After the Divorce, I Could Hear the Voice of the Future
Chapter 451 - 446: Business Concluded in Beijing

Lu Liang smiled and took a sip of his coffee. "Mr. Liu, if you lose confidence now, how can you expect to win later?"

Liu Qing fell silent for a few seconds before suddenly smiling. "Maybe I'm just writing you a bad check, Mr. Lu, got no confidence?"

"Are you provoking me?" Lu Liang squinted with a smiling face.

Liu Qing nodded, "So, are you up for it?"

Lu Liang suddenly laughed, stood up and extended his right hand. "I hope you can save face, and won't need me to help you do it."

Liu Qing's smile bloomed like flowers as she also stood up and shook hands. "It's still uncertain who the prey will fall to!"

The two exchanged a glance, and for a moment, let go of any grudges between them.

After Liu Qing had departed, Lu Liang watched her retreating figure and exclaimed with sincere admiration, "Who says women are inferior to men."

He really liked Liu Qing, liked her in a way that was full of admiration; having her on his side would definitely make his daily life much more relaxed.

But it was not to be.

Before he could finish his coffee, Lu Liang received two calls, one from Fang Shiyu, and the other from Cheng Wei.

He gave them the address and a few minutes later, his tall cousin hurried over, holding a thermos.

Fang Shiyu grinned stupidly, "Brother, I brought the medicine back, drink it twice a day for three consecutive days."

Lu Liang nodded slightly, opened the thermos, and sipped, "It's not as bitter as I expected."

Fang Shiyu explained, "Because it has honeysuckle and dandelions, Grandpa used to brew it for us when we were kids."

Lu Liang lost himself for a moment, filled with memories, "Back then, Lu Ya and I would often follow Grandpa into the mountains. You were too young to come along, and you would always cry."

"Really?" Fang Shiyu looked puzzled.

"Yes." Lu Liang said with a certain smile, then talked about the recent Mid-Autumn Festival at home when they went to have a meal at Uncle's house.

He said, "The new house is quite imposing. It'll be ready to move into by the end of the year. I'll buy Uncle a car for running errands then."

Fang Shiyu nodded seriously, feeling a warm sense of emotion, having things on his mind he couldn't express.

His salary was high, totaling over thirty thousand a month, with a generous year-end bonus to boot.

All year round, his clothing, food, lodging, and transportation were arranged by Lu Liang, so he hardly had to spend a penny.

Having only graduated from high school and spent a few years in the military, he always felt he didn't deserve such a high income.

Seeing his cousin's troubled expression, Lu Liang knew he was about to get sentimental again and smiled, "Go wait for me in the parking lot, I'll call you when I'm about to leave."

Fang Shiyu nodded and had just left when Cheng Wei came striding in, curious, "Mr. Lu, where's Mr. Liu?"

"She just left." Lu Liang finished his herbal medicine in one gulp, unwrapped a candy and threw it into his mouth, then said with a laugh, "It's unrelated to DiDi, just some foundation company matters."

Cheng Wei smiled awkwardly, hurriedly saying, "Mr. Lu, I absolutely didn't mean to doubt you."

Lu Liang chuckled, skipping the topic, "I'm done here for now, I will leave Secretary Xu behind. Mr. Cheng, while I'm gone, I'll have to trouble you."

"No problem."

Cheng Wei asked about when to resubmit for listing approval, and Lu Liang said, "If all goes well, then by the 20th."

He had just glanced at the documents Liu Qing had prepared for the review. Stacked from the floor, they were almost two meters high.

All those documents had to be re-integrated, and then updated with the latest information for the quarter, a task that was bound to be substantial.

"And what about the Ministry of Commerce?" Cheng Wei asked further.

"We do our best and leave the rest to fate."

After leaving DiDi's New Chenghai Building, Lu Liang went to the headquarters of Li Xiang Automobile to attend the shareholders' meeting.

Half a year since Li Xiang One went on sale, its sales had broken through twenty thousand units, making a small dent in the high-end automobile market.

Now, no one mocked fridges, TVs, large sofas anymore, nor the range extenders that were scoffed at as unnecessary at launch.

So, Li Xiang, seizing the moment, called for a shareholders' meeting. With Lu Liang also in Beijing, he took the opportunity to attend.

Li Xiang beamed with delight, brimming with enthusiasm, "In the current situation where charging stations aren't widely available, and battery capacities are limited, consumers have made their choice. The range extender is the optimal choice for now."

Initially, he had withstood all opposition, braving the pressure from public opinion and investors, to launch the first vehicle focused on a range extender, which ultimately won market approval.

Fuel cars lacked fridges, TVs, large sofas, and also lacked smart driving and driving assistance.

Pure electric vehicles had range anxiety, with countless getting stuck on the roads or queuing for charges during the National Day holiday.

They say a good wind can take you soaring to the skies.

This National Day holiday, the pure electric vehicles stranded on the roads directly popularized the concept of range extenders in countless households.

While others in their green license plate cars queued for charging or were stuck on highways, afraid to even turn on the AC,

Li Xiang's range extender vehicles, also green plated, just refueled and zoomed off. That was the difference.

"Now is the golden time for development, so the decision-makers have decided to initiate the Hundred Store Plan."

Of course, Li Xiang wasn't idly calling investors from all over just to show off.

Mostly because the company was running out of money, the seven hundred million dollars raised last time was all spent on increasing production capacity.

Currently, there are only eight stores, located along the southern coast or in economically developed key cities.

So this time, he planned to add 92 new offline experience stores, to plant Li Xiang's flag all across the country.

Different from pure electrics, which suffer half the range in cold weather, their range extender could even knock on the doors of the cold northern regions.

This was Li Xiang's Series C financing, valued at fifty billion dollars, planning to offer 10% equity for financing.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last round of financing before we go public."

