novelraw Chapter 643 - 629, the debt of the two families is settled! (1)
Chapter 643 - 629, the debt of the two families is settled! (1)
Chapter 643: 629, the debt of the two families is settled! (1)
This day was probably the luckiest day in Pu Sangzhi’s life.
Starting from midnight, every minute and every second was spent with a smile.
Especially at the tail end of the day, she received a call from her father and got such good news.
The family’s debts were gone, and they no longer had to live in fear and trepidation.
Her father also began to recover and earnestly started a new venture.
What the future held, Pu Sangzhi did not consider.
Only now, only this moment...
Pu Sangzhi knew that her life had returned to peace.
The most difficult hurdle in their family had been overcome.
So it goes to show, there’s no hurdle in life that can’t be crossed.
As long as one persists in living, even significant problems can be gotten through.
After speaking with her father on the phone, Pu Sangzhi immediately shared this great news with Huo Feng and shared her joy with him.
...
At the same time, in a hotel in Shanghai, Pu Wenhua and Chen Huifen were packing up to return home.
Pu Wenhua had come to Shanghai in a hurry, without even a single piece of luggage, only bringing a feasibility plan, because he was prepared for an all-or-nothing gambit.
The chances of success were originally very low, so low that Pu Wenhua was essentially at his last stand and there was a good chance that negotiations would fail, he would be ridiculed, taken as a hostage, and wait for a ransom to be paid for his release.
Yet, against such low odds, the deal was eventually sealed.
Although burdened with greater pressure, pressure could be transformed into motivation, and Pu Wenhua would strive even harder in the future.
Because Pu Wenhua was bound for another province, Chen Huifen had gone with Xu Hui to a certain underground market today and scoured a lot of cheap clothes.
Now, she was busy packing for Pu Wenhua’s trip to another province.
"Not sure what the climate is like now in Shuangya Mountain, I’ve packed one thick piece of clothing, the rest are all for the autumn season. Wear these first, and if it’s not enough, you can buy more there."
After meticulous packing, Chen Huifen roughly organized the luggage, "I’ve bought a few packs of instant noodles for you to eat on the train. I dared not buy too much, afraid of spending money. Once you’re in Shuangya Mountain, keep your expenses to a minimum. We can’t waste a single penny more; our family owes too much debt."
"Yes, yes."
Pu Wenhua, having just finished the phone call with Pu Sangzhi, turned and approached Chen Huifen.
Just as he reached out his hand wanting to touch Chen Huifen, the room door was suddenly knocked.
Pu Wenhua had no choice but to withdraw his hand, passing behind Chen Huifen to open the door.
As soon as the door opened, there stood Ye Xi holding a bottle of red wine, smiling at him, "Uncle Pu, I want to have a drink with you. It’s not much of a wine, is that okay?"
"Of course."
Pu Wenhua smiled, "You’ve reached the age where you can drink with me, huh?"
Ye Xi also smiled, "I’ve grown up, Uncle Pu."
"Yes, yes."
Pu Wenhua smiled and nodded, then turned back and said to Chen Huifen in the room, "Huifen, I’m going to have a couple of drinks with Xiaoxi. Why don’t you go next door and have a chat with Hui sister?"
Chen Huifen put down the nearly ready luggage and instructed, "Drink less."
"Yes," Pu Wenhua agreed.
...
Thus, Pu Wenhua and Ye Xi started drinking red wine in the room.
After three rounds of drinking, Ye Xi, unable to hold his liquor, was flushed, with the sound of his heartbeat throbbing in his ears.
Watching Ye Xi turn into a ’red monkey’, Pu Wenhua couldn’t help but laugh, "You want to compete with Uncle Pu in drinking strength? My tolerance has been trained through many years of socializing, a bottle of red wine won’t put me under~"
At this point, Ye Xi was so drunk that he sat down on the floor, and Pu Wenhua joined him there, with only the bedside lamp on, its dim light making the atmosphere even more warm and soft.
"Uncle, a little more..."
Even though he was nearly unconscious from drinking, Ye Xi still made such a request without giving up.
Pu Wenhua indulged him, pouring a little more red wine into his cup, "Drink up, until you’ve had your fill. A man needs to drink a bit of alcohol to have some yang energy."
"Uncle..."
Ye Xi lifted his cup, took a small sip, and with a grimace said, "I think, I want to tell you some drunken ramblings..."
"Yeah. What do you want to say?"
Pu Wenhua turned his head, hooking his lip into a light smile, "Whatever you say, uncle will take it as drunk talk and not take it to heart."
"Uncle Pu..."
Ye Xi licked his lips, exhaling deeply, "I think, you should just tell me honestly, back when the company went bankrupt, amassed so much debt that shouldn’t have existed, and fell into such a state... it was all my dad’s doing, wasn’t it!"
His words were not of a questioning tone but of affirmation.
Uttering these words, Ye Xi’s unwavering conviction seemed to shock Pu Wenhua.
For a moment, Pu Wenhua was so choked up that he didn’t know how to respond to Ye Xi.
"Uncle, I want you to tell me the truth..."
