151: Chapter 152 Despair Born from Thirteen Billion Dollars! The Ecological Poison Pill Stuffed into the Mouth

Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, it was early March 2013.

Inside the study of the courtyard house in Kyoto, the atmosphere was so oppressive that it felt as if viscous blood was about to seep out into the air.

In the two full months from New Year's Day to now, Young Master Su Chi had been like a gambler who had completely lost his mind.

He ignored the frantic warnings from the Wall Street actuarial team.

He once again forcibly injected 300 million dollars in pure cash subsidies into the domestic C-end market.

But after this huge sum was smashed into the sinking market, the feedback from the overall market was like a resounding slap in the face.

This 300 million dollars was indeed frantically consumed by underlying users like a swarm of locusts passing through.

But looking at the final financial data.

The combined market share of Alibaba Group, Douyin, and Pinduoduo not only failed to rise in the slightest.

But instead, it humiliatingly fell below the 20% life-and-death red line!

Counting the 2 billion in equity base positions smashed in during the early stages of forcible market control.

Young Master Su Chi had already poured a terrifying sum of over 3.3 billion dollars into this meat grinder of a sinking market.

One-third of the volume of the entire plate had been completely evaporated by Shen Du without even a splash.

At this moment, the layer of rational disguise Young Master Su Chi wore finally collapsed completely.

"Bang—crash!"

In the corner of the study, a valuable welcoming pine bonsai, worth hundreds of thousands and meticulously pruned and watered by specialists every day, was lifted by the red-eyed Young Master Su Chi and violently smashed onto the ground.

Under the tremendous physical impact, the expensive purple clay flowerpot instantly shattered into pieces.

The dark, moist nutrient soil, mixed with sharp ceramic shards, splattered violently in mid-air.

Even the incredibly hard natural marble floor was forcibly cracked by this violent force, creating a visible depression.

"Damn it! Damn Shen Du!!!"

Young Master Su Chi's chest heaved violently, his hands clutching his messy hair, and the collar of his originally exquisite haute couture shirt was roughly torn open.

Like a beast that had completely lost its mind, he roared despairingly in the messy study: "How on earth did he do it?! What kind of sorcery did he use?"

Young Master Su Chi's bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the "zero profit" financial report of Jiyuan Technology on the computer screen.

His voice became hoarse and cracked from bewilderment: "Jiyuan Technology has not earned a single cent this year. How can they turn the 1.3 billion dollars in direct subsidies I poured in into a pile of useless waste paper?"

Just as Young Master Su Chi was raging helplessly like a trapped beast, the heavy solid wood door with a pure copper handle of the study was slowly pushed open from the outside.

Accompanied by a steady sound of footsteps, a middle-aged man, who looked 60% similar to Young Master Su Chi but had a completely different aura, walked in, stepping over the moist soil and sharp ceramic shards on the floor.

The person who arrived was none other than Young Master Su Chi's father, the helmsman hidden behind the scenes: Su Qu.

Compared to Young Master Su Chi's hysteria at this moment, Su Qu's brows and eyes revealed a bottomless depth of composure and coldness.

He was wearing a well-tailored dark grey suit. His custom leather shoes crushed over the pieces of purple clay without hesitation, making a teeth-gritting "crack" sound.

Looking at his disheveled, near-collapse son before him, Su Qu did not show any irritable anger. But his voice, which sounded like it was mixed with ice shards, slammed into Young Master Su Chi's eardrums like a heavy hammer: "As a trader, look at yourself now, looking like a sore loser of a stray dog!"

Su Qu stood in the middle of the mess, staring directly into Young Master Su Chi's bloodshot eyes with an oppressive gaze: "The most fatal answer has clearly been laid out on the table for a long time. Yet your arrogance has made you blind for half a year!"

Young Master Su Chi's breath suddenly hitched. His chest heaved violently, as if he had been doused with a basin of absolute zero ice water, and cold sweat instantly broke out on his back: "Father..."

Su Qu ignored his astonishment completely. He reached out and pointed at the pile of worn-out offline research reports on the table. Cutting straight to the point, he pierced through the core interest black box of this offensive and defensive battle: "The problem you could not figure out even after throwing 1.3 billion dollars at it does not lie with the C-end users at all."

Su Qu's voice was low and cold, revealing a sharpness that pierced through to the essence: "You still have not truly thought about it. Why do those millions of calculating grassroots merchants in the country dare to entrust their entire family's cash flow and trust Shen Du wholeheartedly?"

"More than half a year ago, Jiyuan Technology and Meituan carried out an unprecedented purge across the entire internet. They kicked all the grassroots merchants with high customer complaint rates and those selling counterfeit and shoddy products off the platform, skin and bone."

Su Qu coldly analyzed Shen Du's seemingly self-mutilating purge operation from half a year ago, his eyes revealing a sharpness that made people shudder.

"And what about you?" Su Qu looked at his pale son, his tone filled with a kind of sorrow for failing to meet his expectations: "In order to grow the merchant pool data in the shortest possible time, you opened up entry with no threshold. Those inferior merchants who were swept out the door by Shen Du were like a swarm of mutant locusts that smelled blood. They brought their deadly, cancerous products and were completely accepted by your subsidy policy. They poured into the ecosystem of Alibaba Group, Douyin, and Pinduoduo in droves!"

Young Master Su Chi's pupils shrank violently. It was as if a blinding flash of lightning had struck deep within his brain, and he finally realized where the most fatal blind spot was.

"This is the ecological poison pill that Shen Du personally fed you!"

Su Qu's fingers tapped heavily on the rosewood table, emitting a dull sound like an alarm bell: "Think about it, those grassroots C-end users. They take the dollar red envelopes you scattered in handfuls. But on your platform, what they buy are all corner-cutting junk fast food and 'three-no' products that break after a few days of use! Do you think your 1.3 billion dollars bought user stickiness? What you bought was tens of millions of sinking users feeling completely disgusted with your entire platform ecosystem!"

The air in the study was completely drained at this moment.

"And in the domestic business soil, the most terrifying revenge is not the overflowing complaint rate in the customer service backend."

Su Qu's voice became lower and lower, revealing the ultimate insight into human nature from a Wall Street veteran: "It is the silent block."

Su Qu stared fixedly at Young Master Su Chi, revealing a cruel psychological profile of the sinking market: "Grassroots users are very realistic. They take your subsidies to fleece the wool, and even if they buy junk, as long as there are still subsidies to be had, they will not curse out loud, or even bother to leave a bad review. But cognitively, after experiencing disgust a few times, they have long ago nailed your three major platforms to the pillar of shame for 'selling only junk'! This silent collapse of trust is the fatal culprit behind your market share finally falling below 20%!"

"In extreme contrast to your platform, which has completely turned into a 'garbage dump', is the ecological moat that Shen Du personally welded shut."