June 15th, deep in the night.
Yu Xing, fresh from a hot shower, sat down at his desk and switched on the lamp, then got up to turn off the dormitory's overhead light. He fished a lighter out of the drawer and lit a Red Nanjing cigarette he'd bummed from the room next door.
His former roommates had all gone off to their hospital internships, and he had grown used to the quiet of the night.
The smoke curled and blurred under the lamp, but the project he'd been busying himself with these past few days grew clearer and clearer in his mind.
Thanks to the rough mathematical model Liu Wanying had built, Yu Xing had tried running calculations on the probabilities using different pricing schemes. The back-calculated probability never exceeded 3.75%, and at its lowest wasn't even 1%.
The essence of this product was the probability.
In fact, its prototypes were mostly insurance products: Anxin Insurance's "Gift Money Edition," Chang'an Insurance's "Diamond Edition," Tian'an Insurance's "Rose Edition," Taiping Insurance's "Cash Edition"... there were at least a dozen or so similar products.
Did these insurance companies innovate so eagerly for the benefit of their customers?
Clearly not. They had gone through careful calculation and detailed investigation, confirming that such products were a guaranteed win with no chance of loss.
Once the core was established, the head and tail of the product became simple.
The only real difference now was who did it—the backing, the customers' trust—but that only affected whether you earned more or earned less.
Yu Xing ground the cigarette butt into a makeshift ashtray, reached out, and drew a SWOT analysis table in his notebook—a common analytical framework based on four dimensions: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
He pressed his pen tip on "Threats." The first thing that came to mind was why those innovative insurance products had all vanished without a trace.
A consistently profitable product suddenly disappearing could only be the result of interference from above—the most direct culprit being, in all likelihood, the Insurance Regulatory Commission.
Why?
Yu Xing had never thought about such things before, but today he found himself pondering them involuntarily. After turning it over in his mind, it was probably that institutions like the Insurance Regulatory Commission felt the influence was bad.
What if that bad influence from insurance companies were instead carried by a dating contract that wasn't insurance in nature?
It wouldn't fall under the Insurance Law, but rather the Contract Law. Would that kind of threat still exist?
Yu Xing thought for a moment, picked up his phone, searched for the relevant legal provisions, and studied them word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.
His earlier exchanges with Liu Wanying had indeed steered clear of the wrong directions, but this area still needed attention, still deserved thought.
A long while later, Yu Xing stared carefully at a term on his phone screen and wrote it down in his notebook.
—Public order and good morals.
Not only could you not break the law, you also couldn't violate public order and good morals.
As for how "public order and good morals" was determined...
Yu Xing drew a circle around the term with his pen. Having roughly figured out his product's threat in this area, he immediately thought of Liu Wanying's two suggestions and felt their value rising yet again.
There were no detailed regulations on public order and good morals; the same thing might yield different outcomes in two different cities.
That said, if one was aware of this risk from the very beginning, there were still measures to reduce the threat.
A few hype ideas popped into Yu Xing's head—for example, selecting elderly relatives of customers and holding free golden or silver wedding anniversary ceremonies for them, or even finding many such couples and holding collective commemorations.
Then, working with the media, steering public perception in a positive direction...
Yu Xing wrote the character for "positive," hesitated for a few seconds, then crossed it out.
Destruction is easy, construction is hard. If he had money and resources, this kind of hype could be carried out, but counting on it to substantially offset that threat was probably too optimistic.
There was no barrier to entry and it was easy to copy. When similar competitors appeared on the market, would they make that kind of investment?
And if they didn't, how much effect would his own investment still have?
Good news never leaves the door, but bad news travels a thousand miles.
This was a vertical niche to begin with—what influence could it possibly have on those above? If it disappeared, it just disappeared.
So...
Yu Xing picked up the notebook and stared at the probability calculations.
Once the core was established, the product in his mind seemed to naturally grow flesh and blood.
Such a product, with a beginning and an end, was without question viable.
