Chapter 467: The more good stuff the better

Inside Su Hao's office at Fanghuan Investment.
"Chairman Su, this is another personnel list for Storm Entertainment."
Liang Haiyuan handed over a document.
"Another one?" Su Hao took it and raised an eyebrow.
"Yes, Chairman Su. I think... I understand how those spendthrifts at Storm Entertainment managed to drive themselves to a cash flow crisis."
Liang Haiyuan smiled wryly, his face clearly showing his astonishment.
"Their operations were outrageous. Their internal 'team' was larger than a reinforced company, and most of them were just coasting along."
Ever since Fanghuan Investment, like a god descending to earth, acquired the gaming giant Storm Entertainment, a massive and unprecedented purge had begun.
Its efficiency and ruthlessness were comparable to an industrial-grade meat grinder.
Each list Liang Haiyuan sent was a dense mass of names, a glaring crimson, resembling not documents but a blood-written roster of fallen soldiers.
The entire "Storm Rain Entertainment" was like a rotting giant, needing a thorough, radical overhaul.
Su Hao had never imagined that such a large, utterly useless team could lurk within a company, contributing nothing to its development and only capable of eating and defecating.
No wonder the operations were so atrocious, a bottomless pit; pouring more money in would only create a tiny ripple.
"But Chairman Su..." Liang Haiyuan's voice trembled. Watching Su Hao's swift strokes of the pen unleash another wave of bloodshed, he couldn't help but remind him,
"This list you approved... this is practically uprooting it.
At this rate, we won't even have enough manpower to maintain the game's basic operations. Isn't this... a bit too harsh?"
His words were not without merit.
It's a fact that the team in the rainstorm was bloated with incompetent and useless individuals.
But Su Hao's decisive and ruthless approach was also quite frightening.
The red pen in his hand was practically a scythe of death, leaving nothing but devastation in its wake; names on the list were crossed out in droves.
"Opportunity knocks but once. If we don't act now, when will we ever have another chance for a legitimate purge?"
Su Hao merely smiled calmly.
"To get this wrecked ship moving again, we must throw all the ballast into the sea to feed the turtles!
Besides, didn't I ask you to find a group of promising startups?
Their development teams can serve as the 'fresh blood' we need most right now."
"Ah, right! You're right!" Liang Haiyuan suddenly realized, quickly pulling out another document from behind him.
"Chairman Su, I've also brought the information on those startups; I was just about to report to you."
Su Hao's gaze shifted from the blood-soaked "death note" to this new list. Instantly, the world seemed to brighten, the air filled with the fragrance of money.
If the previous list was the Book of Life and Death of the Judge of Hell, then this one was practically the God of Wealth's Book of Fortune.
He had just been visually fatigued by the overwhelming red light, but now all he could see was a dazzling golden light that almost blinded him.
Several names on the list gleamed with a dazzling, ostentatious brilliance, like born geniuses, clearly destined to become future tech giants.
“How are those startups doing now?” Su Hao asked with interest.
“One word: disastrous. No, it should be said, extremely disastrous.” Liang Haiyuan’s tone carried a hint of schadenfreude.
“As you know, those old men at the Federal Reserve are like they’ve taken some kind of poison, raising interest rates like crazy, and all the hot money in the market has vanished overnight.
As a result, investors are short of funds, clutching their wallets tightly, nobody’s throwing money around.
Bank loans are out of the question, the barriers are sky-high.
So, the startup scene right now is a scene of utter devastation, with dozens, even hundreds, of companies going bankrupt and going into liquidation every day, like dumplings being dropped into a pot.”
Once upon a time, in the golden age of zero interest rates, the flood of capital fueled a frenzy of tech entrepreneurship, a time when even a pig could be blown away by the wind.
Countless amounts of hot money poured in, inflating the IT bubble to a dazzling, glittering spectacle.
However, when the tide receded, it revealed who was swimming naked.
When the global tech stock bubble burst, leaving behind a trail of destruction, these once-hyped startups, like punctured balloons, plummeted one after another, shattering into pieces.
Investors finally realized:
More than half of the so-called "high-tech startups" were, in essence, nothing more than elaborately packaged Ponzi schemes designed to defraud investors.
“But,” Liang Haiyuan’s tone shifted, his eyes gleaming with excitement,
“this ruin is precisely the best time to strike gold!
If we can find the real gems among these rubble, it will be a tremendous boost to our company.
Moreover, most of these companies are now at their wits' end, unable even to pay their employees' salaries. We can practically acquire them at rock-bottom prices!”
“Then, absorb all those top developers into our system?”
“Yes! Chairman Huang also attaches great importance to this, even personally mobilizing the strategic analysis team at headquarters to thoroughly investigate every worthwhile startup on the market!
After a carpet-bombing scan and evaluation, this list was compiled.
It can be said that every name on this list is the cream of the crop, the elite of the elite!”
I see.
Su Hao understood. No wonder the names on this list shone so brightly; they had undergone layers of “blessing” by the professional team at headquarters.
Huang Fengwen's level of seriousness regarding this matter was extraordinary.
After all, this concerned the game world where their guild brothers had fought and bled—their other "home"!
It absolutely could not be lost!
"..."
Su Hao said no more. His gaze slowly swept across the list, and he lightly touched it with his pen.
His intuition began to buzz, like a high-precision metal detector, accurately marking every "treasure" containing immense value, leaving none unmarked.
However... as he ticked off the items, he himself began to have doubts.
There were just too many good things here!
The number of companies with "Jinguang Dasheng" on the list was far greater than he had imagined.
So many that he even wondered if swallowing them all at once would cause him indigestion.
But then he relented.
To hell with it!
Good things, of course, the more the better!
When has his intuition ever been wrong?
That was his biggest trump card, his means of survival and strategic maneuvering!