Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

Chapter 148 Schemes

The private office of Wu Tao, Vice President of Operations of Sohu Group, on the tenth floor of the Sohu Building.

The blinds were half-open, and the afternoon sunlight cut into strips of bright white light, falling on the dark solid wood desk.

Wu Tao stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, his hands behind his back, watching several bread trucks with the 5Q Campus Network logo driving out of the parking lot below, their cargo compartments stuffed with styrofoam boxes filled with fried chicken legs.

A slow smile crept onto his lips.

He personally approved the supplier for this batch of fried chicken.

When Chen Yizhou submitted his proposal, he wrote "Contact reputable restaurants around the cafeterias of major universities," and the budget quote was also clearly stated.

With a stroke of his pen, Wu Tao cut the budget by 40% and then approved the order to a small fast food delivery factory in Tongxian County. His reason to Chen Yizhou was that the hygiene and quality of various restaurants might vary, so it would be better to have a catering factory in charge, delivering directly to each distribution point and having temporary sales staff fry the chicken legs.

The factory owner's surname is Ma. He used to supply boxed meals to Sohu's canteen for a while, but was later evicted by the property management because the hygiene standards were not met.

Wu Tao had dealt with Lao Ma a few times and knew his ways: he would take on any job with a price that was pushed down to an unacceptable level, but the quality was another matter entirely.

When he got to the promotional stall, whether the chicken legs were fried well or not was no longer his concern.

"Boss Ma, you're making huge quantities, tens of thousands of chicken legs every day. Can you handle all that?"

"Brother Wu, I'll take any job you assign, even if I have to borrow money."

"Okay. We'll figure out how to handle cold chain transportation; the cost is too high. Foam boxes and ice packs will do, as long as they make it to the school gate."

"No problem, delivery guaranteed."

Wu Tao hung up the phone without even lifting his eyelids.

Right now, the 36-degree Celsius heat outside the window is baking the whole street until it's practically smoking.

The ice packs in the styrofoam box probably melted into lukewarm water within half an hour of leaving the cold storage.

Thousands upon thousands of undercooked chicken legs, covered in bacteria, are being transported by truck to the entrances of university cafeterias in Beijing, where they are then deep-fried in blackened grease.

Wu Tao turned around, picked up a teacup from the table, and slowly took a sip.

On the table lay the fried chicken promotion plan signed by Chen Yizhou, complete with the supplier's stamp, Chen Yizhou's signature, and the budget approval form.

When the incident occurred, the name "Wu Tao" was not found on these written documents.

He simply signed "agree" according to procedure; the specific supplier selection and implementation details were to be handled by Chen Yizhou himself, as stated in the plan.

Wu Tao sat back in his office chair, crossed his legs, and picked up the mouse to browse the news feed on the homepage of HaiNei.com.

Students from several universities have started hurling insults online, saying that eating Sohu's chicken legs caused them diarrhea, and some even posted photos of their university hospital registration slips.

He tossed the mouse onto the table, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling.

Chen Yizhou is technically incompetent and a poor manager, but he's incredibly audacious.

We spent 20 million US dollars to hire Chen Yizhou and 10 million US dollars on promotion, but there was little progress.

Five or six million dollars have already been burned through, with the Buddha's Light Dog, the front-end minus one, the free chicken leg upon registration, and the campus beauty pageant—each one more absurd than the last.

But Zhang Chaoyang was still willing to give him a chance, and even crammed a slide about 5Q Campus Network's "social ecosystem layout" into the roadshow materials.

Judging from this, Chen Yizhou, this outsider, not only doesn't take me, the vice president of operations at Sohu, seriously, but if he continues to cause trouble, he'll really turn the company upside down.

This is what Wu Tao truly couldn't tolerate.

Sohu's social networking section should have been Wu Tao's territory.

Zhang Chaoyang had explicitly opposed the acquisition of ChinaRen, but he couldn't fight city hall.

Chen Yizhou brought his mediocre team to Sohu. Zhang Chaoyang provided him with money, resources, and office space, while leaving Wu Tao out in the cold.

Now look what's happened. Chen Yizhou jumped into the fire himself, and Wu Tao is just adding fuel to the fire.

When approving the plan, they deliberately cut the budget, crippled the machines, and assigned useless and trusted employees to him, stepping on Chen Yizhou's weaknesses at every step.

Moreover, every step was clean and transparent, driven by the interests of the group and the social business, leaving no room for criticism.

Wu Tao picked up the internal phone on the table and dialed a number.

"Hello, is this the Legal Department? This is Wu Tao. Get ready, I've seen some online discussion, there might be a problem. This afternoon, some universities might call to complain about food safety issues. Yes, it's about 5Q Campus Network's fried chicken leg giveaway."

"Don't panic. This is Vice President Chen Yizhou's project. He chose the supplier, and he signed off on the plan. The internal responsibility attribution within the group is relatively simple. Now that a problem has arisen, you need to investigate the situation. If it is indeed our responsibility, you must provide a proper explanation and handle the matter accordingly. The medical expenses that should be reimbursed should be covered by 5Q's budget, not from headquarters' account. Also, prepare a situation report and submit it to the president's office tomorrow."

After hanging up the phone, Wu Tao rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a bag of raw peanuts with red skins. He opened it, poured a few into his palm, and popped them into his mouth one by one.

He's already chosen the perfect kind of grass for Chen Yizhou's grave, since he's vying with Wu Tao for Sohu's social networking business and the group's internal power.

It was dusk at the Tsinghua University male dormitory building.

Wang Xing's class monitor, Li Lei, had just sent a "Are you there?" message to the class beauty in the QQ group. She replied with a smiley face instantly. He was overjoyed and casually picked up a bag of still-oily fried chicken legs that he had taken from Wang Huiwen's dormitory, and took a big bite.

The chicken leg was fried until golden brown, and it looked alright, but the moment I bit into it, an indescribable strange taste filled my mouth. It wasn't the taste of spices, but rather like a mixture of stale water and gutter oil.

Li Lei frowned, hesitated for a moment, and then swallowed it.

After all, it's free.

He took two more bites, leaving the chicken leg bone half-eaten, then threw it into the trash can and continued chatting with the class beauty.

More than ten minutes later, when he was halfway through typing "How do you think I treat you?", his stomach suddenly churned violently.

Li Lei paused for two seconds, thinking it was his imagination.

The second sharp pain came quickly and violently, like someone was pulling on his intestines and running, while tying a tight knot.

Holy crap!

Li Lei shoved the keyboard aside, knocking the chair to the ground. Clutching his stomach, he bent over and rushed out of the dormitory, his slippers clattering as he ran wildly towards the water room.

In the QQ group, the class beauty's message was still online: "Where are you?"

My roommate in the next bed peeked out, then ducked back in to continue playing Counter-Strike.

Why is Li Lei running away?

"Maybe he ate too much chicken leg and choked."

Before the words were even finished, a heart-wrenching scream came from the direction of the water room, followed by the sound of water being flushed, which never stopped.

Five minutes later, the door to another dormitory room on the same floor burst open, and a fat man in slippers staggered out, clutching his stomach and cursing, "Sohu isn't human! This chicken leg is poisoned!"

Three minutes later, the dormitory at the end of the corridor also exploded.

The two boys rushed out almost one after the other. One went straight to the water room, while the other, not having enough time, turned into the trash can in the stairwell, squatted down, and started dry heaving.

An indescribable smell permeated the air throughout the entire floor.