178: Chapter 179 Monopolizing the Deep Waters! Pointing the Gun at the Old Fox of Wall Street

Late September.

After completely arranging the infrastructure for the village, Shen Du returned to the Jiyuan Technology headquarters.

The office door had just been pushed open when General Manager Chen Shengqiang followed closely and walked in quickly.

He pressed a market report, still warm from the printer, directly onto Shen Du's large desk.

"General Manager Shen, the final market data for last quarter is out."

General Manager Chen Shengqiang's voice was kept very low, but the barely concealable excitement in his tone could not be hidden.

Shen Du took off his suit jacket and hung it casually on the back of his chair, his gaze falling directly onto the tabletop.

There was no need for a lengthy written report; the pie chart on the paper had been brutally split into two distinct sections.

After experiencing the previous bottomless, bloody slaughter, the originally chaotic domestic internet landscape had been forcibly solidified.

The defensive front composed of Alibaba, Pinduoduo, and Douyin, after burning money with all their might to resist, was barely managing to maintain a total market share between twenty and twenty-five percent.

Moreover, their growth curve had been completely flattened, making it difficult for there to be any fluctuations.

On the other hand, the grand alliance formed by the three companies—Jiyuan Technology and Meituan, representing Shen Du's core holdings, along with their deeply bound strategic ally JD.com—had seen their market share data bar aggressively break through the forty percent mark!

At first glance, forty percent did not seem to reach absolute dominance.

However, Shen Du's gaze was tightly locked onto these cold numbers, and he understood the terrifying weight behind this data better than anyone else.

It was 2013, the golden explosion period where smartphones and 4G networks were sinking into the whole country and advancing at the same frequency.

In this era of super-growth where the user base was expanding crazily by the hundreds of millions, being able to steadily swallow forty percent of the share in this boundless market...

In the evaluation system of Wall Street investment banks, this was no longer simply an "industry leader."

It was, in a substantial sense, a preliminary touch into the deep waters of "monopoly."

General Manager Chen Shengqiang stood in front of the large desk, his gaze following Shen Du's movements as he flipped through the report.

Seeing that the competitors still had over twenty percent of survival space left.

This executive president, who had followed Shen Du and fought his way out from a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, revealed a hint of instinctive vigilance and a sense of crisis in his tone.

"General Manager Shen, although these companies have been beaten so hard recently that they can't lift their heads, their underlying user base is still there."

General Manager Chen Shengqiang rested his hands on the edge of the desk, leaning forward slightly, and cautiously probed:

"I feel that just letting them catch their breath and develop in that remaining bit of market is not very friendly to our future competition.

As long as you give the word, we can launch a targeted round of sniping next quarter to completely clear them out."

Shen Du threw the report back onto the desk, where it slid for a distance before stopping next to his coffee cup.

He did not show any of the fighting spirit that General Manager Chen Shengqiang had expected, but simply shook his head very calmly.

"There is no need to deliberately target them anymore."

General Manager Chen Shengqiang was stunned for a moment.

This did not fit Shen Du's past style of leaving no survivors and cutting off all paths of retreat.

Before he could ask, Shen Du had already pulled out his swivel chair and sat down, soberly puncturing this layer of fatal logic:

"Move your eyes away from the commercial ledgers and go look at the recent trends from above.

At the national policy level, the implementation of the anti-monopoly law has already begun to be explicitly ordered."

Shen Du's knuckles tapped heavily on the desk twice; his voice was not loud, but it carried a warning tone that made people suddenly wake up.

"If at this critical juncture, we continue to use extreme measures to clear the field in pursuit of absolute dominance, that would be tantamount to sending Jiyuan Technology directly to the guillotine of public opinion and regulation."

Shen Du looked at him and said, word by word: "Running head-on into it now is no different from courting death."

A layer of cold sweat suddenly seeped out on General Manager Chen Shengqiang's back, and he immediately straightened his body.

Dizzied by victory, he suddenly realized that his proposal just now had almost steered this massive commercial ship directly onto the hidden reefs of regulation.

"Then, where should we shift our strategic focus for the next steps?" General Manager Chen Shengqiang quickly adjusted his thinking and asked in a low voice.

Shen Du's gaze was sharp as he issued the group's highest directive for the future:

"Starting from today, completely stop the endless money-burning subsidy war.

We are going to pour all our funds and resources into the reconstruction of ecosystem integrity and service barriers."

He pulled out a brand-new project folder from his side and pushed it directly in front of General Manager Chen Shengqiang.

