—Two years later.
“This is it. Open your phone, go to the official ‘Singing Heavenly Voices’ website, and vote for my sister. Just send a screenshot of your successful vote, and you can join the ‘200 off 20’ promotion. The support stacks too.”
“Got it. I understand.”
“Make sure all the front desks in every branch get the notice. Change all the desktops to Lin Qianqian’s support poster. And if a customer is checking out and doesn’t know about the promotion, remind them in time.”
“Understood.”
After giving the instructions, Lin Wangye started flipping through the computer, checking the data reports for all branches of Shenlin E-sports Hotel.
Ever since Shenlin E-sports Hotel opened and did well, Ningchang and many other cities saw a rush of competitors trying to grab a piece of the pie.
In the past two years, no fewer than thirty new e-sports hotels had opened in Ningchang alone.
Counting Shenlin’s own branches, not including the original flagship, there were five in total. Business was still decent, but of course, competition inevitably drew customers away. The days when the main branch was packed every single weekday were long gone.
Lin Wangye had predicted all of this.
That’s just how starting a business works. The first to arrive gets the meat; the followers get the broth. Once a project shows potential, others will jump in—it’s a typical pattern of growth and competition. There’s no way around it.
Even now, many e-sports themed hotels were still under renovation. At this rate, sooner or later the market would saturate, and the industry would start eating itself alive.
Fortunately, Lin Wangye had the first-mover advantage and acted quickly. As competitors opened, Shenlin E-sports Hotel gradually launched branches across different districts of Ningchang. Out of the five, only one was about the same as the main branch; the other four were bigger in scale and investment.
Back then, Lu Chengxuan didn’t push Lin Wangye to rush. He simply suggested five locations for new branches and let Lin Wangye plan and manage on his own. There was no strict deadline to drain his time and energy.
In principle, he could have taken it slow and steady.
But Lin Wangye wasn’t one to sit idle.
He thought, if he’s opening one, why not open all five at once? Better to push them all forward together.
So all the branches were renovated, recruited staff, and opened at the same time. By the time Lin Wangye realized, it was too late to regret it. Every day was either class or work—he was completely swamped.
Running back and forth between school and the hotels, Lin Wangye finally understood why his father had been so busy in his previous life.
Where would he have the time to spend with his kid?
Compared to running the entire Lin Group, managing the hotels was a piece of cake.
The main issue was that Lin Wangye was a first-time boss. Running one branch felt manageable, but once there were multiple branches, he started to feel his lack of experience. Many tasks he was handling weren’t smooth or familiar at all.
To be honest, most things in running the business were actually easy to handle.
The problem was that they were all so trivial.
If you couldn’t tell what was important and what wasn’t, and tried to do every little thing yourself, of course you’d end up completely overwhelmed.
Thanks to the school system and guidance from Lu Chengxuan and Lin Shen, Lin Wangye finally understood the difference between leadership and management. He started learning to assign specific tasks to specific people, watching over the process rather than doing everything himself.
But honestly, that was still easier said than done.
After all, Shenlin E-sports Hotel hadn’t been open that long. Its target audience and way of running things were very different from a traditional hotel.
Most of the staff he hired either understood e-sports but not hotels, or hotels but not e-sports. Almost all of them needed time to learn and adapt.
So training still mostly fell to Lin Wangye himself. He made sure the main branch staff got familiar with the hotel’s operations first, then sent experienced employees to manage newcomers when the branches opened.
Even Wang Xiaoshuai was forced to attend an administrative management course.
Lin Shen had officially started taking care of the family business since the beginning of his sophomore year. He had even more headaches than Lin Wangye. Lu Chengxuan was even more elusive—disappearing at random, always mysterious.
Most people wouldn’t know what he was up to, but Lin Wangye did.
A year ago, Lu Chengxuan had officially launched the ‘Chengfeng’ online shopping platform.
Even though it came online relatively late, the platform used the most advanced algorithms and programs in the industry, plus cutting-edge big data recommendations. Its popularity was skyrocketing, and it was currently riding the industry’s wave of rapid user registration. Every day, it had tens of millions of regular visitors.
Daily transaction volume kept climbing, leaving 90% of other shopping platforms far behind. The only real competitor was ‘Shengtian.’
Lin Wangye couldn’t help feeling increasingly nervous.
