Buying a Car

Zhou Qi didn't know much about luxury cars, but he'd read enough novels to know that the ones that always appeared in "rich guy" stories for showing off were Aston Martins and Porsche Panameras.

However, he wasn't interested in luxury cars.

Believe me, if you had the superpower to open Space Gates, you wouldn't be interested in luxury cars either.

Right now, he felt like he was standing in the clouds, looking down at mortals. To him, they were all just ants, specks of dust.

A Panamera or an Aston Martin was no different from a Wuling.

Since there was no difference, he might as well support domestic brands.

"Yibing?" Zhou Qi looked at the young man in front of him, who was a bit chubby with a half-bald head. He recalled his youthful appearance and wondered if this was still the sturdy, handsome Zhou Yibing from back then.

As the brother of the Zhou Clan's most beautiful woman, Zhou Yining, he naturally couldn't be ugly, but this guy in front of him...

Well, he had potential. If he lost some weight, he might look decent.

"It's me!" Yibing looked at Zhou Qi and then at Tashigi behind him. "You have a girlfriend? Why didn't you say so? I would have had my sister-in-law come keep her company!"

"She's not my girlfriend, just a friend!" Zhou Qi quickly shook his head. Tashigi didn't understand Chinese now, but that might not always be the case.

She might remember what he said today and suddenly understand it one day.

How would he face anyone then?

"Really!" Zhou Yibing didn't believe him. If she wasn't his girlfriend, why would she sit with him on a subway for an hour in this heat to buy a car?

But since his brother said she wasn't, then she wasn't.

"What happened to you?" Zhou Qi asked. "I remember your dad wasn't bald!"

Zhou Yibing touched his hair, feeling a bit melancholic, as if reminiscing about his lost youth. "This is the mark of a strong person!"

Zhou Qi fell silent. That made sense. A programmer, after all...

"Okay, enough about that. Let's talk about you. You want to buy a pharmaceutical factory? Seriously?"

Zhou Qi didn't answer. He just took out his phone and showed him his balance.

"Holy crap..." As expected, Zhou Yibing was shocked. "Where did that come from? Did you hook up with a rich woman?"

"With my looks, do you think I could hook up with a rich woman?" Zhou Qi retorted.

"Well..." Zhou Yibing sized Zhou Qi up. "Actually, if you dressed up a bit, you might be a third as handsome as me. You're just too scruffy..."

"Get lost!"

At the BYD flagship store, apart from the slightly reserved Tashigi, Zhou Qi and Zhou Yibing exuded an air of wealth.

Their nouveau riche aura immediately caught the attention of the saleswoman.

"Gentlemen, and this lady, hello. Are you here to purchase a car? What are your needs?"

"Recommend a business car!"

"Ah, then I recommend this BYD Qin PLUS. It only consumes 3.7 liters per hundred kilometers, and accelerates to a hundred kilometers in..."

"How much is it?"

"Ah?" The saleswoman was stunned and quickly said, "We have four models in total. The Premium trim is 111,800 yuan, and the Flagship trim..."

"I'll take the most expensive one. I want to drive it away now. Can you get me a proper license plate?" Zhou Qi asked.

The saleswoman was taken aback and felt like crying.

I knew you weren't short on cash, but I didn't expect you to be this loaded! The most expensive Qin is only a little over 150,000, but the Tang is 320,000!

If I had known, I would have introduced you to the Tang!

But seeing how decisive Zhou Qi was, she didn't dare to introduce the Tang rashly. After all, for such a hassle-averse customer, she might annoy him if she said too much, and he might just turn around and leave.

This was a street full of 4S dealerships, with too much competition.

A Qin would do. Better to secure the sale.

"It's definitely too late to get a license plate today, but if you're in a hurry, we can help you get a temporary one. Will you be using it within the city, or will you be going out of town?"

"To Nan'an!"

"No problem, we'll apply for it for you right away. If things go quickly, it should be ready in about an hour!"

Zhou Qi checked the time; it was almost eleven o'clock.

"Then you go handle that. I'll go pay first, and then we'll grab something to eat before coming back!"

"Okay!"

"You're done buying already?" Yibing looked bewildered. "That was fast, wasn't it? When I bought my car, I agonized over it for days..."

"I don't drive often, so I'll just buy one casually!" Zhou Qi shrugged, then asked, "By the way, where's a good place to eat around here?"

