Shen Bing's words reminded some of them of disaster movies in which a super-tech corporation predicted the end of the world, built something like Noah's Ark, then sold tickets to the world's richest people.
Absurd as that comparison was, none of them found it funny.
Who among those seated here was a fool? Shen Bing's meaning was clear: a storm was coming to the internet industry. Anyone who failed to board this ship would be destroyed by it.
Of everyone present, Zhou Hong was by far the most relaxed. He already had his ticket.
Two days earlier, he had even been kidnapped by "terrorists" because of his association with Shen Bing. Yet he felt no resentment toward Shen Bing, nor did he blame him. In fact, after witnessing how Shen Bing rescued him, his awe of him had only deepened.
That was why he had been the first to arrive in Rongcheng after receiving Shen Bing's invitation, even though he had only returned to Kyoto the previous night and had planned to visit his company that day to reassure the employees unsettled by his kidnapping.
"Chairman Shen, how exactly can we get a ticket?" Niu Yu seemed quite composed. He had already had some preliminary contact with Shen Bing in Seattle and could more or less guess what he had in mind.
"Getting a ticket is simple," Shen Bing said calmly. "It would follow a model similar to our arrangement with the Strange Fox Company. The internet has many branches, such as the cybersecurity business the Strange Fox Company handles, the e-commerce business Taobao operates, and the instant messaging business Penguin is involved in. Our company's Intelligent Core offers a comprehensive range of service interfaces. Let me give you a simple example: e-commerce. With support from our Intelligent Core, intelligent