Chapter 8 — The Mighty, All-Powerful Genie

Long Thịnh Group occupies a towering forty-story building right in the center of the first district, symbolizing the ambition of the man who built it from scratch: Hứa Việt Long. At the age of forty-two, Việt Long is one of the most powerful young businessmen in the city, owning a business network spanning from real estate, logistics to financial technology, but few people know that the deep roots of that ambition stem from a hatred that has been ingrained in his blood since the age of sixteen.

Việt Long's father, a businessman who used to do business with Đường Vĩnh Bảo in the early years of both of their businesses, was discovered by Vĩnh Bảo himself of cheating on the books in an important joint venture transportation deal. Vĩnh Bảo, with the transparent business principles that have followed him throughout his career, was uncompromising, immediately cut off cooperation and publicly denounced the fraud before all partners in the industry, right at the time when Việt Long's father's company needed capital the most to survive the economic crisis. The company went bankrupt within half a year, and his father, unable to bear the shock of losing his life-long career, died of a stroke just two years later, leaving Việt Long, then only sixteen years old, and his ailing mother in debt.

"I will take back everything the Duong family stole from my family." Việt Long once swore to himself on the night of his father's funeral, and over the next twenty-six years, he turned that vow into the driving force to rebuild Long Thịnh from a small brokerage company into a formidable business empire.

In Việt Long's mind, he is not an evil person. He believes that he is demanding justice for his father, that it is Vĩnh Bảo's ruthlessness and indifferent rigid principles that are the real cause of his family's tragedy, not his father's fraudulent behavior. He has spent decades observing and waiting for the opportunity, and now, when Vĩnh Bảo has passed away, leaving the Đường Gia group in the hands of an inexperienced young heiress, he believes that the time for revenge has finally come.

"Nhã Kỳ Street has just been assigned two new strategic projects." Việt Long's personal assistant reported in a closed meeting at his private office on the thirty-fifth floor of Long Thịnh building. "She is gradually gaining the trust of the Đường Gia board of directors."

Việt Long sat behind a glossy black mahogany desk, gently rotating a gold-plated pen, his sharp eyes looking out the large glass window towards the city center. "The faster you gain trust, the more likely it is to collapse quickly when a major incident occurs. Prepare a plan to approach Đường Gia's three main supply partners in the shipping sector. We want to know the exact terms of their contracts, and find a way to make them reconsider continuing to cooperate."

"Are you planning on disrupting their supply chain?" asked the assistant.

"I intend to show them that a young female CEO with no real market experience will not be able to maintain the most important partnerships in the face of real competitive pressure," Việt Long replied, his voice calm but full of calculation. "This is just the beginning."

In the weeks that followed, Long Thịnh began to quietly approach each of Đường Gia's important supply partners, offering much more attractive terms of cooperation, along with subtle hints about the instability that could occur when a large corporation like Đường Gia was in the transition period of power. One of Đường Gia's longest-standing shipping partners, Kim Thịnh Logistics, began to show hesitation in renewing the annual contract, citing the need to review the terms.

Although Nhã Kỳ had keenly recognized that there was something unusual behind the sudden hesitation of her long-time partner, she still could not clearly determine the source of the problem, because all of Long Thịnh's moves were done discreetly, leaving no direct trace that could be attributed.

"Something is wrong with Kim Thịnh Logistics," she spoke during an internal meeting, her eyes scanning the latest report. "They have cooperated with us for nearly twenty years, and have never once hesitated to renew their contract. Why is this year suddenly different?"

"It might just be their internal problem, ma'am." The purchasing manager replied, not paying much attention. "We still have time to renegotiate."

Nhã Kỳ was not completely convinced by that explanation, but she also did not have enough clues to search deeper, so she had to put that concern aside to focus on the more urgent projects that were waiting.

But Bách Nguyên, with his extraordinary intuition left over from thousands of years as a genie, sensed a current of instability creeping around Đường Gia very early, before Nhã Kỳ even realized the problem. He began to quietly research, using the relationships that Lâm Đắc Tường helped him establish in the business world, to track down unusual movements.

"Long Thịnh is systematically approaching each partner of Đường Gia." Bách Nguyên told Đắc Tường one evening, after spending weeks quietly gathering information through seemingly unintentional conversations with low-level employees of partner companies, who had no idea they were providing important clues for a counterattack plan. "This is not a normal business competition. This is a meticulously planned campaign, aimed directly at the time when Đường Gia was weakest since boss Vĩnh Bảo passed away."

"What are you going to do?" Đắc Tường asked, looking worried.

"I will quietly protect the most important partnerships, without making it obvious that I am interfering," Bách Nguyên replied. "But more importantly, I will start to collect evidence about what Long Thịnh is doing. If the opponent really has long-term intentions targeting Đường Gia, there will come a time when we need concrete evidence to confront them directly, not just forever defending in the dark."

He knew clearly that if he wanted to deal with a corporation with resources and long-term business experience like Long Thịnh, he could not rely solely on intuition or physical strength. You need to understand how the modern business world works, you need to learn how to read a financial statement, how to recognize the signs of a shell company, how to follow the flow of money through many layers of concealment. For many months, he spent most of his free time self-studying, reading dozens of books on corporate finance and competition law that Đắc Tường bought for him, combined with his absolute memory and extraordinary analytical ability left over from thousands of years of being a genie.

He began quietly and patiently building his own information network — not with magic, but with the persistence of a person truly learning how to operate in the complex world of business. He met with former employees of Long Thịnh who had quit their jobs due to dissatisfaction, listened to their stories about how the company operated, and about the unfair competitive tactics that Long Thịnh's leadership had used against other competitors in the past. He spent hours reading through Long Thịnh's public financial reports, looking for recurring patterns that might reveal the true strategy behind the group's facade of business legitimacy.

Every small piece of information was carefully recorded by him, stored in a separate notebook whose existence only Đắc Tường knew, carefully hidden in a locked drawer in his private room in the annex. He knew that this would be a long-term war that could not be resolved overnight, and he needed to be fully prepared before the opponent acted decisively.

"Miss Nhã Kỳ didn't know you were doing these things," Đắc Tường said, feeling a little guilty for Bách Nguyên.

"No problem." Bách Nguyên smiled, his eyes determined. "I don't do these things to make her grateful to me. I do them because I promised my boss, and because..." He paused for a moment, then continued with a rare sincerity. "Because I really don't want to see her fall before the forces that are silently lurking out there."

That night, when Nhã Kỳ returned home after a tense meeting with the Kim Thịnh Logistics board of directors that was not very successful, her face showed a rare expression of fatigue and anxiety. She did not know that, as soon as she entered the bedroom and closed the door, in the annex behind the garden, Bách Nguyên was sitting under the table lamp, diligently writing a new page in his secret notebook, preparing for a war that he knew would certainly be much longer and fiercer than what had happened up to now.