First, in his previous life, even though he was young, doing business meant knowing your competitors. He had looked into the Lu family and their ventures. Based on what he’d seen, ‘Chengfeng’ could never have grown this fast. But now, the progress Lu Chengxuan was showing far exceeded Lin Wangye’s expectations.
The second, even scarier point:
‘Shengtian’ had appeared out of nowhere.
In his past life, that shopping website didn’t even exist.
From the time he could remember until his last accident, the online shopping world had only ever been dominated by two platforms: ‘Chengfeng,’ founded by Lu Chengxuan, and ‘Linhong.’
‘Shengtian’ simply didn’t exist.
Now, although Lin Shen had created the Linhong online shopping site, his main focus was still on the physical, brick-and-mortar side of the business.
Lin Wangye couldn’t help but worry.
Because in his previous life, his grandfather had died suddenly from high blood pressure. One moment he was fine, the next… gone.
Right now, Lin Pengcheng’s health was clearly going downhill. He was in and out of the hospital, and by the looks of it, his days seemed numbered.
According to what his aunt said, when his grandfather passed away, the Lin family was left in a total mess. Most of their malls were bleeding money, investors bailed as soon as the head of the family was gone, and bankruptcy was just around the corner. Back then, it was only because of Lin Shen and the ‘Linhong’ online shopping site that they managed to turn things around.
But this time, Lin Shen hadn’t really done much with the platform.
To Lin Wangye, the Linhong website now looked half-dead, barely hanging on.
How the hell was that supposed to save the family?
It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried pushing Lin Shen to shift his focus to e-commerce, but Lin Shen was dead set on fixing the losses in the malls. No matter what Wangye said, he just wouldn’t budge.
Thinking it over, Lin Wangye could only comfort himself with excuses.
First off, his dad definitely had the ability—who’s to say that in this life, he wouldn’t really solve the problem with the malls?
After checking all the hotel branch reports, Lin Wangye felt more at ease. Endless crazy profits weren’t realistic anyway; as long as things stayed in the green, that was already good enough.
He had just closed the laptop when an employee beside him couldn’t hold back anymore and leaned in curiously: “Boss, do you actually know Lin Qianqian?”
After graduating, Lin Qianqian had signed up for a music reality show called ‘Singing Heavenly Voices’. She’d already pushed through all the auditions and made it into the national top 20.
Lin Wangye remembered it all too clearly—last time, his aunt had joined this same show, got a bit of fame, but not long after making it through, his father suddenly died. She ended up giving up her semi-final slot, got married the next year, and completely left the industry.
In every sense, this year was shaping up to be another stormy one.
“Of course I know her—she’s my sister,” Lin Wangye said with a nod.
“I thought you were just a fan!” The new front desk girl at the main branch lit up, eyes sparkling. “I love her! Boss, can you get me her autograph? She sings so well and she’s so pretty!”
“Haha, of course. If you stick around working here, you might even get to see her in person one day.” Lin Wangye flashed a bright grin. “But for the autograph, you’ll have to wait a bit—she’s been really busy lately.”
“That’s fine! No problem at all!” The girl nodded hard, then asked, “But still… can we even get her that many votes? We’ve got good traffic here, but online votes run in the millions—it feels like a drop in the bucket.”
Lin Wangye just shrugged, smiling.
“It’s fine. We’ll do what we can. The show doesn’t even decide who advances by votes—votes are just for popularity rankings and maybe an extra revival chance. My sister can win it all with her strength alone, so it doesn’t matter if she gets revived or not.”
“True!” the employee clenched her fist. “Go Qianqian!”
“Alright, I’m off. Thanks for the hard work, everyone.”
After waving goodbye to the staff, Lin Wangye headed out, planning to return to school. Just as he stepped off the elevator, his phone rang. Seeing the caller ID, his voice softened as he picked up.
“Hey, Suihe. What’s up?”
On the other end, Xu Suihe’s soft, sleepy voice sounded: “Brother Xiao Lin, I listened to the teacher today just like I was supposed to.”
“You’re so good,” Lin Wangye said gently. “Do you want a reward?”
Xu Suihe whispered, “I want to see Brother Xiao Lin.”
“I’m a bit busy right now,” Lin Wangye thought for a moment, then said, “How about the day after tomorrow, I take you out to play?”
