Chapter 48

Wei Lai leaned against the headboard, currently screening suppliers for fresh seafood.

The previous supplier’s seafood quality had been declining sharply over the past two months, with several instances of substandard products. The General Manager of the Fresh Department decided to switch to a new supplier and, after inspection, found three promising options. She decided to show the situation to the GM tomorrow before making a final decision.

Only by immersing herself in work could she resist the urge to check her phone and WeChat.

Her phone, placed near the pillow, vibrated noticeably, but fearing disappointment, she didn’t check it.

Wei Lai persisted in reviewing the information from the three suppliers. Glancing at the time, it was almost eleven o’clock. She closed her tablet, and habitually checked her work group on her phone before going to bed.

At the top of the pinned conversation, there was an unread message sent half an hour ago.

Zhou Sujin: [Finish your work and get some rest early. If there’s anything bothering you, you can talk to me.]

Her marriage to him seemed like a mirage, spectacular yet distant and untouchable. Perhaps it would disappear in a second, and she wanted to grasp it but couldn’t.

So she artificially added so many constraints to their marriage, supplementing agreements over and over again, yet it never felt enough.

His message made everything that had been hanging in the air fall into place.

There were things bothering her, but she hadn’t planned to tell him. She didn’t want him to deal with her negativity after a tiring day.

[Nothing’s wrong, I just don’t feel like sleeping yet.]

Zhou Sujin had just arrived home and received her reply as he climbed the stairs. He immediately called her back.

“Do you want to talk to me for a while?”

“Yeah. Honey, do you have time?”

Zhou Sujin: “I do.”

He asked her what she wanted to talk about.

Wei Lai got out of bed. “There’s nothing specific to say, I just wanted to talk to you on the phone.”

It was a contradictory statement, but Zhou Sujin understood.

He had reached the doorway of the closet, unbuttoning two shirt buttons with one hand. He stopped, turned around, walked out of the bedroom, and headed to the study.

“I’ll be busy for another half an hour. I won’t hang up, so if you think of anything, you can tell me without interrupting me.”

“Okay, you’re busy.”

Wei Lai took out a copy of the supplementary agreement from her bag and retrieved the original from the desk drawer. The property agreement was with her father; she had no interest in keeping it herself, so her father kept it for her.

There was a small shredder at home. She turned it on.

Zhou Sujin heard the noise through the phone. “Wei Lai? What are you doing?”

Wei Lai placed her phone in the upper right corner of the desk, with the shredder on the left. She stuffed both the copy and the original of the supplementary agreement into it.

It wasn’t until he asked for the second time that Wei Lai heard him and replied, “I’m shredding all the supplementary agreements.”

Zhou Sujin paused. “I finally got you to sign them, why do you want to discard them now?”

Watching the agreements slowly turn into shreds, she realized that these clauses couldn’t give her the real him she desired. “What I want in my heart, agreements can’t give me.”

As the shredder stopped working, she picked up her phone and said to the receiver, “Actually, I don’t really like marriages that resemble contracts.”

“During the separation period, I thought of you.” She paused for a moment. “So when you asked me to marry you for the second time, my first consideration wasn’t whether this kind of marriage was suitable, but that I didn’t want to miss you again. After agreeing, I felt a little uncomfortable with no emotions, so I made a supplementary agreement.”

Zhou Sujin momentarily stopped working. “Let them shred, it doesn’t affect how I feel about you.”

Wei Lai emphasized, “You don’t need to placate me anymore in the future.”

Zhou Sujin responded with a simple “Hmm”. It was getting late, so he urged her, “Can you go to bed now?”

“Not yet.”

“Another two minutes.” Zhou Sujin glanced at his watch and started timing. He wouldn’t urge her to sleep before she finished shredding the agreements. He would wait for her to hang up on her own, otherwise, she would feel aggrieved.

Wei Lai persisted, “Two minutes are too short, three minutes.”

Zhou Sujin surrendered to her helplessness. Fortunately, she wasn’t beside him now; otherwise, she would linger in his arms for four minutes before going to sleep.

After three and a half minutes, he hung up.

