Chapter 2338 - 2338

Zhang Xiaoyang looked thoroughly depressed, shook his head with a helpless smile, sighed, and let it go.

Sure enough, over the next two weeks, the international gold price exploded upward.

This world really is way too trippy.

Can you imagine it? Liu Zhizhong put down half a billion to get that gold, and now the price has gone insane—he's made at least a hundred million!

Fuck…

Less than half a month, and pocket a hundred million?

Yeah, that's actually what happened.

Liu Zhizhong immediately told finance to contact the bank and say the company's hoarded gold was ready to sell.

The bank of course treated it as a special case: an armored cash‑transit truck with fully armed guards showed up, plus a business manager and a technical manager personally coming to Liu Zhizhong's company to do door‑to‑door gold buyback, haha…

But who could've seen this coming?

In the middle of the recovery process, the bank's tech people actually discovered that a small portion of the bars weren't pure—this wasn't the standard pure gold on the market, it contained some impurities.

This batch of impure bars, based on the price at the time Liu Zhizhong originally did the deal, was worth about fifty million. At today's price, that's worth sixty million.

As soon as this result came out, the finance department panicked and immediately reported to Liu Zhizhong and Yu Haiping.

With something like this blowing up, of course you panic—no one wants to carry a criminal charge on their back!

This batch of gold was all appraised before the deal was completed back then, then kept in the company safe the whole time. And the safe's password was remote‑input by Liu Zhizhong and Yu Haiping; it was a randomized two‑factor code, pretty advanced stuff.

In other words, besides Liu Zhizhong and Yu Haiping, there was no third person who could possibly open that safe.

Meaning, there's no way someone swapped the real gold midway and slipped in watered‑down bars.

Likewise, that means the gold the Zhang Family sold to Liu Zhizhong's company already had issues when it left the Zhang Family's warehouse.

The issue being: did the Zhang Family rip off Liu Zhizhong's company for fifty million?

When Liu Zhizhong got the call from finance, he was stunned for a moment, but quickly calmed down.

He immediately called Yu Haiping; Yu Haiping was just about to call him too!

The two got on the line, and Yu Haiping, still the sharp one, went straight to cursing: "Fuck the Zhang Family, how disgusting can you be in business and in life? Who does that? How's this any different from robbery?"

By this time, Liu Zhizhong had already completely adjusted his mood.

That "master of emotional management" label on him really wasn't for nothing.

He said mildly, "Hai Ping Brothers, even if the Zhang Family robbed us in broad daylight, what can we actually do?"

"Huh? We… I mean… hey, Brother Zhizhong…"

Liu Zhizhong said, "Today's gold price has hit a historic high. We sell right now, we won't be taking a loss—we're still making money, aren't we?"

"But… we're just gonna say we got screwed by the Zhang Family and swallow it? They're too damn bullying, no?"

"Brother, no… listen to me. Right now the situation is like this…"

After a round of talking him through it, Liu Zhizhong successfully talked Yu Haiping into it.

So Yu Haiping decided not to bother with it anymore and left everything to Liu Zhizhong to handle.

Liu Zhizhong, well, he's got a system for emotional management, and he's got a system for weighing interests too.

So he made a snap decision and replied to finance: sell immediately, let the bank buy back all the actual pure gold bars at market price.

Sure enough, with that move, the bars originally worth six hundred million were sold by Liu Zhizhong's company for five hundred and forty million.

Considering what the company paid in the original transaction, hey, still pretty decent—less than half a month, and they made forty million, heh…

Even if they got screwed by the Zhang Family, they still came out ahead, didn't they?

Less than a week after this wrapped up, gold prices plunged, hahaha…

Judging by the crash price, the bank that bought Liu Zhizhong's gold took a loss—on the books, it was definitely a loss.

But there are plenty of leeks out there who love chasing highs, right?

So all the gold the bank bought from Liu Zhizhong's company was sold off completely in less than two days. Even the impure stuff was sold as pure—there are some leeks who are just dumb. In this world, where are you gonna find that much genuine gold bars anyway?

Of course, with the impure ones the bank used some tricks: they didn't ship, they talked customers into "gold deposits," gave them gifts, paid interest. With bars like that, there's simply no way they're going to blow up, hehe… and even if the time comes when they really might blow up, they'll deal with it then—plenty of ways.

Even though Liu Zhizhong made a small profit, he was still not okay with it inside. Put this on anyone else and they'd feel wronged too, wouldn't they?

Still, Liu Zhizhong was able to keep his cool.

Not long after, the latest Provincial Party School youth cadre training class was about to start, a three‑month program kicking off right after May Day.

Dongnan City had four slots: Liu Zhizhong, Zhang Xiaoyang, Lu Jie, and Du Shali.

No need to explain Liu Zhizhong—at the City Culture and Tourism Bureau he's been killing it, red‑hot. If he didn't get a slot, that really wouldn't make sense.

Zhang Xiaoyang, what's there to say? A very young deputy division‑level cadre, Deputy County Mayor, the Zhang Family's eldest grandson—of course he's supposed to have a slot like this.

Lu Jie, female, 29, one of Zhang Xiaoyang's cousins. Pretty good‑looking, nice figure, currently Deputy District Mayor of Dongjiang District in Dongnan City's urban area. She's a backbone of the younger generation of the Zhang Family's power network—how could she possibly be left out?

Du Shali, 30, same age as Zhang Xiaoyang, a junior section chief in Section Three of the secretariat in the City Committee office. But she's stunningly gorgeous, sexy and mature, and she's the Mayor's little mistress, hehe, just hitching a ride on the youth cadre training bandwagon!

These four, two men and two women, already have a bit of a reputation among the public—among the up‑and‑coming new faces in the Southeast official circles, they're all seen as the "own‑the‑stage" type.

When Liu Zhizhong got the news that he'd be going for training, he wasn't surprised at all; he'd known beforehand.

And of course, there were plenty of people congratulating him.

At the very least, inside the City Culture and Tourism Bureau, everyone knew Director Liu's opportunity for study and training had arrived. Once he finishes the program, hey, it means another promotion is around the corner.

Right now he's still at deputy division level; after he comes back, might he jump straight to Standard Level?

Of course that possibility is still pretty slim; in less than two years, doing a triple jump—there really hasn't been a precedent.

By normal officialdom logic, once Deputy Division‑level Director Liu Zhizhong finishes the training and gets his completion certificate, there'll be a note in his personnel file. When the organization considers appointments, they can easily transfer him down from the City Culture and Tourism Bureau to a district or county government as a Deputy District Mayor or Deputy County Mayor, give him one or two years of real leadership work, then promote him to Standard Level—totally by the book.

At the very least, his mentors Zhang Qidong and Mayor Xiong Wenwu had mapped it out that way. For Liu Zhizhong, the two really did have high hopes.

But as for what happens afterward, who can say? Sometimes, good things just take a few more twists.