No sooner had Li Ye finished speaking than Wen Qingsheng lowered his crossed leg.
Minister Xue, whom they had been toasting, froze for a moment. He did not drink, instead setting his glass back on the table in surprise.
Then he smiled and said, "I was wondering why something felt off! Your father-in-law usually praises you to the skies—says you're exceptionally clever, mature beyond your years, with grand ambitions and remarkable talent. But the scene you made today caught even me off guard."
"Forget about being caught off guard for now."
Wen Qingsheng pointed sternly at Li Ye. "Explain it clearly, from beginning to end. What exactly happened?"
"It's like this. Since the year before last, our First Branch Factory has focused on building our own R&D team. I begged my mom for graduates and poached people everywhere. After enormous effort, I finally scraped together fewer than two hundred researchers, only for the Japanese to set their sights on them."
Li Ye sat up straight and said, "When we brought in the new production line this time, the Japanese sent technical personnel to help us calibrate it. Then they offered to supply us with engines—but their price was so blackhearted that even Sun Erniang, who sold human-meat buns, would have thought it too much."
"We ignored them and invested our own money and manpower into researching our own engines. At first, they mocked us, saying we couldn't do it. But now that we've made some progress, they took the initiative to cut their price by thirty percent."
Li Ye held up three fingers and said with a trace of resentment, "A thirty-percent price cut on an industrial product—just how much profit does that mean? Yet we still didn't agree.
"Then the Japanese bypassed me and approached Niu Hongzhang, saying they