After touring the top floor, they finally entered Xu Jianqiang’s presidential office. Xiao Liang stood before the broad glass window, looking down at Dongzhou’s low, sprawling cityscape.

Only a few buildings rose above the rest, and even those were only forty or fifty meters tall.

At that moment, Xiao Liang felt more clearly than ever how far behind Dongzhou’s urban development still was in the 1990s.

He sat down on the soft leather sofa, accepted an iced Coke from Xu Jianqiang’s secretary, Zhou Hua, and said to Xu Jianqiang,

“Credit is so tight right now that I doubt we’ll see a policy reversal in the next three to five years. If Fanhua Construction wants to keep chasing projects that make tens or hundreds of millions a year, I won’t be able to offer much advice. But if President Xu doesn’t mind making fuller use of the team and resources you already have, without tying up too much capital, I might be able to toss out a few ideas that could earn you three to five million a year.”

“Oh?” Xu Jianqiang smiled. “I’ve been looking for a chance all month to invite you to Xinhuatong. I was hoping for exactly this kind of lesson.”

If Xinhuatong Tower was ultimately completed and all its units sold, the project was expected to generate twenty to thirty million yuan in profit.

For this era, that was an astonishing figure.

But profits that high would not be realized in two or three years. From development and construction to final sales, it might take five or six years. If the property market performed poorly, the cycle would be even longer.

The longer the digestion cycle, the higher the operating and financing costs, and the thinner the profit.

Under optimistic conditions, averaged out, Fanhua might earn only three to four million yuan a year from Xinhuatong Tower.

How could Xu Jianqiang possibly think three to five million a year was a small number?

Xiao Liang said,

“Dongzhou’s urban development lags behind Xijiang and the provincial capital, but it’s still growing quickly. Quite a few state-owned factories in the city will gradually relocate to the development zone as the city expands, which means their old factory sites will inevitably be vacated. At the same time, compared with Xijiang and Moling, Dongzhou still lacks all kinds of comprehensive and specialized professional markets—small commodities, hardware and electrical goods, building materials, home renovation—as well as large entertainment, cultural, and dining venues where residents can gather and spend. Overall, Dongzhou’s commercial landscape is far behind that of first- and second-tier cities. Before credit loosens, it may be difficult for you to secure large loans, but you already have a mature tenant recruitment and operations team. You might consider starting from there.”

“Renovation, not demolition and rebuilding?” Xu Jianqiang’s eyes lit up.

In Xijiang, small-commodity trading clusters had first formed spontaneously along several busy roads, but street vending badly affected the environment and nearby residents.

The Xijiang municipal government then attracted investment to build the Zijiang Road Wholesale Market, guiding merchants off the streets and indoors. The result had been excellent.

With Fanhua’s current cash position, acquiring land and building a brand-new wholesale market was unrealistic. But many people had not yet realized that selecting suitable old factory sites for renovation was the fastest, cheapest entry point into that field.

Xiao Liang nodded and explained in detail. “Buying land after demolition and rebuilding a commercial project would generate higher profits and look more upscale. But it requires a massive capital investment, and development can easily take two or three years. Add tenant recruitment and property sales, and the total digestion cycle becomes hard to predict. If you can secure a suitable vacant factory site on the edge of the main urban area and convert it for commercial use, you can control investment, shorten the construction and sales cycle, and quickly put your tenant recruitment and operations team to work. In fact, Fanhua doesn’t even need to buy the entire site. Leasing it would be enough to operate.”

“Good. Very good!”

Xu Jianqiang slapped his thigh.

“This alone is worth several toasts tonight. Let’s find a place for dinner now. Don’t call me stingy for not hosting you here today. This place is purely for show, and I’ll admit there was some youthful vanity in it when I built it. Business has been slow this year, and Fanhua has had to tighten expenses everywhere. We haven’t used this place once this year. Besides, Le You is stubborn. I still haven’t managed to talk him around properly, so it’s better to drink separately. Running into him would only ruin the mood.”

