The chips in the Cen Family’s hands change day by day.

Xiangnu received a call from an unknown number, and the other party said they could help Mouyu secure the May broadcast rights for LOL.

When Xiangnu asked how much it would cost, the respondent just said they wanted to talk to Li Yang.

Xiangnu understood immediately.

She herself could not even see Li Yang now, let alone anyone else.

Moreover, regarding the broadcast rights issue, Li Yang had told her not to worry about it, so she definitely wouldn’t bother him about a promised matter.

Thus, they didn’t reach any agreement.

In truth, Xiangnu really wanted to secure the LOL broadcast rights after May, because only this game still had popularity on the platform.

Primarily, it was the only game across the web with sustained heat; even if the others weren’t unpopular, they could only be described as ’once-hot’ when placed next to LOL.

She didn’t know what it was like over in the Capital City, but recently money was being spent in a methodical fashion to sign people.

It seemed they knew Mouyu was generous with female streamers; even for a newcomer, as long as she was pretty and had a little talent, she could sign a decent contract.

Talent has no boundaries; of course, the best talent is being good at talking.

Generally, a pretty woman who is good at talking may not necessarily become a top streamer, but at least wouldn’t care much about a monthly contract of a few thousand.

Xiangnu was well aware this was quite a burden; with contracts for hundreds of people, even if most had a base monthly salary of only two thousand, these expenditures alone exceeded a million every month.

And in fact, it was far from just that.

Mouyu had several major expenses; the first was the twenty million each year for the top ranking LOL national server naming rights, just to change those names.

Even though many game streamers had switched platforms, this expense hadn’t decreased, as it was a measure to attract game players.

Following that, there were the bandwidth server costs for the streaming platform; once only in the tens of millions, these costs had now exceeded one hundred million.

Previously, another expense was traffic generation, typically forty to fifty million annually, but now with frequent edge-line news operations, this was reduced to need only a small team costing just over a million to maintain.

Though this cost shrank, according to Li Yang’s requirements, another expense emerged.

That was to allocate teams for female streamers, divided by regions; sometimes one team was responsible for twenty or thirty streamers, offering a full suite of services from photography to attire and makeup.

This team was expanding daily, with each team’s monthly costs exceeding 150,000, accruing over thirty million in annual expenses.

Additionally, there was recruitment for video commentators and editors.

Most of those video contents were placed on the individual streamers’ profiles, though in reality few watched them.

After all, only extreme fans would check out everything regarding a streamer; most viewers followed whoever was live, and absent that, watched nothing.

All these miscellaneous expenditures added up to an annual cost approaching fifty million, yet they hadn’t yielded results.

The 360 million from Li Yang’s last round of financing was nearly spent by now, barely able to sustain until July.

Unless they won those lawsuits, for the damages would total around a billion; even retrieving a third of it would be enough to operate the platform for over a year.

...

Ruyi Hall, since last year, had been experiencing a downturn in business. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

The prior incident was just one minor factor; the main issue was that the dishes were no longer as astonishing as before.

Liu Ruyi hadn’t cooked in a long time; just made a dish at Li Yang’s place earlier in the year, and afterward let other chefs take over.

Even though they were high-paid chefs hired by her, patrons were clearly unimpressed, and over time, a vicious cycle ensued.

However, Liu Ruyi didn’t care; opening this restaurant was never a money-making venture, and there wasn’t much to be made anyway.

Today, she surprisingly dressed up exquisitely, with delicate makeup and a lavish little velvet robe, complementing her extraordinary beauty. Even if the food was so-so, it still could go down with such splendid scenery as accompaniment.

When Cen Yeming saw Liu Ruyi again after half a year, he was also astounded.

The present Liu Ruyi exhibited an inexplicable melancholy between her brows, her aura suddenly elevated to another level.

In Cen Yeming’s eyes, at this moment, Liu Ruyi was unparalleled in beauty.

Seemingly... marrying her wouldn’t be a loss.

The former Liu Ruyi was beautiful indeed, but her value was too low; in Cen Yeming’s eyes, value was the fundamental criterion for evaluating a partner.

And now, his wife’s value plummeted, while Liu Ruyi’s value was, almost imperceptibly, elevated a lot. By comparison, he wavered, finding her increasingly beautiful.

As Liu Ruyi entered, he immediately walked up to try to take her hand and express his affections.

He believed that if he made just a slight move, Liu Ruyi wouldn’t be able to resist.

However, this time, Liu Ruyi dodged and directly asked, "Why are you looking for me?"

Cen Yeming awkwardly brushed the air, with a smile said, "Just missing you, during this half a year outside, you’ve been on my mind all the time."

For Liu Ruyi, Cen Yeming saying such things was already quite remarkable.

If it had been a few months ago, she surely would have been sucked in, willing to do anything to make Cen Yeming care so much.

But... where was he then?

"Just be direct, why are you here? A busy person like you wouldn’t waste time on me."