December 5th, the fifteenth day of the tenth lunar month.
Little Tan Jinyue was officially two years old. No matter how swamped Chairman Tan was with work and university lectures, he had to clear his schedule today to head home and celebrate his baby sister's birthday.
Because of the leap seventh month this year, the little girl's birthday arrived slightly later than usual.
At two years old, children understood a tremendous amount, and her speech had already become remarkably fluent.
Jinyue currently stood 90 centimeters tall and weighed around 24 catties. She wasn't going to be small when she grew up, and carrying or holding the little tot nowadays felt much more secure.
Jinyue's outfit for the day rocked a neutral style: a dark gray hoodie paired with matching dark gray trousers, layered over a pure white cotton long-sleeve tee, finished off with white canvas shoes and a red cap.
Draped with a tiny water bottle across her torso, she looked utterly therapeutic.
When the family went out shopping, parents frequently stopped Zhang Suzhi to ask where she bought her daughter's clothes. This left Zhang Suzhi caught between quiet pride and a lingering sense of loss, completely unsure how to respond.
She felt proud that her daughter's adorable aesthetic won over strangers, yet felt a bit defeated because all of Jinyue's standout outfits were hand-picked by her son.
"I didn't buy these. I make them myself—I'm a garment maker working in Shenzhou,"
Tan Jincheng would routinely spin tall tales to strangers whenever this happened.
Over time, Zhang Suzhi caught on and picked up the trick herself.
In truth, many of Jinyue's clothes simply couldn't be bought off the rack. Tan would sketch out the designs during his downtime, have Jinpeng Industry's apparel designers refine the patterns, and then source the custom fabrics for production.
Some outfits were only manufactured in runs of one or two pieces—once the sample was built, the pattern was archived. While they looked like ordinary, unbranded everyday clothes, their production costs were astronomical, making them exceptionally luxurious.
What could he do? Tan's aesthetic sensibilities hailed from over a decade in the future. Most contemporary clothing styles failed to catch his eye. Adult fashion could be compromised on, but toddler clothes were completely non-negotiable.
Little girls, especially, deserved to be dressed in absolute style.
Therefore, whenever he had spare time, Tan sketched out children's clothing styles and handed them over to Jinpeng's staff designers to tweak and sample according to his exact specifications.
Jinpeng Industry had employed full-time garment designers for a long time.
Chairman Tan frequently brought out novel clothing styles that left them dazzled, but an employer who personally designed custom wardrobes specifically for his younger sister was a first in their careers.
"Is this what the joy of the wealthy looks like?"
The joys of the rich exceeded their imagination, but they certainly understood that the clothing cuts were exceptional.
The company didn't produce children's wear, and Chairman Tan didn't care about commercializing them, but that didn't stop them from quietly filing patent applications for these designs under the company's name.
Just in case they came in handy someday, right?
That was what you called professional foresight.
As an emerging industrial district, Beilun genuinely lacked recreational spots for casual leisure. Whenever Tan's family went shopping, they usually headed straight into the city center, which offered vastly more options than Beilun.
While Chairman Tan enjoyed a relaxed day strolling through the city with his family, Zhang Xuhui was feeling the heat all the way up in Beijing.
Ever since relocating to the capital, Zhang Xuhui's core responsibilities revolved around administration and logistics.
Backed by Lu Ruifeng's close cooperation and top-tier compensation packages, the work wasn't overly difficult—anyone trained under Lu's wing was sharp, and nobody intentionally stirred up trouble.
This assignment, however, was entirely different. When Shanchi Technology acquired equity in Bafang Electric, existing cooperation served as a bridge, making negotiations relatively straightforward.
This time, however, with zero prior cooperation and without even a preliminary introduction, Zhang was tasked with stepping up under the banner of Hangxin New Energy to acquire equity in a company located all the way down in Shenzhen.
That raised the difficulty level significantly.
Even though the boss casually mentioned that failing didn't matter and they could simply scout other battery manufacturers in Shenzhen, this was still the boss's top choice.
Lu Ruifeng also found the situation slightly taxing. Both men understood Tan's underlying intent: integrating recently developed research breakthroughs directly into the mobile battery space.
Acquiring an existing factory was undoubtedly the optimal move, but neither of them had ever executed a corporate M&A deal or possessed any prior investment experience.
"I'll reach out to some veteran investors I know to feel out what a reasonable valuation looks like, or maybe ask President Tan to introduce an investment mentor to guide us through the ropes. Didn't his Orange Technology company go through external financing rounds?"
"Wouldn't that be different? Tech and internet startups carry heavily inflated valuations; industrial manufacturing firms can't be valued the same way."
"Asking around won't hurt. After that, we can temporarily assemble an ad-hoc negotiation team. You worked closely behind President Tan long enough to pick up the mechanics; if we're short on headcount, we can just borrow people from him."
An experienced veteran is worth two greenhorns—if you don't know how to do something, you find someone who does.
Furthermore, someone who had spent this long navigating the state-enterprise apparatus still retained a modicum of social capital, allowing them to pull enough strings to connect with intermediaries down in Shenzhen.
Zhang understood the logic, but suffered from a severe lack of personal connections.
"Alright, I'll start assembling the team right away. I'll leave the other arrangements in Chief Engineer Lu's capable hands."
"No trouble at all, it's my duty,"
Lu smiled warmly.
Applying laboratory breakthroughs to real-world commercial products was also their lifelong aspiration. Doing so would elevate the research institute's revenue streams—and their personal returns—ensuring a comfortable, prosperous retirement.
Shanchi was a remarkably young entrepreneurial outfit. The earliest core cohort who followed Tan were barely in their twenties; youth brought aggressive momentum, but it also meant a deficit in seasoned networks.
