Barring surprises, once this bull run was over the assets he was holding would have a chance of coming close to ten million.

Ten million was nowhere near a fortune in Shanghai, but it just about counted as well off, and Xu Ye felt the time had come to start making provision.

So far, setting aside his father-in-law and mother-in-law, whose standing had yet to be restored, Jiang Chao was the highest-placed person Xu Ye had come into contact with, and he happened to be the associate dean of Fudan University’s School of Economics. Going through him to get into investment was Xu Ye’s best option, and he was certainly not going to let an opportunity like that slip.

The night passed, and then it was Monday, the day everyone hates most.

Xu Ye went to the canteen early, and had barely sat down in the back row of the classroom after breakfast when a picture came through from Xu Wanying.

He opened it and found that someone had thrown red paint over the door of his fruit shop.

He tapped the voice message below it and heard Xu Wanying complaining. “Xu Ye, look at this. Somebody’s thrown paint on our shop door. It isn’t even dry yet and the smell is really sharp.”

Xu Ye asked at once, “Have you or Li Tongwen had any arguments or trouble with customers in the shop lately?”

“No. They’re all students from the same school. How would we end up arguing?”

Xu Ye replied quickly, “Leave it alone for now. I’ve got class this morning. I’ll come straight over when it’s done.”

Xu Wanying said, “All right.”

Once he had sent the two messages, Xu Ye told Zhang Xinzhou and Yang Fei beside him about it, and when the two of them had heard him out, neither could make any sense of it either.

Yang Fei: “Who has that little class?”

Zhang Xinzhou was quiet for a moment. “Could it have been Luo Wenbing at Kangyuan Fruit Shop?”

“You and I got to the same place.”

Xu Ye explained, “He’s been eyeing us jealously ever since we ran that promotion, and last week he stopped Li Tongwen quietly and tried to buy him. If you’re asking who’s most likely, it’s him.”

“Should we call the police?”

“Until we’ve got evidence there’s no point calling anyone. And even if it did come out that it was him, he’d get away with paying a bit of compensation at most.”

Xu Ye rested his hand on the desk, tapping the surface steadily with his index and middle fingers, and after thinking it over for a long while he gave a cold laugh. “If he wants to play, we’ll play with him properly. First we’ll do ‘retreat in order to advance,’ then ‘cross the sea by deceiving the heavens,’ and finish with ‘kill with a borrowed knife.'” [TL: three of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, a classical Chinese compendium of military ruses. Xu Ye is planning a fight between two campus fruit shops as a war.]

“What are you going to do?”

Xu Ye saw the lecturer step up to the podium and shook his head. “I’ll tell you at lunch.”

…

The bell rang for the end of class.

Xu Ye drove Zhang Xinzhou and Yang Fei over to the shop, and when they pulled the rolling shutter down there was a mass of red paint on it still giving off a foul smell.

Once he had taken it in, Xu Ye turned and looked over toward Kangyuan Fruit Shop, muttering to himself, “It’s almost certainly him. He’s always standing in his doorway, and today there isn’t a trace of him. Looks like a guilty conscience to me.”

Zhang Xinzhou sighed. “We should have put a security camera over our door too, back at the start.”

Yang Fei immediately pointed at a restaurant diagonally opposite. “That place has a camera over the door. It ought to reach our side, shouldn’t it? Want me to go over and ask?”

“Don’t go empty-handed. Take a few apples with you.”

“Okay~”

Yang Fei picked out a few apples and headed over to the restaurant. Xu Ye and Zhang Xinzhou waited in the shop about a quarter of an hour before he came running back.

“Christ, you two called it. The picture quality is garbage, but you can tell from the build that it’s him.”

“Did you copy the video?”

“Mm, it’s on my phone. He took delivery of a truckload of stock in the small hours last night, and on his way out he passed our door and threw a bucket of paint over it.”

Xu Ye snatched the phone from him and watched the video through carefully, then laughed. “Zhang Xinzhou, come with me in a bit. We’ll ask him out to dinner tonight.”

“What did you say?!” Zhang Xinzhou stared. “He threw paint on our door and you want to buy him dinner?”

“Don’t worry. I never do anything that leaves me worse off.”

…

Evening came around in no time.

The smell of the paint had almost gone by now, and the foot traffic in the shop had picked up.

Xu Ye checked the time and clapped Zhang Xinzhou on the shoulder. Zhang Xinzhou got up at once and went with him over to Kangyuan Fruit Shop.

