Chapter 317: 40 Million a Day, 1.2 Billion a Month—Li Yanhong in Panic! Live Loud or Die!

The next day, at dawn.

Luzhou, Luyang District, Rongfeng Garden Community.

A young man in his early twenties sat in front of his computer, constantly yawning; it was a rare holiday, so naturally he stayed up all night gaming.

“Dragon Scale Horse! My body’s really weak now—back when I was seventeen or eighteen, I could pull three all-nighters without nodding off. My stomach’s starving. I’ll order takeout.”

Wang Junjie patted his hollow stomach and muttered to himself.

Since KuaiPao Takeout became popular in Luzhou, many homebodies have lived lives where meals arrive automatically at their doors without them ever stepping out; Wang Junjie wasn’t a total shut-in, but he was a loyal KuaiPao user.

In his view, KuaiPao was a local internet company of Luzhou, so of course he should support it.

He pulled out his Orange C2 smartphone, opened the KuaiPao app, but accidentally tapped one extra time and landed on the group-buying channel.

He’d planned to exit immediately, but his peripheral vision suddenly caught a new button in the menu: “Group Buy Delivered to Door.”

Group Buy Delivered to Door?

What’s this new feature?

Curious, Wang Junjie immediately began investigating and soon understood what Group Buy Delivered to Door meant.

For group-buying sets from Caidiexuan, Luzhou Madam, or Daimei Hotpot, previously you had to visit the store to redeem them; now, with an extra delivery fee, KuaiPao riders could bring the food straight to your door.

Ordering group-buy items like takeout!

Combining “group-buy discounts” with “instant delivery”!

For users, this meant enjoying low group-buy prices while experiencing takeout-style speed—delivery to the door within 29 minutes.

For merchants, the takeout model’s higher consumption frequency reached more customers, easily tripling to quintupling order volumes.

Moreover, identical meal sets could dramatically speed up preparation, reduce marginal costs, and expand profit margins.

Pei Yi deliberately launched this new feature on the second day of National Day, aiming to catch Wang Xin off guard.

The plan proved successful: by 11 a.m., popular restaurants across Luzhou’s districts were overwhelmed with orders.

Brands like Luzhou Madam, an economical chain, had already joined Meituan, KuaiPao, Dazhong Dianping, Lashou, and WoWoTuan.

Yet by noon, their backend received 86 two-person group-buy sets, 32 four-person sets, and 17 eight-person sets—each with at least eight dishes, up to sixteen.

The kitchen staff, seeing the thick stack of orders, nearly fainted.

How the hell are we supposed to finish all this?

The dining hall manager urgently contacted KuaiPao staff; after negotiations, they temporarily disabled the Group Buy Delivered to Door feature until the restaurant cleared the backlog.

Pei Yi hadn’t expected so many users to stay home during National Day.

Merchants hadn’t anticipated so many customers would appear the moment Group Buy Delivered to Door went live.

As a result, one Luzhou Madam branch in Yaohai District pushed through until 3 p.m., finally clearing both dine-in and group-buy takeout orders.

After learning of this, KuaiPao’s marketing department immediately reported it upward.

Kang Guodong pulled together product and development teams to urgently roll out a group-buy delivery cap feature, defaulting to 20 orders per store, with the maximum limit set by each merchant based on actual capacity.

Once the cap was reached, users could no longer use Group Buy Delivered to Door at that store.

This balanced the experience for both group-buy and takeout users!

After adjustments, the overload eased; though there was a minor uproar, KuaiPao’s Group Buy Delivered to Door feature achieved its intended effect.

On launch day alone, it added 200 million yuan in GMV to the platform!

That figure previously took a full week to achieve!

By the afternoon of the third day, when Wang Xin finally reacted, he canceled his vacation, ordered Beijing HQ’s Wang Huiwen to pull a team of R&D engineers into a task force, and pushed city operations managers nationwide to counterattack KuaiPao’s move.

The most effective tactic in past group-buy wars had always been price cuts.

To protect market share, Meituan launched subsidies of 10 to 15 percent.

For the same group-buy item, KuaiPao sold it for 99 yuan; Meituan dropped it to as low as 84.9 yuan—a direct 14.1-yuan cut!

No ROI evaluation, no long-tail effect—just order volume and GMV. First, hold the Meituan line!

Lashou quickly followed; under Li Yanhong’s coordination, Gong Zhenbing rapidly assembled teams to work overtime developing Group Buy Delivered to Door.

Suddenly, programmers at Meituan and Lashou were complaining loudly.

Their perfect National Day holiday was ruined—engineers who had been with family or girlfriends had to rush back to headquarters after receiving calls from their bosses.

Lashou was better off, backed by Baidu, and Li Yanhong was generous enough to pay double wages to anyone called back to work.

Wang Xin remained his usual stingy self: overtime meant only compensatory time off; overtime pay?

Not a chance!

So when the project manager received the product document, he planned to call a meeting with the product manager, frontend, backend, and QA leads to review requirements—but he called out for half an hour and got no response.

“What’s going on? Don’t you all want to work anymore?” Tang Ling, suppressing her fury, demanded sharply.

Two months ago, Zhu Xianbao’s resignation scandal had humiliated her, but the company didn’t punish her—instead, it promoted her.

After all, she treated her subordinates like dirt, and herself no better; such a worker was the boss’s ideal loyal dog.

“My classmate works at Lashou—they pay double overtime wages. What do we get? Just compensatory time off!”

A QA team member retorted gruffly.

“What’s wrong with compensatory time off? Are you losing out? Just rest after the project ends!” Tang Ling fired three questions in a row.

But everyone else, though angry, dared not speak up.

They knew Tang Ling had driven away key tech staff, yet the company hadn’t scolded her—meaning the boss approved of her actions.

