Chapter 626
Pursuit
Chapter 626 Pursuit
Li Yufei's actions surprised everyone.
The atmosphere in the banquet hall was unusually silent, and everyone looked embarrassed. After Li Yufei left, Li Jilin immediately followed her out, but he quickly returned. No one knew what the father and daughter had talked about, and he was soaked in sweat.
Li Jilin didn't have time to think much. As the head of the family, he had to deal with the current situation. He immediately picked up a glass of wine and went to apologize to Lu Jingrong and his wife.
Lu Jingrong smiled, filled his glass with wine, stood up and said to Li Jilin, "Putting personal feelings aside, I must say, Yufei is a good girl. It's naturally a pity we can't be in-laws, but it doesn't affect our friendship. Come on, Xie Ting, Mr. Li, let's have a drink. Let's put this matter behind us."
Lu Jingrong was indeed a man who had seen many storms. Faced with this unexpected turn of events, he acted with composure and defused the extremely awkward situation with just a few words.
The Lu family couple stayed at the Huatian Hotel.
After the banquet, Lu Jingrong personally escorted the Li family to the hotel entrance, but this gesture made the Li family even more embarrassed, and they kept apologizing to Lu and his wife.
Lu Jingrong waited with his hands behind his back until the Li family got into their car and disappeared into the rain before the smile on his face faded. He called Lu Yuanzhou, who was hanging his head, into the tea room and brewed himself a cup of Da Hong Pao tea: "Is there anything you want to say to me?"
Lu Yuanzhou stood there, without saying a word.
Lu Jingrong said, "If you won't say it, then I will. Actually, you have good taste. I never understood why you were so infatuated with this girl before, but now I do. However, please stop here. I don't want to say things like 'a man should be able to take things in stride,' that's something you should consider. I just feel that if this girl's name appears in our house again, your mother's heart won't be able to take it."
Lu Yuanzhou remained silent, but his features were contorted, and his expression showed even more pain.
Lu Jingrong said, "Is a woman really worth making you act like this?"
"Dad, something's happened!" Lu Yuanzhou finally spoke, his voice hoarse.
Lu Jingrong then looked up at Lu Yuanzhou.
This son is capable. After returning from studying abroad, he left the Xiongsen Group to start his own business. He is good at finance and made a lot of money during the Shanghai Stock Exchange crash at the end of 92. He then established his own trading and real estate companies, which he managed very well, making the Lu family look at him with new eyes.
The Lu family's main business is in the Xiangbei region. This time, their expansion into the Xiangnan region was initiated by their son, who volunteered for the project. Apart from leveraging the Lu family's connections and the reputation of the Xiongsen Group, he independently managed the takeover of Qingwu Commercial Street and participated in the restructuring of Xiangtai. He can be considered one of the best among the three generations of the Lu family. However, his shortcomings are also very obvious. He appears polite, knowledgeable, and intelligent, but he has never experienced any setbacks and is too ambitious.
Normally, his son wouldn't talk about his troubles in front of him, so if he did, it must be big trouble. Lu Jingrong put down his teacup: "What?"
You know Yongxin Trust, right?
"Isn't this the partner you found?"
“That’s what’s on the surface.” Lu Yuanzhou shook his head with difficulty: “Actually, I’m the real controller behind this trust.”
Lu Jingrong was silent for a moment, then said calmly, "In other words, you are directly using the trust's money to manipulate the market."
Lu Yuanzhou nodded again with difficulty.
Lu Jingrong's face was ashen: "No wonder you're so successful in the market. Yongxin Trust has been established for some time now, hasn't it? Did you also gain control through layers of connections? Why are you telling me this now?"
Lu Yuanzhou said, “At the end of 92, during the stock market crash, I needed money to turn things around, but I didn’t want to beg the Lu family and be looked down upon by other relatives. So I contacted a classmate at a trust company and engaged in illegal operations to weather the storm until the bull market of 93. Not only did I plug the hole, but I also made a lot of money. That experience made me realize that this was a zero-risk, high-return business. So in 94, I seized the opportunity to acquire Yongxin Trust. Most of the money raised by Yongxin Trust was used by me for equity acquisitions, stock market manipulation, and commercial real estate. Stock market manipulation has always been profitable, but I expanded too quickly in the real economy, and the return on investment didn’t keep up. Meanwhile, Yongxin Trust developed very quickly, attracting tens of thousands of people and a lot of state-owned enterprise funds in less than two years. With the compounding interest, the pressure to repay was getting bigger and bigger. My original plan was to use this manipulation of the stock price of Xiangtai Pharmaceutical, a large state-owned enterprise, not only to acquire Xiangtai and push our Lu family’s pharmaceutical business into the Hunan region, but also to make a fortune and solve the problem of Yongxin’s repayment. But…”
"but what?"
