65 Chapter Sixty-Four
◎You've checked your phone five times already.
This person is named Echo, and she was Yu Jinyang's classmate before he went abroad. They even formed a dance group called Wasteland Graffiti.
Back then, we were all young and ambitious and dreamed of pursuing our dreams in the entertainment industry. However, the one who had the most potential to pursue his dream never imagined that he would go abroad and they would go their separate ways.
Echo hadn't been in much contact with Yu Jinyang in recent years, and she never expected him to reach out to her. However, their personalities remained as incompatible as ever; they'd already run into each other before even meeting. She couldn't imagine what kind of misfortune awaited him once they did meet.
Actually, Echo had never really respected Yu Jinyang. He thought Yu Jinyang looked like a pretty boy and was a rich kid. When Yu Jinyang said he danced breaking, Echo initially thought it was a huge joke. Echo hated rich kids who said they liked breaking, paid for a few lessons from a famous teacher, practiced a few floor moves, and then called themselves bboys. At first, Echo rudely called Yu Jinyang "that floor-roller."
However, in his opinion, Yu Jinyang was too mild-mannered and gentle. How could someone without a temper understand the spirit of breaking? It wasn't until he battled with him a few times that he witnessed the ruthlessness hidden in this man's bones.
"You don't dare to see me?" Yu Jinyang said after laughing enough.
"Wait there for Grandpa." Echo hung up the phone in a huff.
***
Li Yingqiao slept until the afternoon, completely forgetting that Yu Jinyang had done a set of eye exercises for her before leaving in the morning. She had even sent him a message before leaving: "I'm going out now, see you tonight."
The other end quickly replied, "See you tonight."
The two exchanged a few more emojis, and the conversation dragged on for a long time. Li Yingqiao lingered in the bathroom for ages without coming out, until Wang Wenxiang knocked on the door and asked if she was ready. In the end, she sent Yu Jinyang Gao Dian's classic "respect" emoji.
The other side replied: "If we steal his emojis again, DianDian will get suspicious."
Li Yingqiao replied confidently, "No. With his brain, even if we walked right past him holding hands, he wouldn't even think of it that way."
The reply from the other end was: "If you don't believe me, try it next time."
Li Yingqiao replied with a classic husky pointing at someone emoji that said, "Don't think I don't know what you're up to."
The other side replied with the same "I don't understand, I don't understand" baby emoji.
Li Yingqiao could almost picture his expression and tone of voice. How adorable! She smiled and opened the door. Wang Wenxiang was standing there waiting for her, giving her a strange look. Li Yingqiao looked at her even more strangely, then locked the door. "Sis, why did you dye your hair?"
Wang Wenxiang led her to the elevator, speaking in an incredibly cool tone: "Is that not allowed?"
In Li Yingqiao's memory, she was the smiling tiger type, steady and scheming, and rarely so openly showed a sour face.
In the afternoon, at a teahouse, Wang Wenxiang's sour face remained unchanged. Li Yingqiao sat to the side, sipping her tea, and couldn't help but wonder: What had she done to offend her? Had they made too much noise late at night? No way, they hadn't done anything, they hadn't even dared to kiss too loudly, afraid that Wang Wenxiang next door would hear.
So she crossed her legs, occasionally stealing glances at Wang Wenxiang, and then checking her phone for messages from Yu Jinyang. Strangely, she rarely thought of him at work before.
“You’ve only been sitting for ten minutes,” Wang Wenxiang said, “and you’ve already checked your phone five times.”
Li Yingqiao put down her teacup and immediately sat up straight. At that moment, the door to the teahouse private room was pushed open, and a woman about the same age as Wang Wenxiang entered. The woman had a smiling face that was even more like Wang Wenxiang's than before. After greeting Wang Wenxiang, she turned to Li Yingqiao with a smile and said, "Yingqiao, it's an honor to meet you."
Li Yingqiao realized what was happening and quickly put down her teacup, stood up and shook hands with the person generously: "It's an honor to meet you, Sister Liang."
After saying that, she glanced at Wang Wenxiang, who remained silent and quietly pulled out a chair, saying, "Come and sit down."