Li Xiang awaited with eager eyes, his previous enthusiasm seemingly vanished in an instant.

If Li Xiang could make a profit, he'd dare to slam his hand on the table in front of investors and say, "Invest if you love it, roll out if you don't."

But even with sales breaking through twenty thousand units, Li Xiang was still in the red, with a net loss of 1.45 billion RMB last quarter.

In two and a half years, losses surpassed 8 billion RMB, all of which came from the deep pockets of the investors sitting here.

So, when it was time to admit defeat, they had to submit.

Wang Xing from Meituan asked, "Mr. Lu, what do you think?"

"Just follow through," replied Lu Liang with a smile. "Let's help it go public, then talk about getting our capital back."

Tianxing Investment had invested $390 million in Li Xiang Automobile in several rounds, currently holding 18.5% of its shares.

The better Li Xiang's performance, the more they stood to earn.

However, Li Xiang was Li Xiang's second entrepreneurial venture, much like some good film and TV projects that would never make it to the open market for amateurs to invest in.

Born with a silver spoon, Li Xiang managed to secure an investment of one hundred million dollars early on, hence it didn't bring venture capital firms returns of tens or even hundreds of times like other startups.

With a valuation of five billion dollars, their 18.5% stake was worth $925 million, giving them just over a 100% return on their investment.

After thinking for a moment, Wang Xing said with a smile, "If Mr. Lu has already said as much, then Meituan and I will also continue to follow."

He was friends with Li Xiang, so he invested in two portions, one in his personal capacity at the establishment of Li Xiang.

Another portion was under Meituan's Dragon Ball Capital, recognizing Li Xiang's potential for growth and joining in later.

Heads of institutions like Jingwei and Ming Shi Capital nodded in agreement, following up with investments in this round once again.

The five hundred million dollar fundraising plan concluded amid laughter.

Li Xiang looked at Lu Liang, his eyes brimming with gratitude.

Lu Liang's influence in the investment circle had reached the point where it could create waves on its own.

His approval was truth.

At least until he experienced a major failure, whatever he invested in tended to result in a herd mentality.

After the meeting, Li Xiang approached Lu Liang with an idea he was hesitant about. He was debating whether to focus on a single model, or to launch a new car.

"What type?" asked Lu Liang.

"A seven-seater large SUV."

"No need, let's wait another two years."

Lu Liang thought of Li Xiang's slogan "A Mobile Home" and surmised they were likely planning to sprint down the path of luxury family cars.

He said, "Which of the luxury SUVs released by the major brands in the last two years has been able to outsell the Li Xiang One?"

Although the One had been on sale for only half a year and barely matched the monthly sales of the BMW X3, it wasn't an issue with the car itself but rather the market.

Spending over three hundred thousand on an electric vehicle, domestically made and produced by the Lifan Factory, would undoubtedly make some consumers uneasy.

This perception isn't something that can change overnight. It requires time for the public to slowly accept.

Li Xiang chuckled, "Mr. Lu, actually I feel the same way."

Lu Liang chuckled in return, "Anything else going on?"

"Mr. Lu, how is your new car coming along?"

"Our new car isn't in the same race as Li Xiang, so don't worry about any competition."

"Then that's reassuring."

Li Xiang took a deep breath. The success of the One made him so confident that he didn't even consider Tesla a threat.

Only Tianxing consistently seemed to be a thorn in his side; after all, Lu Liang, with his unpredictable antics, even dared to lay eyes on DiDi, and it was hard to imagine what he wouldn't dare do.

In the early stages, they focused on developing smart driving and investing in factories, creating a 300 billion RMB fund to support a full industrial chain, which included aid to 18 related companies, BYD among them.

Such bold moves meant that even before Tianxing Automobile hit the market, it had become a major worry for all major new energy vehicle enterprises, and nobody wanted to compete with them in the same category.

Lu Liang stayed in Beijing until the end of the national holiday, first visiting Li Xiang and then Douyin.

Eventually, he went back to DiDi, checked the progress of their project, and returned to Modu in the early hours of the 7th.

He called Little Wang and Long Fei to pick him up from the airport and went to a restaurant for a late-night snack: "Douyin's shop goes online tomorrow."

Last month, Douyin boldly spent one billion dollars to acquire North America's Musical.ly, successfully turning from a pirated version to an official one.

Thanks to a recommendation algorithm cultivated by over eight hundred million users in just over a year, their arrival in the European and American market was a textbook example of disruptive competition.

Without the legal entanglements of TikTok, they quickly climbed to the top of the Apple download charts and stayed there.

In just one month, the number of international daily active users grew from 89 million to 360 million and continued to rise rapidly.

With the company virtually dominating the domestic short video market, Yang Zhen proposed in the meeting that Douyin's shop would go live the next day, officially breaking into live-selling and e-commerce.

Little Wang and Long Fei exchanged glances, each seeing the helplessness in the other's eyes. This day was inevitable.

Panda, Douyu, and Huya might stand a chance, but against Douyin, they had no power to fight back.

Long Fei couldn't help but ask, "Mr. Lu, do you have any good advice?"

Lu Liang chuckled helplessly and shook his head: "Don't know, not familiar, no advice."

Douyin was valued at 35 billion dollars, and he held a 7.07% stake, worth 2.473 billion dollars.

Unlike Li Xiang, Douyin wasn't just a playground for a few domestic institutions; they had already received investments from international capitals like Temasek, Saudi Sovereign, Softbank Group, and even BlackRock, indicating their recognition of its value.

In comparison, Panda was being hyped to the skies by Wall Street firms, but with a valuation of only 15 billion dollars, how could they compete with Douyin?

He truly had no idea.

Their ceilings simply weren't on the same level.

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