The Black Card

Chapter 249 - Zhen Xu’s Call

Translator: Lav

Editor: Seliniaki Ilikia

Shi Lei woke up early in the morning and headed straight for Dong Xiao Racecourse.

He signed up for a membership card and charged 100,000 yuan without a word. This card’s benefits covered unlimited horse riding and coaching for a total of around thirty hours.

Of course, he had asked for the highest level for everything.

The horse had to be purebred and the coach had to be the best there was.

After all of this, he only had around 200,000 yuan left to spend.

Shi Lei practiced riding for about forty-five minutes in the morning before leaving the racecourse at around noon. He gave Yu Banzhi a call indicating his intention to express his grat.i.tude and hence treat the man to a meal.

Yu Banzhi didn’t hesitate too much after he was informed that Shi Lei’s family’s incident had been solved perfectly and told Shi Lei to go to his shop at 3 PM.

Shi Lei didn’t go there early, instead heading home first. He went to a nearby sports shop to buy the practice carpet for putting and practiced for about an hour at home. His horrendous skills certainly hurt his eyes.

Before 3 PM, Shi Lei then took a shower, changed his clothes, and headed straight for the antique street.

It was already past three when he arrived. Shi Lei walked toward Yu’s Agarwood Shop, which was already open, as expected. 

Yu Banzhi saw Shi Lei and waved his hand with a smile on his face. “You didn’t come here early today, did you?”

Shi Lei didn’t sit down in front of Yu Banzhi or give him a greeting, instead pacing back and forth around the display cabinets. He took out the agarwood he wanted to have a closer look at.

Finally, he picked an ornament just over 200,000 yuan and took a seat at the tea table.

“Recently, I’ve been feeling short of breath and I can’t sleep well, so I want to buy an agarwood to play with.”

Yu Banzhi beamed as he poured a cup of tea for Shi Lei and gestured for him to drink. He glanced casually at the ornament in Shi Lei’s hand and said, “You should know that I’m not short on money. I opened this shop mainly for my own interests. It’s too vulgar to thank me this way.”

Shi Lei had a decent understanding of Yu Banzhi’s personality. Yu Banzhi was sitting on the fence, since he didn’t reject him immediately. It seemed like spending the last 200,000 yuan was going to be easy.

Hence, Shi Lei also smiled. “You still opened the shop. It doesn’t matter how much you don’t care about money. You just don’t want anyone with good tastes here. Half is me being vulgar, but the other half is because I’ve learned so much from you and I really am interested in agarwood. I’ve had the incense for a while now and I gained a lot from it, so it’s not entirely for the purpose of thanking you.”

“Half is still too much. I just mentioned what was happening to Wei Qing, so you should go thank him more.”

Shi Lei finished drinking the tea and refilled his cup. “Your name is Banzhi(2) and you naturally know the character ‘ban.’ It can mean ‘equally divided’ or ‘possible to be either a small or large proportion.’ I’m not doing something that’s not within my capabilities just for face, but you’ll lose your kindness for always refusing to sell to me. Playing with agarwood is a graceful thing to do in the first place but you always bring vulgarity into it, so you can’t blame me for it.”

Yu Banzhi laughed heartily and pointed at Shi Lei in attempt to say something, but didn’t in the end.

He paused for a short while before eventually saying, “You are very good with words. Take it.”

Shi Lei stood up and walked to the checkout counter. He took the POS machine(1), entered the amount of 216,800 yuan, and typed in the pa.s.sword. He then signed the receipt printed by the machine and pa.s.sed it to Yu Banzhi.

“Deal!” Shi Lei immediately took his pixiu(3) ornament and gently rubbed the head.

Yu Banzhi nodded lightly and smiled. “You certainly did some research, to know that you need to smooth the fur when inviting the pixiu home.”

Shi Lei didn’t speak. He was very pleased that there was barely 30,000 yuan left to spend this month.

He drank a little with Yu Banzhi that night and didn’t really go anywhere special. They found a nearby restaurant, asked for a room, ordered a few dishes, and drank two bottles of yellow rice wine.

Shi Lei sat down next to the flowing river, looked over at the resident houses on the far bank, and experienced another lifestyle.

Shi Lei felt tipsy and decided to walk home. Even if it was the middle of winter, he still broke out into a light sweat after walking such a far distance. He lit a stick of agarwood incense and took another shower. After he wiped his body off, the bathrobe hanging in the bathroom out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.

Shi Lei’s heart almost skipped a beat. Without knowing why, he put on the bathrobe that had been worn by Wei Xingyue before.

It didn’t have any special scent of a woman, but did have a faint trace of Chanel No. 5. When he returned to the living room, the fragrance of perfume disappeared under the deep scent of agarwood. Shi Lei picked up the pixiu handpiece and gently stroked it.

He fell asleep holding the pixiu handpiece that night. Without knowing whether it was the a psychological effect or not, he actually felt that the state of his mind and body was better than it had been before after he woke up the next day.

Shi Lei half-lay in bed and picked up his phone, contemplating whether or not he should arrange a meeting with Zhen Xu to gain more information on his developing app.

While he was contemplating, his phone sounded. Speak of the devil, it was a notification of Zhen Xu’s Wechat message.

Shi Lei opened it. Zhen Xu said: h.e.l.lo, Mr. Shi. I don’t dare call you out of nowhere, so I’m sending you a message first. Do you have time to pick up my call right now?

After a moment, Shi Lei decided to call Zhen Xu.

The phone only rang once before Zhen Xu picked up. His voice sounded slightly excited. “h.e.l.lo, Mr. Shi. Did I disturb you?”

Shi Lei knew that he shouldn’t be in too much of hurry as he smiled and replied, “I wasn’t doing anything. What do you need me for?”

Zhen Xu clearly froze for a second. He doubted that Shi Lei was even serious when he talked about investing in him the other time and so he felt anxious.

But he had recently been rejected by many other people, so he forced himself to speak. “Mr. Shi, you said that you could check out my app the day before, at the racecourse. I don’t know when you are free, but I hoped that I could discuss it with you.”

Shi Lei remained silent for a few seconds before saying, “Well, I’ll give you another call in the afternoon and arrange a meeting place.”

Zhen Xu immediately became excited. “Okay, okay. Then I’ll be waiting for your call. Any time is fine, and any place is also fine with me.”

Shi Lei smiled. “Alright, I’ll contact you in the afternoon then.”

“Okay, okay. Please go do your business first.” Zhen Xu imagined that people like Shi Lei would be really busy, so he took the initiative to say goodbye.

Shi Lei also said goodbye and hung up.

Although he had pretended to be rather calm, Shi Lei was a newbie through and through and didn’t have any experience in investing. He felt slightly intimidated after hanging up the call and quickly rolled out of bed. He walked to the desk and began to ponder what he should say and do after he met Zhen Xu that afternoon.

Obviously, he couldn’t agree to invest in Zhen Xu today, since he didn’t even know whether the app had potential to make a profit or not. Although he only needed to use the excuse of going to the bathroom to be able to immediately find the answer, as an investor investing in a project, he should definitely a.n.a.lyze the target market and other such factors.

Overall, even if this project had great potential, he definitely couldn’t let Zhen Xu find out that he really wanted to invest in him. It wasn’t that he wanted to do it on purpose, but because Shi Lei had to keep his position as an independent investor.

He wrote and drew on a piece of paper until noon as he finally finalized the process of this afternoon’s meeting.

He organized the process and practiced it a few times to thin air. Since it was already at the limit, he could not think of a more appropriate way to do it.