Huayu: Live a carefree life

On the evening of August 30, 2018, in Beijing.

At the Park Hyatt Hotel's 66th-floor scenic restaurant, Hu Lianxin, dressed in a simple white spaghetti strap dress and silver high heels, made a wish and happily blew out the birthday candles composed of the numbers 1 and 8.

"Happy birthday in advance, Xiao Hu." Lu Jie smiled and gently hugged his girlfriend from behind, then personally put a Van Cleef & Arpels necklace he had prepared beforehand on her finger. "Do you like it?"

"Wow, thank you, brother, I love it!" Hu Lianxin happily stroked the diamond pendant on the necklace, turned around, stood on tiptoe, hooked her arms around Lu Jie's neck, and gave him a sweet kiss.

Lu Jie hugged her tightly in response, and after a long while he released Xiao Hu, who was almost collapsing, and whispered in her ear while holding her slender waist, "I'll let you off the hook today. After your military training, I'll peel you into a little naked pig and eat you up piece by piece."

"Ugh~ Brother, why are you so mean? You're so annoying!" Hu Lianxin blushed instantly, then playfully punched her boyfriend, before putting on a haughty expression that said, "I'm angry, hurry up and coax me."

Lu Jie was willing to pamper this younger girl he'd been dating for almost half a year, but he wouldn't fawn over her. He immediately lifted her chin, grinned mischievously, and kissed her again, making her dizzy with passion and unsteady on her feet before leading her back to the dining table. "Are you hungry? Let's eat first. By the way, have you prepared all the equipment I told you about that we'll need for military training?"

"All ready: training insoles, sunscreen, mosquito repellent, and cooling patches..." Xiao Hu counted down the items one by one on his fingers.

Lu Jie nodded after she finished speaking. He was so excited to be able to admire Xiao Hu's pretty face and listen to her chattering away. Even the food tasted better than usual.

"Brother, I'm starting to miss you now, what should I do?" After dinner, he accompanied Hu Lianxin to stroll around the Guomao area across the street and casually bought two pieces of clothing.

The young girl hugged Lu Jie at the school gate, and whispered seductively in his ear, "How about... you take me tonight, brother..."

"Ouch...you little devil..." Lu Jie was almost caught off guard by Xiao Hu's sudden outburst, but he had to maintain his composure. He ruffled the girl's hair, pretending to be calm. "Don't tease me, or tonight will be really dangerous. Go on, stay at school peacefully tomorrow, and I'll ask you out again after military training!"

"Oh, okay, anyway, my heart already belongs to you, hehe." Xiao Hu was just infatuated for a moment. After being rejected, she quickly adjusted her mindset, gave her boyfriend a light kiss, pushed open the door and got out of the car, "Brother, I'm leaving, bye-bye."

"Okay, go ahead." Lu Jie smiled and nodded, watching Xiao Hu enter the school gate. After responding to her second farewell as she turned and waved, he started the car and gently pressed the accelerator to slowly merge onto the main road.

…………

Lu Jie, who was twenty-three years old at the time, was an ordinary person before he was eighteen. He came from an average family, had average grades, and was introverted. His only advantage was that he was handsome and had a good physique.

The advantage is that pretty girls both inside and outside the school love to date him, which enriches his knowledge of tactics and strategies. The disadvantage is that boys both inside and outside the school dislike him to some extent, and they have fought a lot because of it. Teachers also regard him as a key target for early dating control.

Lu Jie's ordinary life came to an end on his eighteenth birthday. That night, he suddenly developed a high fever and fell into a coma. He was rushed to the hospital by ambulance and immediately given a critical condition notice, nearly causing his parents to collapse. However, Lu Jie was conscious at the time. He had just been possessed by an artificial intelligence from the future, and his brain had been flooded with an excessive amount of knowledge and information in a short period of time. This caused him to overwork his brain and develop a high fever, similar to a computer's CPU running under overload and causing the cooling system to collapse.

