Chapter 108: Chapter 108: Blackout, Pinduoduo
Wu Yun didn’t even remember how he’d gotten back to the Peace Restaurant. All he knew was that when he woke up the next morning, he was lying in bed in the river-view suite, and Qi Fei was nowhere to be seen.
Wu Yun had finally seen what a true "Wine Immortal" was, what an incredible tolerance for alcohol looked like. No wonder the system had rated Zhang Cheng’s public relations skills as Master Level.
That kind of tolerance wasn’t something an ordinary person could develop.
Thanks to his system-enhanced constitution, Wu Yun wouldn’t go so far as to say he was immune to alcohol, but he could still handle a pound or two of baijiu without any issues.
Even so, with all the employees toasting him and the fact that he hadn’t bought any hangover prevention medicine from the system store, he’d let his guard down for a moment. Zhang Cheng had taken advantage of it, drinking him under the table.
Wu Yun pulled out his phone and saw it was already nine o’clock.
His WeChat showed a string of unread messages.
The first one he saw was a message from Qi Fei: "Xiaoyunzi, you’re not allowed to drink that much anymore! It’s bad for you, and you reeked! When I came to get you last night, you smelled so strongly of alcohol. I don’t know how much you drank to actually pass out like that! Haha! Here, take a look at this video of you."
Veins popping on his forehead, Wu Yun tapped open the video Qi Fei had sent.
The video started with him being helped out of a car. He was wedged between two burly men, one on each side, who were supporting him as they walked toward the elevator.
First, the camera zoomed in for a close-up of Wu Yun’s face.
Wu Yun breathed a sigh of relief. Thankfully, he hadn’t done anything embarrassing; he just looked like he was fast asleep.
It was less "supporting" and more like the two men were just hauling him along.
The camera panned around, and Wu Yun saw Qi Fei’s three roommates snickering off to the side. Then the video started to shake, presumably because Qi Fei herself was laughing.
Wu Yun watched it twice before replying, "Senior, how dare you secretly film me! I’ll give you five minutes to apologize and say ’I was wrong!’ Otherwise, I’m unleashing my ultimate move!"
A moment later, a voice message of a few seconds popped up. "Xiaoyunzi, I’ve got dirt on you, and you still have the nerve to threaten me?"
Wu Yun didn’t bother with words. He just found the video he’d taken of Qi Fei when she was learning to drive and hit send.
After a moment of silence from his phone, a new message alert chimed. Qi Fei had sent three "tearing hair out" emojis, followed by three "hitting with a hammer" emojis.
"AHHH! When did you film this?! How did I not know?!"
"Haha, when you weren’t looking, of course."
...
「Citigroup Mansion, 28th floor.」
By the time Wu Yun arrived, it was already ten o’clock.
As he stepped out of the elevator, he happened to pass a few men and women, who were chatting as they walked toward the elevator bank for their interviews.
They passed each other, and one of them, a still-glamorous woman, glanced back at the handsome young man. Assuming he was just another interviewee, she paid him no more mind and went back to her conversation.
Perhaps because Zhou Shen had given the front desk a heads-up, the two receptionists immediately stood and greeted Wu Yun the moment they saw him.
Wu Yun smiled and nodded, leaving the two star-struck receptionists in his wake.
Under the curious gazes of the other interview candidates and new hires waiting in the main office, Wu Yun walked straight into the chairman’s office, leaving a trail of dropped jaws behind him.
Settling into the boss’s chair, Wu Yun sent a message to Zhou Shen, letting him know he’d arrived and asking him to call back after he finished with the current interview.
He spun comfortably in the chair, his mind racing with everything he knew about Pinduoduo.
Before his rebirth, Pinduoduo had been a mainstream e-commerce app on the domestic mobile internet. It was a third-party social e-commerce platform focused on C2M (Consumer-to-Manufacturer) group buying. Established in September 2015, it allowed users to initiate group purchases with friends, family, and neighbors to buy "quality goods" at lower prices.
This tactic—getting friends and family to help you "slash" the price—earned Pinduoduo a great deal of criticism, and some even accused the company of fraud.
In March 2021, a Modu lawyer named Liu Yuhang participated in Pinduoduo’s "Slash the Price to Get It Free" event. After getting many people to help slash the price, he was still stuck at 0.9%. Suspecting the data was flawed, Liu filed a lawsuit, accusing the company of fraud for using false data to conceal the rules. In January 2022, documents later released by Liu Yuhang revealed Pinduoduo’s defense: "Due to the limited number of decimal places the page can display, we abbreviated a percentage with at least six digits after the decimal point to 0.9%. The 0.9% displayed on the price-slashing page is not actually 0.9%, but 0.9996427%."
In March 2022, according to Sina Technology, the Douyu game streamer "Super Xiaojie" mobilized his viewers during a live stream to participate in a Pinduoduo event to get a free phone by slashing the price. Tens of thousands of people were online, yet after two hours, they still hadn’t succeeded. The incident even became a top trending topic on Weibo, sparking massive discussion among netizens who demanded an official explanation.
And yet, despite being repulsed by Pinduoduo’s "slash the price and pull in one more person" model, many people still tirelessly tried to accumulate those last few fractions of a gold coin that always seemed just out of reach.
You could say Pinduoduo had studied the psychology of the Huaxia People down to a science. This viral marketing strategy succeeded time and time again.
You might call Pinduoduo a scam, but then you’d hear about people around you successfully cashing out, some even multiple times. This led many people to keep trying, hoping they’d get lucky.
Then, of course, there was Pinduoduo’s aggressive app design. Every time you opened a page, a pop-up would appear, urging you to open a red envelope or enter a lottery. It was truly a bandit-like approach.
It was precisely because of these shameless tactics in his past life that Pinduoduo successfully went public. In December 2019, it was even selected as one of the Top 100 Brands at the 2019 Huaxia Brand Powerhouse Gala. By the end of 2020, Pinduoduo’s number of annual active buyers reached 788.4 million, making it Huaxia’s largest e-commerce platform by user base.
In 2020, Pinduoduo’s market capitalization surpassed one hundred billion US dollars for the first time.
The current year was September 2014. If he could fast-track its development, Pinduoduo would be the golden goose that sent his net worth skyrocketing.
Even after several rounds of financing, his shares in Pinduoduo would be enough to place his net worth among the wealthiest people in the world.
’But shares and net worth aren’t the same as actual cash flow,’ he thought. ’The cash flow will still have to come from those two game companies.’
’Oh, right. When I sell Little Red Car, that’ll be another huge cash injection.’
Just as Wu Yun was lost in thought, his phone rang.
"President Wu, we’re in the conference room. Everything is ready, please come over," said Zhou Shen.
Most of the people being interviewed today were for future mid-level management and other key positions.
So, Wu Yun stood up. He had to wander around the office for a bit before he found the conference room, which he entered, feeling slightly embarrassed.
Inside the room, the four people sitting in a row facing the door stood up and greeted him in unison, "President Wu!"
Wu Yun looked at the empty seat in the middle. On the table in front of it sat an unopened bottle of mineral water, a pen and paper, and a stack of résumés.
"President Zhou, please introduce me to our two directors," Wu Yun said with a smile, looking at the man and woman sitting on either end of the row.
