Did that pretty boy fleece you of another two hundred thousand euros?

Capital has always been bloodthirsty.

Because capital does not engage in actual production, the financial derivatives born from it have turned the game of making money from money into all sorts of elaborate tricks.

Likewise, owing to the liquidity of capital and the various manipulative possibilities within finance, countless originally dark and sordid transactions can be whitewashed through capital and openly completed in the form of financial activities.

As accomplices to such transactions, the group known as white gloves came into being.

On the surface, Liu Yi was a seasoned domain name merchant, touted by many media outlets as an investor with a discerning eye.

Yet, he knew better than anyone else that without the people and intelligence behind him, he wouldn't even have a seat at the table to pick up food, let alone get a share of the fatty meat.

Wandering between various forces and undercurrents, hunting for every opportunity to profit, Liu Yi had mastered this game to absolute perfection.

In the early days of the reform and opening up, focusing on securing various approval documents and venturing into the island's real estate market allowed him to accumulate sufficient primitive capital.

Later, discovering the internet—a novel field full of opportunities—he targeted domain names as his point of entry.

Sure enough, through several consecutive transactions, he tasted the sweetness of success.

After all, the value of a domain name is impossible to define objectively; once it catches someone's fancy or fits a particular need, a domain that was once worth very little could instantly appreciate a hundredfold, a thousandfold, or even ten-thousandfold.

The room for manipulation in this process was truly fascinating to ponder.

Especially for those newly funded internet enterprises in China, a good domain name was a matter of face, a source of traffic acquisition, and the capital for their next round of financing.

This time, he had set his sights on Wowow.com, which had been established for only half a year. As one of the earliest domestic counterparts to the American group-buying website Groupon, it had secured tens of millions of RMB in financing from Orient Yuanding Capital this March.

With such a massive sum of money, how wasteful it would be not to buy a presentable, high-quality domain name!

Thus, through numerous connections, Liu Yi managed to reach a vice president within Wowow.com.

The two hit it off immediately, and he even bribed several other members of the management team, virtually securing the resolution to purchase a short domain name to empower the website.

During this process, Liu Yi quietly contacted the owner of 55.com in advance, preparing to finalize the domain purchase the moment things were settled on Wowow's end.

Everything was conducted in secret. Liu Yi had been playing this trick since the 1980s and had almost never failed.

Who could have predicted that this time he would capsize in a drainage ditch in such a bizarre fashion?

"Impossible! Ever since it was registered, 55.com has never been traded and has always remained in TIME's hands.

Foreign websites and investors heavily favor domain names composed of meaningful English words or abbreviations.

That is precisely what gives us the opportunity to target pinyin and short numeric domain names. The acquisition cost is low, and once bought, they can be resold for dozens or even a hundred times the price."

Suppressing his anger, Liu Yi pushed away two teenage girls and stated with absolute certainty:

"There is definitely something fishy going on here! I'm afraid our scheme has been intercepted by someone else.

No more than five people in your Wowow.com know about this matter.

Without a doubt, someone else had the exact same idea and made a move ahead of us."

"Then what should we do? We went through so much trouble just to get this resolution passed. Are we just going to make wedding clothes for someone else?"

Huang Zifeng, Wowow.com's current Vice President of Marketing on the other end of the phone, was growing anxious.

He had just checked online and discovered that the registration information for 55.com had changed. At first, he thought Liu Yi had succeeded, but upon closer inspection, it had been purchased by a hidden American IP address.

This left him no choice but to panic. Everything had been ready except for this final east wind, and now it looked like it was all going down the drain.

"Don't panic. I'll contact that bearded guy in a moment.

If the buyer has nothing to do with Wowow, I can simply spend a bit more money to buy it back.

If they are indeed targeting Wowow, it'll be even easier to handle.

If we can't make money, they won't either. When the time comes, if negotiations fall through, you can just go to the board of directors and do everything in your power to torpedo the domain purchase..."

Liu Yi was indeed a veteran white glove, backed by plenty of influential yet shadowy figures.

Therefore, he had numerous methods at his disposal; it was merely a question of whether the situation warranted them.

Hearing this, Huang Zifeng finally calmed down and smiled insidiously: "Right! We went through all this trouble, why should someone else pick the peach?"

After hanging up the phone, Liu Yi brushed the sand off his body, walked solemnly into the hotel interior, and dialed a cross-border long-distance call to reach the bearded TIME.

"Oh! Dear Liu, what bad timing. The domain name you wanted has already been sold."

The bearded man seemed to have been waiting for this call all along.

"I know. Therefore, I want to ask about the buyer's information and the price. I at least need to figure out who I lost to."

Liu Yi said, feigning an air of calm.

However, TIME on the other end was following Hodge's instructions, adopting a rhythm of "first slow, second stall, third fast" to deal with him.

Indeed! This tactic was not only effective for chasing girls in the wild, but it could also be used to deal with impatient, results-oriented men.

"Oh! Just a moment, Liu. I need to immediately verify the validity of the check for this transaction and deposit it into my bank account along the way.

As you know, twenty thousand Euros is not a small sum.

How about this? Call me back in an hour. I'll tell you all the details of the transaction then."

With that, the bearded man hung up the phone.

Liu Yi was intensely annoyed; he urgently wanted to obtain the buyer's information so he could quickly formulate his countermeasures.

What was even more infuriating was that the bearded man had deliberately revealed the transaction price to be twenty thousand Euros.

He had offered the exact same price, yet the bearded man chose to sell it to someone else instead of him, not even bothering to make a single call to ask if he was willing to raise his offer.

Yet, he could do nothing about the bearded man across the ocean, so he had to abide by his rules, patiently waiting a full hour before calling again.

"Hello! TIME, this is Liu. Now we can discuss the details of the transaction and the buyer..."

Before he could finish, he heard the booming sound of DJ music coming from the other end. Liu Yi's frown deepened, but he took a deep breath, reined in his temper, and asked:

"Can you hear me clearly? Why is it so noisy on your end?"

"Oh, oh! It's Liu!

Right now, my friends and I are having a celebration party at a bar!

As you know, selling this domain means another successful domain investment for me.

Well! My friends are lining up to kiss my lucky face and toast with me!

How about this? Call me back in another hour..."

As soon as the bearded man finished speaking, he hung up again. Enraged, Liu Yi slammed his phone hard onto the floor. The sturdy Nokia N8 simply split neatly into three pieces without suffering the slightest actual damage.

This sight only made Liu Yi even angrier, and he felt like stepping on it a couple of times.

In the end, having no other choice, he swallowed his pride, picked up the phone, battery, and back cover, reassembled them, and long-pressed the power button.

Waiting yet another hour, he once again dialed that exasperating transatlantic number.

"Hmm? Liu... I'm drunk, call me tomorrow... Beep, beep, beep, beep..."

Thud!

Hearing this response, Liu Yi finally lost control. With a loud thud, he hurled the phone straight out of the window.

At the same time, Chang Lu, having just returned to her rental apartment near Penn, opened the door only to find her little uncle, Zhao Qitian, already waiting inside for quite a while.

"Lulu! What is the meaning of this? Twenty thousand Euros! That pretty boy scammed you out of another twenty thousand Euros?"