Chapter 3 Investment and Financing Meeting Ashera
Meanwhile, Cheng Mingdu got into the back seat of the car. Having just gotten off the plane, the roar of the aircraft engine was finally gone from his ears, and he began to close his eyes and rest.
But even though everything was quiet in front of me and in my ears, my brain was still working at a rapid pace.
Perhaps it was the white figure that stood out so calmly amidst the bustling airport crowd, or perhaps it was those eyes that resembled those of an old friend.
The figure wearing a white down jacket, hat, and mask, with only his eyes showing, stared at him for a moment amidst the throng of people. The figure leaning on a light cane appeared repeatedly in his mind's eye.
He had seen many people on the street who resembled her, but each time he turned around, he found it wasn't her.
If she wanted to come back, she should have come back long ago. If she hasn't come back in eight years, she's probably settled down abroad.
I really don't want to think about that possibility—that she might never come back.
The secretary turned her head, about to say something, but when she saw Cheng Mingdu's furrowed brows and closed eyes, she shut her mouth again.
Cheng Mingdu keenly sensed it and slightly opened his eyes: "Speak."
"The schedule for next week's recollections has been arranged. Would you like to take a look?" Pei Jie, as Cheng Mingdu's secretary, shared a similar personality with him. He was meticulous in his work, even the glasses on his nose were in the exact right position to avoid affecting his professionalism by pushing them up.
"No need to look anymore. You can let me know if there are any changes." Cheng Mingdu closed his eyes again.
Pei Jie glanced at the electronic schedule and said seriously, "The schedule is unchanged, but the closed-door meeting has invited you to be a guest speaker. I roughly estimated the time. Your speech at Tsinghua University will end at around 5 pm that day, which coincides with the end of the closed-door meeting. There is a time conflict, so you can only make it to the dinner."
Are there any interesting projects this year?
"The Bafeng Industrial Robots project that you were quite optimistic about has been withdrawn from, saying that they were not technically ready yet."
"That's a pity." His eyes were calm and his tone was indifferent, as if he couldn't discern much regret.
"The company that fills in the gaps is very new; I've never heard of it before. They make artificial exoskeletons."
"What's your name?"
"I've never heard of this company before. The name is a bit of a mouthful; it's called Ashera, which sounds like a word that's commonly used in the Middle East."
Pei Jie was completely baffled. He had studied in North America, and in the English-speaking world, this word was somewhat like the name of a kebab restaurant run by Arabs.
Cheng Mingdu was leaning back in the back seat with his eyes closed, resting when he heard the name. His brow twitched slightly, and his eyelids lifted.
Ashera?
He repeated the name softly, his tone devoid of any emotion, but noticeably a beat slower.
Pei Jie, oblivious to anything amiss, continued his report: "Yes, ASHRA. I checked, and there's no background information. The founder seems to have just returned to China this year, and the team isn't very large. But according to the closed-door meeting's schedule, she'll be speaking in the last session."
Cheng Mingdu didn't speak, but he gently tapped the armrest of the chair with his fingers, looking down at his moving knuckles.
He murmured the name: "Ashera..."
It was like chewing on a long-lost yet familiar word; the word pierced his mind like a needle.
But only he knew that behind those three simple notes lay a past he hadn't been able to truly let go of for eight years—all about her.
He once took an elective course in college called "Classical Myths and Archetype Analysis".
He remembered the word Ashera very clearly.
It's not English, nor Arabic, but an ancient Hebrew word.
Within minutes, he sensed two signals from the outside world that were related to her.
But he couldn't deny that in that chaotic airport exit, in that instant when a figure with only a pair of eyes visible passed by him—that indescribable sense of familiarity, like a belated echo, was abruptly cut off in his throat.
If it weren't for that cane, just those bright eyes, that silhouette, and Ashera, he would have thought Ye Yuying had returned to China.
Why because of that cane?
The lightweight cane was clearly the kind of one that had been used daily for many years. If it were Ye Yuying, how could she possibly use such a cane? When she entered Rongcheng No. 1 High School, she was a sports specialist, good at running, and still holds the school record for girls' sprinting.
This cane had absolutely nothing to do with her life.
He didn't say anything more.
But the temperature inside the car seemed to drop by two degrees.
