Becoming Famous

Tang Shizhe, dressed in a protective suit and surrounded by a group of Splitters, toured the factory floor.

"Boss, our ten production lines can produce a hundred thousand Purification Trees a day, but I don't think that'll come close to keeping up with future sales."

"Once the first batch reaches our customers and they experience the benefits of the Purification Tree, they'll probably recommend it to friends and relatives. Sales could skyrocket!"

"Shouldn't we consider expanding?" Tang Yi asked eagerly, holding a tablet.

Including the five hundred thousand Purification Trees produced before preorders began and the number made over the past three days, Tang Shizhe now had a full eight hundred thousand trees in warehouses across the country.

If he sold all of them, he'd make a total profit of 510 million! Even after deducting costs, he'd still have nearly 500 million in net profit!

That was more than enough to fund further expansion!

"No rush. Let's sell these eight hundred thousand first." Tang Shizhe waved a hand. He wasn't in a hurry to expand. He planned to learn from Xiaomi's hunger-marketing strategy: people always wanted what they couldn't have. He needed to keep the Purification Tree in the spotlight.

At that moment, as he inspected the factory, Tang Shizhe had no idea he'd become famous—wildly, unbelievably famous!

Reporters outside had heard from an "insider" that each Purification Tree brought in a hundred yuan in net profit. Based on that, they calculated that Titan Environmental would make fifty million yuan in net profit from preorders alone—and that was only the beginning.

Most people were still waiting and watching, holding off until the first customers tried the product and shared their opinions.

According to media estimates, if the first batch of Purification Trees received good reviews, Titan Environmental could sell thirty million this year! Nearly half the population in the country was troubled by air pollution and secondhand smoke.

And to get the best results, homes larger than a hundred square meters would be better off buying two more.

That gave the Purification Tree a potential market of three hundred million units—not just in the Xia Kingdom, but also in neighboring countries with even worse air pollution, such as the Curry Nation!

Even this year's projected sales alone could bring Titan Environmental a staggering three billion RMB in net profit.

Overnight, all sorts of "economic experts" and scholars began valuing Titan Tech at sixty billion RMB. If Titan Environmental were publicly listed, that would put its price-to-earnings ratio at twenty.

Of course, this valuation depended on the first customers being satisfied. If they weren't, the company would be worthless.

But the media didn't care about that! All they noticed was the sixty-billion valuation!

What did that mean? Reports said Titan Environmental's founder owned eighty percent of its shares, which meant his personal fortune had already reached forty-eight billion RMB!

And he was still a student!

The reporters' eyes practically glowed green. They were desperate to dig up every detail about Tang Shizhe and study him inside and out.

Titan Environmental's factory became a stakeout spot for reporters. Whenever Tang Shizhe checked the company entrance through the drones, he saw a dense crowd camped outside.

If the factory walls weren't high and sturdy enough, and topped with an electric fence, he wondered whether the reporters would storm the place.

"What kind of nonsense are these experts spouting? Don't they know how to make a fortune quietly?" Tang Shizhe ground his teeth when he heard the news after returning to his office.

Some media outlets with powerful connections had somehow obtained every detail about Titan Environmental's chairman. They even got hold of his academic records from childhood to the present and published them!

When people following Tang Shizhe saw his life story, they fell silent.

At first, they'd assumed he was some rich second-generation heir, or that he'd gotten lucky and suddenly become wealthy.

But after reading about his life, everyone couldn't help feeling a little admiration for him.

The information they published went like this:

Tang Shizhe had always been an excellent student, and his family had been happy and loving.

But the year he came of age, his parents had died in an accident, leaving him all alone.

After that, his grades had plummeted. He'd become a bottom-of-the-class student and stopped talking to other people.

Then, a few months ago, he seemed to suddenly change. He began studying obsessively, ordering countless biology books from various websites and borrowing a huge number of biology papers from the school library.

A few months later, Tang Shizhe had used money he made trading cryptocurrency to start his first company, then successfully developed an era-defining air purifier!

What an inspiring, moving story! A boy who'd lost both parents had struggled out of the shadows and become a top student!

Of course, no one could say how many of those excellent grades had been exaggerated by the schools to make themselves look good. Tang Shizhe certainly didn't remember being that good at school.

As for the books he'd supposedly bought online and the library records of his studies, Tang Yi and the others had hacked into the websites and library servers afterward and added them by force.

To make sure everything looked authentic, they'd even hacked into the courier company's servers!

