Chapter 444: The Gu Family’s Best Move

Chapter 444: The Gu Family’s Best Move

“Little Wu, what did you just say? Could you say that again?” Li Maoren honestly thought he’d misheard, mistaken one word for another.

The Gu family? Some other Gu? The Lu family?

“I said I’ve brought the Gu family into the game…” Wu Chen repeated with a smile.

“The Gu family?” Li Maoren cut in.

“Yes.”

“Gu Hongtu’s Gu family?”

“That’s right.”

The line abruptly went silent.

Li Maoren had finally confirmed that he hadn’t misheard or misunderstood! It was the very Gu family of Modu he’d thought of first! Gu Hongtu was Gu Ruibo’s father!

In fact, Li Maoren knew that if Wu Chen said simply “the Gu family,” without any other qualifier, he had to mean the Gu family of Modu.

Because of all the Gu families with any connection to the Li family, it was the only one Wu Chen would bring up with him.

Li Maoren had only asked over and over because he couldn’t believe it.

It was far too sudden!

How on earth had the Gu family entered the game just like that?

As for relations between the Li and Gu families, they could only be called neither close nor distant. Li Ruotai and Gu Ruibo were very good friends, but that was a connection the two young men had built themselves.

Two great families didn’t warm to each other just because two of their third-generation youngsters were close.

Those were two different things!

The Li family could be said to have kept up good relations with the Gu family, and the two had occasionally done each other small favors. But that was all.

There were no deep ties between the power-holding cores of the two families!

Let alone an alliance!

It really was extremely sudden!

Come to think of it… Li Maoren’s plan against the Ding family had only just completed its initial deployment.

At present, besides the Li and Sun families themselves, the only people who knew of the plan targeting the Ding and Wei families were core members of the two families’ dependent families.

The Tang family had been brought into the game, but it knew only part of the plan, the part concerning the Wei family.

Li Maoren hadn’t told the Tang family about the Ding family yet.

There was no hurry.

As for secretly allying with still more families, that had to be done slowly!

Because it was too dangerous!

The stakes were too high!

If word got out early, the trouble would be enormous!

That was why Li Maoren was especially cautious about recruiting new allies.

This had to be done steadily!

Even the Tang family’s entry hadn’t come from Li Maoren seeking them out! It had been set off by the Tang Xinbao incident. Wu Chen, single-handedly, had produced the dirt on the Liu family and settled everything in a round of negotiation!

Li Maoren had been stunned by Wu Chen’s methods, and extremely pleased with the ally he’d found.

Mainly because it was safe. The alliance between the Li and Tang families was at heart an exchange of power, which guaranteed the Tang family would never sell the Li family out ahead of time. It would be an exceptionally reliable ally!

What’s more, the Tang family represented not just one family but an entire faction!

Wu Chen had handled that one beautifully!

And now… the Gu family?

It had been barely more than a week since the Tang family came in, hadn’t it?

And now he’d brought in another great family, the Gu family? Found the Li family yet another reliable major ally?!

Li Maoren couldn’t begin to imagine what Wu Chen had done this time.

“Little Wu… you mean, about the Ding family… you’ve already gotten the Gu family to…” After a full minute of silence, Li Maoren finally collected himself, but he still needed to be sure.

“Yes,” Wu Chen replied.

“What did you do?” Li Maoren asked at once.

“Nothing much. I came to Modu for a couple of days to take care of a few things. Ran into a bit of trouble at noon today… and just now I had a chat with Tang Jingbin and Gu Ruibo…” Wu Chen said.

He made it sound remarkably easy!

But in fact, he wasn’t hiding anything! That really was how it had happened! Wu Chen hadn’t set anything up in advance.

It was just that he carried so much in his head that… even a small, sudden problem could be driven into something enormous using the intelligence he already had!

“You…”

“Here’s how it is, Uncle.”

Wu Chen cut him off and went on, smiling. “Tang Jingbin has promised me that within three days, he’ll move against a ten-billion-yuan commercial family dependent on the Xiang family. Gu Ruibo, for his part, will assist Tang Jingbin and publicly back the Tang family on the Gu family’s behalf…”

He didn’t go into the specifics of Shuangqi Real Estate.

He only gave a brief account of where things stood with Tang Jingbin and Gu Ruibo.

And with Li Maoren’s intelligence, he grasped it immediately. The outside world would wrongly assume the Tang and Gu families had allied, and the Xiang family, wary, wouldn’t dare retaliate.

It was only a dependent commercial family. The Xiang family had no reason to go head-to-head with two great families over it. It could only play the whole thing down.

