Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Six: Nan Wei Starts His Job

“So… let’s first check his overall situation.”

After hesitating for a long time, Xiao Yu finally arrived at this conclusion.

Yan Jin’s eyes darkened for a few moments. Then, he dipped his head in agreement.

“Got it. You can count on me.”

…….

Half a year had already passed since YL’s last mass recruitment phase. According to the original plans, the next round of recruitment should have been well underway. But because of the repeated problems Yan Jin had encountered, this task had been repeatedly delayed and delayed. By this point, it was simpler to just delay a little more to university graduation season.

Nevertheless, the timing actually suited YL quite well. It matched up with university career fairs, so they could recruit a group of new graduates.

Recently, YL’s reputation had grown by leaps and bounds along with their finances, resources, and overall industry strength. The human resources department had started to grow restless; no longer could they be satisfied with inexperienced greenhorns. They had begun thinking of poaching some of the industry’s leading experts. That is, up until Xiao Yu had joined.

Putting aside Xiao Yu’s reputation and repeated victories as Mr. Mystery, YL would have already been wild with joy after successfully recruiting a former SI chief designer. Although Xiao Yu’s contract terms would have been enough to attract three similarly outstanding designers, the high price was undoubtedly well worth it. One needed to look no further than YL’s recent development and financial success to understand this.

With Xiao Yu’s talent and experience, YL’s design department was now considered among the industry’s finest. In terms of their overall strength, the pressure lightened dramatically. However, they were somewhat understaffed; as the now number one jewelry design corporation in City S, YL had to fulfill a neverending rush of business collaboration requests and purchase orders. The only person with energy to spare was He Xinjia because an entire design team worked behind her. At most, all she needed to do was to communicate the design requirements more frequently. However, it was precisely because she was only a designer in title that she couldn’t take things too far. It wasn’t worth it if others began to have suspicions.

It could be said that recruiting needed to be their top priority.

As YL’s cornerstone, Xiao Yu had to personally handle many issues that spanned across a wide spectrum of both scope and complexity. It was much different from his time at SI when he had only needed to focus on designing blueprints that satisfied the design requirements. He hadn’t needed to worry about any of the other logistics; they had all been handled by Lin Zhou. At first glance, this had seemed like a huge favor from Lin Zhou. However, this was actually one method to isolate Xiao Yu. What if Xiao Yu interacted too much with the higher-ups and won their favor? This was a necessary precaution against Yan Yixuan’s secret disciple.

Now, there were many things that Xiao Yu needed to relearn, as well as many tasks that Xiao Yu didn’t fully understand. Still, Xiao Yu wasn’t discouraged at all. He had a feeling of being wholeheartedly accepted by the corporation for his achievements and a feeling that he had been entrusted with the company’s mission. This powerful motivation caused him to forget any of his fatigue. He wished he had a hundred twenty percent of his energy to dedicate his all for work in these few days.

Although the amount of work had increased, Yan Jin always forcefully order at Xiao Yu to rest whenever Xiao Yu spent too long sitting in front of the computer or with his head lowered in thought. Under Chairman Yan’s twenty-four hour supervision, Xiao Yu was frequently dragged away from work for afternoon tea. Yan Jin had directly canceled projects in spite of Xiao Yu’s protests after finding out that Xiao Yu was anxious from being unable to meet deadlines. As a result, in order to prevent Yan Jin’s interference, Xiao Yu did his utmost to raise his efficiency. After a while, Xiao Yu developed a habit of completing the most he possibly could using the least amount of time.

In the end, Xiao Yu had a lot more work to do here at YL as compared to at SI.

On the other hand, working through the night was entirely impossible now. Whenever Xiao Yu gave the slightest inkling of wanting to work at night, Yan Jin became a human alarm clock. Every half an hour, he’d remind Xiao Yu of his promise of “just another thirty minutes”.

Of course, this wasn’t the primary reason for Xiao Yu to yield. If Yan Jin really was only reporting the time, Xiao Yu could have easily extended the interval and said, “I only need another eight hours before going to sleep.” The important point was that if Xiao Yu didn’t sleep, neither will Yan Jin.

This self-harm strategy had a one hundred percent success rate and a one hundred percent utilization rate. Naive and soft-hearted as he was, Xiao Yu was always moved by Chairman Yan’s smooth displays of “struggling not to fall asleep”. Xiao Yu would then obediently walk right into Yan Jin’s plans and go to sleep on time.

More than once, Xiao Yu had thought that Yan Jin was an extremely unsuitable chairman of a large corporation, carefree as he was. But when he recalled of how he usually couldn’t find any trace of Zhou Jinrong at all, he then felt that it was already pretty good that everyone could easily find their Chairman during work hours.

As for the YL’s recruitment, the original plan was for Xiao Yu to just provide some suggestions based on his expertise and not be too involved in the process itself. After all, his expertise wasn’t in speaking and business relations. It wasn’t a wise choice for him to interview candidates; neither did the human resources department want him to. They were concerned that they would attract more fans of Mr. Mystery than serious applicants.

