131: Chapter 131 Su Qingxue's Compromise

Su Qingxue didn't look at Lin Fan.

Lin Fan didn't look at Su Qingxue either.

The two of them stayed in their own spaces, no different from sitting at opposite ends of a negotiating table.

It was quiet for about a minute.

Su Qingxue spoke first.

"Song Ya, you go help too."

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Song Ya was slightly stunned, opened her mouth, and swallowed her words back down.

She glanced at Su Qingxue, then at Lin Fan, and finally nodded.

"Mn."

The footsteps faded into the distance.

Only two people were left in the Karst Cave.

A ray of sunlight danced across Su Qingxue's face, illuminating the un-scabbed scrape very clearly.

The silence lasted for another half a minute or so.

Su Qingxue spoke.

"Lin Fan."

"Mn."

"You win."

Lin Fan didn't respond.

Su Qingxue looked at the inner compartment, the corners of her mouth twitching slightly; that arc could hardly be called a smile, looking more like self-mockery.

"Out of the two thousand three hundred employees of Shengtang Group, I know no more than two hundred. An intern from the Sales Department? I haven't even glanced at your work badge once."

She paused for a beat.

"How long have you stayed at the company? Three months?"

"Four months."

"Four months." Su Qingxue repeated, nodding, "A low-level intern of four months, how much is the monthly salary? Thirty-eight hundred? Forty-two hundred?"

"Thirty-five hundred."

"Thirty-five hundred."

Su Qingxue smiled, but her smile was filled with bitterness.

"A thirty-five-hundred intern has driven a wealthy conglomerate president worth tens of billions into a corner."

She raised her head and glanced at Lin Fan.

"Lin Fan, you're something else!"

Lin Fan leaned against the rock wall with little expression.

"Is President Su praising me?"

"Not praising you, I am laughing at myself."

"I, Su Qingxue, in my twenties, led a bunch of forty- or fifty-year-old old foxes to push the market value from a few hundred million to tens of billions."

"People from the Ministry of Commerce have to arrive at the meeting room half an hour in advance to wait for me, and those fund managers on Financial Street line up to wait for my signature, stretching all the way to the elevator entrance."

"In the capital, whoever I, Su Qingxue, want to see, my secretary makes a phone call and the other party comes knocking on their own. Whoever I don't want to see, the heavy doors close, and no one can get in."

"The biggest concession I've made in my life was adjusting the profit-sharing ratio of a cooperation project from seven-three to six-four."

"Six-four." She repeated, her voice sinking, "That was already my bottom line."

Lin Fan listened, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly without making a sound.

He knew Su Qingxue was venting her emotions; as soon as she finished venting, it would be his turn next.

Su Qingxue stopped for a few seconds, as if digesting what she had just said.

Then she continued, "And what about now?"

"Sitting in a cave, the clothes on my body smell so bad I can't stand them myself, the injuries on my face haven't been treated yet, and even a clean sip of water requires me to look at someone else's expression."

"And the person whose expression I have to look at didn't even have the qualification to pour me coffee in the company pantry four months ago."

When she said the three words "pour coffee", the corners of her mouth twitched again.

"Funny?"

Lin Fan looked at her.

"Pretty funny."

Su Qingxue was stunned for a beat; did he have to be so direct?

"President Su, for an intern making thirty-five hundred like me to play games with you, wouldn't that be asking for trouble?"

Lin Fan's tone didn't sound like sarcasm, but rather like casual chatting.

But the content of the chat wasn't very friendly.

"You just said a whole bunch: a market value of thirty billion, fund managers lining up, a secretary's single phone call."

"Spoken quite well."

"But out of that thirty billion market value of yours, how much was squeezed out of the workhorses working overtime until two in the morning?"

Su Qingxue's mouth opened slightly.

"I'm not settling old scores with you." Lin Fan picked up the water bottle and shook it; there was still a little less than half a bottle left inside. "I just want to say, President Su, the things you've done have a nice-sounding word in civilized society called resource integration."

He took a sip of water.

"Put bluntly, it's no different in essence from what I'm doing right now."

Su Qingxue's expression changed for a split second.

"Your Su Family sits on the forty-second floor of the office building, drinking hand-ground coffee, while letting more than three thousand people underneath take a salary of thirty-five hundred to create thirty billion in market value for you. Nicely put, it's called enterprise management; bluntly put..."

Lin Fan paused for a beat, looking into Su Qingxue's eyes.

"What it's bluntly called, President Su, you know best in your heart."

Su Qingxue's fingers tightened.

"Now the tables have turned, you've fallen from the forty-second floor into the mud, and you find that the people below no longer pour you coffee and have started setting rules for you."

"Uncomfortable?"

"Definitely uncomfortable."

"But President Su, have you ever thought that those three thousand people under you are also quite uncomfortable within the rules you set?"

Su Qingxue stared at Lin Fan for a few seconds, her lips pressed into a thin line.

She didn't retort.

It wasn't that she couldn't retort, but she knew retorting was meaningless.

Because what Lin Fan said wasn't entirely right, but it wasn't entirely wrong either.

And on this island, right and wrong no longer mattered.

"Alright." Lin Fan screwed the bottle cap back on, "The prologue is long enough, and you've done enough foreshadowing."

He looked at Su Qingxue.

"Should we talk about business now?"

Su Qingxue's shoulders tensed up.

There was no expression on her face, but her eyelashes were trembling.

Then a drop of something slid down from the corner of her left eye.

Su Qingxue didn't raise her hand to wipe it.

She just let that tear fall.

As if wiping it would be equivalent to admitting she was crying.

Not wiping it, then it was just dust getting into her eye.

"Doing it is fine."

Three words.

When they came out of Su Qingxue's mouth, her voice was steady.

Her throat was hoarse, but steady.

It was like signing surrender terms, where the handwriting is not allowed to shake.

Lin Fan didn't move, nor did he respond.

He waited.

Because he knew there was the second half of the sentence.

"Doing it is fine" and "can do it", the order of these three characters is different, so the meaning is different too.

"Can do it" means there are no additional conditions, but this "doing it is fine" has conditions attached.

This wasn't being finicky.

This was instinct.

Sure enough.

Su Qingxue took a deep breath, raised her head, and looked at Lin Fan.

Her eye sockets were red, but her gaze didn't scatter.

"But I have one condition."