Chapter 189: Sudden Arrival

From a distance, Xiao Ran saw Huang Qiusheng and Zhang Manyu, who had run away earlier, returning at the deputy director’s call. Smirking, he stepped forward and said to the actors still laughing, “Ayu, Ah Huang, Tang—you’ve drunk some soup. If you don’t perform well in this play, I’ll make you pay!”
“Does it really deserve such a price just for drinking a little soup?” Zhang Manyu asked as if to herself, while Huang Qiusheng hid his laughter. Huang Qiusheng was one of the first graduates from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. He had joined Meiying last year, but Xiao Ran wanted him to hone his skills further to become part of the future trio of outstanding actors, so he hadn’t pushed him too much.
In fact, Huang Qiusheng’s childhood wasn’t easy—he was often confined at home with no place to go. So, in such an environment, he would perform for himself to pass the time. Perhaps this was what paved the way for him to become one of Hong Kong’s future film legends.

The next afternoon, An Yuxuan knocked on the office door and entered Xiao Ran’s room, handing over a document. “President Xiao, this is the information you wanted!”
Xiao Ran, who was writing a script, immediately looked up and smiled at the beautiful woman before taking the document and starting to read it. It was from Hongwei Real Estate Company, a firm with assets worth 3.9 billion, mainly engaged in real estate business.
Xiao Ran stared at the familiar face in the photo—it was Mo Huaien, the boss of Hongwei Real Estate. Who was Mo Huaien? He was the wealthy man who had once tried to pursue Lin Qingxia.
But was Mo Huaien targeting him personally, or was it purely for business interests? Or maybe both? Xiao Ran couldn’t give himself an answer for now. But it didn’t matter. He curled his lips into a smile, though it seemed a bit cruel.
Hongwei Real Estate had assets worth 3.9 billion, but half of that came from an investment by a South Korean business consortium. After investigating their background, it turned out to be a purely commercial investment group. The only interesting thing was that this group also invested in Sidus Film, South Korea’s largest film distribution company.
“Interesting… really interesting…” Xiao Ran’s fingers tapped lightly on his leg—allegedly helping him think better. But now, a strange smile appeared on his face. “Sidus Film!”
Sidus controlled most of the local theater distribution rights in South Korea. The only company that could compete with them was Film Service Company. It was this very company that had made it difficult for Meiying to enter South Korea. It wasn’t until “Spy Change” was released that Meiying managed to secure a distribution deal through their influence, eventually leading to an acquisition.
Sidus had previously contacted Meiying, hoping to invest in their film productions. Unfortunately, Xiao Ran firmly rejected them, as there was still huge profit potential in the industry. From this perspective, he had no reason to give up those profits.

He instructed An Yuxuan to investigate that Guoli Investment Group, and only then did Xiao Ran realize that this conglomerate was involved in many investments. However, what interested Xiao Ran the most was that the group had initially only invested in Xijie, but it was only in the past three months or so that it suddenly acquired control rights.

Korean movies were clearly not that good. From this perspective, even Xiao Ran saw no reason to increase investment and take control outright. But why then? Xiao Ran was very puzzled. Suddenly, he smiled in understanding—whatever, it didn’t matter.

Why would Hongwei Real Estate design such a scheme to frame Mingxuan? Even if competitors were enemies, there was no need to go to such extremes. Unless Hongwei was trying to gain something from Mingxuan. What benefit could Hongwei get from Mingxuan’s bankruptcy?

Actually, Xiao Ran didn’t suspect it was aimed at him. With his current wealth, such a scheme clearly wouldn’t hurt him. Moreover, Shao Haohao didn’t conduct business under Xiao Ran’s name. So, Mo Huaien’s move was likely for business reasons, perhaps also to strike at him personally.

Thinking of this, Xiao Ran felt a spark in his heart and picked up Mingxuan’s documents to take a look. Mingxuan was nominally a real estate company, but in reality, it only owned two plots of land, mostly used for real estate speculation.

