Business War

Three black vans with Beijing license plates silently drove into the backyard of the Heaven on Earth nightclub.

There was no greeting or pleasantries; the car door opened, and four men and one woman got out.

The man in the lead was named Song Yan, 41 years old, thin, wearing a well-tailored dark gray suit, frameless glasses, and his hair was neatly combed. He carried a worn-out leather briefcase.

He worked at CICC for eight years on mergers and acquisitions restructuring before starting his own business, specializing in taking on deadly business situations that others dared not or could not handle. He was known in the industry as "Song the Three-Knife"—his three strikes were always to the bone, and he had never lost in his twelve years in the business.

Lin Feng waited for him at the entrance of the underground operations room.

This operations room was cleared out by Shangguan Jinghong overnight. It was originally the most private VIP meeting room in the club. Now, the wine cabinet and sofa have been removed and replaced with an entire wall of electronic screens, three long conference tables, and more than a dozen high-speed computers. The walls are covered with the business registration information, equity structure diagrams, and personnel relationship networks of the two companies.

The curtains were kept closed all day, and there were three security checkpoints. Apart from key personnel, even the club's manager could not get in.

When Song Yan entered, he didn't shake hands with Lin Feng or even glance at him. He went straight to the wall, looked up at the two huge relationship diagrams, and stared at them for a full three minutes.

Then he turned around and said his first words.

"Mr. Lin, I have a rule when it comes to taking cases." His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a sense of confidence. "I don't listen to emotions, I don't listen to grudges, and I don't care how many clients the other party has stolen from you. I only care about three things—when the opponent dies, how they die, and how many clients you can take over after they die."

"If your goal is to vent your anger, you can let me go back now. If your goal is to make these two companies disappear completely from Cangzhou, or even from this industry—"

He pushed up his glasses, his gaze sharp as a knife: "Then we can begin."

Lin Feng smiled and gestured for him to come: "Mr. Song, I spent seven figures to invite you here, and this is exactly the result I wanted."

That afternoon, the framework for the three-front war was finalized in Song Yan's hands.

The first line of communication, the intelligence line, is led by Shangguan Jinghong and operates covertly.

Ma Hongtao, whose target is Hongyuan Building Materials. People who rise to power through organized crime have a criminal history; their downfall isn't in the business world, but in prison.

Hongjie activated her network of informants, which she had cultivated in Bazhou for many years. She meticulously investigated every detail, including the sand mining section of the river, nighttime working hours, weighing records, fund transfers, and old cases involving assaulting colleagues. She was determined to uncover solid evidence, one by one, with blood on her hands.

The second line, the customer line, is led by Ouyang Qian and operates openly.

We won't chase prices or drastically cut them; we'll fight a battle to protect our customers. We'll sign annual framework agreements with key clients, extend payment terms, and lock in shipping capacity.

Small and medium-sized customers use Shuke's intelligent tracking, timely compensation, and cargo insurance—features that competitors can't replicate—to build a defense. Simultaneously, they extract intelligence about the two competitors from the customers they poach.

The third line of action, the funding line, is spearheaded by Song Yan's team, who are employing a killer strategy.

The target was Qian Litong of Tonglian Logistics. The data analysts and lawyers brought by Song Yan scraped all of Tonglian Logistics' business registration files, legal cases, equity pledges, movable property mortgages, bidding records, and court documents in three cities. They even used various legal channels to painstakingly extract every detail of Qian Litong's personal bank statements and those of his eleven affiliated companies.

"In the end, business wars are never about who has the lowest price." At the first deployment meeting, Song Yan pointed at the screen with the tip of his pen. "Dumping at low prices is just a tactic; the essence is burning money to survive. Ma Hongtao is burning money from stolen resources, while Qian Litong is burning money from borrowed time. Stolen things can be confiscated. Borrowed time will eventually expire."

"What we need to do is expose what they've stolen and make all their loans mature on the same day."

The next seven days.

The lights in the operations room were never turned off before 3 a.m.

The first to report good news came from the hidden network.

Hongjie's informant in Bazhou was a long-established sand pit owner who had been driven out of business by Ma Hongtao and had been harboring resentment for three years.

Evidence was sent to Cangzhou one by one. Ma Hongtao did not have a legal river sand mining permit at all. The three permits he had were all forged and obtained through illegal means. He had been illegally mining sand in the prohibited section of the Daqing River at night for many years. He had installed hidden compartments on his sand dredgers and bribed supervisors to falsify weighbridge slips.

Seventy percent of the proceeds from selling sand and gravel were not deposited into the company account, but into seven personal bank cards belonging to his brother-in-law and mistress. It is conservatively estimated that he evaded tens of millions of yuan in taxes over three years. Two years ago, a colleague filed a formal complaint against him, and the next day, his legs were broken and he was left at the entrance of the sand quarry. The case is still pending, and the murderer has not been caught, but everyone in Bazhou knows who did it.

"Illegal mining, tax evasion, intentional injury, forced transactions." Sister Hong slammed a thick stack of evidence on the table. "Any one of these charges, if proven, would be enough to put him in jail for life. I've already divided these things up—the gang-related assault case goes to the police, the illegal mining case goes to the water resources and natural resources department, and the tax evasion case goes to the tax authorities. As long as the higher-ups give the order, all three lines will come knocking at the same time, and he won't even have time to destroy the evidence."

The battle to protect customers along the open line was fought equally well.

The most dangerous moment was for Old Zhou from the auto parts market.

He had over two hundred truckloads of goods to ship each month, and he was overwhelmed by Tonglian Logistics' terms of "70% off shipping fees and a three-month payment period." He was almost ready to sign the contract. Ouyang Qian came to his door in person, without mentioning their past relationship, and simply spread out three sheets of paper on his desk and explained three accounts to him.

"First, the cost accounting." Her pen flew across the paper. "From Cangzhou to Jinan, it's 400 kilometers one way. The hard costs for a single trailer—tolls, electricity, driver's wages, vehicle depreciation—are at least 3,200 yuan. The quoted price from Tonglian is 2,800 yuan, meaning we lose 400 yuan per truckload. Mr. Zhou, you've been in business for twenty years; have you ever seen a boss willing to lose money every day and work for you for free?"

Old Zhou's expression changed.

"The second offense is a prior record." Ouyang Qian pushed over a printed document. "This is Tonglian's operational record in Dezhou and Hengshui. In the early stages, they grabbed market share with a 30% discount, squeezing out local logistics companies. Then, within six months, their freight rates increased three times, reaching 40% higher than the original price. Shippers had no choice but to ship, because there were no other logistics options available. The three months of cheap deals you're taking now will be paid for later when they're ripping you off with price hikes."

"The third one is the risk account." Her voice turned serious. "Why would he give you a three-month payment period? It means he doesn't keep any money in his account. He transfers the money as soon as it comes in, robbing Peter to pay Paul. This kind of company can go bankrupt in no time. When your goods are in transit, you won't get back a single penny of the freight deposit you left with him."

A cold sweat broke out on Lao Zhou's back. He tore up the Tonglian contract on the spot and turned around to sign an annual framework agreement with Shuke.