However, Xiao Yu not being too involved was only the original plan.

Now, because of one person in particular, Xiao Yu was much more concerned with the entire interview process.

That person, who had already scheduled to come in long before the large recruitment fair, was Nan Wei.

When Yan Jin had received news that Nan Wei was finally free of his other responsibilities, he’d glanced at his calendar and immediately made the decision to have Nan Wei go through the motions at their upcoming recruitment fair. This way, Nan Wei would be “joining through honorable and fair procedures”. There wouldn’t be any reason to doubt YL’s reputation of never opening a back door for applicants.

Nan Wei had no objections to Yan Jin’s arrangements. Ever since he was a child, he had never doubted Yan Jin’s decisions. On the contrary, Xiao Yu felt that engaging in such deception only made their intentions more obvious. He looked upon Yan Jin’s schemes with disdain and scorned all of Yan Jin’s hard work. Instead, Xiao Yu carried out his own plans and searched for as much information as available about their applications process. He was prepared to help Nan Wei directly compete with his own strength against the other applicants so that Nan Wei would actually enter YL through the standard channels.

……

The day that Nan Wei officially started work was the same day that Liu Ye packed his luggage to fly overseas.

With the battle that had been brewing for so long almost upon them, Liu Ye had finally picked a side. Yan Jin’s most powerful secret weapon could be best utilized in Country M, where Yan Jin’s influence was much more stable.

Liu Ye had long guessed that Yan Jin wouldn’t sell him a favour for nothing. Thus, when Liu Ye had “developed a serious illness that needed to be treated overseas”, he had no second thoughts whatsoever. Instead, he’d held Nan Wei close to him for an entire night as “atonement” for leaving him.

In spite of Nan Wei’s verbal protests, Nan Wei was actually quite accommodating and played along in light of their upcoming long-term separation.

Nan Wei had never been a pretentious person. Once he’d sorted out his own thoughts and desires, he wasn’t one to deny reality.

They loved each other, so they couldn’t leave each other. But because they loved each other, they had to leave each other.

Nan Wei had come very close to losing his dearest childhood friend and his lifetime partner. Their treasured happiness together now seemed normal but had actually overcome many trials.

Not long ago, Nan Wei had chosen to leave home partly to escape the forced marriage but also partly to avoid Liu Ye’s confession. He had thought that he would have plenty of time to consider these things, but he hadn’t expected that the Nan Family wouldn’t give him such an opportunity. Citing their family’s best interests, they hadn’t permitted him to have any say in the matter. As such, he’d only spent three days with Yan Jin before being brought home.

Once he’d returned home, his uncle’s family had threatened to move his mother’s grave to force him to submit to the marriage.

Nan Wei hadn’t gotten any sleep that night. He’d stood in the patio gazing up at the stars until daybreak, when he’d finally realized what he hadn’t realized for the past half month—what he truly desired.

Unfortunately, it was too late.

The marriage had already become a foregone conclusion .

He’d never gotten a chance to say goodbye to Liu Ye. He’d feared that he’d never have this opportunity.

After that, he’d boarded the plane and headed to the church with an ashen heart.

Throughout the process, Nan Wei had become a mindless unresisting puppet. As his right hand was enveloped by that familiar touch, he’d even felt that he was in some dream-like fantasy.

Would reality really be like a children’s fairy tale with a perfect turn of events to reach a happy ending?

It probably would be.

From his childhood, he had always been very lucky.

With red-rimmed eyes, he had dove into the embrace of his beloved.

……

Nan Wei had very little interest in what had really gone on behind the scenes. He’d always hated the bloodless wars in the business world. In terms of IQ and talent, Nan Wei was a gifted student that had easily sailed through university. Even if he couldn’t compare to his genius older brother, his abilities were definitely above average. If he had no choice but to learn financial business management, he definitely would be able to reach Zhou Jinrong’s standard.

However, in terms of artistic talent, his psychological barrier was much harder to overcome. The barrier wasn’t from comparing against his amazing brother, but rather the ever-present threat hidden behind his amazing brother.

Nan Wei hadn’t followed suit when Chu Ge had left home for ten years to pursue this.

Regardless of whatever happened, Nan Wei was never involved.

In the morning, Nan Wei had to drive Liu Ye to the airport, since Liu Ye was the classic shut-in that didn’t even know how to drive. When he’d finally reported in to YL, he was already half an hour late.

Normally, arriving late on the first day of work would leave bad impressions. However, because Nan Wei was a special case and because he actually had a reason, neither Yan Jin nor Xiao Yu would comment about it .

On the other hand, the rest of the new hires that joined on the same day didn’t think the same way.

Nan Wei had hardly sat down at his desk when his coworkers approached him with malicious intentions.