Ordinarily, when building a product, you would consider risks in advance, carefully polish the team, and pursue long-term vitality—that was the seemingly proper approach.
But if the goal changed to finding a sucker to take over, the approach became different.
Yu Xing thought of Liu Wanying, who had only mentioned two suggestions out loud but had actually given him three: build up the scale, then sell to potential competitors like Jiayuan, Baihe, or Zhenai—that was what she'd said after the two suggestions.
And then there were the big internet companies he had thought of on his own.
If that was the plan, then now and for some time to come, there was only one thing to do: rapidly inflate the project's scale, not patiently craft its skeleton and flesh.
With different end goals in mind, things get done in completely different ways.
Which to choose?
Yu Xing's gaze was unfathomable. In this deep, silent night, it felt as if those three true selves had materialized beside him again.
If it were the accountant, the boss, and the belt—what would they do?
Their voices seemed to sound in Yu Xing's ears.
Hype it up! Burn the money! Leverage, leverage!
Yu Xing drew a deep breath. The dormitory remained silent.
He raised his hand and, in the notebook, crossed out every formula and every step of the work from top to bottom, left to right. The flesh and blood that the product had grown in his mind seemed to wither in an instant.
This probability game was quite fun, but if you didn't need to sustain it all the way to the final redemption stage, then the exact probability no longer mattered.
With offloading the project as the goal, the core of the matter naturally shifted—no need to pay much attention to the product's probability; just focus everything on inflating the scale.
Yu Xing closed the notebook and glanced at the time on his phone. There were exactly three months left until the financial storm of September 15th.
In other words, time was truly running short.
If he could sell the project, the money in hand would be enough to delight any ordinary person.
Zhong Zhiling was an ordinary person. Lü Haiying was an ordinary person.
So was he.
Yu Xing switched off the lamp, lay down on his bed, and pondered carefully. He and Zhong Zhiling were just two ordinary people in debt. If the money could fill the hole, that would be best; if not, it could still quickly ease the situation.
Better yet, if the battle could be resolved before September, both of them could return to normal lives.
Yu Xing's mind conjured up his junior's helpless words—All I ever wanted was to live a plain, quiet life as a doctor.
He had spent a lifetime setting off thunderous blowups; surely he too longed to quietly be a doctor. Or not be a doctor at all—just buy some property, buy some coins, enjoy life. That wouldn't be bad at all.
Yu Xing closed his eyes, but the two different end-goal-driven modes of running a company burrowed back into his mind, strikingly vivid.
He had plenty of work experience, and even some management experience leading teams, yet this was the first time he'd felt how, once the top-level design was set, the way the entire project operated changed completely.
In the darkness, the corner of Yu Xing's mouth curled into an involuntary smile.
It felt pretty good.
He rolled onto his side, stopped thinking about the project, and just repeated words like "make money," "buy property," "buy coins" over and over in his head to lull himself to sleep.
After who knows how long, Yu Xing, not the least bit drowsy, suddenly opened his eyes. A breathtaking thought crept quietly into his mind: buy coins, buy coins—why must I only buy coins? Why couldn't I build an exchange?
The deep night was utterly silent, the true selves sunk in quiet stillness.
Yu Xing's thoughts turned briefly—too distant, that. Getting the present matters done well was what counted. And whether it was long-term operation or finding a sucker to take over, the first order of business right now was to hurry Liu Wanying along.
The company in Xiangjiang had to be registered first. Once the company over there was settled, they would instantly gain one more numerical endorsement—our company has five million in registered capital.
Unlike the mainland, where capital verification was still required, Xiangjiang required no verification of funds.
Without any deliberate explanation, that alone would surely put many customers at ease.
As long as customers could be brought in—after all, there was the final probability—surely the sucker who took over would be responsible to them too.
At worst, by the time I buy...
Yu Xing's thoughts paused. In any case, I'll definitely take responsibility in the future.
New-book period still means splitting chapters—there's one more to come, and together it's even longer.