Epiphanies of Rebirth Chapter 81 (Part 1)
Translated by Pure
Chapter 81.1 Lin Jingzhe: Life was really beautiful.
With the existence of Dai Gaofeng, the famous ‘yabber’ mouth, the following force of the two families in the compound was beyond imagination.
"Huh? How strange, why is the competition of hosting a wedding in November so intense?"
Yu Shuyuan and Shen Juanying looked at each other suspiciously after hanging up the phone.
After the two families finalized the wedding date, it was natural for them to have a wedding banquet. However, the strange thing was that after calling several big hotels, every one of them had apologized stating that the schedule for November was completely booked.
Yu Shuyuan, who doesn't want to use underhanded tricks and connections to forcibly jump in line to disrupt other people's wedding, was deeply confused. Since any time after October to the end of this year was an auspicious date, November shouldn’t be a peak period. Why was it so popular all of a sudden?
The two mothers were quite satisfied with the agreed day. The timing was perfect and they had already put in their time off. The two mothers didn't want to give up very much, so they were put in an awkward situation.
Grandma Xiao came out of the Buddhist Hall, still holding her favorite string of Buddhist beads, and seeing the two young people at a loss, she suggested with a smile, "Just choose Yan City Restaurant, the other venus locations won’t be available."
Yu Shuyuan knew that her mother-in-law was thinking about that brown sugar cake again. Recalling her blood sugar levels, she pinched the bridge of her nose and hurriedly said, "Mom, I remember last time you said that the gold ink for copying scriptures was almost used up? Dabao bought more yesterday, they are currently kept in his father's study."
Grandma Xiao pouted, and grunted unhappily. She then went upstairs while rambling about her descendants' lack of filial piety.
The two mothers went on to locate more establishments, hoping to host the banquet, but even after the return of Xiao Miao and Shen Tiantian, they couldn't make any progress.
"How is he?" Shen Juanying asked her daughter.
"It's nothing serious, he’s just still in a bit of shock. The news of Grandpa Qi's death probably hit him hard." Shen Tiantian shook her head and sighed when relaying about what she saw in the hospital.
Qi Kai was most likely done for, Shen Tiantian had noticed the countless monitoring eyes around the hospital ward. The news that Shi Nanxing released some time ago had a detrimental influence on Qi Kai. Moreover, without the elderly around to lift the burden, the numerous criminal charges were enough for him to be deferred to death sentence or life imprisonment.
Shen Tiantian was not allowed to enter the room. For some reason, the strict protection of Qi Kai's personal safety was much higher than she imagined. Looking back now, through the transparent glass, she saw his serene face and an inconspicuous urn that didn't quite match the simple and neat style of the ward.
The urn was very strange, it was much smaller than an average urn. And on top was a roughly carved flowery, it looked crooked, as if done by an amateur.
Qi Kai also looked a little different from his usual sloppy image in her memory, but Shen Tiantian can't come up as to what the specific difference was.
However, with Xiao Miao silent beside her, Shen Tiantian considerately changed the topic. "By the way, Mom, Aunt Yu, what are you doing?"
"What else, but your brother's marriage. It’s a baffling matter, there’s not a single venue available in Yan City to host the banquet." Shen Juanying rubbed her temples worriedly, they had been busy for hours, but still without any results. The population of Yan City had increased dramatically over the past year, as could be seen from the increasingly congested traffic on the streets. However even so, it seems too exaggerated to not even be able to toast a wedding wine.
Shen Tiantian immediately lost her enthusiasm for knowing the follow up. To be honest, she still hadn't fully accepted the reality that her brother was going to get married.
After getting married, my brother will have his own separate family QAQ
In between disappointment and frustration, Shen Tiantian led Xiao Miao upstairs. She turned on the computer and sorted out the website they were about to put into operation, but couldn't redirect herself into the appropriate mood.
Xiao Miao was also very puzzled. "Say, how did Brother Jingzhe even fall in love with Xiao Chi? Did he cast some black magic or something?"
Xiao Chi was sarcastic, mean, and stingy. Most of the time, he wouldn’t even give her a penny for pocket money; to be so unkind to his own sister, he didn’t seem like a suitable match at all!
Shen Tiantian recalled her wholly devoted and earnest elder brother, someone who hadn’t even held a grudge against the people who tried to assassinate him. Her brother was as strong as the distant mountains, and always tried to solve and keep everything to himself; she then recalled the appearance of Xiao Chi while competing with her while buying clothes in the mall, and pursed her lips aggrievedly.
If her brother hadn’t personally said he liked him...
The two girls looked at the green pages of their website and sighed. They couldn’t even muster up the mood to read the latest chapter of the new book they had been following for ages.
…
When Grandma Xiao went downstairs, she was stopped by two mothers.
"Mom..." Yu Shuyuan hesitated to speak.
However, there was no need for her to say any more, the old lady easily sensed the subject, "What? There’s no vacancies, right?"
"We also contacted Yan City Restaurant just now, but they also didn't..." Yu Shuyuan slowly said. In fact, she stopped Grandma Xiao to ask if the wedding date could be rearranged to another suitable time.
"It's normal if you can't get a reservation." Grandma Xiao just smiled mysteriously, then tremblingly rummaged through the drawer of the coffee table in the living room with her cane, and took out a manilla envelope. "But don't fret, I've long been prepared."