"However, one of my competitors has this leverage over me."
"Who is this person?"
"I can talk to Hu Xianxun."
"Since you can talk to Hu Xianxun, isn't he a natural partner? Why would he become your competitor?"
"Because of Li Yufei..."
With a loud "smack," Lu Jingrong slapped Lu Yuanzhou across the face.
Lu Yuanzhou knelt down with a thud: "I've thought of another way, which is through Xie Yun. If something happens to me, something will happen to Xie Yun too! And Xie Yun is Li Yufei's maternal uncle, and Li Yufei has a very close relationship with Zhang Yunqi..."
Lu Jingrong stood up with his hands behind his back: "I won't even mention how stupid your plan is, but are you really willing to give Li Yufei to that Zhang Yunqi now?"
Lu Yuanzhou's eyes were bloodshot as he gritted his teeth and said, "I won't implicate my family or Xiongsen Group. I handled all the operations independently..."
Lu Jingrong waved his hand: "You won't implicate the Lu family!"
******
The most painful thing in life is not not having a choice, but having no choice at all. Lu Yuanzhou, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, had countless choices. Zhang Yunqi, who once toiled in the mud for a bite to eat, had no choice. But the moment Zhang Yunqi placed the equity transfer agreement of Jinzhao Industrial in front of Lu Yuanzhou, Lu Yuanzhou had no choice.
Lu Yuanzhou was fully aware, or rather, anyone with a sound mind would know, that Zhang Yunqi, given this opportunity to kill him, would never let him go. But in a situation where he had no other choice, he still chose to fantasize.
Fantasy is still fantasy.
In just one day, a large amount of news about Lu Yuanzhou and even Xiongsen Group using Yongxin Trust to manipulate the stock price of Xiangtai Pharmaceutical had already spread. Several newspapers and media reported the news, and even Lijin TV, which covers all citizens of Xingcheng, broadcast the matter on its morning news.
Because Lijin's propaganda department is responsible to Yang Jiarong! Unsurprisingly, as soon as the report came out, retail and institutional investors learned that the mysterious funds supporting Xiangtai's stock price were actually illegal trust funds, and that they might be forcibly withdrawn. Panic selling ensued like a landslide and a tsunami, directly causing Xiangtai's stock price, which had been soaring for several days, to plummet! Lu Yuanzhou's holdings instantly suffered huge unrealized losses and faced the risk of being liquidated.
On the same day, relevant departments sent a letter requesting Yongxin Trust to undergo an audit and to suspend related business. This meant that Lu Yuanzhou's most important source of funding was instantly cut off!
However, this was just the appetizer before the storm. What truly dealt Lu Yuanzhou a fatal blow was that Yongxin Trust involved the money of tens of thousands of clients and a large amount of idle funds from state-owned enterprises. He misappropriated most of this money and seized all the profits, while the real investors of the trust, the ordinary people, bore all the risks!
These risks, when combined, become deadly ghosts!
That afternoon, Zhang Yunqi saw the announcement from Xiongsen Group. The announcement stated that although Mr. Lu Yuanzhou was a director of Xiongsen Group, his business dealings with Yongxin Trust were independent actions, and the company had no connection with or knowledge of them. As of the date of this announcement, the company had not received any investigation notices or cooperation documents issued by any competent authority, and the company's operations were currently stable and normal.
In a straightforward manner, Xiongsen Group severed ties with Lu Yuanzhou. This demonstrates the magnitude and severity of the trouble Lu Yuanzhou caused, to the point that even the Lu family's business swiftly distanced itself from him.
Lu Yuanzhou's actions were actually quite secretive. On the other hand, for most people, knowing about it would be useless, as there was no way to appeal. Zhang Yunqi was able to discover it for three reasons.
First, after failing to break through the stock price of Xiangtai Pharmaceutical, he painstakingly analyzed Lu Yuanzhou's past business trajectory and discovered that Yongxin Trust appeared repeatedly like a ghost at different times and in different projects. As a fund provider, it was inseparable from Lu Yuanzhou's various projects. For example, the tens of millions of yuan in funding for the Wangyueling Bamboo Fragrance Ancient Alley renovation project some time ago actually came from Yongxin Trust.
Secondly, although Yongxin Trust's apparent shareholding structure has nothing to do with Lu Yuanzhou, and its shareholders are several seemingly unrelated investment companies and individuals, money can make the devil turn the millstone. Wang Guibing spent a huge sum of money to recruit Yongxin Trust employees, enough for them to work for fifty years. Moreover, they didn't need to provide any evidence. As long as they described the relationship between Lu Yuanzhou and Zhao Mingxuan, a lot of useful information could be collected. One of them was that an employee had accidentally seen Zhao Mingxuan sign an internal fund transfer form for Lu Yuanzhou.