Xiao Liang suspected that in his previous life, Xu Jianqiang and Le You had soon parted ways.

Earlier, Xu Jianqiang had shown them only his exclusive top-floor space, not Fanhua Construction’s offices below. Hearing him say this now made it even clearer.

Some suggestions could be given to Xu Jianqiang, but there was no need for Le You to be involved.

That was normal. When Xu Jianqiang first arrived in Dongzhou, perhaps even a powerful outsider had needed a local snake like the Le family to smooth things over. But after three years of putting down roots in Dongzhou and building his own team, if Le You and the Le family behind him were not good partners, Xu would naturally need a way to shake them off.

A wise bird chose the right tree. If Xu Jianqiang didn’t know how to choose, Xiao Liang would not have thought so highly of him.

Xiao Liang smiled and showed that he understood.

Xu Jianqiang brought along his secretary, Zhou Hua, and two core assistants—the two vice presidents currently responsible for development, construction, tenant recruitment, and operations at Fanhua Construction. They took two cars to Dongzhou Hotel.

Dongzhou Hotel was on the same street as Xinhuatong Tower, less than two kilometers away.

Before the 1990s, its sixteen-story main building had long been a landmark in Dongzhou’s urban area. Only in the past two years had three or five newer buildings, including Xinhuatong, surpassed it in height.

Inside the luxury private room on the top floor of Dongzhou Hotel, Xiao Liang did not hold back. He spoke at length about his judgment of how Dongzhou’s various urban commercial formats would evolve, with the focus naturally on the possibilities of converting old urban factories into commercial spaces.

Dongzhou’s economy had lagged behind Xijiang over the past two years, let alone developed regions in Europe and America, but in its early years, it had still been considered a relatively well-developed domestic industrial area with a fairly complete range of industrial sectors.

In 1984, when the prefecture and city merged, more than forty percent of Dongzhou’s factories—including those in its counties—were concentrated within the main urban area.

That year, Dongzhou became one of the coastal development cities and established an economic development zone to attract investment. Township enterprises also began to flourish. But it was only in recent years that the municipal Party committee and government had begun pushing factories out of the urban area to free up more space for city development.

In 1994, China had neither the concept nor the economic strength for large-scale new city district development.

The factory sites that could be converted commercially would not only serve the entertainment, dining, and shopping needs of the city’s 300,000 residents. What Xiao Liang cared about more was the underdeveloped logistics and trade channels between urban and rural areas. Outside department stores and traditional commercial-material enterprises, there was a need to invest in and build a number of more specialized wholesale markets.

Dongzhou’s early industry had been dominated by light industry. On the edge of the main city, there were several textile and timber-processing factories with high-ceilinged workshops. Such buildings were the easiest to renovate. If they happened to be near main suburban roads, their value was even higher.

Next, the municipal Party committee and government would further accelerate the relocation of urban factories. If those factory buildings were not converted, their excellent locations would be carved up within the next two or three years.

Xiao Liang did not currently have the strength to take a share. Nor did he want to get too deeply involved with city-level affairs in the short term. It was better to give Xu Jianqiang a strong push now.

So over dinner, Xiao Liang not only discussed the gap between Dongzhou and first- and second-tier cities in commercial development, as well as the room to catch up over the next three to five years, he also discussed the city’s existing development plans and possible future adjustments. He was generous in evaluating one vacated urban factory site after another.

He even pointed out the three or five most valuable plots and analyzed them in detail, stopping just short of writing Fanhua Construction’s project research reports by hand.

Xu Jianqiang might not be famous among ordinary people in Dongzhou, but the restaurant manager at Dongzhou Hotel knew perfectly well who the head of Fanhua Construction was. Even though it was past regular business hours, the manager personally waited outside the private room with service staff, attentive to every need.

