Chapter 191: Chapter 116: One After Another_3
Yan Fei hustled all day outside, but no bank was willing to lend to him, which left him somewhat disappointed. He had thought that even if several banks didn’t support him, there would surely be some that would, only to find out in the end he had come up empty-handed, with no one willing to help him.
With only three days to spare, time was already extremely urgent, and Yan Fei had wasted a day. With no other choice, Yan Fei had to turn to the Shanghai Municipal Government for help.
The Shanghai Municipal Government didn’t refuse Yan Fei’s request, but the amount of capital involved was huge, and the city’s leaders needed to hold a meeting to discuss it, so they could only ask Yan Fei to wait patiently.
Although Yan Fei was burning with impatience, he knew that government affairs required a process. While he didn’t get a definite answer from the government right away, at least there was hope, so he continued to wait. But as time ticked away, with still no word from the government, Yan Fei began to get anxious and had his secretary contact Green Pine Capital, which had previously attempted to invest in his company, hoping to negotiate with them once more.
At this critical moment, Yan Fei could no longer care that he had previously had a falling out with them; he began to consider agreeing to their request to buy shares. With no good news coming from the government, he had to find another way out, lest he be unable to cope with any unexpected circumstances.
However, to Yan Fei’s surprise, when his secretary contacted Green Pine Capital, they seemed to have lost their previous urgency about Dream Technology and were not as eager as before. Although they agreed to renegotiate with Yan Fei regarding the shares, they set the negotiation for a week later.
Yan Fei was incredibly angry. In a week’s time, regardless of whether Lu Pingping was alive or dead, this matter would have already ended. What use would it be for Green Pine Capital to talk about shares then? However, after noticing the peculiar behavior of Green Pine Capital, a thought suddenly struck him: could the Lu Pingping kidnapping incident really be related to Green Pine Capital? Had they, upon his rejection of their investment, ostensibly applied commercial pressure on him, while secretly setting this trap to make him panic? Were they not interested in investing in Dream Technology, but rather waiting for an opportune time to achieve the best negotiation result at a lower price? Could the Assassin Sect be something made up to scare him, the real purpose being to throw him into chaos, so they could win amidst the disorder?
With this suspicion, Yan Fei instructed the Drone Assisted Intelligent Brain to search extensively on the Network World, trying to determine if the Assassin Sect really existed, or to find evidence linking Green Pine Capital to the kidnapping of Lu Pingping. Unfortunately, the Auxiliary Brain was ultimately a computer and could only perform searches based on Yan Fei’s instructions, unable to take initiative. Thus, it found no useful leads on the Internet.
Yan Fei had discovered the Dark Web of the underground world and logged into it through the Auxiliary Brain. There, he found a massive number of Bounty Tasks. The range of tasks was vast, from those wanting to purchase explosives, to those aimed at overthrowing a government in Africa, to even assassinating the President of The United States of America. With all manner of strange and bizarre tasks, there was everything one could think of. He even found a bounty notice for assassinating himself, identical to what the man in the Black Robe had described, with a bounty of one hundred million US Dollars.
Therefore, Yan Fei logged onto the Dark Web again, hoping to find some clues. However, among the tasks published on the Dark Web, he found no commission related to the kidnapping of Lu Pingping. The Assassin Sect, which had kidnapped Lu Pingping, seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, quickly getting a hold of Yan Fei’s weak spot and backing him into a corner.
While Yan Fei took the initiative on one front, on another, Wei Chao of the Shanghai Criminal Investigation Team had set up his operation center at the Dream Technology Headquarters Building, hoping to find more leads to rescue Lu Pingping. After all, Lu Pingping, currently the General Manager of Dream Technology, was also considered an important public figure at the national level, and her kidnapping in Shanghai was a loss of face for them.
After Wei Chao reported to higher-ups, the mysterious China Special Duties Unit also began to move, gathering intelligence about the Assassin Sect everywhere. However, they had not obtained any useful intelligence in a short time.
The Assassin Sect seemed very confident about themselves, not preventing Yan Fei from reporting to the police in their extortion letter but rather acting as if they were afraid Yan Fei wouldn’t report it, exuding an air of absolute control, not at all afraid of escalating the situation. This was completely unlike other kidnapping cases, where the kidnappers usually demand that the police are not involved. From this perspective, the modus operandi of this Assassin Sect seemed quite similar to the sect that dominated the world centuries ago.
Until the second day, Wei Chao’s investigation team had not found any concrete clues, and the unconscious female bodyguard, Liu Hong, hadn’t awakened to provide more intelligence. Meanwhile, the China Special Duty Group hadn’t found any breakthrough clues either. However, they brought back one piece of intelligence related to the Assassin Sect. In their investigation, it appeared that the Assassin Sect that had emerged was indeed the one historically annihilated by the Mongol cavalry. But the organization’s members had elusive movements, and even with the capabilities of the China Special Duty Group, they had not been able to find their whereabouts for the time being.
Just when Yan Fei was extremely anxious, another explosive piece of news came through. The Dream Foods Processing Factory had been notified by the local Township: since the previous owner of the Food Processing Factory had used improper means when signing the land use agreement, the agreement concerning the township’s land had been deemed invalid. The Food Processing Factory had to shut down immediately, demolish the structures aboveground, and return the land to the local township.
Together with this notification came the factory’s doors sealed, and the workers inside were forced to stop working. And this halt in production meant the cash cow of Dream Technology, the Weight Loss Cookies, was completely extinguished. Without the support of the Weight Loss Cookies, not to mention safely rescuing Lu Pingping, even Dream Technology might not be able to survive. A large amount of breach of contract indemnities and consumer complaints could lead to Dream Technology going bankrupt…