CH 6

“Your reaction is very fast,” Yan Mu’s eyes shifted from Lu Chengyu to Cao Jingshen’s folder, which Lu Chengyu used to smash teacups. “Nowadays, there aren’t many college students who are as physically fit as you are.”

“Usually I do a lot of exercises and I used to play basketball before, it was due to the conditioned reflex that I somehow managed to throw precisely. ,” said Lu Chengyu, he saved the document file, close his laptop and smiled at Yan Mu.

After a while, Yan Mu’s lips moved. He said: “Just now, thank you.” He glances at Cao Jingshen and leaves the office.

Cao Jingshen saw his glance and follow him out. Lu Chengyu was left alone in the conference room, he scrutinises the room before slowly walks out of the room while holding his laptop using one hand.

When he walks into the elevator, he saw several people who participate in the meeting just now. All these people appearance are good. When they saw Lu Chengyu entering the elevator, they nodded to him. From that, Chengyu can deduce that these people are Yan Mu’s ally.

Either it is a business world or politic world, one’s standing is important. If you choose the wrong place to stand, your life is going to be tragic.

Back to his cubicle, Lu Chengyu printed out the previous meeting minutes and then continued to familiarize himself with Huading’s internal situation. No matter how Huading’s future gonna be, what he needs to do now is to do his job well.

When it’s about time to get off work, Lu Chengyu found that his office’s colleagues were very enthusiastic about him as a newcomer. So, when he wants to go home, there were many people said they wanted to hold a welcome party for him. With a big smile on their face, they told Lu Chengyu if there was anything he didn’t know, just ask them.

During today’s noon break at the canteen, these people have still alienated him. But now, they have become so excited. This is not because they are relieved since they can stay in Huading, but because Chengyu was the assistant of the President’s secretary, meaning that he is one of the new President’s faction.

After leaving the company, Lu Chengyu takes a crowded bus that was more tightly packed than canned bus this morning. He began to consider buying a second-hand car. Although he has a miserable working experience in his past life, he was able to buy a second-hand Chery. This life shouldn’t be worse than that and he doesn’t really care whether others would gossip about how an intern was able to buy a car.

In this society, it doesn’t really matter if someone gossiping about you. What is important is whether you have or not the ability to block the gossip.

Regardless of how well and perfect someone can do his job, there always be someone else slander him behind his back. Only the person who has ‘someone strong behind his back’, or they have ‘money’ are able to block gossip. If someone who has both of this and yet still being slander by someone else, let alone him, who someone doesn’t have both.

(T/N: For Chengyu, he doesn’t care about gossip because regardless of how strong your backer or how much you money you have, someone still gossips about you. As for him who don’t have both, it is not a surprise if someone wants to tell gossip about him, so he doesn’t care)

After Chengyu gets off the bus, he went to a noodle shop in his neighbourhood and ordered a bowl of beef noodles, added with two dishes of meat and a plate of vegetables. Lu Chengyu loves to eat Tang Thiong noodles [1] here. It has quite a strong taste. All these years, he only likes the taste of this shop although this shop’s front is not impressive.

[1]

The owner of the noodle shop is a fat man of about forty years old. Every time he sees Lu Chengyu, he puts extra two pieces of beef in his noodles. This young man has a good appetite and is a frequent customer. Some girls in the shop come to eat noodles just to see him. Since he is the boss, he puts extra beef to in Chengyu’s noodle to reward him.

He couldn’t help but sigh with emotion when he heard about this young man’s family. This young man has no father or mother in his early twenties. Fortunately, he had a house and was a student from a famous university. If he was an ordinary person, it would not be easy to find a wife. Nevertheless, it is not easy for such a young child to live alone without parents.

As usual, Chengyu didn’t take the coin balance from the boss shop. The fat boss smiling while looking when Chengyu is leaving. He can’t help but feel that this young man appearance is handsome. If his daughter is a few years older than now, he wanted Chengyu to be his son-in-law.

