Chapter 63: Heir
Chapter 63: Chapter 63: Heir
"I’m going to destroy my older brother!" Si Mingcheng dropped this murderous bombshell as an opening statement.
"Brother Gan, murder is illegal..."
"Get lost. I don’t mean it literally."
Thanks to Zhang Yan’s joke, the atmosphere lightened up a bit.
For the first time, Si Mingcheng spoke about his family background in detail. "Ouya Group is our family business."
Ouya Group was founded in 1995 and was a retail giant in the Northeast Region. Today, it covered multiple business sectors, including department stores, shopping malls, supermarkets, and electronic appliance stores, spreading across most of the major provinces and cities in the Northeast. The Ouya Mall was even hailed as one of the largest single-building shopping centers in the world.
Si Mingcheng had hidden his depths incredibly well to be one of the heirs to this colossal enterprise.
"From our grandparents’ generation, our family has been composed of extreme meritocrats," Si Mingcheng explained. "The winner takes all, and the losers are relegated to living as ordinary middle-class citizens."
Although being ordinary middle-class sounded pretty good, Zhang Yan now understood this feeling. It would be one thing if there was no hope of ownership at all—one could just take things lightly and drift along. But if that hope was once within reach, it was hard not to crave it. According to the future revealed by the system’s prompts, barring any accidents, Si Mingcheng would lose this battle for succession, lose all his resources, and become just another face in the crowd.
Zhang Yan thought silently as he continued listening.
"According to the rules, any outstanding descendant of the corresponding generation from all the branch families can participate in the battle for succession. However, in the past, this rule could only be treated as a joke."
Since the Si family had operated on a winner-takes-all basis in every generation, the other siblings became marginalized branches. In theory, their children were qualified to compete for the heir position of the next generation. However, due to the astronomical gap in educational and network resources, the development of their horizons was leagues apart. Because of this, every generation’s succession battle essentially came down to a contest between the Patriarch’s own children.
"But this generation is a bit different. Right now, there are two and a half people who are the most hopeful to claim victory," Si Mingcheng said. "My older brother, Si Mingxin, is three years older than me. He has the greatest comprehensive advantage and is basically leaving everyone in the dust.
"Si Mingzhan is two years older than me. She’s a natural-born business prodigy. If it weren’t for her branch family background, she wouldn’t lose to anyone."
The Si family’s evaluation for the heir mainly consisted of three criteria: business acumen, management ability, and network resources. After coming of age, each candidate would be granted the right to run a company. Picking an outstanding company from a long list of assets was a great test of their business sense and foresight. Following that, their year-round management and operation of the company would fully demonstrate their talent in administration. Before the final results were decided, all heirs could represent the Si family externally. Relying on this background, they had to accumulate as many high-quality connections as possible.
In the end, the most outstanding person would inherit everything.
"And the reason I can only be counted as a half right now is because of my older brother." Speaking of this, Si Mingcheng gritted his teeth.
Si Mingcheng did not go into too much detail about his Waterloo, but it was generally understood that a woman had been his downfall. Like Zhang Yan, Si Mingcheng had once let love cloud his judgment, only that woman was on a level countless times higher than Cheng Lu.
That woman was actually his older brother’s subordinate. She passed all of Si Mingcheng’s secrets and valuable information to him. As a result, the company Si Mingcheng managed teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and most of his connections were poached.
Zhang Yan hadn’t expected Si Mingcheng’s experiences to be so complicated. He leaned back in his chair. "So, Brother Gan, you want to defeat your brother and take back everything that belongs to you?"
This sounded a bit like a melodramatic urban novel.
"No, the gap between my brother and me is too vast, and getting backstabbed by a woman has already caused me to lose a ton of points.
"However, even though I don’t have much hope left, Si Mingzhan has gained the support of almost all the branch families. Her chances of winning aren’t low.
"I want to drag my brother down and help Si Mingzhan win."
Hmm, why did this feel even more melodramatic? But it did seem kind of interesting.
Zhang Yan downed his almost flat cola in one gulp. "Brother Gan, after saying all this, how can I help you?"
"Zhang Yan, I don’t know exactly how much wealth you’ve inherited, and I won’t ask. Everyone has their own secrets.
"But I hope you can help me with this matter. Of course, you definitely won’t be helping for free. There are massive profits involved in this, and I wouldn’t mind if you swallowed them all up.
"It’s just that, to pull this off, I need to know your approximate financial strength."
Zhang Yan let out an airy burp.
His financial strength was genuinely hard to describe. While Brother Tongzi was indeed a transcendent existence and he was a tycoon with a promising future, right now, the usable funds on hand were only a little over four million. In a matter involving the succession battle of the Ouya Group, this was a drop in the bucket.
But he couldn’t just use empty words to make Si Mingcheng believe he would be a badass in the future. He pondered for a moment and thought of his best track record at this current stage.
"Brother Gan, have you heard the name Ren Jintian?"
"The chairman of the Ren Group?"
"Yes, that’s him.
"Today, I went to Bai City for matters regarding Chi Xinyue’s family. I coincidentally ran into Brother Ren, who was eager to sell a whole street of retail storefronts.
"I conveniently spent ten million to buy it and gave it to Chi Xinyue’s father as a symbolic bride price."
Si Mingcheng raised an eyebrow. There was no need for Zhang Yan to brag about something whose authenticity could be verified with a casual inquiry. However, the thought of spending ten million in a bottom-tier small city to buy an entire street, just to give an explanation to the family of a girl he wasn’t going to marry... That was truly...
"Sure enough, we’re the same kind of people." Si Mingcheng shook his head and smiled. "I just hope you don’t end up experiencing what I did."
"Don’t worry, Brother Gan. I can handle things at this level."
What Zhang Yan meant was romantic relationships, while Si Mingcheng obviously interpreted it as the ten million in wealth.
"I have a good grasp of your situation now." Si Mingcheng let out a heavy sigh of relief.
Almost everyone around him now was under Si Mingxin’s control, and his "friends" were basically all Si Mingxin’s friends. His family’s rule dictated that one had to finish university. Normally speaking, if someone wanted to compete for the heir position, they would have to start devoting themselves entirely to company management right after graduation.
He had been forced into a corner where he needed to pursue a useless master’s degree in art, pretending to be decadent and broken, just to make Si Mingxin focus more of his attention on Si Mingzhan. It really left him feeling breathless!
Now that he had Zhang Yan as a surprise trump card, he could plan properly. Feeling relaxed, he was also in the mood for some jokes. "You called Ren Jintian ’Brother Ren’ just now? Do you know that he’s Ren Junfei’s father? When the time comes, I’ll have to egg Junfei on and make him call you ’Uncle’!"
"HAHAHA, that sounds good to me!"