“You want to be a dog? Doesn’t mean everyone wants to be an animal. What the hell? Have you even read? Do you know labor laws?”

The QA employee didn’t spare Tang Ling a single inch—when pushed too far, people say anything.

“Gu Rui’s right! Other companies pay overtime according to labor law—why can’t we? No overtime pay, no work!”

At that moment, a backend programmer stood up.

Normally, they might have swallowed it.

But this was National Day—a holiday meant for rest. Why should they work?

And now they didn’t even want to pay overtime?

“I don’t want compensatory time off either!”

“Oppose compensatory time off! We want overtime pay!”

Unlike last time, more and more employees stood up—until the entire team halted. HR received word immediately and reported the scene to Wang Xin.

Upon learning of the collective strike, Wang Xin clasped his hands, unconsciously tapping his index fingers together. After a moment’s thought, he looked up and told HR: “Change it to double pay—only for National Day.”

Meaning: one-time only.

“Understood, boss,” HR nodded, didn’t dare delay, and rushed out of the office, taking the elevator straight to the tech department to relay the message.

“Double pay’s about right—barely worth working.”

“Meituan’s benefits are terrible. Better than Lashou? No way—I was an idiot to take Meituan’s offer.”

“KuaiPao has the best salary and benefits system! Overtime pay calculated down to the minute: 1.5x on weekdays, 2x on weekends, 3x on holidays.”

“Damn! If I worked my current hours at KuaiPao, my income would jump over 50%. Could that even be true?”

“Ask Bao Ge! He works at KuaiPao’s Beijing branch.”

After their “victory,” the group chattered excitedly.

Tang Ling sat alone at her desk, face pale with rage. Logically, she should’ve benefited—but there was no trace of joy on her face.

Meanwhile.

Shanghai, CN District, Anhua Road 492, Dazhong Dianping Headquarters.

Zhang Tao, after learning the latest industry developments, was stunned—he had no takeout business and no delivery capacity, leaving him defenseless.

Even if he poached riders from Meituan, he’d first need to develop a takeout-ordering app.

“I should’ve copied Meituan and Lashou—entered the takeout market earlier.”

Zhang Tao regretted bitterly, but now he had no choice: he faced Meituan’s price war and KuaiPao’s assault on Dazhong Dianping’s group-buy business.

After thinking it through, Zhang Tao summoned Dazhong Dianping’s CTO, marketing director, and operations head to strategize.

First: should Dazhong Dianping launch takeout?

Second: should Dazhong Dianping roll out Group Buy Delivered to Door?

Third: Meituan had launched up to 15% subsidies—should Dazhong Dianping follow?

For the final four days of National Day, employees at Meituan, Lashou, and Dazhong Dianping could all expect to spend their holidays working overtime.

All major group-buy platforms reluctantly joined the price war, slashing prices—users benefited.

Especially in food categories, nearly everything was available at 10% or even 20% off.

KFC’s original 79-yuan fried chicken set was slashed to 59 yuan!

Meanwhile.

Didi and KuaiDi Taxi’s competition intensified; during National Day, both raised subsidies for returning customers to 12 yuan off per ride, up to three times daily.

Combined, their daily cash burn reached over 80 million yuan!

If converted to hundred-yuan bills and burned one by one in a furnace, this sum could burn nonstop for ten days.

Li Yanhong stood before his office window, unable to sit still; every six hours, Xiang Hailong came to him to approve marketing budget requests.

Each request: up to 10 million yuan!

He stared at the endless stream of traffic, thinking: at this burn rate, his 1.2 billion yuan investment in Didí would be wiped out in under a month.

The thought made his breathing heavy, his scalp prickling.

This was 1.2 billion yuan—not 120,000, not 12 yuan.

Ninety-nine percent of China’s listed companies didn’t have a market cap of 1.2 billion.

Li Yanhong panicked!

This terrifying rate of spending made him shudder!

On the other side, Cheng Wei in Hangcheng headquarters had also gone mad—over forty million yuan in subsidies per day; in the past, he never dared imagine he could spend so recklessly.

The investment firms behind both sides fell silent upon hearing the figure of “forty million yuan per day,” but did not intervene.

First, they had no authority,

second, they knew the ride-hailing war had reached a critical moment.

Whoever could no longer bear the losses would be the first to fall out!

The winner takes all!

To monopolize China’s ride-hailing market!

……

……

Norway, Kirkenes.

A crab fishing vessel sailed across the Barents Sea, its hull rising and falling over the dark, deep waters; Chen Yan stood on deck, picking up a piece of king crab leg and putting it into his mouth—tender and succulent.

Opposite him, Song Yuncheng, bundled in thick winter gear and a windproof hat, had wrapped herself tightly and was slowly chewing on a piece of crab meat.

Nearby, the chef prepared dishes from the catch: king crab, black cod, and Atlantic redfish.

Though lacking elegant plating or rich seasonings, the ingredients were fresh, and the flavor was surprisingly excellent.

While Chen Yan was vacationing in Northern Europe, Li Yan, Wang Xin, Zhang Tao, and others couldn’t sleep a single night because of him.

The wind howled over the sea, and the sails above cracked loudly in the gale.

“Boss, when are we going to Spotify’s headquarters to discuss cooperation?”

Song Yuncheng asked.

Norway was fun, but she hadn’t forgotten the real business.

“No rush—we haven’t visited Sognefjord yet. Sweden and Norway are close; we can go there on the last day.”

Chen Yan shook his head.

He understood Song Yuncheng’s mindset—like most Chinese people, she felt guilty if she didn’t work for two days.

But life must be lived wildly—what’s the point if it isn’t?

(End of Chapter)