here. All in all, I’ve heard that the Qichen Project should be obtained by Zhao Changshuo.]

Zhao Yao replied: [Okay, the money will be sent to your card. By the way, help me check who is interested in Huihua and Chen Xi.]

[EV: Huihua and Chen Xi? Why are you interested in this?]

Zhao Yao: [Making an investment.]

[EV: Okay. I’ll treat this as doing a friend a favor and I won’t charge you any money.]

Zhao Yao paused briefly when he saw the words of his friend. It wasn’t just looking at a big customer. EV was his high school classmate. Zhao Yao helped him out when his family became sick and the contact wasn’t broken.

After graduating from high school, EV didn’t go to university. He started to do this type of news investigative work with a studio. He raised a lot of marketing accounts and had a lot of online channels. The place where he worked was considered to be an old team and the work was clean and tidy. Later, the boss gave up and went to rest. Then EV officially took over the studio.

Zhao Yao had worked for the Zhao Group for two years after graduating from university. Every time he needed help, he approached EV and they maintained a cooperative relationship. Zhao Yao could rest assured about this person who took money to do things while maintaining a bottom line.

[EV: Oh yes, our studio recently launched a card service. You will automatically be upgraded to a black card VIP. You can receive a 10% discount for any later work.]

Zhao Yao: [Only 10% off?]

[EV: I looked at our two years of cooperation and was nice enough to give you an automatic upgrade. Ordinary VIP is a 9.0% discount, premium VIP is 9.5% and a black card is 10%.]

This man had a flexible mind and especially liked money, but he was also very stingy.

Zhao Yao ended the conversation and fell into a brief silence. He suddenly lost interest in the reference book in his arms. He switched to Weibo and read a few Weibo posts. Along with the bloggers Yao Bai helped him follow, he saw talk from Pei Mingzhan’s fans. It had to be said that the national attention of Pei Mingzhan was quite high. He remembered that previously, the Zhao Group wanted to advertise a product and looked for him to endorse it…

As he saw the photos sent by Pei Mingzhan’s fans, he suddenly saw a familiar photo.

In the photo, Pei Mingzhan was dressed in a Jianghu costume. He was sitting on the edge of a cliff with a sword in his hands and the full moon in the background. This was one of the promotional photos for Pei Mingzhan’s new work, ‘Jianghu’, that was scheduled to be broadcasted in October. Fans were doing their best to promote it.

Zhao Yao suddenly remembered something. It was no wonder that the name Pei Mingzhan was familiar.

He had seen Pei Mingzhan’s work before. At that time, he was extremely anxious because there was a problem with a certain project. Yao Bai couldn’t stand it anymore and wanted to take him to relax. Thus, he pulled Zhao Yao to watch the movie called ‘Jianghu’, starring Pei Mingzhan.

At that time, the cinema was full and the plot was wonderful.

It was obviously a happy ending but once the movie ended, many people in the theater started crying.

Zhao Yao remembered asking Yao Bai about it at the time and he couldn’t remember Yao Bai’s precise words.

It was probably something about how the leading actor, Pei Mingzhan died unexpectedly and the movie was delayed a year. Most of the people who watched it were fans of Pei Mingzhan.