1998, Northeast China. The wave of state-owned enterprise reform sweeps across the country. Chen Weixin, a twenty-eight-year-old engineer at a steel rolling mill, loses his closest friend in a brawl over defending the factory and ends up behind bars himself. By the time he is released, his wife has remarried, his parents have died of illness, and the world has been turned upside down.
No one hands him a weapon. All he has is a copy of Introduction to Business Management and a mind full of business insights from the future.
While others use iron bars to fight over territory, he reorganizes the gang with KPI assessments. While others bind brothers together with blood oaths, he wins loyalty with equity incentives. While others clash in the streets, he uses SWOT analysis to dismantle his rivals at the negotiating table. And while traditional gangs are still collecting protection money, he has already built a citywide same-day delivery network.
From a joint-venture taxi company to a real estate miracle built on unfinished buildings; from an offline traffic strategy based on internet café chains to the tumultuous world of capital markets, he takes twenty years to transform a street gang into a trillion-yuan business empire spanning real estate, logistics, finance, and technology.
He personally sends his brothers to prison and personally puts his enemies in boardroom seats. Some call him a "white knight"; others curse him as a "traitor." He is the greatest heretic of the old underworld and the earliest architect of a new world.
Only when he stands atop his empire and looks back does he realize:
There has never been an exit from the true underworld. The most masterful way to clean up your image is to become the one who makes the rules.