"Are you looking for Hunan cuisine or Cantonese cuisine?" Yibing asked. "There's also a decent Tujia cuisine place."

"Do you have Henan cuisine?" Zhou Qi asked. "Henan cuisine is so expensive here. I used to be reluctant to eat it..."

"Henan cuisine." Zhou Yibing thought for a moment. "Then we can only have Big Plate Chicken..."

After all, Henan cuisine didn't seem to have many famous dishes. They couldn't exactly go have Hu La Tang for lunch!

"Then Big Plate Chicken it is. Just in time to show Tashigi... ah, Da Qi..." He almost blurted out Tashigi's real name.

"Da Qi?" Zhou Yibing glanced at Da Qi. He was a married man, and this girl was seemingly his sister-in-law. He naturally wouldn't look at her too much, let alone greet her.

Are there still people with the surname Da?

He thought of Uncle Da?

Oh, and Da Vinci.

"Hello, Da Qi. My name is Zhou Yibing. I'm Zhou Qi's... cousin, I guess..." Zhou Yibing said.

"She's from Okinawa and doesn't understand Chinese!" Zhou Qi said from the side.

"Huh?" Zhou Yibing was surprised. "Okinawa!? Japan?"

Then he heard Da Qi softly say, "Konnichiwa..."

Big Plate Chicken is a dish invented by Nanhe people in Xinjiang, and it was later perfected in Shaanxi.

Therefore, the name of this restaurant was "Xinjiang Authentic Nanhe Big Plate Chicken," with two small characters underneath: "Shaanxi Flavor."

The shop wasn't large, with two floors, but it was crowded. The first floor was already full, so the three of them had to go to the second floor.

Zhou Qi took out his phone, ordered a Big Plate Chicken first, and then handed the phone to Da Qi. "See if there's anything you want. Don't be polite, order whatever you like. You don't have to save money for me?"

"Uh..." Da Qi had never used a phone before, but it was just a matter of scrolling through the dishes. It wasn't difficult, just that she didn't recognize many of the characters.

"This..." She ordered a Roujiamo.

"And this one!" This was a century egg.

Then she stopped ordering.

"Is that enough?" Zhou Qi asked. Don't people in the One Piece World have huge appetites?

"It's enough!" Da Qi nodded quickly. She hadn't cultivated to the point where she could eat a whole cow in one meal. It was still four years ago, after all.

"Alright!" Zhou Qi thought for a moment and ordered three bottles of fruit beer.

"This afternoon, we're going to see the factory with people from Linlang Consulting. If it's suitable, we'll buy it today. You can be the factory director, Yining can handle HR, and then we'll hire all the poor relatives from home..." Before the food arrived, Zhou Qi started explaining his vision to Zhou Yibing. "My goal is to unite the family and pull everyone up, one by one!"

"I know you want to help everyone, but this is a bottomless pit!" Zhou Yibing shook his head. "The profit margins for pharmaceuticals in China aren't high, let alone Amoxicillin, which any factory can produce. Everyone is laying off people now, and you're hiring more and more. You'll probably start losing money from the first month. Even with a hundred million, how long can you last?"

"One person's salary is 5,000 yuan a month. If a factory supports a thousand people, that's 5 million a month, and 50 million a year, not to mention water and electricity fees..."

"You know about pharmaceutical companies?" Zhou Qi asked with a smile.

"I learned some since you mentioned you were going to do this!" Zhou Yibing said. "I think it would be better for you to open a cat food factory instead of a pharmaceutical factory. People nowadays don't like to get married or date, but they still need companions. If they can't find a person, they'll get a cat. Didn't you see how crazy the sales of cat beds are online? If you have a hundred million and invest it all in cat food, you could probably create the largest and most professional cat food production enterprise. That's much more reliable than selling medicine, isn't it?"

Zhou Qi shook his head. "In China, Amoxicillin is 4 cents a pill, but if I take it abroad..." He glanced around. It was noisy, everyone was eating, and they probably couldn't hear what he was saying.

His voice wasn't loud anyway.

"Abroad, I can sell one Amoxicillin pill for 50 yuan!"

"Rubles?"

"What the hell are you talking about, it's RMB!" Zhou Qi rolled his eyes.

Zhou Yibing frowned. "Zhou Qi, don't joke with me. Where can you sell Amoxicillin for 50? Even if you could sell it for 50, wouldn't foreign pharmaceutical companies be rushing to occupy the market?"