That had created the perfect illusion for outsiders: a young man who'd shut himself away after an accident, but then suddenly awakened one day and made a dramatic comeback!

For a while, the news was full of praise for Tang Shizhe. He seemed to have become a model of success, held up as an example for everyone.

His less inspiring path to wealth—trading cryptocurrency—was glossed over.

"Boss, you're famous!" Tang Yi teased.

Tang Shizhe could only smile bitterly. He hadn't wanted to draw attention to himself so soon. After all, his goal was to monopolize every major industry in the world. Wasn't it too early to reveal himself now?

"Boss, I know what you're thinking. I think you can take on the image of a successful entrepreneur here in the Xia Kingdom. It'll help keep you safe."

"And our forces overseas can be controlled discreetly through offshore shell companies." Tang Yi chuckled slyly.

"True. We do need a shield to protect us until we grow stronger. That means I have to keep expanding our influence." Tang Shizhe nodded and rubbed his chin.

But tomorrow was the Purification Tree's official launch. For now, he planned to head upstairs and get a good night's sleep.

As for producing more Splitters, Tang Shizhe had already left all the work to the Brood Mother.

The Brood Mother had already started producing Tang Thirty-One in the Splitter Chamber on the office building's third basement level. The name was a little strange, but at least it was easy to remember. Besides, it saved him the trouble of coming up with names.

He shut down the computer in front of him and stood up, heading for the concealed door nearby. As soon as he stopped in front of it, the door opened automatically, revealing an elevator.

He stepped inside, and the elevator rose slowly, carrying him to his six-thousand-square-meter "sky" mansion.

After such a long time spent renovating it, the mansion was finally complete, and all the furniture had been moved in.

The elevator opened onto the mansion's grand hall. Beside it stood another private elevator that went straight down to Tang Shizhe's exclusive parking garage on the first basement level.

On either side of the two elevators stood two "statues" in black titanium-alloy armor, each gripping a sword.

Of course, these "statues" were actually Death Soldiers split off from Tang Shizhe. They stood guard here to protect him at home.

Only physical-type Splitters, with their superhuman strength, could manage a simple suit of titanium-alloy armor and a pair of one-and-a-half-meter-long swords.

And since they had practically no needs beyond eating, excreting, and sleeping, they made the perfect "statues."

The mansion had a very regular layout. The entrance opened into a reception hall, with another living room farther inside.

On either side of the hall were a home theater, a gym, a pet room, and a housekeeper's room.

Farther down the hall was a long corridor lined with guest rooms. The Death Soldiers assigned to protect him rested there, and beyond them lay a two-hundred-square-meter hall.

Beside that hall were the kitchen and dining room, while the other side led to an indoor swimming pool.

Directly south of the hall was Tang Shizhe's master bedroom, a huge room measuring a full hundred square meters.

Through the bedroom's floor-to-ceiling windows, he could see the entire southern half of the factory!

The mansion's decor was mostly modern, with a few silver ornaments in a European style.

The living room floor was made entirely of huge slabs of black marble. The walls were either pale brown or blue-gray, and the furniture was starkly minimalist, in black and white. Together, they gave the place a cold, restrained feel. But there was no helping it—Tang Shizhe liked this style. It had a certain class to it.

In the mansion's southwestern corner was a special area decorated to look exactly like his old home. It was one way he remembered his parents.

Yawning, Tang Shizhe took off his clothes one by one and tossed them to Tang Eleven, who was serving as his butler.

Wearing a black butler's uniform, Tang Eleven took Tang Shizhe's clothes, carefully folded them, and draped them over his arm as he followed him inside.

"This is so unfair. Why couldn't you have been a woman?" Tang Shizhe shot Tang Eleven a look of distaste and complained. He wished he had a few beautiful maids following him instead.

"Boss, if you like, you can think of me as a woman." Tang Yi joked, earning a roll of Tang Shizhe's eyes.

Since they shared Tang Shizhe's memories, they all had interesting personalities.

"Come wake me up at nine tomorrow morning. Let me get a good night's sleep." After washing up, Tang Shizhe waved Tang Eleven away. Then he flopped onto the bed, rolled around comfortably a couple of times, and burrowed under the covers.

In his dream, Yin Qi was on his left, Yan Yanran on his right, and Zhao Yin in his arms.

Wait! Why was he cuddling the Brood Mother? She'd been split off from his own body! Just thinking about it gave him goosebumps, and his sweet dream instantly turned into a nightmare.