Chapter 183: Jiang Yehan

"To save Li Lang, I left my home; who would have expected to become the top scholar on the imperial list..."

"I have also attended the Qionglin Banquet; I have also ridden a horse in front of the imperial street..."

"I didn't take the top scholar exam to make a name for myself; I didn't take the top scholar exam to become a high official."

"For that affectionate Young Master Li, husband and wife are loving, the flowers are beautiful, and the moon is round..."

The latest electronic speakers of the year were playing newly arranged old tunes. The big sisters and aunts in the square were clapping and dancing to the soothing rhythm. Under the streetlights, light and shadow overlapped, and shadows of people were flickering on the ground.

Xia Yubing pinched a tattered hydrangea flower in her hand, lowered her eyes to look at the shadows of people crossing each other in the square, not knowing what she was thinking.

Ning Zhe sat beside her, unzipped the travel bag, and simply checked the equipment inside.

A lightweight drone in a folded state, along with supporting control equipment and replaceable batteries, but no manufacturer was marked.

Two large-caliber pistols using standard rifle ammunition, as well as corresponding spare ammunition, also didn't show which manufacturer they came from; it was estimated that they were assembled from non-standard parts purchased from multiple different channels.

3 cameras that could be mounted on the drone. Looking at the brand, they were products of the Baiwu Group, which specialized in photography equipment. The goods were legitimate, but Ning Zhe didn't remember seeing this model of Baiwu.

"This is a trial sample; the effect is slightly better than products on the market, but the manufacturing cost is almost half higher, so it wasn't put into mass production." Xia Yubing saw his confusion, so she explained.

"A trial sample? How did you get this kind of thing?" Ning Zhe became interested.

Xia Yubing's small face collapsed, and she said somewhat unwillingly: "My dad is a co-founder of Baiwu, the one surnamed Jiang, Jiang Yehan."

"So that's how it is." Ning Zhe nodded to show he understood.

Baiwu was currently the premier photography equipment supplier in the country—photography equipment here didn't just refer to professional equipment in the hands of photography enthusiasts. From the city eyes purchased by local governments to the small cameras on smartphones used by ordinary people, they were all within Baiwu's business scope.

Compared to the steady and conservative Zhang Yangxu, Xia Yubing's father, Jiang Yehan, who founded the Baiwu Group, was a very radical person.

When he was still a poor student, he dared to fabricate false information to defraud financial institutions of loans, and then bet the defrauded money on the internet industry.

However, unlike those speculators who plunged into the early internet wars, Jiang Yehan saw that the general trend of the future must be the one-sided crushing of traditional print media by internet streaming media.

In the not-too-distant past, cameras were the symbol of journalists, and when ordinary people mentioned taking photos, the first thing they thought of was a photo studio.

In the near future, the popularization of the internet and cheap traffic would devolve the need for "taking a photo at will" from media practitioners to hundreds of millions of ordinary people.

Jiang Yehan realized this and decisively entered the market; entering the market meant going all-in.

First, he plagiarized foreign patents to lower product costs. Later, he engaged in vicious competition, using despicable means including but not limited to spreading rumors, slander, and reporting tax evasion to suppress peers.

After starting to make a profit, Jiang Yehan quickly mortgaged assets, raised funds, purchased advanced technology from foreign companies that were still far ahead at the time, and then took the foreign companies' patent authorizations to sue peers in court, accusing them of infringement, and giving the already defeated competitors another blow.

After accumulating enough technical accumulation and talent reserves, Jiang Yehan led the Baiwu Group to turn to self-research, playing the emotional card with concepts like "supporting domestic products" and "using the eyes of Shenzhou to see the moon of Shenzhou," labeling all peers who started importing foreign technology later as "sheepdogs," and using internet armies to carry out information bombing, making their products the target of public criticism, as if buying those brands meant one wasn't a person of Kyushu...

One blow after another, each blow drawing blood, each blow fatal. To this day, almost all domestic smartphone launch events would make the fact that their products were equipped with Baiwu cameras a major selling point. The Baiwu Group had also become the designated supplier for city eyes, and the professional-grade photography equipment they produced had also been recognized by photography enthusiasts. Jiang Yehan's legendary status could no longer be shaken.

Sharp-eyed, radical, all-in, arbitrary. A very evil person. This was Ning Zhe's evaluation of Jiang Yehan.

Then he was favored by Xia Yubing's grandfather, because the financial institution that Jiang Yehan defrauded of loans back then was opened by the Xia family. After the matter was exposed, he knelt down at light speed and then married Xia Yubing's mother. Otherwise, when his legendary entrepreneurial path had just reached the "suppressing peers" stage, he would probably have started to encounter threats to his personal safety.

Personal effort is very important, and having a backer with enough weight behind you is also very important, perhaps even more important.

"Hmm... what is this?"

Placing the Baiwu sample camera and the lightweight folding crossbow back into the travel bag in order, Ning Zhe fumbled around and found another thing in the inner compartment of the bag, a thing that did not exist on the list he gave Xia Chan.

A free gift?

Ning Zhe pulled that thing out of the backpack and exposed it to the light. It was a leather-bound notebook, with a black carbon pen clipped to the leather cover.

"How could there be a notebook in the bag?" Ning Zhe turned his head to look at Xia Yubing: "Yours?"

Xia Yubing shook her head: "This is what my aunt asked me to bring to you."

As she spoke, she also pulled out an identical notebook from her small leather bag, exactly the same as the one in Ning Zhe's hand, except that the pen clipped to the cover of hers was blue ink, while Ning Zhe's was black ink.

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"This thing..." Ning Zhe frowned slightly. Borrowing the light of the street lamp, he had already noticed something wrong.

Both notebooks in their hands were genuine leather-bound, not cheap artificial leather.

Artificial leather is a modern industrial product, characterized by being cheap and mass-produced. No matter how many meters are stretched, it is the same pattern, constantly cycling and repeating. But biological leather is not like that. There are no two cows in the world that are the same, and there are no two cowhides that are exactly the same.

Even for leather products of the same model and batch produced by the same company, their "sameness" is only the same shape in the manufacturing process. As long as one puts their mind to observing carefully, one can still see some subtle differences in skin texture; they won't be exactly the same.

But the two notebooks in his and Xia Yubing's hands were really exactly the same, exactly the same in the literal sense.

The texture of the skin, the gradient of the color, the creases on the spine... Even with Ning Zhe's meticulous observation, he couldn't find even a trace of difference between these two notebooks. The terrifying consistency was simply like copy and paste.

"Um, Ning Zhe, open the cover and turn to the first page." Xia Yubing said, opening the notebook in her hand and pulling out the blue ink pen on the cover: "Aunt said this thing will definitely be useful to you. After doing this, you will know how to use it."

Ning Zhe nodded, unbuttoned the button, and turned the notebook in his hand to the first page.

At the same time, Xia Yubing held the blue ink pen and wrote a few lively characters on the first line of the first page of the notebook:

【Hello there】

Ning Zhe looked down at his knees and saw that on the first line of the first page of the notebook placed on them, in the same position, three blue Chinese characters appeared stroke by stroke:

【Hello there?】

Xia Yubing added a question mark at the end.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 184 =====