Chapter 17: Where There Are People, There Is the World of Martial Arts

Gu Cheng had been feeling mentally exhausted lately, worn down by a series of troublesome matters. Today, he took the opportunity of picking up Cherry from the hospital to finish work early and clear his head.

After completing the discharge procedures, Pan Jieying drove Cherry back to her residence—Gu Cheng was barred from obtaining a driver's license for a year after his unlicensed, high-speed dash to the hospital that night.

Although Cherry was a minor player in the grand scheme of things now, she was someone Gu Cheng had personally recruited from Dongyi back in the day. Since she had traveled to a foreign land to work for him, he couldn't just ignore her after she had been hurt.

Once they were in the car, Gu Cheng remembered to ask, "I haven't heard of you buying or renting a place, so where have you been living lately?"

Cherry, still recovering from her injuries, looked a bit pale—not unlike the heroines suffering from terminal illnesses in Dongyi dramas. Her reaction was slightly sluggish as she replied, "I'm still in the company dormitory. There were four of us left in that room, but one girl found a local boyfriend and moved out. And then... Jin Chengze got arrested."

It turned out she had been living in the "Lakeside Garden" apartment that Legend Entertainment had purchased on the western outskirts of Qiantang when they first started. Four people were crammed into a space of less than 90 square meters.

By October last year, after the funding from Masayoshi Son came through, Gu Cheng had purchased a new office building in the Eastern Software Park. The company had long since upgraded to a better location, meaning the employees had to commute by bus for over half an hour every day. It was clear that Cherry was quite laid-back and not particularly fastidious about her living conditions.

"The company moved three or four months ago, why didn't you move? Tell you what, there’s a small place near the company that I used to live in when my cousin was in school. It’s yours now. It’s not big, but it’s very convenient."

The place Gu Cheng mentioned was naturally the apartment he had bought for 200,000 near his cousin's school when he first transmigrated. It was much closer to the company and in a more bustling area. Ever since Gu Cheng's family moved to the White Horse Apartments, this place had been left vacant.

With Gu Cheng’s current net worth, such a property was a trifle. When Jin Chengze was arrested, Gu Cheng had rewarded Cherry with half of the recovered illegal gains—amounting to over a million—so Cherry didn't need to be coy about accepting a house worth over 200,000.

Pan Jieying drove them to the location, helped Cherry upstairs to get settled, and handed over the keys. Aside from a few personal items they had packed away, everything else in the apartment was left for Cherry. The appliances and furniture were all there; she could move in immediately. Seeing the place, Cherry realized this had been Gu Cheng's "old home," and her heart warmed.

Once everything was settled, Gu Cheng saw it was still early and suggested, "It’s still early, let’s go out for a meal to celebrate your discharge."

Cherry smiled and did not object; she was happy to follow whatever Gu Cheng suggested. Pan Jieying, however, was more thoughtful and chided him, "Who eats and drinks heavily right after being discharged? I'll order a few light dishes for delivery, and I'll go buy some ingredients to make porridge."

With that, Pan Jieying put on her hat and sunglasses and headed downstairs to buy groceries. Gu Cheng stayed behind to chat with Cherry. Both sides intentionally avoided awkward topics, so the conversation naturally drifted toward work.

For the first time, Gu Cheng shared some details of the Jin Chengze case with Cherry: how he had exploited database permissions to sell in-game items for millions in illicit profit, and the methods he used to collude with Du Ming.

As he spoke, Gu Cheng couldn't help but sigh, "I always thought that only 'supply chain management' in manufacturing was troublesome and prone to kickbacks. I never imagined that the content industry could breed so much internal corruption. Sometimes I feel quite helpless; I’m really not good at management."

The management experience in the content industry that Gu Cheng had seen three or four decades later was completely useless right now. The level of data analysis at the time was worlds apart from what it would be in the future. If this incident hadn't occurred, he wouldn't have even realized where the problem lay.

In comparison, although Cherry didn't understand management either, her insight into corruption within the content industry was deeper than Gu Cheng's. She said calmly, "This kind of thing is normal. The 'supply chain' of the content industry is even harder to manage than in manufacturing. During my year at Emade, I saw countless project teams privately currying favor with supervisors or the company's promotion teams just to secure more resources.

"In this world, there are almost no bosses like you who bet everything on one game, convinced that it will make money—and you were lucky enough to be right. But if you have to manage several online games in the future, do you think they will be able to resist using underhanded tactics to fight for the company's public resources?"

Gu Cheng was rendered speechless by this simple truth. It was true; he was a "prophet" who knew that *Legend* would inevitably become a hit, which was why he supported it unconditionally.

But how did normal people do business? They would use a shotgun approach, testing several projects to see which ones took off and which ones flopped. They would then allocate more resources to the ones that showed promise—much like the angel rounds and Series A/B/C rounds of venture capital.

