Chapter 48: The Company

"Of course I understand."

Louise Lindon massaged her temples with her fingertips, her head aching: "Coach, my father and the board have great trust in Georgia Richard. His achievements over the years have been outstanding. Even I can't force him to do anything for me. His future isn't at Lindon Academy; it's in politics."

"So we just let it go? Let him meddle in our Comprehensive Cold Weapon Combat Club?"

Coach Ricard's tone was full of dissatisfaction: "Listen, Louise, if this continues, the morale of the entire club will fall apart. What happened with Elena and John will happen again sooner or later. They withdrew and transferred not just because other schools offered better treatment, but also because the school treated them unfairly before! We can't let that happen again. Louise, you're the heir of the Lindon family; I know you have a way."

"Alright, Coach, let's end this topic here. I'll consider your suggestion. But before that, please let me talk to them first, okay?"

Seeing that the silver-haired old man beside her still had a grim and angry expression, Louise shook her head slightly, then strode toward the gymnasium entrance.

She also had a match today, one of the earliest rounds, and had no time to waste here.

But just as Louise climbed the steps and passed the corridor leading to Hall B, she caught sight of a group from her school gathered around a schedule, discussing animatedly.

Louise raised an eyebrow and looked over. Then she saw that a name at the top of the list—'Bill Clendo'—had been crossed out with a horizontal line. She paused in surprise and walked over: "What's this? Bill Clendo, the Mad Bear Bill? He can't compete?"

"You guessed it, miss. I just asked the staff; that guy got acute hemorrhagic enteritis and has already reported it to the officials. All Amo has to do is check in with the event organizers, and he'll automatically advance to the third round. Then in the fourth round, he'll get a bye. The top sixty-four are already in sight."

William's eyes were full of disbelief and envy: "I think the nickname I gave him is spot on—Lucky Amo. He's really lucky."

Louise was also speechless, thinking that his luck was truly extraordinary and unbelievable. But then a hint of joy appeared on her face.

Having someone from the club advance to the fourth round meant their chances of accumulating team competition points had greatly increased.

Li Mochen, standing nearby, had a stiff expression. He could no longer tell whether his current luck was good or bad.

This feeling of having built up strength, eager to strike, only to hit cotton, was really hard to describe.

But what could he do? If it was acute hemorrhagic enteritis, the patient would need at least eight to ten days of recovery to heal.

In this world, healers could use magical healing techniques to cure various kinds of injuries, but when faced with bacterial or viral diseases like acute enteritis, they were helpless.

This was because the life light used by healers not only promoted the growth of human flesh and blood tissues but also had the same effect on bacteria and viruses. Moreover, the internal organs were especially complex, beyond the reach of low- and mid-level healers.

But it didn't seem necessary to call on a high-level healer for this illness, and ordinary families couldn't afford such conditions.

This situation was more or less the same in their original dome. Wood-element and water-element cultivators with a certain level of skill could use their techniques to heal severe injuries, but they were helpless against minor ailments. This situation could only be gradually reversed after reaching the Primordial Spirit realm.

At this moment, the people in front of the ranking list had turned around, casting strange glances at him. Li Mochen could understand their feelings of surprise, envy, or jealousy, but he simply couldn't be bothered to say anything. He turned around and walked toward the podium in Hall B.

Since there were no matches this afternoon, he might as well visit the company left by his original father and that Carl Jenkins law firm.

……

The company left by Li Chunchu was named Rising Sun LLC, which in the Eastern language could mean either 'rising sun' or 'morning sun.'

Li Mochen thought the name's intention was probably to hope that his company would rise like the morning sun and shine like the rising sun. Unfortunately, things turned out contrary to his wishes. Although Rising Sun developed well in its early years, it hit a bottleneck ten years ago and had never achieved significant growth since.

The company was currently being managed by two veterans left by Li Chunchu: one was a Spanish man named Cadilun Jebson, and the other was a middle-aged woman named Li Mei.

The former was the deputy general manager, responsible for daily operations, while the latter was the financial director.

After Li Mochen arrived, both were quite pleasantly surprised and then introduced the company's situation to him in great detail.

This was a company engaged in import and export trade, importing cheap goods from around the world, especially from the Eastern ancient country, and then selling them to customers and major distributors. In addition, it also did some side businesses. The company's annual turnover reached seven to nine million gold shields, with a net profit after operating costs of about twelve percent, between ninety thousand and one hundred ten thousand gold shields.

Li Mochen soon noticed, while flipping through the financial statements, that there was a large amount of cash in the company's accounts, totaling 1.6 million gold shields.

"This is to deal with the maturing loans. Over the past few months, we've collected all the accounts receivable that we could," Jebson explained.

"Previously, the boss's real estate project owed the bank about 8.5 million gold shields, which will mature in fourteen months."

Li Mochen frowned slightly. "But I think this approach should be detrimental to the company's operations? Considering the loan repayment fourteen months from now, isn't this too early?"

Jebson seemed surprised by Li Mochen's acumen, and a hint of astonishment appeared in his eyes. "Some customers and distributors are indeed angry with our approach, but for the company, it was a necessary choice. Our sources of goods in the East are decreasing. Even if we hadn't called in the debts, it would be difficult to maintain ties with these customers."

But Li Mochen didn't take this statement seriously. He thought there were two other possibilities: one was to facilitate absconding with the funds; the other was to prevent him and his sister from inheriting the company with a heavy debt burden.

He continued reading the subsequent content and found that the company's outstanding accounts receivable were not much, only about 500,000 gold shields. As for fixed assets, apart from a commercial building in the eastern suburbs, there were only seven warehouses for storing goods and a piece of land under commercial development. The total value, according to the bank's previous assessment, was around 12 million gold shields.

This puzzled him greatly. It seemed the company was in quite good shape.

Then Li Mochen immediately noticed that the company's expenditures in the past two months differed somewhat from six months ago. Not more, but less.

He continued to examine the more detailed expenditure statement and found it was wages. Despite no reduction in staff, they had decreased by about twenty percent.