Lu Chengyu returned home with a pile of junk food he bought from the supermarket near the entrance of his neighbourhood. He put drinks and beer in the refrigerator and turned on the TV. He casually glances at the television and saw entertainment news, where a female celebrity was humbly saying something.

Looking at this scene, Lu Chengyu laughed. In his past life, while working in the production team doing all the odd jobs, he remembers that this female actress was a guest actor in a drama. She was full of airs and he couldn’t see any modesty in her that she shown on the television right now. When he remembered those time during the crew was in trouble, Chengyu sneered and picked up the remote control to change the channel.

She has a small heart, and it was precisely her style to repay the kindness that she received by complaining and show dissatisfaction.

Cao Jingshen looked at the meeting minutes in his hand and pushed his glasses. The record was clear and even summarized. But, this isn’t the part that surprised him. The most surprising thing was that the meeting minutes were recorded exactly the way how the meeting was held, but somehow it made people feel that boss is doing the right thing, while on the other side, Yan Lao Er had a shallow meaning.

The meeting minutes are not reports. So every sentence must be written truthfully and clearly to record the process of the meeting and you can’t add your own judgment. But, for such a simple task as writing meeting minutes, Chengyu was able to get others to feel like this.

Cao Jingshen was excited looking at the whole meeting minutes one by one while can’t help but feel that Chengyu has a rare talent. Not to mention that he is only a student who has not graduated formally, even if he is a veteran in the business, there aren’t many people able to do this. For this kind of person, Cao Jingshen had to find ways to keep him.

With this in his mind, Cao Jingshen hurried to the president’s office, knocked twice at the door, then pushed the door and said, “Boss, look at this meeting minutes!”

Yan Mu took the meeting minutes, he read a few lines, put down the records and said, “Very good.”

Cao Jingshen knows that he can get a “very good” sentence from Yan Mu, even he agrees with it. Then he said, “When Lu Chengyu came to report this morning, I thought he looked better than his brain. Now I have to admit that it’s me who’s blind.”

(T/n: Jingshen thought Chengyu is only good looking but not clever but it the truth is that boy really have talent, so he admits that he wasn’t good at judging people.)

Yan Mu looked at the time, it was 8:00 p.m. He gets up from his chair, picked up his suit coat, and lightly threw out a sentence: “Also it is true that he is good-looking.”

Cao Jingshen stunned for a while, he doesn’t know how to reply to that. After a moment of hesitation, he continued to speak: “I mean, this potential talent, we must hire him.”

“When he comes to interview here during the turbulent time, it shows that he intends to stay in Huading,” Yan Mu tightened his tie. “Just follow the normal procedure. He is a wise man who knows what he wants.”

After he thinks about it, Cao Jingshen nodded. He thinks that the boss was right. “I see.”

“It’s already late. You should go back early to have a rest.” Yan Mu put on his coat, “It’s time for me to leave work, too.”

When Cao Jingshen turned around and saw Yan Mu had already left the office. Then he thinks about it. He folded the meeting minutes and put them in his pocket. He went out of the office and saw the shredder outside. He hesitated and then solemnly put them in the shredder.

The only way to keep something safe is to make sure no one saw it. There are still several commercial spies in Huading that haven’t been pulled out. He can’t let this potential talent taken by rivals.

Lu Chengyu works smoothly in the next few days. He wonders if he shocked Cao Jingshen so much by revealing his hand in the conference room. Cao Jingshen was being more gentle to him compared on his first day. There was more communication between the two of them in during work. But even so, he didn’t have contact with the big boss. All he did was more to coordinate work in various departments every day, or to sort out various documents.

After three weeks of work, the car he bought finally got its license tag on. Although it was only a hundred thousand or so, he was in a very good mood. Anyway, he owns a car.

Huading has an internal parking lot, so Lu Chengyu went to apply for an underground parking pass and went to work by his car.

After more than a month later, Lu Chengyu returned to school to defend his thesis. Only then he knows that Chen Jin had obtained quota to attend Liang’s foreign meeting, so he used a video conference to defend his thesis. Maybe it was Liang Deyou who helped him considering Chen Jin’s application was easily pass.