The two plots owned by Mingxuan were valued at 400 million and over 200 million respectively. The former was a plot whose value was rising, while the latter was the one seized through the scheme. Its original value was around 600 to 700 million, but after the news spread, its value plummeted quickly.

These two plots were the only things of any value for Mingxuan. The former was acquired with financing from Tianxia Fund, and the loan was taken out at that time. This made Xiao Ran laugh a bit. Though he wasn’t a master of conspiracies, he could still see through such tricks.

Mo Huaien’s target must be one of these two plots. So, he deliberately inflated the price of one plot to push Mingxuan to the brink of bankruptcy, forcing the bank to demand repayment. If Mingxuan couldn’t pay within a month, the land would be seized, and the bank would auction it off. Mo Huaien might even act before the bank even held the auction.

But which plot was the target? Or both? Xiao Ran was confused. He tapped his fingers lightly, as if practicing a finger-gunning skill, deeply pondering. According to the analysis report, the 400-million plot had the potential to rise to over 600 million, while the other plot was harder to predict.

If it were you, how would you choose? Xiao Ran smiled softly. Such a choice didn’t seem very difficult. With no financial problems, acquiring both plots was clearly no issue. With Guoli’s financing, could Hongwei face financial difficulties?

Wait—Guoli wasn’t completely fully controlled; it had many directors and bank financing involved. And that bank happened to be Korean Liyou Bank. This made things interesting.

Liyou? Guoli? Xijie? Hongwei? Xiao Ran tried to sort out the relationships. He always had the feeling that these three were targeting him. To be precise, it was more like they were targeting Hong Kong movies. But what was their goal? Didn’t they know that registering a movie company in Hong Kong was extremely strict these days?

Back to the earlier question! Xiao Ran realized his thoughts were indeed wandering wildly. Of course, that’s a polite way of putting it; to put it another way, it simply meant he tended to get distracted by other things. The 400 million yuan worth of land would definitely appreciate in value, but what about the 200 million yuan worth? There must be some reason for it to appreciate as well.

At this thought, Xiao Ran seemed to catch some inspiration. Suddenly, he dug through the map and after searching, he finally understood. The 200 million yuan worth of land was right next to the land controlled by Hong Wei. The land under Hong Wei’s control was much larger than Ming Xuan’s, large enough to build a shopping mall or a luxury residential area, which could still be sold at a high price.

This meant that as long as Hong Wei acquired Ming Xuan’s land, it would be as if Ming Xuan was paying to help Hong Wei buy the land. Truly impressive, Xiao Ran smiled faintly. But maybe Mo Huaien was underestimating him a bit.

“Of course I’m not underestimating him. After all, his assets are more than ours combined. Right now, we’re just making him suffer a little loss; there will be even more difficult situations to come!” Mo Huaien chuckled, his calm demeanor surprising the people around him.

Especially Jin Zhiyou, the chairman of Guoli, found it quite interesting. He thought Mo Huaien was quite skillful for being able to trick Xiao Ran. Most importantly, with just this one maneuver, Mo Huaien had made at least 500 million yuan, yet he remained unfazed—this was somewhat terrifying.

“Mr. Mo, I really don’t understand why you’d want to scheme against Xiao Ran,” Jin Zhiyou said with a laugh, though his eyes showed confusion. In fact, their cooperation wouldn’t end here, and he felt it was necessary to figure this out.

“Because…” Mo Huaien’s expression instantly froze, his heart pounding. Now he understood why he hadn’t been able to win Lin Qingxia over before. Perhaps he had assumed it was Xiao Ran who was getting in the way, thinking that Xiao Ran was using his relationship as a younger brother to get close to Lin Qingxia. Of course, the most important reason was making money.

Just thinking of Xiao Ran made Mo Huaien excited. Actually, he had no real grudge against Xiao Ran. To be honest, Mo Huaien didn’t hate Xiao Ran at all. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the principle that those who win take all; even if he didn’t, he should have learned it from his experiences in business. He was simply jealous that Xiao Ran had won Lin Qingxia’s heart.

Most importantly, Jin Zhiyou from Guoli had told him how much money Xiao Ran had made from movies last year. It was a huge amount—more than his entire fortune in just one year. For a businessman like him, this was clearly a very lucrative source of income.