Lu Jie pulled through, though he didn't become mentally impaired as the doctors feared, he was still incredibly exhausted, weak and listless. His father was slightly better, but his mother, Wang Xiaojun, had swollen eyes from crying and fell ill from the overwhelming joy and sorrow of seeing him wake up. Torn between his biological parents who had raised him and his adoptive father who had given him limitless possibilities, he could only keep the secret and repay his biological parents properly in the future.

Thanks to his youth and quick recovery, Lu Jie was discharged from the hospital on the third day. He was mainly afraid that if he stayed any longer, his mother would tear him apart. After all, in just three days since he woke up, nearly ten pretty girls had come to visit him, crying all the while.

Mr. Lu was also dragged into this mess and suffered a lot of bad luck. Ms. Wang, who had recovered her spirits, kept chasing him around with sarcastic remarks, mainly asking him who his son inherited his popularity from. And then nothing happened. Mr. Lu obediently buryed his head in the sand and let the ridicule continue.

With over 60% of taxi drivers in Beijing using their ride-hailing app, Lu Jie began fundraising. Ultimately, with his almost flawless PPT presentation and fluent on-the-spot answers, he successfully persuaded Lei Jun to invest in him, exchanging 20% ​​equity for 3 million yuan in disposable funds. With the money he had left, Lu Jie decided to accelerate the promotion process.

By the time the Spring Festival of the second academic year arrived, his ride-hailing app had covered twelve cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. He then secured 1800 million yuan in Series A funding and began a rapid expansion, mainly because competing apps had already emerged, forcing him to accelerate his pace.

Lu Jie's rapid and planned expansion across Northeast China, the four provinces of Hebei and Shanxi, Hubei, and Sichuan and Chongqing impressed Lei Jun, who indicated that he would co-invest in the Series B round to maintain his shareholding.

As its market share climbed, Lingmeng Mobility's valuation soared. In the end, Tencent acquired a 20% stake for $2500 million in its Series B round, with Lei Jun investing $500 million to maintain his stake, bringing Lingmeng Mobility's valuation to $1.25 million. This also made Lu Jie, a sophomore, a legendary figure at Tsinghua University and Peking University.

With ample funds, Lu Jie, disregarding all ethics, launched a subsidy war in the battle for the Yangtze River Delta market. How fierce was it? Passengers received a discount of five to ten yuan based on the distance, while drivers not only received full payment but also received additional order bonuses. Coupled with Tencent's channel advantages, this caught Didi, Kuaidi, and other smaller ride-hailing apps off guard.

In the Series C funding round, which was also the last one before the IPO, Lu Jie accepted CITIC's offer of $1.5 million for a 20% stake. This time, both Tencent and Lei Jun cautiously refrained from following up, mainly because Tencent had already begun contacting Alibaba and was preparing to share the market after the fierce competition.

The final result of the subsidy war was that Kuaidi, the company that should have been funded by Alibaba, became the first to die, followed by a bunch of other small apps that were the first to exit the market. Then, with the support of Alibaba capital, Didi fought for a while longer, and only after seeing that the other apps had completely died out did it sit down to talk about a merger.

With victory in sight, and to avoid book losses due to equity changes after the merger, Lu Jie legally and compliantly distributed all remaining disposable operating income as bonuses to his classmates who had accompanied him on his entrepreneurial journey and the veterans who joined later, helping them become millionaires.

Lu Jie then readily accepted the post-merger equity distribution, retaining 18.6% of the shares. Although still the largest individual shareholder, he no longer had absolute power and had to consult with Tencent and Alibaba on everything. Fortunately, Reimu's valuation increased further after the merger, followed by a relatively short IPO journey. Lu Jie became the youngest Chinese person to ring the bell at the NYSE.

After Lingmeng went public, Lu Jie's shareholding shrank further to 16.74%. Compared with the original winner Didi's IPO valuation of $670 billion, Lu Jie was extremely satisfied with his own valuation of $750 billion. It can only be said that having a cheat code makes you awesome.