Within large game operators, there were bound to be ambiguous public advertising and channel resources. Corruption was inevitable when it came to deciding who got those channels. It was just like those low-tier websites where "big-shot" authors had to constantly treat editors to "massage parlors" just to secure a recommendation spot that could be justified as "not a principled error" if given to any of the candidates.

Gu Cheng’s company had been open for a year and a half, yet he hadn't tightened the fence of his internal discipline department. The only reason nothing had gone wrong was that he only had one cash cow so far. If he had several, all fighting over resources, *Legend Entertainment* would have been torn apart by internal friction long ago.

Gu Cheng broke into a cold sweat.

By the time they reached this point, Pan Jieying had returned with the groceries. After washing and chopping them, she threw them into the pot to cook porridge and joined their conversation.

Pan Jieying had studied MBA and had a sharp mind for management. With their ideas feeding off each other, she quickly identified a hidden danger in their current business: "By the way, A-Cheng, what you mentioned shouldn't be too obvious in the gaming sector yet, since we only have one game and don't need to 'fight for the throne.' But what about Dingdang.com? Could there be under-the-table deals between the site management and the independent musicians affiliated with us?"

Gu Cheng’s expression turned serious: "Be specific."

Pan Jieying smoothed her hair, pulled out her laptop, and pointed at the website for Gu Cheng to see: "The biggest problem with independent music sales is presentation. Unlike books or TV, music can't be described in words. If you don't let the audience listen to it first, they won't know if they like it.

"But currently, we don't offer an 'online preview' feature on the public version of Dingdang.com because domestic internet speeds are generally slow, making it unsuitable for buffering while listening. Besides, we can't provide direct MP3 downloads to avoid hurting sales.

"To date, our promotion channel for independent music still relies on over 30,000 internet cafe owners nationwide. On machines pre-installed with the cafe owner's payment client, we provide an encrypted local music library that cannot be copied or transferred. All the songs from independent musicians signed with Dingdang.com are stored in that library.

"When internet cafe owners are doing business, they play the currently recommended albums on loop through large speakers. If customers hear something they like, they ask the owner for the album and artist name and decide whether to buy it."

This promotional method was quite primitive. Just like in the old days, record stores would attract customers by playing music at maximum volume through large speakers at the entrance. It was just that now, thanks to the Alipay system, tens of thousands of internet cafe owners across the country were playing the role that record store owners did three or four years ago.

Gu Cheng hadn't thought there was anything wrong with this channel model initially, but after experiencing Jin Chengze’s greed and listening to Cherry's analysis, his perspective shifted.

"You mean it's possible that independent musicians are colluding with site editors to adjust the order of the library or use other means to manipulate which songs are played more frequently in tens of thousands of internet cafes across the country?"

Pan Jieying nodded knowingly: "That's exactly what I mean. In the era of traditional record stores, the playback behavior of store owners was random, or they played what they felt was popular. But the library they get now is unified, provided by us. If someone messes with that..."

Gu Cheng sprang up, acting decisively: "Quick, check the sales rankings of Dingdang.com for the past few months immediately! Dig out the top 50 independent musicians in sales. I’ll listen to them one by one myself to see if there are any who are clearly lacking in talent."

Pan Jieying gave him a resentful look: "What's the rush? Don't treat Cherry's home like the office. This isn't something that needs to be solved in a day or two. Let's finish our meal first!"

Gu Cheng called Gao Dasong to ask for the reports, and the three of them waited while eating their porridge. After they finished, Gu Cheng opened his computer and found the email had arrived. He listened briefly to the most popular songs and felt there was definitely something suspicious. Some musicians who weren't famous and didn't seem particularly talented had sales figures significantly higher than those of similar standing.

However, without concrete evidence, Gu Cheng couldn't say anything yet.

Seeing Gu Cheng’s grim expression, Pan Jieying advised, "How about this for now: require that all works by independent singers, no matter how popular, receive an equal amount of recommended preview time. If they truly sell well and deserve more promotional resources, let them apply for it at their own expense, or wait until our data monitoring capabilities are upgraded..."

Gu Cheng nodded, temporarily agreeing with his cousin's idea. However, he knew these were just technical details; the key was that he needed to perform surgery on the company's internal management.

Even with a boss as sentimental as Li, the search giant eventually became a peddler of fake medicine, and its leadership was riddled with corruption—the example from twenty years later served as a cautionary tale of "poor management in the content screening industry."

Ma Feng needed a Peng Lei, and Gu Cheng needed a right-hand woman like that. He thought for a moment and said with a weary tone, "Cousin, I don't think you're very good at operations either. Why don't you focus on human resources management from now on? I need someone to help me clean out the flies inside the company."