148: Chapter 149: Official Recognition Received for Zero-Profit Financial Reports; A Lifeline Where No Mistakes Are Allowed

On New Year's Day in 2013, the temperature in Shanghai dropped below freezing.

As the hustle and bustle of New Year's Eve, along with the neon lights, began to permeate the banks of the Huangpu River, the president's office on the top floor of Jiyuan Technology headquarters remained filled with an otherworldly silence.

A comprehensive annual financial statement, calculated overnight by a team led personally by General Manager Chen Shengqiang, lay quietly on Shen Du's mahogany desk, its edges still warm from the laser printer.

Shen Du leaned back into his dark leather chair.

His gaze traced down the dense list of expenditures on the report, finally settling precisely on the total accounting column at the very bottom of the page. There, a glaring number was printed: zero.

Over the past six months, a defensive period where money was burned frantically every single second, Jiyuan Technology and Meituan—those two super money-printing machines that originally churned out two billion RMB in net profit per month—had been completely drained of their last drop of blood.

All book surpluses had been funneled by Shen Du through compliant channels of commission waivers and rebates, pouring like a flood into the pockets of millions of grassroots merchants and delivery riders.

After half a year of hard fighting, the company hadn't earned a single cent on paper.

Yet, looking at this zero-profit report, which traditional venture capitalists would call "financial suicide," the muscles in Shen Du's shoulders, stiff and tense as iron for half a year, finally showed a subtle, imperceptible sign of sinking and relaxing.

Because beside this report that had drained the company's core capital, lay the latest national market share calculation chart.

Over the past 180 days, the foreign capital camp had arrogantly forced through a terrifying volume of three billion USD.

Two billion USD was used to forcibly control the underlying market, and one billion USD was turned into unprincipled cash dumping.

Yet, even with the absolute weight of these three billion USD—equivalent to nearly 20 billion RMB—crashing down, the combined market share of Jiyuan Technology and Meituan remained like a fortress of cast iron pinned to the bottom of the deep sea by tens of thousands of tons of water pressure.

It stood unshakable at 45%.

With three times their capital volume, the multinational corporations had bombarded them for half a year, yet they ultimately failed to tear even 0.1% of the core market share from the hands of this young man in his early twenties.

This steel-like financial report, bearing a zero-profit figure, was the highest honor in the history of business warfare.

Shen Du reached out and picked up the dark cashmere coat draped over the back of his chair.

Just as he was about to rise and leave this office that had been stifling for half a year, his private phone on the desk—the number known only to a very few interested parties—suddenly vibrated rapidly.

The metal body of the phone rubbed against the solid wood desk at high frequency, emitting a dull "buzzing" sound.

Shen Du glanced at the caller ID on the screen and pressed the answer button.

From the other end of the line, the rough, unmistakably excited voice of his Shanghai capital ally, Wu Tianheng, immediately came through.

"Nephew Shen, the defensive battle you fought in the second half of the year was simply masterful!"

Wu Tianheng's laughter could be felt through the receiver, carrying the fervor of someone who had just survived a catastrophe:

"Our The Wu Family didn't make much money on paper this time, but using such a small capital pool as leverage to forcibly withstand a 3 billion USD multinational assault from the other side—in the entire Shanghai venture capital circle, this is already a legendary battle!"

As an interest entity deeply bound to Jiyuan Technology in the Beijing-Shanghai business war, The Wu Family had fully reaped the massive dividends brought by the ecological defense.

By leveraging this compliant operation of supporting B-end merchants, JD.com not only did not retreat a single step under the strangulation of foreign capital, but instead took the opportunity to absorb a large amount of high-quality logistics capacity abandoned by foreign platforms, firmly securing the second-in-command position in the Shanghai e-commerce and rapid delivery sectors.

But this was not the part that made this old fox of the business world feel most satisfied.

"The most brilliant part is that a commissioner from the Shanghai City Hall just paid me a personal visit."

Wu Tianheng lowered his voice, his tone filled with a thick sense of business black humor:

"Those Wall Street capitalists on the other side threw away a billion USD, turning the entire sinking market into a mess, and are now being closely watched by the Administration for Market Regulation through the magnifying glass of the anti-monopoly law. And us?"

Wu Tianheng slammed the table on the other end of the line:

"Just because we avoided the red line of malicious dumping to the C-end throughout the process and distributed funds to merchants in the form of 'commission waivers,' the City Hall issued an official commendation letter to JD.com and your Meituan at the end of the year for 'optimizing the business environment and supporting small and micro-entities'!"

In the cruelest capital meat grinder, using a compliant disguise that didn't spill a single drop of blood to trap and kill over ten billion in the opponent's cash flow, and then turning around to receive a moral gold medal issued by the government—this sense of contrast, where rules were utilized to the extreme, made Wu Tianheng, an old hand who had been struggling in the vanity fair for most of his life, feel an unprecedented thrill and excitement.

Facing Wu Tianheng's undisguised fervor on the other end of the line, Shen Du's face remained expressionless.

His gaze stayed fixed on the zero-profit financial report on the desk.

His voice was like a layer of freezing ice, devoid of any fluctuation in temperature:

"Uncle Wu, this battle has only just begun; it is too early to be happy now."

The laughter on the other end of the line stopped abruptly.

"Those Wall Street traders on the other side have only temporarily fallen into a cognitive blind spot regarding the underlying logic. Their bottom position of three billion USD is still there; they have not been truly repelled."

Shen Du tapped his finger lightly on the edge of the mahogany desk, emitting a dull thudding sound:

"The batch of inferior merchants I proactively cut off and stuffed into their camp six months ago, skin and bone included, is an ecological poison pill with strong corrosive properties. The explosive extreme customer complaints and counterfeit goods can indeed erode their platform reputation into tatters in the short term."

"But the poison-laced bait will eventually be detected by their management."

Shen Du's eyes suddenly became sharp, cutting into the core like a blade:

"Once they on the other side react, forcibly scraping the bone to remove the poison and reorganizing the merchant ecosystem, what comes rushing at us next will surely be a bloody, hand-to-hand fight."

In this multinational strangulation that had no room for warmth, Shen Du clearly knew where the absolute Achilles' heel of his own camp lay—the one that must never be touched.

"Uncle Wu, the only cornerstone that allowed us to firmly withstand this 3 billion USD impact over the past six months is the absolute trust of the grassroots merchants in the platform's monthly rebates."

"If at this critical juncture, even the slightest crack appears in our trust system, what follows will be a total betrayal and a complete loss of everything."

He paused for half a second and threw out the strictest tactical red line to his Shanghai ally on the other end of the line:

"Therefore, in the upcoming internal operations of JD.com and Meituan, there must absolutely be no issues with the funds subsidizing the merchants. The payment period cannot be delayed by even a single day, and the amount cannot be shorted by even a single cent! This B-end blood transfusion pipeline is our lifeline. Once it is cut off by internal corruption, we won't even need the foreign capital to act; the millions of enraged grassroots merchants will tear our fundamental base into shreds themselves."