Xia Zeyu rented an apartment near the nightclub and spent five consecutive nights working there. In just five days, he achieved a twenty-match winning streak, filling his pockets to the brim.
The bonus for winning his first challenge was six million yuan, and after becoming a regular, each subsequent victory netted three million. At this rate, even after accounting for taxes, he would earn enough to amass one hundred million in less than a month.
The system panicked, terrified that once he made enough money, he would abandon the mission entirely.
To this, he replied: “Don’t worry, I’m a very greedy person. I’m going to claim that one-hundred-million-yuan reward of yours, too.”
Only then did the system feel secure enough to slack off.
The manager’s smile stretched from ear to ear; ever since Xia Zeyu arrived, the number of challengers had surged, and both the audience and bettors had multiplied. Countless people tuned in hoping to see Xia Zeyu get defeated, but unfortunately, none of them ever succeeded.
Still, how should he put it? Doing the exact same routine every day was getting a bit repetitive.
Money, after all, came from all directions; he couldn’t limit himself to just a single revenue stream.
Thus, he decided to take a trip back to the Xia family estate.
In the original plot, the Xia family business was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy due to poor management. Shen Congjin hadn’t met Tang Tang yet at that time and held a favorable impression of the original owner, which was why he proactively proposed a marital alliance.
The Shen Corporation was a titan in the jewelry industry, whereas the Xia family enterprise could only be described as a mid-sized company. Back then, Shen Congjin rescued the Xia family from dire straits despite the vast disparity in their social standing and status, and even funded the original owner’s studies abroad. It was hardly a wonder that the original owner had been so hopelessly devoted to him.
Yet when they are deeply in love, people will give you anything; once they transfer their affections elsewhere, they step on you like an ant. Scumbags are just like diodes capable only of extreme actions, utterly devoid of the concept of parting on good terms.
Xia Zeyu wanted to see what exactly caused the poor management, whether it could still be saved, and if saving it meant he could fold this company into his own pocket.
The moment he stepped into the living room, a teacup came flying toward him. Xia Zeyu raised his hand and caught it steadily.
Unhurriedly, he walked over to the living room settee and placed the teacup gently onto the coffee table, remaining completely unfazed.
Old Master Xia was practically bursting with rage, pointing a finger at his nose and cursing: “You useless piece of trash! You couldn’t even hold onto an engagement!”
“How much is the company currently in the red?” Xia Zeyu went straight to the point.
“As if telling you would do any damn good!”
“Fifty million?” Xia Zeyu smiled faintly, pulled out a bank card, and set it down on the table. “Here is sixty million. Take it and use it.”
“You…” His father froze.
Beside them, his eldest brother, Xia Zexing, sneered derisively: “Stop trying to stir up trouble for us. What kind of act are you putting on with a blank card?”
Xia Zeyu pulled up his mobile banking notification screen, showing a steady daily influx of several million yuan. His eldest brother’s jaw dropped in disbelief.
Oh right, Xia Zeyu had purchased a brand new phone the legendary Apple smartphone. Overall, it was pretty decent, save for the slightly spotty signal.
“What shady business have you been getting up to?” Xia Zexing demanded accusingly.
“Rest assured, it’s all honest, hard-earned money,” Xia Zeyu said, sitting down, crossing his legs, and assuming a relaxed, casual posture. “Sixty million should be enough to relieve our most urgent crisis, right? Since I have the ability to make money, stop trying to sell me off like livestock to some other man.”
As if hearing a hilarious joke, Xia Zexing scoffed: “I don’t know where you got that money from, but can you guarantee you’ll keep earning it? Besides, you were the one clinging to Shen Congjin in the first place—what drama are you trying to pull now?”
Without wasting breath on explanations, Xia Zeyu dialed Shen Congjin’s number and put it on speakerphone. After a brief ring, the call connected.
“I knew you’d come crawling back to me voluntarily,” Shen Congjin’s voice dripped with disdain and arrogance. “If you come back right now, kneel on the gravel path outside my front door, and kowtow in apology, I might consider forgiving you.”
“Did you not get beaten up badly enough last time?” Xia Zeyu struck straight at his vulnerability. “A gravel path? That actually gives me a fresh idea, I could just shove your face right against it and grind it in.”
Shen Congjin fell silent for a few seconds before speaking up again, still putting up a stubborn front: “That last time was just a fluke. Do you think doing this will catch my attention? It only makes me despise you even more.”
Xia Zeyu let out a sigh and patiently reasoned: “Shen Congjin, putting everything else aside, you did offer plenty of help to my family over the years, and you even funded my studies abroad. For that much, I want to thank you. But please get one thing straight: I am not your property to be bought and sold. You refuse to grant me even the most basic respect and treat me like livestock. I don’t feel this engagement has any necessity to continue. As for the money, I will pay you back.”