Considering the upcoming internet boom he remembered, Lu Jie privately approached Tencent's Ma, Alibaba's Ma, and Lei Jun, asking to sell his shares on the grounds that he was still a student and needed to focus on his studies. Of course, the three old foxes didn't believe a word of this reason.

The negotiation resulted in Lu Jie having 52 billion yuan in bank deposits, as well as 0.55% of Alibaba, 0.53% of Tencent, and 3% of Xiaomi. He only retained a symbolic 1% stake in Lingmeng Travel and resigned from all positions at Lingmeng, citing his reason as wanting to return to school.

Lu Jie really didn't intend to give up his studies. During the busiest period of his entrepreneurial journey, he still took time to return to school to take the final exams three times during his sophomore and junior years. Not only did he not fail any courses, but he also got high scores in every one of them. There's no way around it, failing a course makes you arrogant.

In the second semester of his junior year, Lu Jie studied quietly at school until he heard that some senior students were collecting used bicycles and recommending a cycling app called OFO. He knew that the time was ripe for his second entrepreneurial venture.

Unlike his first venture, this time he was already a capitalist, so he would naturally reap the greatest benefits. This time, he didn't bring along his classmates who had become billionaires with him. These people were all now good-for-nothings, and the more flamboyant ones were even surrounded by female students from the three major art colleges.

Lu Jie was quite open-minded about his partners' rapid "decline." He thought, "Men are all financially independent, why bother striving for anything else? Can't they enjoy themselves?"

Eighteen years have passed in the blink of an eye. The total amount in Lu Jie's account hasn't increased much, but the unit has changed from yuan to US dollars. It was at the beginning of the year, when he went to Shenzhen to attend the Tencent shareholders' meeting, that Lu Jie met Xiao Hu by chance at the airport. He was a little infatuated with her pretty appearance that was both pure and charming, and took the initiative to contact her. Although he soon learned that she was a minor, he still established contact with her.

For the next six months, Lu Jie would fly to Shenzhen every month for no reason. At first, Xiao Hu was a little nervous about dating an adult brother, but after trying to get to know him a few times, she found that this handsome and rich brother was very polite and opened her heart.

When Lu Jie learned that Xiao Hu was the second-highest scorer in this year's Central Academy of Drama entrance exam and wanted to become an actor, he immediately and obsequiously befriended Sun Zhonghuai of Tencent Video, intending to pave the way for Xiao Hu. However, this kind of obsequious behavior is highly discouraged for those with connections.

Speaking of cheat codes, Lu Jie had information about future technology and politics in his mind, but information related to the entertainment industry was almost nonexistent, so he didn't know if Xiao Hu would become famous in the future. However, considering that she ranked second in the Central Academy of Drama entrance exam and had such outstanding looks and figure, she shouldn't do too badly, especially since Xiao Hu had her powerful boyfriend, herself, to protect her in this timeline.

Meeting Xiao Hu was like triggering a switch; Lu Jie's romantic life in the entertainment industry began to blossom rapidly. Not long after returning to Beijing, he met actress Chen Yao at a party. This time, things progressed very quickly, and that very night he took her back to his hotel and had his way with her.

Because he really liked Chen Yao's gentle and weak personality, Lu Jie decided to keep her for the long term after sleeping with her a few times, so he had someone conduct a background check on Chen Yao.

Chen Yao's attitude towards him has also changed for the better. She would occasionally complain about her previous reckless driving. Only then did Lu Jie belatedly realize that Chen Yao had always been afraid of him and had been obediently going on dates with him simply because she didn't dare to resist.

After developing feelings for each other, their interactions became more natural. However, Lu Jie didn't lie to Chen Yao about being with her or anything like that. He only said that as long as she was willing to follow him, he wouldn't mistreat her. Chen Yao neither confirmed nor denied it, so Lu Jie assumed that she had agreed.