A Rich Second Generation with Good Taste

After getting off the plane, Guo Yuan took a taxi straight to the hotel where he had stayed during his last visit to Hangcheng. Once he had settled in, he called Xun Haoran.

Xun Haoran seemed to be busy with something. The line rang six times before he answered.

"Hello~"

"Xun Haoran, I'm in Hangcheng."

Xun Haoran clearly had not expected Guo Yuan to move so quickly and blurted out, "Why did you come so fast?"

"Of course, it's to make sure I can acquire your company," Guo Yuan explained with a smile.

"I told you before that our company has already declared bankruptcy. You really don't need to be in such a hurry."

Xun Haoran had not even managed to sell the house yet, and Guo Yuan was already here. It left him somewhat at a loss.

Guo Yuan instantly understood what Xun Haoran was worried about and hurriedly said, "Xun Haoran, you misunderstood. I didn't come this time to complete the acquisition immediately. I just want to express my intentions to your boss. At most, both sides will sign a letter of intent and pay some earnest money. As for the rest of the payment, it won't be until October at the earliest."

Only after hearing Guo Yuan's words did Xun Haoran let out a sigh of relief.

"By the way, Xun Haoran, do you think there's anyone in your company worth keeping?" Guo Yuan abruptly changed the subject.

"The people I deal with are all technical staff, so the ones I know better are technical staff too."

"That's fine. Tell me which technical staff are worth keeping."

"That would definitely be our technical team leader. Our leader has a master's degree from Xidian University. He graduated in 2015 and joined Penguin, then our boss spent a lot of money to poach him.

"His technical skills are incredible. He led us in building the entire framework for the intelligent engine, and I learned a lot from him."

Xun Haoran's team leader was named Zhao Liyi. He was twenty-eight this year and had once worked for a game company under Penguin. His skills were exceptional. The moment Xun Haoran's company declared bankruptcy, two major internet companies had already extended olive branches to him. If you wanted to keep him, his annual salary would likely need to be in the millions.

After hearing the narration, only two words came to Guo Yuan's mind: Holy shit!

Why was a technical expert this expensive?

"What about besides your team leader?" Guo Yuan continued.

"Besides the team leader... I feel like everyone else is probably not as capable as me," Xun Haoran answered weakly.

"So the core of your technical team is your leader and you, right?"

"More or less!"

Guo Yuan understood. This team leader had to be retained, or the subsequent development of the intelligent engine would probably be difficult to continue.

"How many people are there in your technical team?" Guo Yuan asked.

"There are twenty-one, but I don't think we need that many. Twelve or thirteen should be enough."

"Then after I finish talking with your boss, you'll be responsible for persuading the useful people in the technical team to stay."

"Okay!" Xun Haoran agreed without even thinking, clearly having considered his own future as well.

"Alright, that's it for now. Xun Haoran, send me your boss's name and phone number on WeChat."

"Alright, I'll send it now." With that, Xun Haoran hung up.

A moment later, Guo Yuan received a photographed business card on WeChat. The card was very simple, containing only a name and phone number, without even a company name.

Wu Tianyu, male, twenty-six years old, was the son of Wu Mingjie, founder of Xinglong Steel. Xinglong Steel had gone public in 2009, and its market value had surpassed thirty billion last year. Wu Mingjie held 36% of the shares and served as the company's chairman.

As Wu Mingjie's only son, Wu Tianyu had received an elite education from childhood. While studying abroad, Wu Tianyu discovered that the private companies in China with market values exceeding one trillion were all related to the internet.

Wu Tianyu suddenly understood. He believed that producing steel could not make much money, while internet-related industries were the real path to making big money.

However, by then, everything conceivable in the internet industry had already been done by someone else. So Wu Tianyu decided to take a different approach and enter the internet industry from another direction. The direction he chose was the intelligent engine market, which was currently dominated by intelligent engines. He wanted to develop an intelligent engine of his own.

After hearing the narration, Guo Yuan frowned. Wu Tianyu was not the useless rich second-generation heir Guo Yuan had imagined. On the contrary, he had quite a few ideas.

Choosing intelligent engines as an entry point into the internet industry was also a pretty good choice.

Moreover, the use of intelligent engines was not limited to games. Whether it was the virtual micropolygon geometry system components and fully dynamic global illumination needed for blockbuster films, or animation systems, physics engine collision detection, and real-time rendering, intelligent engines could all be used.

The intelligent engine Wu Tianyu wanted to develop also contained sufficiently powerful AI that could create content after only simple learning.

If Wu Tianyu could truly complete this intelligent game engine himself, the licensing fees from all kinds of games alone would be an astronomical figure every year. He could also earn a huge sum from film and animation production.

It was no exaggeration to say that if Wu Tianyu successfully developed and released this intelligent engine, it would definitely change the global landscape of the gaming, animation, and film industries.

By then, well-made games, animation, and blockbuster visual-effects films would emerge one after another. Ordinary players might even regret not having enough time to experience them all.

As for those shoddily made works that relied entirely on marketing, they would be completely driven out by the market and audiences.

Under those circumstances, production companies could only put effort into areas such as plot and setting, ushering in an era of fierce competition between companies.

At that point, whether it was animation, games, or films, classics would surely appear one after another. Just thinking about it was incredibly exciting.

Aside from his choice of entry point, Wu Tianyu also had very good foresight.

Looking over China's forty years of reform and opening up, there had been countless influential figures in the business world.

There had also been countless people in every industry who had ridden that wave to wealth.

But whether it was real estate or internet services, while they made money and created large numbers of jobs, they were not fundamentally industries that generated wealth.

Only manufacturing and technology were the foundations of society's development.

Yet the ones holding the vast majority of wealth now were internet companies and real estate companies.

Those internet giants with market values exceeding a trillion did not create wealth themselves. They merely used the nature of the internet to carry out a massive integration of the service industry, while monopolizing the channels and raking in enormous profits.

Wu Tianyu saw this clearly. He felt that making money this way was far easier than producing steel, so he was tempted—and he put that temptation into action.

A rich second-generation heir with vision and initiative like that apparently would not be so easy to win over.

Guo Yuan suddenly felt a little pressure.

But he quickly calmed down. What was there to fear? He was a man with a narrator—was he really going to fail to win over some rich second-generation heir?

With that thought, Guo Yuan directly dialed Wu Tianyu's number.