As he ended the call, he remembered something he hadn’t said: [I’m going to London tomorrow or the day after. I won’t make it to Jiangcheng this week, but I’ll visit you when I return from London.]

Wei Lai replied: [It’s okay, it doesn’t have to be exactly every week. I’ve been really busy lately. You should go to sleep early too. Goodnight.]

People become relaxed, and suddenly very sleepy after getting into bed.

The next morning, she was awakened by Tang Yi’s phone call, asking her what time she would arrive at the office as she was already there.

Looking at the time on her phone, it was 8:19 AM, and she was startled awake.

She had set the alarm for 6:30, which she must have accidentally turned off.

“You go ahead and familiarize yourself with the office; I’m not up yet.”

Tang Yi ultimately resigned from her job with Mu Di. Since there were no ongoing projects, the handover was straightforward and only took a day.

Seeing Tang Yi’s determination to resign, Mu Di didn’t insist on keeping her for another month; instead, he approved her resignation report directly.

Yesterday, Wei Lai Supermarket hired her, and there was a suitable position for her. Today was her first official day at work.

Compared to her previous company, the pace at the supermarket was much slower, something Tang Yi was not used to.

Arriving too early, with nothing to do in the office, she went downstairs to the supermarket. There, she met Yu Younian, the general manager of Wei Lai Supermarket, around forty years old, with sharp eyes and decisive actions.

“Manager Yu,” she greeted him.

Yu Younian nodded. “Haven’t you had breakfast yet?”

Tang Yi smiled lightly. “I had it at home. I came to familiarize myself with the products in our supermarket.”

Yu Younian patrolled the store almost every day, promptly ensuring the quality of all fresh products. He had just come from the fresh area, and the new batch of goods delivered today was still not up to standard.

He had seen Tang Yi’s resume. “You and Wei Lai used to work together?”

“Yes, we were partners.”

“Great. We’re not good at financing and risk management, and she happens to have someone she can discuss these matters with.”

After Wei Lai came to the supermarket, the entire organizational structure underwent a major overhaul. Advanced management models and concepts were introduced. Not only did she have to adapt herself, but she also had to integrate the team and lead them to adapt. Financing was something she hadn’t had time to focus on.

“You go ahead; don’t forget about the meeting at nine o’clock.”

“Sure, Manager Yu. You’re busy.”

Tang Yi looked at her watch. It was still early for the meeting, so she spent another twenty minutes wandering around the supermarket.

Before 8:50, the largest meeting room on the second floor was almost full.

Today was the first management meeting after the holiday for the supermarket. All store managers and heads of various departments were present, except for Wei Lai.

Cheng Minzhi stood by the window of the meeting room, looking down at the parking lot, but didn’t see her car. This kid was usually the first one to arrive at the company, but today, she was late for the meeting.

[Lai Lai, did you forget about the meeting this morning because you were doing the store rounds?] She sent out the message, and Wei Lai appeared in her line of sight.

Wei Lai had never overslept for work or had a situation where her alarm didn’t wake her up before. Today was the first time.

Rushing to make it just in time for the meeting, she hastily entered the conference room. “Sorry, I’m late.”

Tang Yi glanced at her; she hadn’t even put on makeup, just applied some lipstick and came over with a bare face.

Chen Qi also glanced at her and saw her calmly opening her notebook.

Today’s meeting was chaired by Yu Younian, who had been promoted internally. He had worked for Wei Lai Supermarket for over fourteen years and was currently the general manager of Wei Lai Supermarket and the manager of the Fresh Business Department.

He first introduced the new colleagues in the work team, Chen Qi and Tang Yi.

Chen Qi served as the company’s deputy general manager, as well as the manager of the Food Business Department and the technical officer of the digital platform.

Tang Yi was currently responsible for overseeing the company’s strategic risks, an area she was proficient in.

After a simple welcome ceremony, Yu Younian discussed the focus of work for the next year. Firstly, to build Wei Lai Supermarket’s own digital shopping platform, secondly, to strengthen the ‘home delivery service’, and thirdly, to establish another procurement team.