"Arigato..." Da Qi's voice came from the side. The waiter, holding three bottles of fruit beer, was stunned for a moment, not expecting to have a Japanese guest in his shop.

But he quickly calmed down. Nanhai City had people from all over the world; it wasn't common, but not unheard of.

Zhou Qi helped open the bottle caps and poured drinks for Da Qi and Zhou Yibing, while also thinking.

He hadn't expected that he could fool his parents but not Zhou Yibing.

However, as the second-smartest person in the village, it wasn't surprising that Zhou Yibing had this understanding.

Besides, he worked in an internet company and had a wide range of information channels. It was hard to fool him.

So what should he do? Tell the truth?

He didn't want to confess yet, at least not until he obtained the Thunder-Thunder Fruit and the Door-Door Fruit and possessed absolute power.

Since he couldn't tell the truth, and he couldn't lie to him, he could only resort to sophistry.

"Whether you believe it or not, that's just how it happened!" Zhou Qi shrugged. "Some things are just unreasonable, like cough syrup. Here, a big bottle of Huoxiang Zhengqi sells for two yuan, but in Africa, it costs 8 cents, which is 5 yuan..."

"Besides, how many foreign industries have gone bankrupt because we squeezed them out? Isn't it possible that only we are producing Amoxicillin worldwide now, and foreign pharmaceutical companies have stopped production because their costs are higher than ours?"

This...

Zhou Yibing fell silent. He really didn't know that cough syrup could be sold so expensively in Africa. He only knew that some people were addicted to it there.

Well, forget him. Zhou Qi actually didn't know how much that stuff cost in Africa. He just made it up. But Zhou Yibing didn't have time to verify it.

Even if he found out it was wrong, he could just say he remembered incorrectly.

"That's how I got my more than 100 million yuan. This is a partial prepayment for some medicines!" Zhou Qi said. "They have huge demands later. Let alone supporting a thousand people, I can support ten thousand people!"

The One Piece World might not have much gold, but it didn't matter. Copper would do; China was in great need of it.

Red soil is soil rich in copper, and there are two red soil continents in the One Piece World.

"This..." Zhou Yibing was speechless.

"Moreover, not only do I want to support people, but I also want to abolish 996, and I want to buy land and give everyone houses to live in, selling them cheaply, at a loss, without shared common areas!"

Zhou Yibing's mouth twitched: "This is completely the opposite corporate culture. You're going to be an enemy of capital..."

"Just tell me if you want to do it or not!"

Zhou Yibing couldn't refuse. Doing so might indeed make him hated, but it would also be incredibly satisfying, especially since he himself worked at a 996 company...

Even the novel website under Penguin was constantly criticizing Penguin, let alone Alibaba, which was even more disliked. Being able to oppose them would indeed be awesome.

"Damn it, I'll do it!" Zhou Yibing slammed the table: "When I get off, I'll resign from that idiot right away. Before I leave, I'll curse him out. I've been unhappy with him for a long time!"

"There's no need to curse him!" Zhou Qi quickly said: "It's better to do less than more. Be forgiving when you can be forgiving!"

Zhou Yibing was stunned. That wasn't right. Based on what you just said, you're not that kind of person!

"By the way, what's your company called, and what do you do?" Zhou Qi asked.

"Oh, it's Longke Network Services Co., Ltd., and we develop, operate, and maintain enterprise management systems..." Zhou Yibing said.

"See, there's an intersection!" Zhou Qi shrugged: "Our company's business will be handed over to him..."

"This..." Zhou Yibing was stunned: "I hate him so much, and you're still going to give him business?"

"We still need to give him business, but have you ever encountered clients who are very picky, have a lot of opinions, don't pay much, but love to drag out payments?" Zhou Qi asked.

Zhou Yibing's eyes lit up: "So many! There are several that still make me grit my teeth when I think about them!"

"See, you're the client now. Seize the opportunity and play freely!"

"I understand!" Zhou Yibing immediately lowered his head and revised his resignation letter.

In the letter, he sincerely thanked his superior for his care, support, and attention over the years, and wished him smooth sailing and promotion in his future life and work!

Tsk tsk, he'd dealt with a factory director, and now he could be a hands-off manager.

Just as the food arrived, the fruit beer was also good. The three of them ate very happily.

Indeed, the secret to staying happy is to transfer other people's happiness to yourself!