Lu knew that Zhang wasn't blind to these limitations—he simply lacked the personal leverage to overcome them.
That was Shanchi's inherent weak spot, but fortunately, Tan recognized it clearly. Subsequent corporate partnerships and talent acquisitions consistently leaned toward seasoned middle-aged professionals—especially those packing deep industry rolodexes.
This exact quality was what Lu admired most about Tan: his ability to promptly acknowledge his own blind spots and systematically patch them.
While the Beijing research institute prepared for its southward push, Tencent was gearing up to march northward! Driven by Happy Farm's explosive performance over the past two months, the head of the QQ Zone project team could finally sit still no longer!
By the end of November, Happy Network's registered user base had skyrocketed to a staggering 11.73 million.
Following the rollout of the updated leaderboard system, Happy Farm alone saw its user base surge by 3.83 million, while monthly revenue climbed from 123,000 yuan in October to 405,000 yuan in November.
Admittedly, a few hundred thousand yuan in monthly revenue wasn't massive, and compared to the marketing budgets of Happy Network and Happy Farm, it was a drop in the bucket.
Yet everyone knew Happy Farm hadn't even launched its monetization props yet; pulling in over half a million yuan purely by selling cosmetic profile skins was already an astronomical figure.
Anyone who had built or played video games understood that pushing monetization items too early easily shattered game balance. Happy Farm was still in its user-acquisition and retention phase; killing the goose that laid the golden eggs was entirely premature.
That said, Happy Farm was scheduled to update a batch of minor functional props that week—specifically low-tier fertilizer. Purchaseable strictly using in-game gold coins, the feature was designed to help new users catch up to veteran players without pay-to-win friction.
Updating once a month was more than enough for Happy Farm, which currently sat completely uncontested in its niche; excessive updates served no purpose.
With over 10 million registered users on Happy Network, the QQ Zone team didn't harbor burning envy over the numbers—after all, QQ Zone still reigned supreme as the undisputed king of social networking platforms, backed by the insurmountable traffic moat of QQ.
What they envied, however, was Happy Farm's monetization capability. It was a game with infinite economic potential.
If they could successfully introduce Happy Farm into QQ Zone, it wouldn't just drive user engagement on their platform; it would unlock a recurring revenue gusher.
Developing games was wildly profitable.
Ever since Tencent shifted its strategic focus toward gaming, leveraging QQ user traffic to funnel players into games had become deeply embedded across all internal project groups, and the QQ Zone team understood that playbook inside and out.
Deeply tethered to the core QQ ecosystem, QQ Zone had remained a flagship priority project for Tencent ever since its launch, enjoying prioritized resource allocation across the board.
Even when Weibo launched in 2009 and shook up the landscape—forcing Tencent to hastily spin out its own microblogging clone—it failed to dislodge QQ Zone's dominance.
Massive resource priority also meant the project team had to deliver concrete metrics, or face harsh accountability from executive leadership and shareholders. Every single member of the team knew that stake.
QQ Zone desperately needed Happy Farm to boost profitability and user metrics, while Orange Technology similarly required QQ's traffic pipeline. Both sides shared a mutual appetite for collaboration.
The general manager and technical director of the QQ Zone project team, Huang Xitong, personally boarded a flight to Ningbo on December 6th, preparing to negotiate partnership terms directly with Orange Technology.
Scheduling the meeting for December 6th—the day right after Jinyue's birthday—was a deliberate choice Tan made after hearing that this heavy-hitting industry titan was flying down personally.
Truth be told, Tan was well aware of who Huang was.
Early in the year of his rebirth, internet news broke that this legendary T13-tier executive—who single-handedly steered QQ Zone toward its golden age before navigating its eventual decline amid shifting industry eras, dedicating 16 years of his life to Tencent—had been laid off.
Yes, laid off, not gracefully retired.
Looking back, Huang was a fascinating figure.
A graduate of Sichuan University, he cycled through seven different jobs over his first six years before joining Tencent, working stints as a metal machinist, carpenter, and even running his own startup.
Eventually, his prominent reputation within online programmer forums caught the eye of a scout at Tencent, landing him a job at the tech giant.
Originally hired as a backend Java developer, Huang took charge of the front-end web architecture for the nascent QQ Zone project upon joining Tencent and turned it into a miraculous runaway success.
As an 80s-born child of the internet who held profound emotional attachment to QQ Zone, Tan didn't cancel his annual Yellow Diamond VIP subscription until 2021, illustrating just how deeply beloved the platform was.
Upon reading the news of Huang's layoff back then, Tan had specifically dug into the history of this legendary figure.
To survive and climb to a T13 tier within intensely competitive Tencent over 16 years while managing a single core product required immense talent, and Huang's subsequent professional footprint was filled with notable achievements.
Among them, the most renowned was the "404 Family Reunion" tracking initiative, which single-handedly salvaged public goodwill for the frequently maligned Tencent brand. Watching a technical titan of such caliber ultimately end up laid off felt undeniably poignant.
The primary reason Tan decided to step out and negotiate the partnership personally wasn't merely to signal high regard for the QQ Zone collaboration, but also to catch a firsthand glimpse of this legendary engineer.
For a general manager of a flagship high-priority product to sink so low as to be laid off after 16 stagnant years without promotion suggested certain glaring flaws in interpersonal personality.
Tech titans often possessed eccentric personalities—Tan understood that.
But what if there was an opportunity to poach him over to Orange Technology? Wouldn't that create a perfect functional complement to Gu Qingqing and Tan himself, neither of whom had a pure engineering background?
(End of Chapter)