Conquering That Black Lotus 31

Chapter 31

“Young Mr. Jiang, this is your schedule for this week, please take a look.”

The speaker was an ordinary-looking man with a delicate appearance, standing in front of Jiang Huaisheng’s desk.

This man, with a wife and child, dressed like a social elite, was Jiang Huaisheng’s secretary, Li Mi. At 28 years old, a graduate of a prestigious university, with elderly parents, a young child, a family, and still in good health, he was a very useful worker.

As for his personal assistant and driver, Jiang Huaisheng didn’t hire externally, but continued to use the staff who had been with him at the old mansion.

The driver, hired nine years ago, had been with him since Jiang Huaisheng graduated from university, witnessing his transformation from a green freshman to the Young Mr. Jiang everyone respectfully addressed. He had become a veteran of the Jiang family.

For a better future, the driver’s daughter, who was in junior high school at the time, took the entrance exam for a finance university in City A, and the family temporarily moved from City B to City A. After all, they were both international metropolises, and City A wasn’t lacking anything.

If he hadn’t been by Young Mr. Jiang’s side, he wouldn’t have been able to find a job with such good benefits.

Jiang Huaisheng quickly scanned his schedule and directly crossed out several items on the editable electronic version.

“These are unnecessary, just follow this itinerary.”

As he grew older and Old Master Jiang gradually aged, the young beast, now fully grown, began to bare its fangs, attempting to seize power from the elder.

Although the old man had made it sound nice, that Jiang Huaisheng was the designated heir, as people aged, they became stubborn and reluctant to relinquish their power.

Their company wasn’t a state-owned enterprise where you had to retire at a certain age. In Old Master Jiang’s view, as long as he could still walk, his mind was still clear, and he hadn’t made any major mistakes, he should remain at the helm.

Young Mr. Jiang was twenty-seven years old. His father, Mr. Jiang, married young, getting married at 22 and becoming a father at 24. He was now fifty-one. Old Master Jiang married even earlier, at a time when people could marry and have children at eighteen, and he was now only seventy-one.

Seventy was still an age where one could work and strive, especially Old Master Jiang, who, as he aged, became even more afraid of losing power. He claimed that Jiang Huaisheng was still young, hadn’t started a family, and hadn’t truly settled down, so he wouldn’t step down yet.

However, the old man not relinquishing power didn’t mean Jiang Huaisheng had no power. While still in university, he had already been working on several projects, and all of them were very successful.

He didn’t start from the bottom and work his way up like some so-called crown princes. After graduating from university, he directly joined Mingyuan Group as the general manager of the headquarters.

After all, Jiang Huaisheng had interned at the grassroots level of this company when he was in junior high school, so there was no need to repeat the process.

And he had also started his own businesses, achieving success from scratch, reaching several small targets (hundreds of millions of RMB). Mingyuan Group was more complex, but many of the problems were similar.

However, not many people had interacted with this crown prince, so when Jiang Huaisheng first joined the company, many people naturally looked down on this young man, thinking that a fledgling couldn’t handle important matters.

“Our Mingyuan Group has a complex personnel structure. The young master is an academic, academics only understand theory, what do they know about practice? Having a high degree is useless, just wait and see, he’ll suffer when he first arrives.”

This seemed to be a common problem among older people, always feeling that having lived a few more years made them superior to young people fresh out of college.

Of course, these people were soon proven wrong. After taking office, Jiang Huaisheng implemented drastic reforms with ruthless efficiency.

There were those who protested and played dirty tricks, but the most vocal and active ones were all sent to jail by Young Mr. Jiang.

Old Master Jiang was getting old, and many of his old comrades from back in the day actually had the most problems, with many incidents being suppressed.

But while Old Master Jiang could turn a blind eye out of old friendship, his grandson had no such mercy.

In these five years, the group underwent major internal reforms. Many incompetent old-timers were kicked out. The better outcome was normal retirement, leaving in disgrace. The worse outcome was ending up operating a sewing machine in prison due to financial embezzlement or other factors, even in their old age.

However, the most troublesome one was CEO Jiang He. When Gu Tang left, he left a file for Jiang Huaisheng, containing evidence of Jiang He harming the group’s interests, such as accepting kickbacks.

The information he had was actually more detailed than what Jiang Huaisheng had.

Gu Tang not only gave this evidence to Jiang Huaisheng but also to some of Jiang He’s rivals within the group.

Jiang He’s salary and bonuses were deducted, but he wasn’t removed from his position because Old Master Jiang protected him.

Because of this incident, Jiang Huaisheng privately conducted several paternity tests, confirming that Jiang He and Old Master Jiang had no blood relationship.

He then knew that the old man’s attitude had changed. It wasn’t just about using Jiang He as a whetstone for him, but also about supporting Jiang He to compete with him, preventing his grandson from seizing too much power.