His father looked ready to lunge forward in panic, but Xia Zeyu shoved him right back down onto the sofa.
“Xia Zeyu, this is all just karmic retribution for bullying Tang Tang.”
“Right, bullying him means I deserve retribution. But that retribution shouldn’t be executed by you, the root cause of all this. If you hadn’t cheated behind my back first, and if you hadn’t deceived Tang Tang, things never would have escalated to this point.”
“You…” Shen Congjin was left temporarily speechless.
How had Xia Zeyu’s logic suddenly become so razor-sharp? Wasn’t he supposed to be someone who only knew how to throw tantrums and act unhinged?
“Tomorrow, bring your lawyer to the Xia estate so we can sign the annulment agreement. If you don’t show up, I’ll bring my lawyer straight to your office. You wouldn’t want your subordinates finding out you got dumped by me, would you?”
Xia Zeyu hung up the phone immediately, denying Shen Congjin any chance to reply.
“Xia Zeyu, how could you be so impulsive!” His father’s neck turned beet red with fury as he pointed a trembling finger at him. “Do you have any idea what scale the Shen Corporation operates on? You make a few tens of millions and suddenly you’re full of yourself? Who do you think you are to propose breaking off the engagement?!”
“If you’re so eager to marry him, go marry him yourself. Besides, Mom passed away so long ago, and I have no objections if you want to remarry. Honestly, your facial features bear a passing resemblance to mine if you put on some makeup, you might still retain a bit of mature charm,” Xia Zeyu retorted sarcastically.
“Are you out of your mind?!”
“Yeah, and you know forcing people into unwanted marriages is out of your mind, too.”
Seizing the opportunity to fan the flames, Xia Zexing chimed in: “Xia Zeyu, do you really think Shen Congjin is going to let you off the hook that easily?”
“If he shows no mercy, I have no intention of sparing him, either.”
“Hah, let’s see how long you can stay arrogant.”
“I should be saying that to you,” Xia Zeyu stared straight into his eyes. “I’m planning to start working at the Xia enterprise. Let’s see who is actually better suited to inherit the company.”
“Oh, wow, making a few tens of millions has you feeling mighty confident.”
“Still better than losing tens of millions.”
“You!”
“Heading upstairs to sleep, don’t bother me.” Too lazy to bicker with them any further, Xia Zeyu turned on his heel and walked away.
He had assumed the original owner’s arrogant and domineering personality was the result of being spoiled rotten by his family. Now it appeared he had merely inherited his father’s volatile temper.
The next morning at nine sharp, Shen Congjin arrived at the Xia estate accompanied by his lawyer. As Xia Zeyu chewed on a sandwich while flipping through the annulment agreement, he couldn’t help laughing out loud.
Shen Congjin demanded that Xia Zeyu cash out and repay every cent spent on his overseas education alongside the capital investments injected into the Xia enterprise—calculated down to two decimal places, totaling over eighty million yuan.
Xia Zeyu glanced at Xia Zexing, who wore a sneering expression, and demanded, “The Shen Corporation poured so much money and resources into the company, and you managed to lose all of it? If you put a pig in your office chair, it wouldn’t bleed through that much cash.”
“What did you just say?” Xia Zexing instantly snapped.
Xia Zeyu sighed, picked up a pen, and signed his name on the agreement.
“The money—I’ll raise it and clear the debt for you within this month,” Xia Zeyu stated.
Shen Congjin sneered, “Your family’s company is bleeding out like this. How on earth do you plan to pay it back?”
“That’s none of your concern. Once the papers are signed, please see yourselves out.”
“Fine, I’ll wait for you to scrape the money together.”
Shen Congjin left with his lawyer, overflowing with confidence simply because he assumed the original owner—a delinquent, delayed-graduation rich kid—could never cough up such a sum, and would inevitably come crawling back to beg for reconciliation in a few days.
Xia Zexing chimed in with a final taunt: “If you fail to raise the cash, just wait to be blacklisted as a default debtor!”
None of them anticipated that it wouldn’t even take a month; Xia Zeyu scraped together a neat ninety million yuan and wired it straight into Shen Congjin’s account.
Because during these past few days, he hadn’t limited himself to just a single underground fighting arena—he had pillaged four others as well. Fuelled by manic energy, he fought from dusk till dawn. Anyone in the fighting circuit hearing the designation “2895” would tremble in their boots.
Even the police had paid him a visit to inquire whether he was up to illegal activities, though the arena owners naturally smoothed everything over after all, he was their cash cow, so protecting him was a top priority.
Unfortunately, because he frequented the nightlife district so often, unsavory rumors began to circulate.