Like Wang Wenxiang, Liang Shuqin also had a neat and short haircut with a striking color. Her hair was simple and clean, with no stray hairs on her forehead, revealing a full forehead that made her look much younger than her age. After sitting down, Liang Shuqin had some casual conversation with Wang Wenxiang, "How many days have you been here? Why didn't you say so earlier? I would have had someone book a hotel for you closer to our company."
"No need. We have a travel expense limit." Wang Wenxiang remained cool and not very enthusiastic.
Li Yingqiao finally sensed something was amiss: "So you're asking about Sister Xiang's older sister?"
Liang Shuqin nodded: "Yes, but we separated when we were very young. I went to Shenzhen with my mother, and she stayed in Fengtan to live with my father."
Liang Shuqin is currently a partner in an organization that has incubated many internet celebrities with tens of millions of followers. The company's KOL matrix has a very high traffic coverage and its commercial influence is currently ranked first in China.
“But this is the first time Wenxiang has come to me about work,” Liang Shuqin said, glancing at Li Yingqiao. “Xiaohuacheng has been getting a lot of attention lately. I’ve seen a lot of posts about you on the platform, like the Ape Conference and various employee profiles. And that thing called ‘Electrical Alliance’ that was trending on the platform the other day, was that yours too? It’s very creative. I heard from Wenxiang that these are all your ideas, and they’re all great. But I’m curious, Yingqiao, with such a mature business model, why did you choose Xiaohuacheng?”
Wang Wenxiang interrupted, saying, "Let's eat first."
Liang Shuqin ignored her and said directly, "Yingqiao, I'd like to hear your thoughts first. The resources of Xiaohuacheng are too limited. When it comes to cultural tourism, the first thing to consider is location. What is the current occupancy rate of hotels and guesthouses around you? Another question is, if I give you my largest KOL influencer matrix to monetize, can you handle the peak visitor flow brought by the influencer traffic? Can your public service facilities meet the standards for handling visitor flow? If these are not realistic enough, can you tell me your ideal? Why do you want to build Xiaohuacheng?"
Li Yingqiao remained silent, partly because she couldn't answer, and partly because she knew the answer perfectly well. She had worked on the Rainbow Youli project in Y Province, and she knew that Fengtan was a cultural tourism city with inherent problems. She had always known that Liang Shuqin could see the problems at a glance. There was simply too much work to be done, and she couldn't explain it all to Liang Shuqin. Because her initial choice of Xiaohua City had no other reason whatsoever, and it had nothing to do with cultural tourism itself; she had no passion for cultural tourism.
If she hadn't unexpectedly joined the Rainbow Youli project, her initial career plans would have had nothing to do with cultural tourism.
Li Yingqiao glanced at Wang Wenxiang. No wonder she looked like this when she came out of the hotel; it was obvious that she knew Liang Shuqin didn't really think highly of them.
Liang Shuqin said, "Let me give you a simple example. One year, when we held a music festival in a certain county, all the surrounding hotels were fully booked, and traffic was congested. In the end, fans had to sleep on the streets and under bridges. Most of these fans were girls, and they were all quite young. Some of them were almost scammed, and others were harassed in the middle of the night. No matter how much we came forward to explain, it was no use. They were just so enthusiastic that they didn't care about their own safety. If you want to host a music festival, how can you prevent these kinds of problems? Other problems are minor. What we are most afraid of right now is this kind of problem."
Liang Shuqin is the kind of person who would never say anything definitive; she would only hint at it and then stop, but her attitude was quite clear: she would not allow her network of online influencers to collaborate with them for the time being.
Li Yingqiao naturally understood and nodded slightly to show her understanding. She offered tea instead of wine and said, "Sister Liang, I understand now. Thank you for reminding me. I will pay attention to this in the future. In any case, I am very grateful that you could come today."
Liang Shuqin smiled with some surprise. She hadn't expected Li Yingqiao to be so frank. She had thought he was someone who liked to take shortcuts, had a lot of tricks up his sleeve, and was difficult to deal with.
Because Wang Wenxiang called her and praised Li Yingqiao to the skies, she mistakenly believed that this girl was someone who would do anything for traffic.
As the head of an MCN agency, she had seen too many people like this, so she wasn't very interested in collaborating with Xiaohuacheng. However, she agreed because it was the first time Wang Wenxiang had approached her about work.