“Okay.” Xu Suihe answered obediently, then asked, “Brother Xiao Lin, when will you take a big plane to see me?”
Lin Wangye couldn’t help smiling. “Next Tuesday.”
“I miss my brother too. When will he come back?”
“Brother’s super, super busy overseas. Way busier than Brother Xiao Lin, like ten thousand times busier. Remember that magazine I showed you? The first few pages were all drawn by Brother. He’s amazing. Once he can find some free time, he’ll come back to see you immediately.”
“Okay, I’ll wait for Brother to come back.”
“Alright, Brother Xiao Lin has to hang up now.”
“Okay.”
After the call ended, Lin Wangye looked up and saw a familiar car parked by the roadside—it was Lu Chengxuan, who had just finished some errands and was here to pick him up back to school.
Lin Wangye got in, buckled his seatbelt, and couldn’t help glancing at his phone again at the plane ticket to Sigwell. So many emotions swirled in him.
Two years… finally, he’d get to see him.
At first, Lin Wangye had thought college wouldn’t be as hectic as high school. Even a long-distance relationship should leave time to meet. But reality? Both of them were swamped.
He was buried in hotel work, and Shi Yuan in Sigwell had no free time either.
That mentor truly admired Shi Yuan. From the moment he entered school, he had shown unprecedented attention to him. Whenever there was free time, Shi Yuan would be pulled into all kinds of industry events by the mentor.
The design academy’s social circle was dazzling, to say the least.
The mysterious power from the East worked its magic.
Shi Yuan’s designs, inspired by China’s five-thousand-year-old traditions, immediately gained huge attention.
His striking looks only amplified the effect, creating a surprising chemistry that gave his identity as an Eastern designer a mysterious aura. Even a simple interview video spread widely and went viral.
Offers from local companies poured in, and commercial projects kept coming—Shi Yuan could barely keep up.
Lin Wangye had thought he’d be paying for college, but in the end, the cost was only one semester’s tuition, three months of living expenses, and the plane ticket.
Yet Shi Yuan not only quickly became self-sufficient but also paid back the money he owed Lin Shen.
Xu Suihe’s treatment still required a long-term financial commitment. Of course, Shi Yuan didn’t plan to let Lin Wangye shoulder all the pressure. When a career was taking off, it made sense to push forward with full force.
They hadn’t seen each other for two whole years. Lin Wangye could understand his mindset—he was genuinely swamped, and there was no room for complaints.
If the other person didn’t have time to come back, going to him whenever possible was just the same.
He slipped his phone back into his pocket and looked up at Lu Chengxuan. Thinking about Shi Yuan, who could turn things around with just one chance; his father, struggling to hold up a collapsing empire; and the terrifying sales figures of the Chengfeng platform, he couldn’t help but sigh: “Brother Lu…”
“Mm,” Lu Chengxuan responded lightly, showing he was listening.
Lin Wangye leaned back in the seat and let out a long, deep breath.
“I used to think you guys had it easy because of your family. Now I realize… you really work hard. And you’re really impressive.”
Through the rearview mirror, Lu Chengxuan met his gaze briefly. He stayed quiet for a long moment, then finally said, “Actually… you’re pretty impressive too.”
Lin Wangye froze for a second.
After saying that, Lu Chengxuan didn’t change his expression and kept driving, as if the topic had been casually dropped. Lin Wangye stared at his focused eyes and brows in the mirror, and suddenly felt warmth in his chest.
He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but in those few simple words, he felt a recognition that seemed to transcend time and space.
Lu Chengxuan rarely spoke much. Lin Wangye’s thoughts quickly drifted to next week, when he’d finally see the person he liked. The car was quiet for a long while—until a sudden phone ring shattered the silence.
Seeing that it was Lin Shen calling, Lin Wangye answered immediately. Just a few seconds in, his expression changed drastically, and he shot upright.
“Brother Lu, turn around! Head to People’s Hospital!”
The thing he feared most had happened. Lin Wangye’s breathing quickened, his voice trembling.
“Something’s happened in the Lin family.”
Hello, everyone ヾ(＾∇＾). I hope you enjoyed the story! If you’re feeling generous, please buy me a coffee, share/comment on my translated works! Check out the link below for early chapters. (๑>ᴗ<๑)