Ye Xi took a deep breath and let it out heavily. His chest heaved, as if breathing was a difficult task.
"Uncle, I’ve been holding this in for a day... I really, really want to know the truth! I refuse to believe, and would rather die than believe, that someone as careful as you would let yourself get into this mess... It has to be him, right! It was him, wasn’t it!"
Within Ye Xi’s pupils was a vast expanse of desolation, yet there seemed to lurk a determination, just as his turbulent inner world was tangled but clear.
Pu Wenhua could hide things from him, but he would never lie to him.
Since he was already an adult and he wanted to know the truth, it was Pu Wenhua’s duty to tell him.
"If you want to know, then uncle won’t hide it from you anymore."
Pu Wenhua lifted his cup, downed half a glass of red wine in one gulp, and sighed deeply before he began to recount the years leading to the company’s decline.
"Ever since that woman appeared by your father’s side, he started to listen to me less and less. In executive meetings, when it came to certain decisions, we would each stick to our opinions, which led to many disagreements. So, to avoid friction with him, I often arranged business trips or took leave so that I could find time to visit you guys and help out the three of you. Heh..."
Pu Wenhua let out a chuckle, "It’s true when they say that trouble doesn’t form in a single day. The company’s bankruptcy can’t be attributed merely to the failure of a single collaboration. During those two years after we started having disagreements, the company frequently faced crises, each time just barely making a turnaround to keep on operating. Later on, that woman brought a major project proposal that looked, on paper, very profitable; if successful, it would allow us to expand into the northern market. Your father wanted to go ahead with it, I didn’t."
At that point, Pu Wenhua took a deep breath, his words heavy as he exhaled, "At the time, I also believed that the project was feasible. It was just that I loathed that woman—I knew that if the project succeeded, her position in our company would greatly rise, and she might even marry him. So I did everything I could to stop it, by all means refusing to give it the go-ahead. In the end, he put pressure on me through the company’s executives and the board, and the decision was made by a vote, of course, to go ahead... And in the end, after pouring a huge investment into the project, the government’s land approval documents were delayed, progress slowed, and the project was even at risk of stalling. At the most critical moment, that woman took off with the funds. A hundred million..."
Upon hearing this, Ye Xi, who was already drunk beyond reason, suddenly opened his eyes wide!
He felt his heartbeat speeding up, as if it was about to explode!
Ye Xi gasped, tears welling up, and beneath that stunned face a storm of emotions was brewing in the dark...
"We filed a police report, but it seemed that woman had fled overseas and couldn’t be found," said Pu Wenhua.
"Overseas is a haven for many criminals. Plus, at that time, the company had suffered such great losses that it could no longer operate normally. It was under those circumstances that your father took out several million from a loan company, to sustain the cash flow of other projects in the company..."
"Couldn’t he take out a loan from a bank?" Ye Xi’s trembling lips asked.
Pu Wenhua shook his head, "At the time, rumors of the company’s impending bankruptcy were widespread, and no bank would lend us money. In the end, the company went bankrupt, all assets were mortgaged by the bank. Houses, cars, all were taken. Your father still owed usurious debts, it was too much for him to bear, perhaps he also couldn’t withstand the blow of being cheated by that woman, so he jumped off a building. The next day, the loan company came to me, because I was the secondary guarantor."
"Bastard!"
Ye Xi cursed, furiously pounding the ground!
He knew it was this kind of situation, he knew it was his good-for-nothing father!
A fine listed company, once their combined assets were worth over a hundred million, and it ended up ruined by a woman!
The company was destroyed, the home was gone! And they had even dragged down someone else’s family!
Knowing all the truth, Ye Xi felt an unbearable surge of anger and guilt.
"He shouldn’t have come to Shanghai. He should have looked at himself and known who he is!"
Ye Xi gnashed his teeth, his eyes red with anger as he spat out, "He can’t withstand temptation! Money, status, power, beauty, any of these could lure him! Someone like him, he should never have come to the big city, he should’ve stayed in the village forever!"
"Xiaoxi..."
Pu Wenhua patted Ye Xi on the shoulder, "He has paid the price for this. I believe, when he left, he didn’t have it easy either. Let bygones be bygones, we’ve made it through. Shanghai, that magical city, is indeed full of temptations. What happened with your dad, it has also been a lesson for me. A man needs to have a sense of responsibility, to have a mind always ready to remain rational."
"Uncle..."
Ye Xi’s eyes, red and inflamed, locked onto his, his nose trembling slightly, "Our family owes you an apology..."
"And I owe you an apology too," said Pu Wenhua.
"For the sake of my family, you had to gamble with ten years of your life..."
That was right.
In this unfair agreement, Ye Xi put ten years of his career after graduation as a condition.
If, in the next five years, Pu Wenhua failed to achieve a return on the investment, then Ye Xi, upon graduating from his postgraduate studies, would have to work for the counterpart without compensation for ten years. During these ten years, he was under obligations to meet certain revenue benchmarks.
This was a contract for talent, and also the aspect in which the Pu family owed the Ye family the most during the negotiation...