Chapter 171: Beginner's Version of Divine Sense: The 0-Yuan Bargain Upgrade Play (Begging for Monthly Votes)

The next day, the morning light faded.

Chen Yansen finished breakfast and returned to 0418, summoning the system panel.

Counting the 43 remaining strands of Human Karma Fire from before, he now had a total of 12,338 strands.

"Synthesize! Add points!"

As his intent gathered, tens of thousands of strands of white mist transformed within seconds into a single chopstick-thick strand of golden mist, which then drilled into his brow.

A surge of tremendous energy erupted in his head; a warm sensation instantly enveloped his entire brain, and golden specks adhered to the cortex.

Immediately after, the specks slowly seeped into his brain, greedily absorbing the golden mist like a sponge soaking up water.

A dozen or so seconds later, Chen Yansen let out a long breath. This time the feeling was far more intense than before—after all, he had burned through over ten thousand strands of Human Karma Fire.

His Spirit stat had risen to 12.48!

In a daze, Chen Yansen seemed to "see" the bedroom, the bathroom, even the scene in the corridor outside the door.

He instinctively closed his eyes; the surroundings were not the pitch-black darkness he had imagined, but a hazy gray.

The outlines and positions of the bed, desk, computer, phone, water cup, and shoes—he could sense them all.

This ability felt innate, without relying on any bodily organ.

Chen Yansen couldn't be sure whether this was a talent that came with his strengthened spiritual power, or the result of his extraordinary memory having recorded the surrounding environment.

After pondering for a moment, he grabbed his jacket and car keys and headed downstairs.

Once in the car, he drove straight out the east gate of the Virtual Academy.

After leaving the vicinity of the school, Chen Yansen actually closed his eyes.

He was very familiar with this road, but the speed and positions of the cars on it were constantly changing.

A minute later, Chen Yansen opened his eyes and finally confirmed it.

With his current Spirit stat, even with his eyes closed, he could live normally.

However, the passing cars and the buildings along the street—he could only make out a rough outline.

Objects more than ten meters away grew increasingly blurry in his perception.

There was no difference between the effect with eyes open or closed; this ability relied on his spiritual power, more than a dozen times that of an ordinary person.

When someone walked past him, he could sense it, but couldn't make out their face.

If his Spirit stat rose to 100, or 1,000, would he be able to see clearly then?

Chen Yansen sat in the car, mulling it over.

This ability resembled a beginner's version of Divine Sense projection; objects within a ten-meter radius appeared in his mind like stick figures.

It allowed him to perceive the size, distance, and temperature of the surrounding objects!

This dog system is at least somewhat useful.

Chen Yansen smiled faintly, then drove toward the Tech Park.

"Good morning, boss!" the receptionist Zhang Yi greeted him with a smile.

Chen Yansen gave a slight nod, walked into the elevator bay, and went up to the 11th floor.

He had two offices—one on the 5th floor of Building 8, the other on the 11th floor of Building 6.

It might seem wasteful, but he didn't want to finish a meeting at Pinbi and still have to go back to his office in Building 8.

"Ding"—the elevator doors opened.

On the 11th floor, aside from his office, the rest belonged to Pinbi's Marketing, Finance, and Legal departments.

Walking into his office, Chen Yansen dropped into his chair, turned on the computer, and first checked the business and financial monthly reports sent over by the heads of each department.

Pinbi had been live for 13 days, with 54 million cumulative registered users and 9.1 million daily active users—proof of extremely high user stickiness.

This was mainly thanks to the 0-yuan bargaining and group-buying mechanics: after user A placed an order, they had to pull in user B to complete the group, so the DAU naturally went up.

Platform GMV totaled 2.73 billion yuan; after stripping out Sister Chengzi's phone sales, 1.12 billion remained, with an average order value of just 26.9 yuan.

This was also why Chen Yansen had brought in JD Self-Operated—while users' impression of Pinbi's products hadn't yet solidified, adding high-AOV goods as early as possible was the only way to raise the project's growth ceiling.

On入驻 brands: 1 S-tier brand, 197 A-tier brands, 516 B-tier brands, and 921 C-tier brands.

S, A, B, and C were the category operations' tiered classification of Pinbi's merchants, modeled on the experience of Fox Taobao merchants.

S-tier meant internationally renowned big names with counters at home and abroad, present in offline supermarkets, carrying their own traffic and buzz—for example, L'Oréal, Kohler, Dyson, Fotile, Haier, and so on.

On Pinbi's side, aside from Song Yuncheng leveraging her past brand-marketing collaborations to bring Haier on board, not a single other S-tier brand had been signed.

On one hand, this was because Pinbi's AOV was low and the big names looked down on it; on the other, Pinbi had only just launched and lacked industry influence.

A-tier meant domestic well-known brands with over 50 counters in first-tier city CBD malls and heavy supermarket distribution—for example, Xtep, Anta, Sany, Vatti, Yuni Fang, and so on.

B-tier meant regionally well-known brands with a certain reputation in some area, or standout online performance—for example, Adolph, Gujing, Zhan's, Koerda, and so on.

C-tier, meanwhile, were pure white-label brands, relying on extreme cost-performance and online marketing to target the low- and mid-end market.

On Pinbi, brands of different tiers received different traffic.

Beyond the brand's own influence, price was also a key factor.

For products of the same type, exposure was calculated based on the weighted score of brand × price × conversion rate × gross margin—if a B-tier brand's weighted score exceeded an A-tier's, the B-tier would get more exposure than the A-tier.

And C-tier brands, once their sales hit the target, could also submit an application to Pinbi to upgrade to B-tier.

