My autobiography is definitely not a tragedy!
Chapter 569 - 370: I’m Talking About 3 Billion

Chapter 569: Chapter 370: I’m Talking About 3 Billion

The next day, Su City, Guanqian Street.

Meng Lang arrived at the entrance of a small alley.

"Little Meng bro!" Ah Xing, who had been waiting there, saw Meng Lang and immediately jogged over.

"Ah Xing, your place here is quite out of the way, isn’t it?" Meng Lang looked around and laughed.

This area neighbored a cultural tourism street, and the surrounding buildings looked like they’d seen better days, with a hint of an urban village.

"Hehe! When we first came to Su City, we started out by collecting debts for people.

The busier the area, the tighter the police control, so Brother Biao decided to set up our... oh no, I mean our company’s address here.

Little Meng bro, this way."

Ah Xing led Meng Lang through several twists and turns to a rather large three-story building.

As soon as Meng arrived, he was startled by the scene before him.

He saw two rows of about a dozen men in black suits and sunglasses standing neatly at the entrance.

As soon as they saw Ah Xing bringing someone over, they immediately bent at a 90-degree angle without saying a word!

"Hello Little Meng bro!"

The uniformed voices instantly gave Meng Lang a start.

"Uh..."

He looked somewhat speechlessly at Brother Biao who was leading the welcoming formation.

"You know... Brother Biao, I’m just dropping by, it doesn’t need to be this grand..."

"How can that be! You’re my Brother Cheng Biao, and even more so, my benefactor. Even this seems too humble to me!

Everyone listen up! From now on, you must treat him with the same respect as you would me, as if he’s your big brother!

My words can be ignored, but if anyone dares to disobey Little Meng’s words, don’t blame me, Cheng Biao, for not being sentimental!"

"Yes! Boss!"

After giving his spiel, Cheng Biao earnestly moved closer to Meng Lang.

"Brother, what do you think of my little brothers here?

Since we are starting a company, we naturally can’t be as disorganized as before. To turn this rabble into a regular army, I even uniformed their attire!

Stepping out in these, the high-end feel of bodyguards jumps right out, doesn’t it?"

Well...

I’m not sure about the high-end feel of bodyguards, but the high-end feel of the black market seems to have increased a lot...

Meng Lang internally remarked.

"Cough! Having so many people follow me around makes me uncomfortable... maybe we should... disperse?"

"You heard him, disperse!" Cheng Biao immediately turned around to command.

The welcome entourage quickly disappeared.

Without the grand entrance feel of a mob boss, Meng Lang finally let out a sigh of relief and turned to look at the metal plaques hanging on either side of the entrance...

On the left was "Wanwu Security Services Co., Ltd."

On the right was "Su City Welfare Bag Financial Information Service Co., Ltd."!

Well... With this location and environment, it sure has the flavor of a shell company...

"Welfare Bag? Why choose this name?" Meng Lang pointed at the company name and asked.

"Master Meng, didn’t you say it yourself? This time we’re doing good deeds that accumulate virtue.

Since it’s about doing good, we definitely can’t think about making money!

I, Cheng Biao, am treating this as a public welfare!

’Welfare Bag’ implies we’re handing out welfare to everyone! Oh, and I think the name ’Liang Shanbo’ that we picked for our gym is quite good, too.

Liang Shanbo and Welfare Bag...

In one hand I hold righteous generosity, in the other, I scatter wealth like nothing! That describes me, Cheng Biao, doesn’t it?"

Cheng Biao thumped his chest with resounding thuds.

"Clap clap clap!" Ah Xing applauded to show his support.

Meng Lang was stunned speechless.

How come after just a few days, this guy seems to have gotten even more self-deceiving?

Leading others in through the door but expecting them to understand by themselves? What exactly have you gone through...

But fortunately, for both the security company and this Welfare Bag, he never intended to make any high profits from them.

The requirement isn’t high, don’t drag the feet, being self-sufficient is good enough.

"Come on! Brother, let me show you around inside."

Cheng Biao led the way in and as they entered, they saw a statue of Guan Gong placed prominently in the central hall, with a layout that had a southern regional flair.

After touring the place and going up to the second floor, they reached some rather simple offices.

"Here, this is the temporary office space for our Welfare Bag.

We’ve only just erected a framework, but all the paperwork and everything is in order, just waiting for your next instructions."

Cheng Biao thought for a moment, hesitated for a short while then added.