Shocking: As the Xia enterprise teeters on bankruptcy, the younger master of the Xia family is spotted repeatedly entering the VIP rooms of older wealthy men.
Xia Zeyu did enter VIP rooms with older men, but strictly to negotiate match schedules and prize money; those older men practically had to line up just to toast him.
Still, given his delicate, pretty facial features, public opinion inevitably skewed toward salacious speculation.
Consequently, Shen Congjin called him, his tone dripping with mockery: “So that’s how you got your hands on all that money. Turns out… sigh, Zeyu, if you had just apologized to me earlier, you wouldn’t have had to stoop to this.”
“Stoop to what? Spell it out.”
“Sleeping with older men—don’t you feel cheap?”
“Hah,” Xia Zeyu couldn’t help laughing. “Would you like to see a video of me playing around with those older men?”
“What?” Shen Congjin froze.
“Hang up, I’m sending it to you.”
Following that, Xia Zeyu selected a match recording of himself brutally beating down a middle-aged, burly challenger and forwarded it to Shen Congjin.
He even censored the bloodstains and posted a copy on his Moments with the caption: If my martial arts weren’t so savage, I’d probably have a secured spot at the Olympics.
Shen Congjin shut his mouth.
Public opinion gradually dissipated.
After that, who in their right mind would dare spread rumors about him?
Even his father and eldest brother treated him with newfound caution.
With Shen Congjin’s debt settled, Xia Zeyu adjusted his match schedule, fighting three days a week with two matches per night after all, he needed to preserve his energy for office work during the day and couldn’t afford to burn out.
Though he held the title of second young master of the Xia family, Xia Zexing had assigned him an office measuring less than ten square meters, furnished with a mere 1.2-meter desk, a sheet-metal filing cabinet, a poorly lit small window, and zero sofas.
Never mind, true power never fears adverse environments. Besides, he would soon be moving into Xia Zexing’s spacious executive office anyway.
The underlying reason for the Xia enterprise’s decline was simple: their product designs failed to keep pace with contemporary aesthetic trends, and their marketing methods were outdated and bizarre, giving consumers the impression that buying their products was deeply uncool.
In truth, Xia Jewelry was a long-standing local brand, originally established by Xia Zeyu’s maternal grandparents who started out hammering gold and silver jewelry from a humble street-corner storefront.
The elderly couple had only one daughter Xia Zeyu’s mother. In high school, she met and fell in love with his father, and after marriage, she retreated into the role of a traditional housewife like most women of that era, leaving the family shop entirely under her husband’s management.
Once her grandparents passed away, his father’s brilliant maneuvers began.
First, he sold off all the storefronts, leased three entire floors in an office building alongside a few drinking buddies to incorporate a company, diluted the equity by distributing shares, and exacerbated the crisis during the early transition period by ruthlessly squeezing employees. As a result, many veteran artisans couldn’t stomach the pressure and ultimately resigned.
In the beginning, he managed to ride the wave of the physical retail boom and carved out a decent run of success. However, the times shifted rapidly into the internet era while he remained intoxicated by past victories, continuing to operate the company using archaic methods that triggered a massive customer exodus.
Figuring that if he couldn’t keep up with the times, his college-educated eldest son surely could, he handed the reins over.
Yet that eldest son turned out even more incompetent, throwing money everywhere into speculative investments and financing deals. He’d sign contracts after a few drinks and casual boasts with sycophants, pouring money down a black hole with zero return while watching equity and voting rights get carved up by outsiders. The marketing campaigns he oversaw were filled with tone-deaf slogans like, “A woman must adorn herself properly if she wishes to catch the eye of an elite man” drawing universal backlash. Two-thirds of their consumer base in this industry consisted of women, yet they insisted on pulling such idiotic stunts.
The original owner’s mother had fallen ill and passed away when he was four years old. Molded under the influence of two useless men, he grew up into a good-for-nothing parasite as well racing cars, smoking, and drinking by sixteen, drifting through his studies abroad, dragging out his graduation for two extra years before returning home, and wasting his days quarreling with Tang Tang over a man in grand, dramatic fashion, utterly humiliating the Xia family name.
People sighed, lamenting that the Xia enterprise was merely a flash in the pan heading toward inevitable collapse.
Looking over the sea of red numbers on the Xia enterprise’s financial statements alongside a dismal 3.2-out-of-10 online rating, Xia Zeyu felt a headache coming on.
He could easily walk away from the Xia business to pursue a career in sports, or leverage the knowledge from his original world to break into the tech sector. Yet, as a reasonably responsible person whose family business wasn’t completely dead, still clinging to a faint breath of life he figured he might as well extend a hand and save it.