Sure enough, it was the mention of Xu Ye that did it.

Zheng Bin was interested right away, though he put on the look of a man who had it all mapped out and answered casually, "No rush. Let them talk first. I'll make my move at the end."

Xu Ye knew this couldn't be hurried. Push too hard and Zheng Bin wouldn't take the hook. So every couple of days he simply went to Lü Cheng, Liu Daqing and Zhang Quan for an update, acting like he cared a lot about the project.

The process kept moving the way it was supposed to, and before he knew it more than half a month had gone by.

Xu Ye hadn't been idle in that time either. Whenever he had nothing going on he drove over to see Yu Jiaying, and sometimes he brought Zhao Ming along. On the evening of the day Lü Cheng opened negotiations with the other side, Xu Ye decided the timing was about right, and only then messaged Zhao Ming to ask him to put up that Moments post.

Zhao Ming picked out a few photos, threw a line of text under them, and set the post so that only Zheng Bin's little circle of spoiled princes could see it. Once it was up, he put the whole thing out of his mind.

He had more than a thousand contacts on WeChat, every sort of person, a real mixed bag.

The post went up a little after seven in the evening, and one of the spoiled princes spotted it before long. Several of the photos were of Xu Ye and Yu Jiaying together, and he knew Zheng Bin had always had a thing for Yu Jiaying, so he took a screenshot and sent it straight over.

When Zheng Bin saw Zhao Ming's post, his eyes were full of disbelief.

Never once had it crossed his mind that Yu Jiaying — the daughter of a family like that — would get this close to Xu Ye, a hick with no background at all.

The thought that something…