Set against Qingqing Fruit Shop, Luo Wenbing’s shop was doing far worse business.

There was no help for it. By one means and another Xu Ye had tied up a great many repeat customers, and those customers had settled into the habit — they were regulars at Qingqing Fruit Shop now.

Luo Wenbing was minding the shop, and when he saw Xu Ye and Zhang Xinzhou walking over together his first reaction was in fact to lose his nerve. He asked, with no conviction at all, “What are you two here for?”

Xu Ye found the look of him privately hilarious, but what he said was, “Nothing much. The two of us would like to buy you dinner tonight, if Boss Luo would do us the honor.”

“Dinner? Buy me dinner?”

Luo Wenbing was rather at a loss. Last night he had been thinking about Xu Ye taking all his business, and there happened to be half a bucket of leftover paint in the truck, so in a moment of heat he threw it over their door. When he saw Xu Ye just now he assumed the thing had come out, which was why he had looked so tense.

“That’s right. My treat.”

“I’m busy.” Luo Wenbing still felt this was the weasel paying New Year’s respects to the chicken and up to no good, so he turned it down quickly.

But Xu Ye went on smiling at him. “The reason I’ve come to buy you dinner today is that our two shops going on fighting like this does neither of us any good. Rather than carry on this way, we’d be better off finding a solution that suits us both. Good for you and good for me.”

With Xu Ye putting it that way, Luo Wenbing was genuinely a little interested.

His shop was doing worse business than Xu Ye’s. That was simply a fact, and he wanted to know what this “good for you and good for me” solution actually was.

Luo Wenbing hesitated for two minutes and finally agreed. “If you’re putting it like that, I’ll hear you out.”

The three of them soon found a street stall on the food street and sat down in a private room on the second floor.

Xu Ye ordered seven or eight dishes, handed the menu back to the waiter, and had him bring over a few cans of beer as well.

“Boss Luo, setting all your costs aside, roughly how much does your shop make in a month now?”

Luo Wenbing assumed Xu Ye was there to sound him out, and lied at once. “A bit over twenty thousand last month. This month should be better.”

Zhang Xinzhou nearly laughed. He went over the fruit shop’s books every day. With every cost stripped out and no promotion running, their own shop’s net profit was a little over twenty thousand a month and under thirty — and that was with the weather warming up. In winter you had to knock a great deal off that figure.

Kangyuan Fruit Shop was doing far worse business than their own, so Luo Wenbing was making it up as he went, plainly talking nonsense.

“Boss Luo, that’s not very sincere of you. We’re competitors. I know exactly what the margin on fruit is and I know exactly how your shop is doing, so I could guess what you’re clearing a month without being told.”

“Stop beating around the bush. I don’t want to hear any more of this. What is it you actually called me here to say?”

Luo Wenbing was getting agitated.

He badly wanted to know what Xu Ye was after.

Otherwise the unease wouldn’t leave him.

Xu Ye took an unhurried drink of his beer and smiled. “Two things. The first is that I’d like to establish whether it was you who threw the paint on my shop door.”

“Paint? What paint?”

“Boss Luo, don’t play dumb. If I didn’t have evidence, do you think I’d say a thing like that off the top of my head? Zhang Xinzhou, show Boss Luo the video.”

Zhang Xinzhou held the security footage out in front of Luo Wenbing.

Luo Wenbing’s face was red before he had even finished watching.

He slammed the table and said furiously, “What is it you want? I’ll tell you now, I wasn’t raised to be frightened!”

“Boss Luo, don’t get worked up. I’ve already asked around. Even if this went to the police the most you’d get is five days in detention. The main reason I invited you here today is to discuss the second thing.”

“What thing?”

In fact, never mind five days in detention — Luo Wenbing couldn’t have accepted one day of it.

So the moment Xu Ye’s tone softened, he softened too.

Xu Ye smiled. “Boss Luo will be aware that as well as the fruit shop I have a company whose main business is vending machines. There’s a great deal more to do at the company than at the shop, and I’m stretched rather thin at the moment. I’m also short of a sum of money. So I’d like to transfer the fruit shop — though the transfer fee would be on the high side.”

“You really mean to transfer it?” Luo Wenbing stared at him, his whole face disbelieving.

Zhang Xinzhou looked at the expressions on the two of them and finally understood what Xu Ye had really been after. He felt a sudden relief that he wasn’t the one up against Xu Ye.

This guy really is a snake!

(End of Chapter 229)