When Su Mansu left the banquet hall to return to school, she was in a complete daze, unable to snap out of it for a long time.
She had originally thought she was joining a company in a phase of rapid development. She imagined a professional life wearing appropriate business attire, handling documents in a bright office, attending various business meetings with the boss, occasionally working late into the night to prepare materials, and so on.
But the reality?
It made her feel like she had accidentally stumbled into a massive, shadowy underworld organization.
Just a few hours earlier, she had personally witnessed the shocking scene of over five hundred people shouting in unison, "Young Mistress!"—and these five hundred were only about half of the core members.
She simply couldn't imagine what it would be like if all thirteen hundred-plus core members were present.
Yu Xin had also told her that the Ten Thousand Dragons Society's goal was to expand to a scale of ten thousand members.
This number didn't refer to the total number of group employees, but rather the core members, like the people in black suits she saw in the banquet hall, aiming to reach a scale of over ten thousand.
Upon hearing this news, Su Mansu's first reaction was: Are you planning to rule the entire underground world of the planet?
Whether in movies or reality, she had never heard of any organization with a membership in the tens of thousands.
In her understanding, an organization with over a thousand members was already terrifying enough.
This clearly showed the immense ambition of her new boss.
Su Mansu had no doubt that if the boss had been born in ancient times, he would absolutely have become a powerful warlord.
Although, more likely, he would have been a bandit king ruling over a mountain stronghold.
After returning to her dorm.
Su Mansu opened her laptop. This computer was given to her by the man named Yun Cheng, and it contained a vast amount of information about the Ten Thousand Dragons Society Group.
This included the current total number of employees in the Ten Thousand Dragons Society, the distribution of the group's various industries, and which companies the boss held shares in or held positions at, among other things.
All of this was what she needed to familiarize herself with.
After today's experience, she wouldn't be too surprised now even if she found out the boss was also the chairman of several capital institutions.
What truly caught her off guard was when she was reviewing the company materials and saw two lines of text at the very top of the motto section.
[Those who betray the Ten Thousand Dragons Society shall face three blades and six holes.]
[Be cautious, meticulous, bold, understand the law, and unify knowledge with action.]
When she saw the first line, her heart instantly sank.
"What kind of company have I actually joined?"
Was she scared? Absolutely.
She had never seen such a hardcore company motto before.
But strangely, aside from fear, a sliver of indescribable excitement also stirred within her.
That night, Su Mansu was completely unable to sleep.
After thinking for a long time, she still decided to go and resign the next day...
..............
This year's real estate market was noticeably more depressed compared to last year. Many companies, due to hoarding large amounts of land for development earlier, faced broken capital chains and ultimately couldn't withstand the impact of the financial crisis, ending up in bankruptcy liquidation.
Liu Yutong, this time, started with a court auction price of two hundred million and ultimately secured a shopping mall with a future value exceeding one billion for just thirty million more.
The reason the price could be so low was mainly because no one dared to participate in the bidding.
Many of these court-auctioned fixed assets had significant disputes. The shopping mall Liu Yutong's group acquired was said to have an original owner with considerable influence and rather shady methods. Most people, even if tempted, didn't want to invite this trouble, so naturally, no one competed with her.
However, even knowing there could be trouble, Liu Yutong didn't care. She only knew she had acquired the mall through legal means.
If anyone dared to cause trouble, they'd better first weigh whether their head was hard enough.
Yu Mo also seized the opportunity to acquire two unfinished residential complexes near the shopping mall, similarly auctioned off by the court due to debt issues.
These residential complexes and the shopping mall were actually developed as a package. Many domestic real estate developers favored this model: building a large shopping mall while developing commercial housing in the surrounding area.
If the mall operated successfully, it could not only boost the sales of the commercial housing but also drive property prices significantly higher than in other areas.
Yu Mo was now basically following in Liu Yutong's footsteps. Wherever she built her shopping centers, he would try every means to acquire the surrounding land plots or residential complexes.
It had to be said, this year's financial crisis had indeed created opportunities for him.
From the beginning of the year until now, the Yu Group had more than quadrupled the number of land plots in its possession compared to last year.
Of course, along with that came a soaring company debt ratio.
Because obtaining loans this year was far more difficult than last year, Yu Mo had gone so far as to crazily pledge all his personal equity shares.
It could be described as utterly insane.
If Liu Yutong weren't sure he wasn't planning some "returning next week" escape scheme, she would suspect this guy had suffered some kind of shock.
This year, most real estate developers were desperate to quickly liquidate their land holdings to recoup funds. Yu Mo's behavior of leveraging against the trend and frantically acquiring land was seen by his peers as completely mad.
However, he did have some basis for doing this.
This basis came from a sentence Liu Yutong once said to him: "The winter is almost over. Next year will definitely be spring for real estate."
Yu Mo deeply believed her words.
And Liu Yutong wasn't lying to him. Starting next year, the real estate industry would enter a period of rapid development. A massive migration of rural populations to cities would create enormous rigid housing demand.
Real estate developers would also frantically hoard land and build houses. Coupled with the fueling efforts of various property speculation groups, housing prices would truly rise day by day.
However, as an old saying goes, the moon wanes after it is full, and water overflows after it fills.
The prosperity of real estate lasted only a few years before beginning to decline. In later years, many once-glorious real estate tycoons fell from their pedestals. The core reason was their unrestrained expansion, unable to sustain that high-turnover, high-leverage, high-debt operational model.
Now, Yu Mo was adopting this model ahead of time. At this current stage, it wasn't a major problem.
As long as he could hold on until next year and maintain this expansion speed, he was very likely to become one of the top-ranked real estate developers in the country.
Except, during this period, this guy did something incredibly foolish.