The dinner lasted until eleven. Xiao Liang had spoken until his mouth was dry. During the meal, he also received a pager message from Yuan Wenhai and learned that the county public security bureau had delayed until eleven before approving the administrative detention of Zhou Bin and the others.

Seeing that Xu Jianqiang and his three subordinates still looked reluctant to stop, Xiao Liang ended the meal anyway.

“That’s enough of President Xu’s liquor for today. I’ll treat you another day. Gu Peijun and Zhang Wei still need to return to Yunshe.”

“Next time, I’m still treating. Don’t fight me for it,” Xu Jianqiang said with a smile. “I’ll gather some more information, and in a few days I’ll inevitably need you to help check things over. From today onward, consider yourself a consultant for Fanhua. For every dinner where you blow smoke for three hours, I’ll pay you a ten-thousand-yuan consulting fee. Don’t think it’s too little. Fanhua’s funds really are tight right now. I won’t hide that from my own people.”

“I can be listed as a consultant at Fanhua, sure, but forget the fee,” Xiao Liang said with a smile. “Do I look like someone who’ll be short of thirty or fifty thousand in the future? Besides, I know some of this because my father works in the municipal Party history office and my brother has worked at the municipal Economic and Trade Commission these past two years. I’ve had some exposure through them…”

Xiao Liang gave a slight hint about his family background. If Xu Jianqiang cared, he would investigate on his own.

“All right,” Xu Jianqiang said crisply.

His mind was still fully occupied with the idea of converting old factories into comprehensive wholesale markets.

Everyone had drunk quite a bit, and none of them had brought drivers, so they left their cars in Dongzhou Hotel’s parking lot and took taxis separately.

After parting ways and getting into the cab, Gu Peijun watched the yellow streetlights spill through the window and said emotionally, “Now I finally understand why you don’t take people like Fan Chunjiang and Zhou Jianqi seriously. This President Xu has quite the background, doesn’t he?”

Xu Jianqiang and his subordinates would never advertise their background openly. But seeing that Fanhua could independently develop a commercial building on Xinhuatong’s scale, Gu Peijun could certainly guess that Xu Jianqiang’s backing was far beyond the reach of someone like him, a village Party secretary.

Although Dongzhou Hotel was not directly a reception department under the municipal Party committee or government, it was a city-owned enterprise of sufficiently high rank. Its department manager would not personally offer such attentive service to just anyone. And the setup Xu Jianqiang had on Xinhuatong’s top floor was something Gu Peijun could not even have imagined in his dreams.

In Gu Peijun’s eyes, as long as Xiao Liang was given an opportunity, he could impress a figure at Xu Jianqiang’s level. Why would he still need to fear Fan Chunjiang, Zhou Jianqi, Xiao Yujun, or anyone behind them, when Xiao Yujun would have to stay in prison for at least two or three more years?

Xiao Liang smiled. If Fan Chunjiang and Zhou Jianqi were isolated individuals, he naturally would not need to fear them. Or if he did not intend to develop in Dongzhou and had no desire to seek justice, he could simply leave Dongzhou behind and ignore Fan Chunjiang, Zhou Jianqi, Xiao Yujun, and the corrupt nest of people colluding behind them.

The problem was that deep down, he still had too much unwillingness in him.

He wanted his family to truly get back on track. He wanted the place where he had grown up to develop better. He wanted kind people to avoid being hurt.

That meant things would never be as simple as imagined.

“We can handle Zhou Jianqi and whatever stands behind him,” Xiao Liang said, speaking directly to Zhang Wei, who had been stunned into silence. “But Zhou Bin mixes with all kinds of people. He has very few scruples. You need to be careful on your end too. Don’t leave anything they can use against you. Take out those slot machines in the cultural center lobby. They don’t earn much anyway. Old Yuan won’t take bribes from you. In fact, he was already planning to deal with those machines in the next few days. It’s best if you handle them yourself now.”

“Got it. I’ll shut them down as soon as I get back tonight,” Zhang Wei said with a nod.