"However... the competition in this industry is fierce right now, the interest rates offered in the market are very high and we don’t have any projects that can generate profits. Finding a reliable financing project is also not something that can be negotiated in a short time..."

"To be honest, even though we’ve given out loans before, you know how we’re a bit clueless about this internet stuff."

Cheng Biao scratched his head.

As a platform, the most important thing is to find investors and financing projects.

Investors are easy to deal with, as high interest always attracts a crowd of "risk investors."

But good financing projects are hard to find.

Those on the market are either targeting people’s principal with all sorts of pretexts, or they have such poor profitability that they can’t support high interest rates.

So, finding investors is easy, but good projects are hard to come by.

"Hehe! I know, that’s why I’m here to solve your problem," Meng Lang said with a laugh.

Indeed, his main purpose for coming today was to "raise funds."

Gaming brings in quick money, but which could be faster than borrowing?

His initial reason for having Cheng Biao and the other set up the company, apart from foiling Xu Jingsong’s scamming scheme, was also to fund his own projects.

The country is encouraging private capital to go into high-tech. It wouldn’t make sense not to use such a great tool as a "money mover."

Internet finance is inherently a useful tool.

Pity that it gradually became a tool for some greedy people to amass wealth...

"Where’s the company’s server room?"

"Over there."

Cheng Biao pointed to a small room nearby.

"Hmm! Open up the platform’s operational backend for me," Meng Lang directed, pointing at the computer in front of him.

As soon as Cheng Biao launched the operational interface, Meng Lang took out a USB drive and plugged it into the computer’s port.

The next moment, various code pop-ups appeared on the entire computer screen, and the interface began to change.

Cheng Biao and Ah Xing were completely clueless, yet they felt it was impressively advanced.

"Xiao Meng, what are you doing?"

"Oh! Nothing much, just giving the company’s system an upgrade, running a virus scan, setting up a firewall, upgrading the webpage of the platform, and other routine operations like batch processing." Meng Lang replied with a chuckle.

"Just by inserting a USB drive, all that can be done?

A couple of days ago, those software guys were tinkering here for days, just to get the system fixed up."

Ah Xing scratched his head, somewhat puzzled.

"That’s low-tech; this is high-tech, smart and foolproof," Meng Lang laughed.

"You don’t need to worry about the system maintenance, software upgrades and all that anymore; it can all be handled online from now on."

Both men were somewhat skeptical at first, but after seeing the drastic changes on the interface, they were truly astonished.

"It has become so much better-looking, and it seems a lot faster, too..."

"Those are just improvements to the user experience. The most critical aspects are still the interest rates, projects, and promotion..."

"So, what interest rate should we offer?" Cheng Biao asked.

"20%!"

"Uhh..." Cheng Biao and Ah Xing were stunned for a moment.

"A hundred... twenty percent? Are you setting it that high?"

If they gave out 20 points, that would almost require earning two points of interest – which is equivalent to 24 points – to cover the costs and risks...

Where in the world could you find a business offering two points of interest? That was almost certainly monopolistic and exorbitant profit territory!

Did Master Meng have such high-quality projects on hand?

"Yeah!" Meng Lang nodded.

He set the rate that high partly because the market competition was fierce, with the average closing in on 10% and the highest nearly reaching an unbelievable 50%.

Secondly, he was indeed in urgent need of money.

As for the projects... Meng had them all planned out long ago.

Gao Yuan had already prepared all the necessary documents. She established the sole financing project, using all assets, including Changqing Biological and the villa under Gao Yuan’s name, as collateral.

This method of using assets as collateral to secure funding for business expansion, doesn’t it have a familiar ring?

Those real estate enterprises were rolling like snowballs, using leverage to pry into capital...

Except they can get money from banks due to indescribable reasons.

Ordinary companies like Changqing Biological had to strive to find their own way.

"Looks like Brother Meng has some good projects in hand..."

Although Cheng Biao was surprised, he had seen his share of rough times and was considered seasoned.

Taking two points of interest wasn’t anything new to him; if the scale was small, he could consider it as advertising...

"So, how much are we planning to raise from the market?" Cheng Biao asked.

"For the first round... let’s start with 30," Meng Lang suggested.

"30 million, huh... No problem! It’ll be good for everyone to get their feet wet," Cheng Biao said with a nod and a smile.

million? Is that worth my taking a trip here personally?

Bending over to pick something up wouldn’t even take that much effort!

"I was talking about 30 billion..."

Cheng Biao: "..."

Ah Xing: "..."