The old man had conflicting feelings. He watched his grandson grow stronger and capable of leading the group to greater heights, but he also felt the pain of a fading hero refusing to admit defeat.

Regarding this, Jiang Huaisheng’s father, Mr. Jiang, said: “He’s both a father and a son, neither side can be pleased, and no one can be favored. The aggrieved sandwich cookie chooses to give up.”

And Jiang Huaisheng’s mother, Mrs. Xu, said privately with disdain: “The shares Mom holds are always yours. I asked your father to give you his shares too, but that old geezer refuses to step down, becoming more stubborn with age.”

After all, she was a daughter-in-law, not a daughter. Don’t expect her to have genuine filial piety towards the old man. She only showed respect on the surface and put on a good show outside.

Between a bad-tempered father-in-law with no blood relation and her own son whom she carried for ten months, unless she was mentally challenged, she would choose her son.

As it was almost closing time, his secretary quickly called: “This is an appointment arranged by Old Master Jiang, he hopes you can have tea with Miss He.”

This so-called “tea” was actually a blind date.

In the past five years, the old man had arranged many blind dates for Jiang Huaisheng, especially frequently during the first year. At first, because he didn’t have much power, Jiang Huaisheng went, and of course, he directly rejected them after the first meeting.

Those who were his equals were mostly daughters of wealthy families. Putting aside their appearance and education, they all had strong self-esteem. Some gave up immediately, some tried two or three times before giving up.

Although Jiang Huaisheng was indeed excellent in all aspects, there were many outstanding men in the world. If they weren’t interested, they couldn’t be forced.

Because there were so many, there were bound to be a few odd ones among normal people. During this period, he inevitably encountered one or two who were overly confident and persistent, and even those who, influenced by novels, tried to bribe the cleaning staff to drug his coffee.

After all, the Jiang family was very wealthy, and Jiang Huaisheng himself was also a good catch. Even if the other party didn’t like him, as long as they entered the Jiang family and became his wife, they could get what they wanted.

Perhaps they could even act out the “chasing the wife crematorium” trope they loved to watch.

Encountering such abnormal people, Jiang Huaisheng had no choice but to disregard his gentlemanly demeanor and send these criminals straight to jail.

Because things once got very ugly, the old man also calmed down for a while.

This time, the old man specifically called, saying that he had seen through things and could compromise. He said: “This Miss He, I heard from her parents that she has a girlfriend. I don’t care what you do in private, you can get married and have two children, one for each of you. This is very suitable, get to know each other.”

Unlike the overly open-minded parents like Jiang’s father and mother, the old man, as the patriarch, had a strong desire for control, always hoping his grandson would do things according to his wishes.

Whether it was education, career, marriage, or having children, everything had to follow his will and plan.

But as he aged, he felt his energy waning, and after facing reality, he compromised a little. After all these years of hard work, his son didn’t have any other children, so he could only give in to his grandson.

It wasn’t about deceiving a good girl. With Jiang Huaisheng’s conditions, let alone his appearance and the fact that he had a boyfriend, even if he had many boyfriends at the same time, there were still plenty of people who wouldn’t mind.

But the old man was still somewhat traditional and felt that he shouldn’t mess around, he should have a proper marriage and children.

Miss He was the most suitable candidate he had found so far. The granddaughter of a shipping magnate, with business connections to their group, from a prominent family, beautiful, and capable, her only flaw being that she only liked women.

But since his grandson liked men, this flaw became an advantage. If they really didn’t have feelings for each other, they could get married and then divorced. As long as they parted amicably, it could even briefly boost the company’s stock price.

This was how elders who urged marriage were. At a certain age, regardless of whether you liked it or not, they would just blindly urge you.

Jiang Huaisheng naturally refused: “Grandpa, my schedule is very busy, I have an appointment with Chairman Wang of Hemei Real Estate tonight.”

The old man said forcefully: “Then make an appointment for tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, free up some unimportant time for me at noon.”

Jiang Huaisheng rubbed his temples. It seemed there would be another unnecessary social engagement wasting his time.

The old man quickly sent him Miss He’s contact information.

The other party greeted him enthusiastically: “Don’t worry, I’m not interested in you, just dealing with the elders, let’s have tea sometime.”

Marriage was definitely impossible between them, but another friend meant another business connection.

Jiang Huaisheng habitually checked Miss He’s social media updates. Although social media posts could be deceptive, they could still reveal a person’s personality to some extent.

This Miss He was someone who loved life and liked to post various photos on social media.

Photos of dining out with friends, photos at the airport after returning home.

Jiang Huaisheng wasn’t interested in Miss He, but when he saw a certain photo, his pupils constricted because he saw Gu Tang in it.

It was a photo Miss He took at the airport. Gu Tang was just in the background, not very conspicuous, but Jiang Huaisheng recognized that face at a glance, even though it only occupied a small part of the photo.

Gu Tang was clearly carrying a suitcase, leaving with her. After disappearing for so many years, he was finally willing to come back?