And his heart, which had been as calm as a dead lake, finally stirred a little.
That night, he had a rare bout of insomnia. His mind was filled with memories of the past, and he couldn't forget a thing. He felt ridiculous. After eight years of inner turmoil, he could be stirred up all night by a single name.
In this kaleidoscopic world, she is everywhere, yet she is nowhere.
*
As the early winter night fell, Ye Yuying returned to her room and never came out again.
Because she is sensitive to cold, even the slightest bit of cold makes her toss and turn in pain, unable to sleep.
She sat on the edge of the bed, watching the moat under the night sky, its dark blue waters surging and flowing, and her mind drifted back to that brief encounter at the airport.
That wasn't a real encounter.
A true encounter is when two people recognize each other.
But he didn't.
He walked past her without glancing at her, as if she were just one of the millions of unfamiliar travelers in the airport. Without pausing, without hesitation, without looking back.
She touched her face, as if she had forgotten how it differed from her eighteen-year-old self, whether she was more beautiful or uglier.
Beauty and ugliness are probably the same, but there are more worries and haggardness.
Over the course of eight years, her hairstyle changed, her clothing style changed, and even her walking posture changed. When attending normal occasions, she wore an elaborate, mask-like makeup.
She went from being a runner to a woman who relied on crutches to walk—a cripple.
My face was also injured; although it wasn't disfigured, it still left a mark.
After a person has experienced such a life-or-death moment, even if their bone structure remains unchanged, their entire face is essentially re-sculpted.
Life was like a Titan lying between heaven and earth, pressing down on her head, blocking out all her sunlight, and making it hard for her to breathe.
Their funds can only last for three months at most. If she can't secure new investment within three months, their team will have to disband.
She and Ding Chu were both single and had nothing to lose, but Lao Wu had a wife and children and a mortgage to pay, so he had no choice.
Since returning from the airport, she has reviewed all the investment and financing materials three times, even abandoning the PowerPoint presentations and replacing them with the most basic folded document pages and hand-drawn sketches. Add to that the "AY-01" exoskeleton sample she carries with her, and the electromyography (EMG) feedback model her team has only briefly developed—all of this will be her final gamble.
She's not here to tell a story.
She's here to rob us.
She needs money, a lot of money, enough to keep the team running and for the next phase of development to be implemented.
She stood up, and the momentary numbness in her legs made her instinctively hold onto the back of the chair. After watching for two more minutes, she leaned against the wall and returned to bed, where she put a painkiller under her tongue as usual before going to sleep.
The wind outside the window picked up even more.
That night, she slept very lightly, her mind filled with pain and numbers.
*
Just before she got into the car, Ding Chu arrived at her residence with a voice and gave her an injection that would last for two hours—the side effects would be delayed, but she didn't care.
The private room was lit with cold, white light, resembling a makeshift interrogation room.
Entrepreneurs lined up, each one looking like they were about to be tortured. The time was strictly timed, and no one dared to laugh.
Ye Yuying sat in the waiting area, while the two entrepreneurs in front of her were reading from a pitch draft that didn't even have a PowerPoint presentation. Their palms were sweaty and their lips were cracked.
She glanced at them; they were all strangers, dressed in suits and ties, with slightly high hairlines.
Ding Chu whispered a reminder: "These founders are all under forty. Two of them came from the AI department of a major company, and the other came from a chip company to start his own business."
"And this one won an innovation award at an international competition the year before last, worth tens of millions." Ding Chu gritted his teeth, not forgetting to make a self-deprecating remark, "It seems like we... are just there to make up the numbers."
Joking aside, she immediately touched Ye Yuying's arm.
"Even so, I believe in you. Although you are much younger than them, our content can withstand scrutiny."
It was her turn; she was the last one to go on stage.
Some people exclaimed, "Could this be the grand finale?"
Another person interrupted in a low voice, saying that she was there to fill in for the person who was leaving Baffon.
When Ye Yuying came on stage, many people were stunned for a moment.
She is too young.
Among a group of mature men who always looked at their cue cards before speaking, Ye Yuying was an anomaly.
Flat leather shoes and a youthful face did not diminish her aura in the slightest. Her steps were slow, slower than most people's, but unhurried and composed, without any panic, as she calmly stepped onto the stage.