Yu Shuyuan opened it in doubt, and immediately froze for a moment. It was a banquet reservation contract, and the signers were Grandma Xiao and the management of Yan City Restaurant!
"........." Yu Shuyuan's line of sight moved away from the ‘Brown Sugar Cake’ order specially marked on the menu of the contracted dishes, and landed on the unreasonably early signing date at the bottom right. She was speechless and left without words.
Grandma Xiao got up with a benign-faced smile, and left without any haste. Inwardly she thought: Bunch of little brats, you think you can outwit your own ancestor?
Amitabha. Very good indeed. It seems that the golden body of the Bodhisattva needs some touch ups.
******
"Thank you for your hard work, auntie." After receiving the notice from the elders that the banquet venue had been booked, Lin Jingzhe thanked Yu Shuyuan over the phone. At the same time, he informed her that he didn’t have any preferences for the dishes served, so they could arrange whatever they deemed best.
It seemed that their mothers were planning to have a big party; fifty tables had been booked for the banquet alone. After hanging up the phone, Lin Jingzhe felt an indescribable nervousness. Fifty tables didn't seem like a lot, but for someone in a simple and close knit circle, it was enough to host all of his relatives and friends. To be honest, from the day he decided to be with Xiao Chi, he had never thought that the two of them would ever publicly announce their relationship.
Lin Jingzhe vaguely remembered that in his previous life, there were similar people in his circle of friends. Everyone was of an ordinary class, and apart from their respective families, there was almost no great social pressure. But even so, in the end, most people of such sexual orientation would be forced to break up and get married with the opposite sex; they all ended up in tragedies due to them having to uphold their ‘responsibility’.
Furthermore, from the beginning to the end, no one around him had noticed he was in such a relationship.
Against all, in an era of a more traditional and rigid thinking, he was actually planning to get married! Yu Shuyuan and Shen Juanying were ready to reveal his relationship to the whole world to see.
Lin Jingzhe stood at the door in a daze for a while, unable to process the reality that had loomed over him. It wasn’t until Liang Pi came out of the conference room, looking for him. "Mr. Lin, is everything ok?"
"Yes." He came back to his senses, regained his calm demeanor, smiled, and followed the other party back into the room.
Lin Jingzhe had never been absent from any of Best Partner IT’s quarterly meetings. On the contrary, he, as the person holding 30% of the shares, was the absolute focus of this meeting, no less impertinent than the two administrators.
In the conference room, the core employees who held most of the equity gathered together, with Gao Sheng at the forefront.
After the establishment of Gao Sheng Advertising, many feared Gao Sheng would abandon Best Partner IT to build up his own business. In order to keep him in Best Partner IT's operation department, Wu Wangfei and Liang Pi pooled together 4% of the company's shares for him. This in turn elevated him as the largest shareholder after the three founders of Best Partner. The organizers of the meeting conscientiously arranged his seat right below Lin Jingzhe’s, and Gao Sheng sat there without a hint of hesitation or psychological burden. Under the seemingly lack of attention of the present employees, he had no intention of hiding——
He was on Lin Jingzhe's side. What’s there to hide?
Even if Best Partner IT's original composition and establishment mechanism was created under simple desires, it eventually became a mutual restraint of interested parties after multiple rounds of financing. Lin Jingzhe held 30% of the shares in his hand, and usually doesn't get involved in the company's affairs; he was an unadulterated cash cow. Gao Sheng was well aware of the countless pairs of eyes inside and outside the company that were staring at this major shareholder. All the more it was for him to display dominance for Lin Jingzhe.
The operation department was the second most important sector after the development department. The whole division was now in Gao Sheng’s hands. With this fact alone, no one dared to climb on top of Lin Jingzhe's head.
Just now, when Lin Jingzhe went out to make a call, he had delayed the originally scheduled start time of the meeting, but the whole room quietly continued to wait for him. No one even dared to make a sound before him.
Gao Sheng was very satisfied with this, especially on the premise that today's topic was mainly about the financing of A.
Joint capital, the dilution of equity, and the increase in the company's market value, the expansion of their influence all escalated the internal power struggle.
There weren't any disadvantages to accumulating prestige early.
Liang Pi glanced at everyone on the conference table, nodded emphatically to Lin Jingzhe, and then got up to announce——
"On March 15th of this year, the instant messaging software 'Best Partner FlashMSG' that had been in long term development had finally started its trial operation. I would like to extend my thanks to the employees and managers of the operation department, development team, and all other related departments for their industrious work..."
During Liang Pi’s introduction, Lin Jingzhe opened the introduction document he had obtained earlier.
After the establishment of Best Partner IT, it immediately launched the search engine ‘Best Partner Search’, and quickly won the entire domestic search market by taking advantage of the market gap and the convenience of relatively simple network composition groups. The combination of Wu Wangfei and Liangpi's innovative minds and Lin Jingzhe's capital support was astonishing— With the gradual increase of domestic computer users, Best Partner Search pivoted their original customer base and became the first choice for every new user. And this originally small, weakly constituted company, had rapidly grown into a mature state with hundreds of employees, with clear division of labor and management within the past year.
It was evident that this scale will increase after the company's financing of A.
While their search engine was launched, Wu Wangfei and Liang Pi had already led the staff of the development department to begin the process of creating a real-time communication software. They finally achieved results near the end of last year.
In mid-March this year, the company officially launched the beta version of their second project. With the help of Best Partner Search, the largest search engine in China, the new software was quickly promoted among users.