When it came to the fourth point, he looked at Wei Lai. “Lai Lai, you’ll need to quickly finalize the overseas procurement partners to reduce the purchasing costs of our imported goods.”

The veteran employees of the supermarket had watched Wei Lai grow up. When she was younger and came to the supermarket, they would jokingly call her “Little General Lai”. The name stuck, and now everyone in the company refers to her as “General Lai” instead of “General Wei”.

Wei Lai agreed, “No problem, I’ll get it done as soon as possible.”

She was a brick. Currently, financing needed her, controlling the quality of fresh products needed her, and procurement of overseas products needed her. As a brick, she would be moved everywhere.

At the end of the meeting, Cheng Minzhi mentioned the recent issue with the supply of fresh products, asking each store manager to provide feedback on the sales situation in their respective stores.

Without exception, all stores had encountered situations where they didn’t have enough sales and needed to offer discounts. Kang, the manager of the Jiang’an Yuncheng store, said, “Some old customers have started to express dissatisfaction.”

Cheng Minzhi nodded, continuing, “This seriously affects the overall reputation of the supermarket.”

Yu Younian said, “We have already screened three potential suppliers, and we will replace the previous supplier soon.”

This fresh supplier only supplied Wei Lai Supermarket in Jiangcheng because of their good quality and reasonable prices, making fresh products a major feature of the supermarket.

Cheng Minzhi pondered, “If the quality is declining but they are not taking timely corrective action, could it be that they don’t want to continue supplying us?”

Chen Qi chimed in, “From my experience, they should be waiting for us to remove them from the supplier list voluntarily.”

All eyes in the meeting room turned towards him.

Chen Qi continued, “They have been supplying us for many years, and there is no reason for them to deliberately offend us when there’s money to be made. The only reason could be that they have a larger client than us, and driven by interests, they decided to abandon us, Wei Lai Supermarket, and choose another large client. This large client must be our competitor.”

Mentioning competitors, Cheng Minzhi naturally thought of Fuman Yuan Supermarket.

Wei Lai also thought it was highly likely orchestrated by Fuman Yuan, aiming to ruin the reputation of Wei Lai Supermarket’s fresh products.

When they adjourned the meeting shortly after, Lu Manyi, the boss of Fumanyuan, got wind of all the key points discussed in their meeting, including the suspicion from the management of Wei Lai Supermarket that there was an issue with the fresh products, and they suspected him to be the instigator.

Originally, it was an idea from his subordinates, but attributing it to him wasn’t entirely unjustified.

After listening to the report from the other party, Lu Manyi said, “You’ve worked hard.”

He didn’t say much else and ended the call.

Before he could even put down his phone, his niece called.

“Uncle, are you busy right now?” Mu Di was in her office but still locked the door.

Lu Manyi replied, “Not really, what is it?”

“Zhang Yanxin and Zhou Sujin have completely fallen out. It’s more serious than I thought. Recently, try to keep Wei Lai Supermarket out of trouble and avoid this mess for now.”

“I understand. These are just some routine competition tactics. Our management has my people; I’ll be the first to know if anything happens.”

Mu Di tentatively asked, “Who are they?”

Lu Manyi was cautious even with his niece. “You’re not in our industry; I’ll mention names you won’t recognize.”

He couldn’t just casually disclose it, just like the other side wouldn’t expose him.

Previously, when it came to the procurement of snacks for Wei Lai Supermarket, it was his people who deliberately offended many suppliers during their tenure, directly affecting Wei Lai Supermarket. Qi Linsheng, the regional manager of Lemeng, was so angry with the procurement that he didn’t want to cooperate with Wei Lai Supermarket again.

However, after Wei Lai took over, she managed to salvage the situation with Qi Linsheng.

Mu Di was very curious but didn’t pursue it further.

She couldn’t guess who her uncle’s people were, whatever their positions. She was too lazy to guess.

She also had her own people arranged in Wei Lai Supermarket, even in the management. Besides her and the parties involved, no third person knew about it, nor would she let a third person know to prevent complications.