After receiving the nerve block injection, her pain subsided, and she went on stage, where even the slightest twitch was not allowed.
She had to stand on the stage as if she were a near-perfect person, shouldering the fate of the team for the next six months or even a year.
The image on the projector turned a page.
Ashera's name appeared behind Ye Yuying.
She didn't start with any pleasantries or praise of the project; she went straight to:
"Ashera solves only one thing—helping those who lack exercise overcome life's difficulties."
Cool, steady, and precise, with a resounding impact.
The scene fell silent for a few seconds.
No one interrupted, and no one whispered among themselves.
Her voice wasn't loud, but it was like a thin thread that precisely captured everyone's attention.
"Behind every exoskeleton is a person who needs to rebuild their dignity."
"In my country, there are more than 17 million people with motor dysfunction caused by trauma and neurological diseases, with hundreds of thousands of new cases every year. This is a long-term, real, and underdeveloped market."
She paused, without making any unnecessary movements: "Ashera v1.0 is our first generation of electromyography-driven exoskeleton. Its core lies in our self-developed high-sensitivity electromyography recognition module and degrees of freedom."
"The modules were developed from scratch by our team without any external purchases. We have completed the first phase of prototype development, including a wearable electromyography sensing system and a lower limb dynamic response skeleton. What we are currently working on is the dynamic adaptation of the neurofeedback algorithm to the physiological model."
She turned the page, manually dragging a simplified graph; her fingertips didn't tremble, but her voice was much clearer than the previous entrepreneurs:
"The data isn't impressive enough yet, but it's enough for us to verify one thing: there are still movement intentions in a semi-disabled state, and these intentions can be recognized by the exoskeleton through the microcurrents generated by muscle contraction."
She spoke calmly and with precise data, as if she were giving a technical presentation without any unnecessary words.
...
The tension only slowly crept in when I stepped off the stage.
During the defense, she could hardly tell who the questioner was. The questions were direct, sharp, and came one after another. The investors didn't care about any story, only how to do it, how much money to spend, how to implement it, how to make a profit, and how to deal with failure.
Her palms were slightly damp, but her back remained straight. As she stepped down from the podium, her pace was still unhurried, as if the fifteen minutes she had just spent had not exhausted all her strength and willpower.
The lumbar spine, which was fixed with steel nails, seemed to be teetering on the verge of collapse at any moment.
With each step I took, my waist felt like it was being burned by an electric shock.
The private room was quiet for a moment, with some people talking and more people looking through the materials she left behind.
The doors opened, and the waiters had already finished setting up the banquet hall. Everyone poured out of the conference room, but Ye Yuying remained seated, taking the water Ding Chu handed her and sipping it slowly to ease the tension in her chest.
Cheng Mingdu got out of the car just as the defense was ending.
He glanced around the half-open conference room.
It's a pity I didn't get to hear the demands of the founder of this company called Ashera in person...
Inside the banquet hall, guests clinked glasses, laughter filled the air, and the scent of champagne and perfume mingled in the atmosphere. Representatives from various companies gathered in small groups, enthusiastically exchanging business cards and information.
The atmosphere in the room paused subtly when Cheng Mingdu appeared.
He didn't go to the main table, casually took a glass of water from the waiter's tray, and glanced around the room. Several acquaintances from the investment circle got up to exchange pleasantries, but he only nodded and didn't say much.
Zhou Ruochen and Feng Ting walked up.
Feng Ting raised his hand to lightly clink glasses with him and said, "I invited you but you didn't come, and you came right after it ended."
He lowered his voice and joked, "You've missed out on a good show. We've never seen a woman this young and so ruthless before."
Their last conversation went like this:
"How much are you looking to raise in total?" Feng Ting asked directly.
“At least ten million,” Ye Yuying said.
"Is that enough?" Feng Ting raised an eyebrow.
“Not enough,” she replied calmly, “but enough to last six months. If I don’t deliver the second-generation prototype after six months, I will voluntarily relinquish control.”
Zhou Ruochen exclaimed, "I haven't heard such a practical answer in the past two years. She actually dared to gamble her entire fortune on this opportunity with us. She's completely different from those who emphasize people's livelihood and make empty promises."
He added, "They're practically writing 'ambition' all over their foreheads."
A note from the author:
----------------------
20 red envelopes~
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com