In fact, instead of facing Chen Jin, Lu Chengyu was relieved. Although there is no resentment between him and Chen Jin, there is not much brotherhood left.

His thesis defence was easy. Lu Chengyu had a hot pot with Liang Hong and Zhu Guanglin and they went to KTV to sing.

They went out from KTV after they done with singing. His mind sobers up when he was blown by the night breeze. Chengyu raised his hand and looked at the watch using the street lamp. It was already after 12 a.m., and sadly he said, “I need to sleep, I have to go to work tomorrow.”

“You didn’t ask for leave tomorrow?” Zhang Hong patted him on the shoulder and said, “Condolence.”

“Get out of the way.” Lu Chengyu gave him a slap on Zhang Hong hands. “How do I know that I’ll be howling with you two till midnight?”

“You speak like you didn’t enjoy singing just now”. Zhang Hong pulled out his ears and said, ” Besides your two brothers, who else are able to stand your hideous singing? You have a nice voice but tone-deaf, what a fraud.”

“If you are saying this means that your sense is dead,” Lu Chengyu stretched his lazy waist, “All right, I’m not going to talk to you anymore, let’s go back.”

Zhu Guanglin, who had never spoken, hesitated for a moment and said, “Lao San (third old), didn’t you prepare to enter Liang Company before? Then, why did you choose to go to Huading? Was it because of Chen Jin…”?

Zhang Hong frowned and stared at him. “Lao Zhu (Old Zhu, from Zhu Guanglin name), what are you talking about?”

“No reason.”Lu Chengyu put his hands in his trousers pocket and laughed, “I just think Huading has a lot of room for development, so I choose Huading. I’m not gonna spend my working life in Liang Company and let Liang Deyou gain profit from it. You guys might not know that Liang Company was responsible for my parents’ accident.”

Zhu Guanglin and Zhang Hong looked at each other face. Zhu Guanglin looked apologetic and said, “Sorry, Lao San, I don’t know about it. I just drank too much and talk nonsense. Don’t take it to heart.”

“That’s just a small thing, I don’t take it to my heart.” laughed Lu Chengyu, he really seems doesn’t care about it, “Even I know about this recently although the accident happens more than a year ago and it doesn’t have anything to do with you. There are a few things I can’t tell even we are best friends.”

Zhu Guanglin speechless looking at Lu Chengyu calm face calm. Eventually, he grins to Chengyu, walk to him and they give each other a pat on the shoulder.

Yan Mu sat in his car and watched Lu Chengyu say goodbye to two young people. Then, he saw Chengyu took a taxi and left. He pulled down his necktie and threw it aside. The young man nowadays is so energetic. He has to go to work tomorrow and but dare to have fun till midnight. (T/N: stalker-detected ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°))

No wonder people say that three years difference is a generation-gap. He’s just six or seven years older than these people and yet he feels like they live in two different worlds with these young people.

However, when he was studying abroad, he did not seem to be as leisurely as they were. It seems that it has nothing to do with age and personality.

Realising that he was thinking of something useless, Yan Mu stepped on the accelerator with one foot and a car that worth near ten million flew out at full speed.

Inside the taxi, Lu Chengyu saw a black Maybach pass by behind him and couldn’t help but to look at it more than twice.

“Ai ya [2], that Maybach cost around 10 million dollars. I’ve seen pictures of this kind of car on the internet, and even its used cars ought to cost more than 8 million!”

[2] 哎呀 [āi yā] : interjection of wonder, shock or admiration

The taxi driver carefully drives his car away from the Maybach. “I need to drive carefully when I see this kind of car. If I accidentally scratch it, I, ordinary person, can’t afford to pay for it.”

Hearing this, Chengyu felt sad, suddenly he realized that there is nothing to be excited when he got 19 million.

Go to hell, rich man! [3]

[3] Chengyu said “Go to your sister” but I change to “Go to hell” because usually in Chinese, if they want to curse someone, they mention family, like your mom, (ni ma) etc. [On a side note, I don’t think Chengyu want Yan Mu to go to someone else, he better go to hell if he does that, hahaha, just kidding.]