227: Clear-headed!

The more Lin Yu thought about it, the heavier that sense of awkwardness in his heart became.

No.

He had been thinking about this whole thing wrong from the very beginning.

He sorted through his thoughts and realized he had trapped himself in a loop.

What did it mean to be a highway robber?

He was the God of Wealth bringing them benefits!

Having realized this, Lin Yu finally grasped just how much he had been selling himself short.

This perhaps also had to do with the fact that his current mindset was completely different from back then.

Back then, having laid low for five years and finally making a comeback, his horizons hadn't actually been very broad.

In his eyes, the three major pharmaceutical companies were behemoths that needed to be looked up to and required every ounce of his cunning to topple.

By bringing them under his command, he could become one of those "people above people" he had imagined.

It was hard to say if, when he first started, Lin Yu hadn't harbored a secret desire to become the kind of top-tier existence he had viewed with such reverence back then.

His goal back then was probably someone like Wang Han.

A business elite, with astonishing wealth, a group director, respected by all.

But looking at it now, that level of vision was far from enough.

It could even be called laughable.

When facing people from the Abyss Domain, how helpless and terrified Wang Han was.

His wealth, his status—in the face of true power, they were as fragile as a sheet of paper.

His stage should long ago have ceased to be limited to the levels of money or business.

His ambitions had to be greater.

Lin Yu didn't want much.

Not to be controlled by others.

To be self-sufficient.

To live his own life in peace and stability.

But in this era where a storm was brewing, he dared not entrust his fate and that of his family to the era or to others.

Once this thought arose, Lin Yu's entire aura changed.

The gloominess of plotting conspiracies from before was instantly swept away.

Replacing it was a sense of righteousness, even carrying a trace of annoyance at having been offended.

That's right.

I am the dealer.

I am the one holding all the trump cards.

You so-called giants are nothing but my pawns, tools for me to realize my plans.

Tools should look like tools.

Having understood this, Lin Yu's mood suddenly cleared.

Wang Qingxuan, who was beside him, felt it most vividly.

She had almost stiffened into a statue.

The bottomless calmness that had been on Lin Yu just moments ago had already put her under immense pressure.

And now, that calmness had vanished, replaced by an absolute, unquestionable sense of control that made her almost want to kneel.

He clearly hadn't done anything; he was just sitting there quietly.

Yet the air in the entire reading room had become heavy and scorching.

Wang Qingxuan felt like she was about to stop breathing.

She didn't even dare to look at Lin Yu, and could only stare fixedly at the hem of her skirt, her mind a complete blank.

Brother Yu... what happened again?

The content of that phone call just now had been enough to overturn her worldview.

And what was this feeling now?

She couldn't understand it at all.

She could only feel the purest fear and awe, stemming from the instincts of life.

Lin Yu didn't pay any attention to her.

He was immersed in the shift in his mindset, even finding it somewhat amusing.

Having figured all this out, Lin Yu felt that his heart, which had been worn smooth by five years of dormancy, had become sharp once again.

An unprecedented sense of ease spread throughout his body.

He leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.

Just then.

The phone on the table emitted a slight vibration.

Buzz.

It was a message from Li Mo.

Lin Yu picked it up and took a look.

There was only one sentence on it.

"Boss, it's set. Tomorrow night at eight, Tianqiong Club."

Tianqiong Club.

Lin Yu looked at these four words on the phone screen and felt they were somewhat glaring.

He had just realized he was the dealer, yet Li Mo had set the card game on someone else's turf.

This was wrong.

Very wrong.

What kind of place was a club? It was for eating and drinking, for superficial social maneuvering, for half-truth, half-false mutual probing, for finding each other's bottom line amidst the clinking of wine glasses.

Those were tricks that only the weak, or at least those of equal status, needed to play.

Did he, Lin Yu, need to play this with them?

No.

He had just crawled out of that quagmire called "conspiracy and calculation," and he didn't want to step back into it.

That was too tiring.

And too slow.

Lin Yu didn't reply to the message but directly dialed Li Mo's phone number.

The phone on the other end was answered almost instantly, and Li Mo's voice, full of flattery, came through.

"Boss! It's all arranged! Tianqiong Club is the top private club in Linzhou; the security and privacy are of the highest standard, and there absolutely won't be any mishaps. The heads of those three companies have all agreed, tomorrow night at eight..."

"Cancel it."

Lin Yu said only two words.

The words on Li Mo's end came to an abrupt stop, as if someone had choked him by the throat.

There was a deathly silence, with only the faint sound of electrical current audible.

After a few seconds, Li Mo's tentative, cautious voice sounded again.

"...Boss? You mean... cancel? Is there a problem with the time, or are you dissatisfied with the location? I can coordinate again immediately! Where would you like to meet? Or should we change the time?"

Li Mo's brain was running at high speed.

What was going on?

Why had the boss suddenly changed his mind?

Could he have done something wrong? Tianqiong Club was already the highest-spec negotiation venue he could utilize; those heads of the three giants usually couldn't be invited even if one tried, and getting them to agree this time was already a huge favor.

"The location." Lin Yu leaned back in his chair and adjusted his posture. "Change it to somewhere else."

"Alright, alright!" Li Mo, as if granted a pardon, quickly agreed. "You name it, where should we change it to? I'll go arrange it immediately!"

"Qingpu Industrial Park, Zone B."

Li Mo was stunned.

Qingpu Industrial Park?

What kind of place was that?

It was a huge area of clustered factory buildings; the raw material warehouses and some primary processing plants of the Four Major Pharmaceutical Companies were all built there for the convenience of logistics.

Talk there?

Talk about what? The grade of reinforced concrete, or the driving skills of the forklift operators?

"Boss..." Li Mo's voice was full of confusion. "That place... isn't it a bit inappropriate? The environment there is noisy, and... it's also too informal. Meeting those three in a place like that, I'm afraid..."

I'm afraid people will think we're crazy.

Li Mo didn't dare to say that out loud.

"I'm not going to eat and drink with them." Lin Yu interrupted him. "And I'm not going to make friends with them either."

"I'm going to collect things."

Lin Yu's voice was very flat, as if he were talking about a trivial matter like what to have for dinner.

"Talking right where they store their things, I think that's very formal."

Li Mo on the other end of the phone was obviously choked up by this statement.

He was silent for even longer.

This time, he finally tasted something wrong.

The boss's style of doing things seemed... to have changed.

The boss from before, who strategized and used infinite resources and information asymmetry to pry open the black market landscape and step by step push Chen Ao into a dead end, seemed to have disappeared.

Replacing him was a kind of more direct, more brutal, and completely unreasonable... power.