“Three days from now, the Gu family will call Gu Ruibo to account internally for allying with the Tang family on the family’s behalf without authorization… Gu Ruibo will explain that the Li and Tang families are allied and about to launch a major move against the Ding family. He and I are working together, so he knows part of the situation with the Ding family… After that, the Gu family will call you to discuss cooperation, Uncle.”

Wu Chen finished.

It was that simple!

At first hearing, what he’d said seemed disjointed, even a little reckless. But on careful reflection, the logic was airtight!

Why would the Gu family, once it understood the situation, choose straightaway to cooperate with the Li family?

There were three angles.

First, Gu Ruibo’s unauthorized alliance with the Tang family meant the Gu family couldn’t break faith right away. It would have to keep the arrangement going for at least a while. The two sides would build initial trust and share a common opponent: the Xiang family! As for whether the Gu family kept up the alliance with the Tang family afterward…

On that front, the Gu family’s best move was naturally to make the alliance with the Tang family real and go after the Xiang family together! The problem was how to trust the Tang family completely!

Second, if the Li family approached the Gu family alone to discuss cooperation, the risk would be enormous. The Li family plus the Sun family held no advantage over the Ding family and its allies.

But add the Tang family, and in terms of sheer power, they would have an overwhelming advantage over the Ding family!

On that front, the Gu family’s best move was naturally to side with the stronger party, the Li–Tang alliance! And once the three families shared a great common interest, trust would follow!

Third, once the great affair began, the Xiang family had only two options: side with the Ding family, or join the hunt against it!

But the Gu and Xiang families had long been rivals. Their industries overlapped heavily, and competition between them was fierce. On top of that came the fresh enmity from the Gu family helping the Tang family destroy a Xiang-dependent enterprise.

So once the great affair began, either the Xiang family would become the Gu family’s outright enemy, or the two would back the same side and end up fighting over the same pie!

One way or another, the two families would come to blows!

The Gu family could choose to tip off the Ding family, or it could choose to cooperate with the Li family. Either way, the Li and Ding families would end up at war!

In other words, the great affair was going to happen no matter what!

So on this third front, the Gu family’s best move… was still to ally with the Tang family and lay plans against the Xiang family ahead of time, ready to take it on!

But allying with the Tang family raised the question of how to trust it, which led right back to the second point…

So!

No matter how the Gu family thought it through, no matter how many times it went around in circles, allying with the Tang and Li families was its best choice!

And enormous interests would drive it to make that choice!

Li Maoren went quiet again for a good while.

He’d thought himself half dizzy, because the logic genuinely was convoluted. Yet however he looked at it, from whatever angle, he couldn’t find a flaw.

The Gu family simply wouldn’t leak a thing. Any way you sliced it, the Gu family was bound to enter the game of its own accord and seek the alliance itself!

And from how Wu Chen had just described it, he’d handled the whole thing with ease. A matter big enough to forge an alliance among great families seemed to have been settled almost effortlessly.

“Little Wu… why did Tang Jingbin agree to take on the Xiang family for you? And Gu Ruibo, why is he willing to publicly back the Tang family?” Li Maoren asked.

“It’s complicated.” Wu Chen paused, then smiled. “But it can also be put simply… great families all need allies. What they’re short on are chances to build trust…”

Wu Chen didn’t go on.

But Li Maoren already understood some of it.

Wu Chen’s explanation was still simple. But Li Maoren knew that actually pulling off something like this was harder than anyone could imagine!

He fell silent for another ten-odd seconds. A great many thoughts passed through his mind before he finally asked, “Little Wu, what do you need your uncle to do?”

Anyone else would have found it unimaginable: that the day would come when Li Maoren himself took his instructions from Wu Chen!

Li Maoren had realized that the final step in all this was his to complete!

“Within the next three days, talk to Tang Jingbin about the Ding family and bring him up to speed on that side of things,” Wu Chen said directly. “Three days from now, when the Gu family calls, you can organize a three-way meeting. As for the details… arrange them however you see fit, Uncle.”

“Done!” Li Maoren agreed.

They talked a little longer, then hung up.

Right to the end, Li Maoren neither laughed heartily nor praised Wu Chen. He’d been too shaken for that kind of performative display. He felt… he ought to end this call first and calm himself down!

Ten-odd minutes later.

Ring, ring, ring…

Wu Chen was still driving when his phone suddenly rang.

He picked it up, glanced at the screen, and answered. “Ruobing.”

“My dear Mr. Wu! Look at you! Not a single call in two whole days, and without a peep you’ve gone and stirred up another huge affair?!” Li Ruobing opened in a put-on, theatrical tone.

“Hm…” Wu Chen asked in return. “Which affair do you mean?”