That's enough. Zhang Yunqi doesn't need that internal fund transfer slip; collecting irrefutable evidence is the job of the police. He only needs to verify the accuracy of his logical loop from the clues between Lu Yuanzhou and Yongxin Trust.
Third, before these funds entered the stock market, they were largely transferred through shell trading companies. The registered locations and legal representatives of these companies overlapped with some of the shareholders of Yongxin Trust. Through complex contracts and accounting procedures, they transferred the funds to Lu Yuanzhou.
Lu Yuanzhou naturally became the sole mastermind behind the entire game, a young financial tycoon! He controlled the industrial platform with his left hand and the financial instruments with his right, stirring up trouble in the capital market.
Although Zhang Yunqi possessed a vast industrial foundation and strong market judgment, and Xu Qingshan's team had conducted rigorous actuarial verification of Lu Yuanzhou's assets and liabilities, they were simply no match for the overwhelming advantage created by the combination of financial capital and regulatory loopholes. The seemingly fair market transactions were, in reality, already firmly controlled by the rules of the game played by behind-the-scenes funds.
This is why Zhang Yunqi couldn't break through Xiangtai's stock price.
As for now, Xiangtai Pharmaceutical's stock price no longer needs him to break through it. As soon as Lu Yuanzhou's incident came out, the market was shaken! Xiangtai's stock price has already plummeted three thousand feet, as if the Milky Way had fallen from the ninth heaven.
That's how stock trading works.
Some are happy, some are sad; yesterday they were on the verge of death, today they are overjoyed. At this moment, the number of people who were worried about Gao Xiangtai could be described as widespread lamentation and bloodshed, but Zhang Yunqi's side was overjoyed.
He borrowed a large number of shares through a "stock holding forward spread agreement" model to short the stock price of Xiangtai. When the agreement expired, he repurchased the Xiangtai shares, which had fallen to the bottom, to return them. This not only resolved the huge debt crisis, but also made hundreds of millions of yuan a sure thing!
It is advisable to chase the poor with the courage of the left, but not to be the overlord.
At this time, Zhang Yunqi did two things: first, he strengthened the security of the people around him, so as not to let Lu Yuanzhou take a desperate gamble and bite him again; second, he wrote a multi-page report on the materials about Yongxin Trust.
This time, he could go see Hu Xianxun.
Above board.
At this time, Xiangtan University will also be on summer vacation.
Because of this, Zhang Yunqi skipped almost all of Xiangtan University's final exams in the second semester, except for the last one, "Ideological and Political Education." It was a foregone conclusion that a large number of students would have to take make-up exams in the second semester.
Zhang Yunqi still took the exam for "Ideological and Political Education," a subject that cultivates character and cleanses the soul. After the exam, he went to dormitory 213.
Of the five roommates, He Lin went home, but his home is in Lijin; Jin Shengze is going on a trip to Thailand; Zhou Dingchuan decided to stay in Lijin to work; Song Junxian is lying dead in the dormitory; and Ma Rulong is lying dead in the ICU.
Ma Rulong is still unconscious, and the medical expenses have reached an astronomical figure, all of which Zhang Yunqi has paid. This act deeply moved his roommates, who were so touched they wished they were women who could repay him with their own lives. Of course, they didn't know the reason behind it all.
Before parting ways, everyone decided to go see Ma Rulong. Zhang Yunqi didn't plan to go; he still had to go back to write that document. He told Zhou Dingchuan that if he wanted to work, he could apply to his company, Zhangji Catering, and then left the dormitory, holding an umbrella as he returned to the South Gate Villa.
Halfway there, his phone rang. Zhang Yunqi took it out of his pocket and saw it was an unfamiliar number. He answered it directly: "Hello?"
"Is this Mr. Zhang Yunqi, General Manager Zhang?"
"Yes, are you?"
"Lu Jingrong".
"Lu Yuanzhou's father?"
"Yes."
"Hello, Mr. Lu."
"You're welcome."
"Did you need something from Mr. Lu?"
"I have long admired Mr. Zhang's reputation and would like to invite you for a chat."
"I actually don't think it's necessary."
"What do you mean?"
"Because I exposed your son Lu Yuanzhou's illegal and disorderly conduct, you must hate me, and our meeting will definitely end badly. If you want to make some demands to make me give up, then I would advise you to give up. Bringing the lawbreaker Lu Yuanzhou to justice has become the ultimate pursuit of my boring life."
******
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(End of this chapter)