"Go notify Lin Zimo and Technical Expert Su Hua, and have them put all their energy back into the technical ports to continue the deep optimization of the underlying recommendation algorithms."

"At the same time, approve a separate special fund to comprehensively upgrade and improve the customer service response speed for C-end users and B-end partners."

General Manager Chen Shengqiang picked up the project folder and quickly digested this new approach in his mind.

"The means of commercial warfare have never been limited to just the extremely primitive trick of subsidies."

Shen Du leaned back against the leather chair, his deep eyes revealing a commercial foresight that far exceeded this era:

"We want users and merchants in the market to choose Jiyuan Technology.

Not because we throw out more coupons, and not because of how much profit we have conceded."

He crossed his fingers slightly and concluded with finality:

"But rather, after they have enjoyed the ultimate service we provide and become accustomed to the efficient ecosystem we have built, they will be unable to leave Jiyuan Technology due to commercial inertia and operational habits."

Receiving this strategic directive that completely overturned the original approach, General Manager Chen Shengqiang's expression turned solemn.

He didn't waste any words, took the project folder with both hands, and nodded heavily.

"Understood, General Manager Shen. I will go organize an executive meeting right away and pass the latest instructions directly to every core business line."

After speaking, he turned and walked quickly out of the office to execute this huge pivot that concerned the group's future direction.

As the heavy solid wood door was gently closed, the large office returned to quietness.

Shen Du turned his gaze, looking through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows at the bustling jungle of reinforced concrete outside.

The memories of having lived two lifetimes allowed him to maintain a near-cold restraint when facing the temptation of such crazy expansion.

In his previous life, he had seen too many such commercial tragedies.

Extreme subsidy wars, in the end, were a deadlock where bad money drove out good.

No one gained any real core benefits.

The originally promising commercial environment was made dirty and messy, with everyone losing money just to shout for attention.

They had forcibly turned a blue ocean market into a foul-smelling quagmire.

Shen Du would absolutely not allow Jiyuan Technology to be dragged into this kind of meaningless bottomless pit.

With such a large market, the domestic commercial ecosystem should not be completely squeezed dry by bottomless internal friction at this stage.

He wanted to forcibly reverse the trend and let the market enter a benign self-circulation.

Because the boundaries of his game had long since crossed over the crowded, involution-ridden domestic market.

What Shen Du was truly looking forward to was the day when the timing was ripe.

He wanted these top merchants in China, tempered in healthy soil, to be able to go overseas en masse and exert truly terrifying influence on the world-class battlefield.

Because he knew better than anyone that being the sole dominant player behind closed doors was meaningless.

When it truly reached the shura field of the global capital meat grinder, that kind of bloated volume would be nothing more than just another fish in the river.

Withdrawing his gaze from the distance, Shen Du turned his boss chair to face the large desk again.

His distinct knuckles tapped rapidly on the keyboard, and after inputting a string of complex dynamic security instructions, he directly called up the latest schedule for the group's listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange from the internal encrypted network.

Because Jiyuan Technology, over so many past quarters, in addition to crazily throwing out funds as strategic subsidies in commercial wars, had always maintained a strong state of self-blood generation and profitability in its underlying core business.

This impeccable financial foundation made the approval process of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange almost a green light all the way.

The red progress bar at the bottom of the screen showed that the final time for the listing bell-ringing had been clearly anchored to after New Year's Day next year.

But as Shen Du looked at the unobstructed approval nodes on the screen, there was not a hint of the fanaticism of impending listing and cashing out in his deep eyes.

He reached out and picked up the fountain pen on the desk, casually pulling over the back of a blank project proposal.

The nib began to quickly outline several complex capital intersection lines on the paper that only he could understand.

What he wanted was by no means just to go to Victoria Harbour to ring a bell in a routine manner and gather some conventional retail investor funds.

His true hunting ground was those overseas capitals that smelled blood and were preparing to enter the game in a big way to seize dividends when Jiyuan Technology went public.

The fountain pen's nib made a sharp friction sound on the paper.

The experience of fighting in deep waters for two lifetimes clearly told him that those bloodthirsty old foxes of Wall Street were by no means lambs waiting to be slaughtered.

If he wanted to make them leave their massive funds completely in the pot during next year's listing carnival, a pretty prospectus alone would simply not be enough to make them fall into the trap easily.

Shen Du's pen nib paused heavily, poking an ink dot that penetrated the back of the paper at the intersection of several capital lines.

Before the official listing, in the gap period of these few months, he had to bury the chain of countermeasures that could instantly cut off the retreat of overseas capital into the dark side of the market without a single omission.