Of course, at first Mo Huaien was skeptical. He wasn’t Xiao Ran, nor did he possess “Shadow.” Few people knew how Fang Ruohai was completely defeated by Xiao Ran, but the facts were right in front of him, leaving him no choice but to be afraid. Moreover, he was well aware of how much power Xiao Ran had in the entertainment industry. As the only person from the entertainment industry to be included in last year’s list of the top ten powerful figures in the region, it was by no means a joke.

However, sometimes profits are truly tempting. The profits from Phantom in the movies are enough to excite anyone—of course, this is only true for businessmen of his caliber. He had to admit that if one could achieve the scale of Phantom, the profits would indeed be staggering.

As Xiao Ran had predicted earlier, he was a very cautious person, cautious to the point of calculating everything precisely before taking action. This time was no exception. He agreed because his side already had several advantages.

These advantages came from various sources. Without them, under Xiao Ran’s influence, they might not even be able to register a movie company. With these advantages, the situation was completely different; he even thought he had already won.

Of course, there were two other reasons. First, Guoli had made concessions to his interests in this real estate battle. Second, Mo Huaien was jealous that Xiao Ran had won Lin Qingxia’s heart; he always believed that a young guy like Xiao Ran couldn’t bring her happiness.

Xiao Ran was completely unaware of all this—at least not yet. Though he had some hunches, hunches couldn’t be relied on. He had completely set this aside and was now working on a script of his own.

He wanted to write a script similar to Spider-Man, in the urban wuxia genre. This wasn’t difficult; the challenge lay in using this film to make Westerners accept wuxia movies just like science fiction films.

The story was actually quite simple: it was about a person with martial arts skills doing good deeds in the city. Of course, this also made it easier to make sequels. He had been considering this idea for a long time. To get Westerners to fully accept Chinese-language movies, they first had to overcome the wuxia barrier.

Culturally, he had already made Shuxiang pay a hefty price to acquire a British publishing house. In a sense, this was a huge loss. But Xiao Ran’s strategy had always been to do whatever needed to be done, no matter the loss, to get the market to respond.

That’s why Xiao Ran acquired shares in Dell and Microsoft. His goal wasn’t to become a wealthy tycoon but to use that money to offset losses in the film industry. Just like last year, when the cinema chain in France continued to operate at a loss, even spending money to distribute some films.

On the surface, Phantom’s good performance in Southeast Asia covered up its losses in the West. Moreover, in the previous two years, Phantom had at least one hit film each year in the West to make up for the losses, so it wasn’t very obvious. But in the future, Xiao Ran wasn’t sure.

It seemed that just one month had passed this year, and Phantom had already invested 500 million in the computer sector to add various equipment, and 300 million each in companies like Pixar. Anyone could see that such investments were losing money. These highly technical sectors might not generate enough profit for Phantom. Fortunately, Xiao Ran held the majority of the company’s shares, and Fang Xiaoqiang and Wei Dongling had no objections to his decisions, allowing these losses to continue.

Returning to the script, Xiao Ran has been constantly pondering how to make Western audiences accept something that seems completely unimaginable to them. Xiao Ran is well aware that the first step is to cultivate audiences’ viewing habits; once Western audiences get used to this type of film, their resistance will gradually diminish. This requires Meiying to enhance its production efforts in this area and release as many films as possible in the West. In fact, “Smiling at the World” is already in preparation. This time, Xiao Ran once again invited Director Hu Jinquan as producer, while assigning Director Xu Ke to direct—the opposite of what happened in history—so as to avoid a conflict between Xu Ke and Master Hu. It’s impossible to have Hu Jinquan direct while Xu Ke keeps pointing out flaws here and there. After all, Xu Ke is a very solitary person; he doesn’t have many friends in the industry. Almost everyone who has worked with him stops collaborating in the end. The most typical example is Li Lianjie—Xu Ke helped launch Li’s second acting career, but in the end, Li could no longer tolerate Xu Ke’s temper and stopped working with him.