She was playing the long game, causing Wei Lai Supermarket to make strategic mistakes without them knowing, resulting in irreversible losses.

As for her marriage with Zhang Yanxin, it had come to this. On the first day of the Lunar New Year, he couldn’t let go of Wei Lai, went to buy a watch from Zhou Sujin, directly angering Zhou Sujin, and causing her to become a laughingstock in their circle.

Zhou Sujin withdrew all investments, causing significant losses to their family.

Marriage, career, nothing was going smoothly. She couldn’t swallow this humiliation.

—

After the meeting, Wei Lai went directly to her mother’s office.

There was bread on Cheng Minzhi’s desk, which she opened and handed some to her daughter. “Have a few slices to fill your stomach first; it’s still early for lunch.”

A mother knows her daughter best; Wei Lai smiled and took it. “I actually haven’t had breakfast yet.”

“Overslept?”

“Yeah, I haven’t slept soundly for a long time; even the alarm didn’t wake me up.”

Cheng Minzhi asked her daughter what she thought about the issue with the fresh products.

Wei Lai absentmindedly chewed on the bread. “Even if it was orchestrated by Lu Manyi’s people, it’s hard to find evidence.” Without evidence, they couldn’t claim compensation from the supplier for the losses.

As the number of supermarket stores increased and the scale grew, there would be more and more malicious competitive tactics like this.

“I’m going to Shanghai with Chen Qi tomorrow to solve the financing problem first. When I come back, I’ll think about how to solve this issue.”

Cheng Minzhi reheated a box of milk for her daughter. “You focus on your work; I’ll handle these matters.”

Wei Lai took the milk and drank a sip. “Mom, do you think the procurement people who left before offended so many of our suppliers; could it be related to Lu Manyi?”

Cheng Minzhi remained silent for a moment. “Hard to say.”

Even if it were true, it would be difficult to trace it after such a long time.

The next day, at two o’clock in the afternoon, Wei Lai and Chen Qi headed to Shanghai. The other party was only available in the evening.

The driver drove while they sat in the back seat, discussing the potential problems they might face. Along the way, they passed by the coffee shop where she and Zhou Sujin had coffee. She took out her phone and snapped a picture.

She had been busy yesterday, working overtime until after ten o’clock. He should have been on a long flight to London.

Having not contacted each other all day, Wei Lai sent him the photo she had just taken: “Just passed by here.”

Zhou Sujin was already in London; it was 9:01 a.m. there.

He asked, “In Shanghai?”

“Yes. How about you?”

Where was he, and what was he doing?

Zhou Sujin replied, “London. Visiting someone. Just arrived at his office.”

“I thought you might come.” The other person handed him the coffee.

Putting away his phone, Zhou Sujin crossed his legs and leaned back on the sofa, calmly taking in the conversation. “But I didn’t expect I would come so soon, did I?”

Xiao Donghan chuckled and sat across from him, relaxed and casual.

His sharpness was hidden behind his golden-rimmed glasses, while Zhou Sujin’s dominance and edge were buried in his calm demeanor.

Both of them had the personalities of being reserved, keeping their cards close to their chest, and stopping conversations before they went too far.

The one entity that didn’t get along with the Beijing Capital was the Xiaoning Group, controlled by him, Xiao Donghan. There had been internal power struggles within Xiao Ning Group, finally settling down last year in his hands.

Before the control of the company was settled, the patriarch of the Ning family, one of the elders of the Xiaoning Group, didn’t allow his grandchildren to get too close to him, fearing that he was ruthless and unfeeling, afraid that he would corrupt them.

The tense relationship had only begun to ease in the past six months.

“Your grandfather’s concern about others being corrupted by me is understandable,” Xiao Donghan said with a hint of amusement, “but what about you? What’s so good about you that he’s worried you’ll be corrupted by me?”

In terms of ruthlessness and business tactics, there was little difference between Zhou Sujin and him.

“I heard you got married. Someone from Jiangcheng?”

“Yes. from Jiangcheng.”

Xiao Donghan joked, “How dare she marry you?”

Zhou Sujin lifted his coffee. “Because I treat her well.”