Chapter 272: Liu Lingyun’s reques (1/2)

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Bai Xiaofei didn’t meet with the nine bosses immediately as Chu Qingtian requested, but had him shoulder the pressure for now and arrange for them to rest until tomorrow.

Bai Xiaofei could fool normal merchants all he wanted, but facing these kinds of elites from the big groups, meeting them unprepared could possibly mean throwing all efforts down the drain, just like how he had been totally crushed by Chu Qingtian before…

Therefore, Bai Xiaofei planned to use that afternoon and night to catch up on the information on these nine groups, and the ‘teacher’ who was going to fill him in on this overlooked lesson was naturally the one who wasn’t participating – the Babel Merchant House.

If someone asked you who knew you best, the answer would definitely be your opponent. The Babel Merchant House was the long-time rival of two-thirds of the nine businesses. Moreover, Zhuang Ming and co. were more than happy to help out Bai Xiaofei at this time. In Bai Xiaofei’s words, they were now grasshoppers tied to the same rope. The more he earned, the further the Babel Merchant House would be away from danger.

To this end, the three people Zhuang Ming recommended really spared no effort to teach Bai Xiaofei, afraid to miss any important points. It was so intense that when Bai Xiaofei left, he felt like he had been competing with those merchant groups for a dozen years!

The nine big merchant groups started up in their own different ways. Just as the Babel Merchant House relied mainly on gambling stalls, the rest had their own distinguishing features. However, they also never limited themselves to those features and they extended their reach into various fields as time passed. Consequently, it was competition among the nine groups instead of each minding their own field in peace, so fierce to the point that there were members of every group being quietly assassinated every year…

In a nutshell, the competition among the nine merchant groups was far more intense than Bai Xiaofei had imagined.

Apart from the competition among the nine major merchant groups, Bai Xiaofei also had the other three who were coming basically figured out.

The Hundred Flavor House and the Thousand Aroma Restaurant were a pair of old rivals whose relationship was just like KFC and McDonald's. Where there was one, there must be the other. These two both followed the high-end route and covered all major cuisines on the continent. Like a copy-paste from Starnet, the situation in the other parts of the continent was either the Hundred Flavor House had the upper hand or the Thousand Aroma Restaurant had the upper hand.

This seesaw battle had lasted for hundreds of years!

However, one thing that couldn’t be denied was that this kind of competition also forced the two to keep improving, thus leaving other restaurants far behind. So, sometimes it wasn’t a bad thing to have an equal opponent.

As for the last one – the Phoenix Cry Pavilion, it was a legend.

The first leader of the Phoenix Cry Pavilion was a Starnet graduate, and she was the top in the Blossom Ranking of her time. Under her leadership, what had been a small street performing group back then had become today's colossus.

After that, the Phoenix Cry Pavilion seemed to have an unspoken tradition: anyone who took over as head of the group must be the No.1 of Starnet’s Blossom Ranking, but this requirement was really a bit high, that was why the Phoenix Cry Pavilion had only changed three heads so far. The current leader was about the same age as Lei Min. This was also an important reason why they sent someone this time. They needed a new leader! And even if they couldn’t find a new leader, it was still a good thing to replenish their reserve troops.

So, although tomorrow's meeting hadn’t come yet, the degree of excitement was palpable. Even Bai Xiaofei was starting to look forward to it!

Nursing a heavy head as he returned to the Demon of Illusions, Bai Xiaofei was going to share the joy with Chu Liuyun and the others and then go straight to rest, but unexpectedly, someone had been waiting for him there all night.

It was Lu Lingyun.

Originally, Liu Lingyun still had time to struggle. He really hadn’t lied when he told Bai Xiaofei that the headquarter inspector would take at least two weeks. However, no one could have predicted that the movement from Starnet would push up the date by more than ten days!

The current Thousand Aroma Restaurant compared with the Hundred Flavor House was like earth and heaven, so an assessment was simply not needed. If it weren’t that Liu Lingyun learned the reason why the inspector came early, and that the reason also had something to do with him, he would have packed up, ready to scram already.

So now, Bai Xiaofei was truly his last lifeline!