Even without collaborating, the three women had a relaxed and easy conversation at the dinner. Liang Shuqin found Li Yingqiao very pleasant to be around; even knowing she had been rejected, she wouldn't pester Li Yingqiao to secure the collaboration and become annoying. Instead, she subtly changed the subject, quickly easing the somewhat tense atmosphere with a few words.
Liang Shuqin did indeed sense a flowing power emanating from Li Yingqiao. Someone like her, who habitually wrapped herself in a hard shell, was most afraid of encountering someone like this. An egg is most afraid of hitting a stone; a weak-hearted person would automatically distance themselves from someone like her. But Li Yingqiao wouldn't. She would simply flow by calmly, and whoever resisted or opposed would be affected.
As they left the teahouse, Li Yingqiao handed Liang Shuqin the red wine she had bought from the mall: "Sister Liang, this is a little something to say goodbye. I didn't know what you liked, so I asked Sister Xiang and she said you like to have a little wine before bed, so I just bought a bottle."
Liang Shuqin readily agreed: "Thank you."
After the taxi driver left, she picked up the bottle and looked at it, a little curious as to what kind of red wine someone like Li Yingqiao would give her. She said she would just pick any bottle, but Wang Wenxiang didn't believe her. Wang Wenxiang glanced at her and said, "She heard that your competitor and ex-husband was born in the Year of the Ox, so she picked this bottle of Eger's Bull Blood."
"..."
Li Yingqiao returned to the hotel, entered, took out her phone to check it, went into the bathroom to remove her makeup, sprayed on some facial mist, and couldn't help but pick up her phone again. Even applying a cold face mask didn't cool her down, so she picked up her phone again. Finally, she lay down on the bed, glanced at Xiaohuacheng's tweet, and things that usually fascinated her now seemed utterly uninteresting. She then switched to WeChat, but there were still no new notifications.
When she got back, it wasn't dark yet, but two hours passed in the blink of an eye, and then it got dark. She didn't turn on the light, and alone in the darkness, she leaned against the headboard, clicking the screen on and off repeatedly. She realized that she couldn't seem to stay in this room alone; if she stayed any longer, she was starting to hallucinate, her mind filled with the gentle voice of Yu Jinyang speaking to her last night.
She called Miao Jia for half an hour, intending to tell her that dating is really exhausting and that she should never date. Miao Jia replied, "Even dogs don't date." Li Yingqiao fell silent, went in to take a shower, and came out to find that she still hadn't heard from Yu Jinyang.
She sighed deeply, rubbed her face hard, and decided to focus on her work. So she concentrated on thinking about him for another five minutes, but the more she tried to concentrate, the easier it was to get distracted...
Li Yingqiao got out of bed and decided to go downstairs for a stroll.
Yu Jinyang had just finished talking to someone and dropped Echo off at home. As he drove back to the hotel's underground parking garage and turned into the concierge driveway, it started raining, and a few raindrops fell through the windshield. As soon as he turned on the wipers, he saw a woman wearing a shawl over her shoulders and a "Touch me and you're dead" pajama set casually sharing ice cream with a child dressed in a hip-hop style at the hotel entrance.
"Hey, are all you B-boys this cool, no matter how old you are?"
The child was about the same age as him when he first started dancing, but spoke in a mature tone: "It's alright."
"Are girls this cool too?"
"Yes," the child nodded.
Li Yingqiao looked at him curiously: "Are all B-boys like this?"
The child corrected her: "Sister, only those who dance breaking are called B-boy or B-girl. Other dance styles don't have this name."
After a long while, she fell silent, her face bare, leaning against the magnificent Roman column at the hotel entrance, watching the bustling traffic in the distance, silently eating her ice cream.
The car lights in the distance flowed like neon in the rain. She was wet, but she was like a masterpiece that was becoming more and more vivid. She was free from worldly troubles and was just carefree.
The casual woman suddenly looked down and asked the cool-looking child:
Is breaking training tough?
[Author's Note]
Tips: I'm taking a break tomorrow. Starting next week, I'll be posting four days a day, then taking a day off, then four days a day, then taking one or two days off. It depends on my condition.
(I'm giving out red envelopes in this chapter~)
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