Just as Huaxizi, later made famous by the top livestreamer, was originally a white-label (C-tier) brand; once its sales and buzz rose, its strength had effectively reached B-tier.

Chen Yansen glanced over and noted that A- and B-tier brands were far too few.

In his previous life, the reason Pinduoduo had struggled to change users' perception was precisely because C-tier brands made up too high a share.

Put bluntly, the vast majority of people had never even heard of these brands—so when buying high-AOV goods, why would users think of Pinduoduo?

Chen Yansen didn't want to repeat the mistake. From the day Pinbi launched, he had deliberately added 99-yuan rice cookers and 129-yuan four-piece bedding sets to the selection, to retain high-value users.

"Ding-ding-ding—!"

A message popped up in the bottom-right corner of the desktop.

Seeing it was from Song Yuncheng, Chen Yansen tapped it open.

"Boss, the onboarding process for Chery Auto is done. Their marketing department wants to replicate the previous brand group event from Li Tao's products, with a budget of around 10 million."

"Sure. Have Zhuang Rui design a fixed event template for this kind of need."

Chen Yansen agreed on the spot.

At this point, Chery's inventory pressure was heavy. The inventory cycle at dealerships below generally exceeded 80 days, with some reaching 150 days, making the risk of a broken capital chain extremely high.

That was why Chery's marketing department was looking everywhere for sales outlets. Besides Pinle, they had also approached Taobao and JD. com, trying to expand their sales channels online.

After all, the marketing plan on Li Tao's products had worked remarkably well before. Later, when Chery took part in Taobao's Double Eleven Auto Festival, they still sold over 200 units.

"Got it, understood." After replying, Song Yuncheng left her workstation and went to the product department to find Zhuang Rui.

Chen Yansen closed the spreadsheet and went on to open Yun Su Express's November performance and financial monthly report.

Operating revenue: 110.4 million. Operating cost: 146.2 million. Losses: over 30 million.

But after deducting expenses like truck depreciation and outlet rent, actual profit was over 13 million.

This showed that raising couriers' wages would not cause the company any operational difficulty at all.

Besides, Yun Su was in a phase of rapid expansion, with heavy upfront investment and business volume that had not yet fully caught up.

Once it gained a firm foothold in the East China market, it could still turn a profit even if delivery fees were cut to 2 yuan per order.

Chen Yansen also checked the on-time delivery rate, complaint rate, and customer retention rate — all had improved by over 20% compared to October.

This showed that Yun Su couriers weren't incapable of doing their jobs; they just had low pay before and no motivation to do things well.

After studying couriers' daily pickup and delivery volumes, Chen Yansen thought for a moment, then called Liao Wei: "Starting in December, Yun Su couriers will be on the same overtime pay system as headquarters staff."

Liao Wei listened and said with a bitter smile: "Boss, I'm worried the people below will slack off — dawdling through the day and milking overtime pay at night. What then?"

He had worked his way up from the bottom and knew all too well the dark and cunning sides of human nature.

"Set a baseline standard based on the median pickup and delivery numbers. Whether a policy is good depends on execution. If anyone really tries to cheat and slack off, just fire them."

Chen Yansen countered with a smile.

He understood Liao Wei's concern, but he felt that as long as the plan was well laid out and employees were paid more, it would definitely be good for the project's development.

"Alright… fine, I'll draft a plan first." Seeing Chen Yansen had already made up his mind, Liao Wei knew he couldn't talk him out of it.

Seeing that, Chen Yansen hung up the phone.

Meanwhile.

Pinle's 0-yuan bargain-hunting module was upgraded and revamped. On top of the existing categories — phones, small appliances, home goods, snacks and fruit — it added an easier-to-get 30-yuan cash red envelope.

"@everyone help me out! Pinle just launched a red envelope bargain. My friend got hers with only 5 people — super easy!"

"You there? Help me slash!"

"One slash, one yuan. Online begging for help!"

In no time, college students and white-collar workers were the first to play along. Just pulling in a few coworkers could get you 30 yuan cash — so easy it was hard to refuse.

"Congratulations! Your friend slashed 19.9 yuan!"

"Congratulations! Your friend slashed 9.9 yuan!"

"Congratulations! Your friend slashed 0.1 yuan!"

For the vast majority of people, after three slashes only 0.1 yuan was left. The fourth slash could take off 0.09 yuan. Facing that final 1 fen, most would invite friends to keep slashing.

They didn't know that if the first four were new users, pulling in one more new user would push the progress bar to 100%, earning them 30 yuan cash.

If the first four were active users, they'd need to pull in 4–5 more new users.

The acquisition costs for new users, old users, and users who hadn't placed orders had all been clearly tagged in the code before the event went live.

Based on a netizen population of 500–600 million, 90% of users hadn't registered on Pinle at this point.

With an event of this intensity, Pinle's 30-yuan bargain links spread like a virus, rapidly reaching every corner of the internet.

QQ groups, WeChat groups, BBS forums, and the comment sections of news sites like Weibo, NetEase, and Sohu — Pinle's invite links were everywhere.

Some even went to Taobao to threaten sellers, saying they'd leave bad reviews if they didn't help out. Merchants were full of complaints about it.

The tactics were tacky, but the results were obvious.

On December 1st, new customers brought in solely through the 0-yuan bargain feature reached over 3 million, and Chen Yansen only had to spend less than 5 million on marketing — a cost per acquisition (CPA) of under 2 yuan per user.

"No wonder Huang Zheng got roasted so badly and still insisted on running the slash feature. This thing really is a master at playing with people's hearts."

Chen Yansen muttered softly as he looked at the data Hu Yun had sent over.

(End of chapter)