Chapter 296 - 296 Warning
Just past five in the morning, Ye Qing had Black Bear send all the migrant workers away. At that time, there weren't many people around the Dog Field, and the personnel from Blessing Sky Blue Gang had already withdrawn back.
Li Lianshan made a call and summoned a group of people to the Dog Field. They cleaned the place from the inside out and then went to find the previous managers of the Dog Field to prepare it for reopening.
Previously, most of the staff at the Dog Field were Tiger King's people; now replaced by Li Lianshan's men, who had no experience in this area, it wasn't easy to restore the Dog Field to its former state. However, now that the Dog Field was back in their control, making money was only a matter of time, so Li Lianshan was not in a hurry.
Although he had recalled many of the former managers of the Dog Field, he was more focused on training his own management team, as he wanted to thoroughly assimilate the Dog Field.
After Li Lianshan had completely tidied up the place, Ye Qing returned to the city. As soon as he returned, he received a call from Zhao Chengshuang, informing him that the Tianqing Gang had pulled out of those five facilities. That is to say, Ye Qing's eleven venues, as of today, were completely back in his hands.
This was actually within Ye Qing's expectations; if the Tianqing Gang could give up the Southern Suburbs Dogfight Arena, the other venues were already unimportant to them. Given Huangfu Ziyu's threat, it was better for them to gracefully hand over the venues than to provoke Huangfu Ziyu.
Mad Dog had been driving with Ye Qing all night, knowing that Ye Qing intended to reclaim the venues, he had thought there would be a fierce battle. With so many venues, it would take at least a month to get them all back, and he guessed many would be wounded.
He never imagined that Ye Qing would so easily reclaim all these venues, which made him respect Ye Qing profoundly, and he felt exhilarated to have found such a great leader.
After a busy night, Ye Qing and his team rested for a while in the morning, then got up at noon, and Ye Qing summoned the managers of those ten venues.
Huang Fei, the former assistant manager of Tian Sheng, had been promoted to manager by Ye Qing, which thrilled him immensely. He saw Ye Qing as his personal savior, wanting nothing more than to work his utmost to express his gratitude.
For the other nine venues, several managers were no longer there, and Ye Qing directly promoted the assistant managers to managers. This way, the management for all ten venues was set, at least in terms of operations, they could function normally.
Ye Qing held a brief meeting with these managers, mainly to ensure they ran the venues smoothly, allowing for normal business operations. As for profit-making, Ye Qing had never mentioned it from beginning to end, which greatly surprised all ten managers.
Having worked in clubs for a long time, each manager was shrewd. During Tiger King's control, Tiger King's people were placed in these venues, and they didn't dare manipulate much. Now, with Ye Qing managing, everyone knew that Ye Qing had no experience in managing or operating these venues, so they had already prepared fraudulent accounts to scam Ye Qing.
Yet, Ye Qing didn't discuss profit, which puzzled everyone. He had gone through great effort to snatch these ten venues from the clutches of Blessing Sky Blue Gang; if not for profit, what was he aiming for?
The managers couldn't fathom Ye Qing's intentions, and they were even more perplexed by what this overly young boss actually intended to do. However, they had all decided to take advantage of Ye Qing's ignorance of nightclub profits to make a large sum.
Ye Qing did not talk about profits; he only repeatedly instructed the managers to maintain the venues and keep them running smoothly. If there were any incidents, they could contact Li Lianshan to resolve the matter. It seemed Ye Qing was genuinely clueless about nightclub operations; he only cared about whether they could operate normally.
Of course, the managers wanted the clubs to run normally too because each day brought in hundreds of thousands in revenue. Now that they had cooked the books, all the income went into their pockets. A day's closure meant a significant financial hit!
In this regard, Ye Qing and the managers were on the same page. The meeting went very smoothly; Ye Qing even treated the managers to lunch, and all of them swore their allegiance to him vigorously. However, nine out of ten were harboring ulterior motives; only Huang Fei had not yet entertained any crooked thoughts.
After lunch, the managers left one by one. Ye Qing sat in the private room, slowly savoring a cup of strong tea, showing no rush to leave.
About five minutes later, Huang Fei quietly slipped in from outside. Seeing Ye Qing was still there, he couldn't help feeling delighted and hurried over, speaking in a low voice, "Boss."
As if Ye Qing had anticipated his return, he casually pointed to a chair nearby and said, "Sit."
Huang Fei sat down next to him, glanced at the composed Ye Qing, and said in a low voice, "Boss, there's something I'm not sure whether I should say."
Ye Qing said, "If you shouldn't say it, you wouldn't have come back to find me, and I wouldn't have been waiting here."
Huang Fei's expression shifted, as Ye Qing waiting here wasn't just for tea, but deliberately waiting for him. It seemed Ye Qing had already guessed he would return. The young boss really seemed to have an uncanny ability to plot and strategize.
"Boss, since you knew I'd come back, then you should know, those nine venues, each day's income is a significant sum!" Huang Fei said in a lowered voice while observing Ye Qing's expression, "But, while sitting with them just now, I checked their accounts from yesterday. The revenues from these venues have dropped by about seventy percent compared to usual!"
Ye Qing nodded slowly, saying, "You seem to have a good grip on the revenue of each place."
"After all, I've been in this business for so many years. I might not know other things, but I understand the state of the industry quite well," Huang Fei declared proudly. "After Tiger King died, it indeed affected these places. However, even with the impact, a decline of thirty percent is the most.
Their drop is simply too steep; it's impossible unless there were serious issues like disturbances or major personnel changes at the venue."
Ye Qing nodded, saying, "So, you mean someone has been tampering with the books?"
Huang Fei glanced at Ye Qing and whispered, "Boss, you didn't mention anything about the books during the meeting earlier. That might make them think you don't understand how to manage at all, emboldening them in the future!"
Although Huang Fei didn't explicitly say it, he hinted clearly that it was those managers who had been tampering with the accounts.
"Regarding the accounts, I indeed don't understand them. However, I believe that, in business, integrity is crucial!" Ye Qing smiled lightly, saying, "I won't often check their accounts. But, I've always believed that dishonest people will be punished!"
After speaking, Ye Qing slowly stood up, walked over to Huang Fei, gently patted his shoulder, and then left the room first.
Huang Fei sat in the room in silence for a while before slowly standing up. He had gleaned a bit of meaning from Ye Qing's words; it seemed that Ye Qing was not planning to ignore the situation, just not ready to act yet. But, when he did take action, those dishonest people would be in real danger.
Seeing Ye Qing going downstairs and getting into a car, Huang Fei immediately took out his phone and called a familiar manager, relayed Ye Qing's words to him, and hinted that he shouldn't play any tricks under Ye Qing's watch. Otherwise, when Ye Qing really decided to take action, it would be troublesome.
Downstairs, Mad Dog was driving Ye Qing, rushing to the hospital. He was going to check on Wang Tiezhu; it had been a while since the last incident, and he hadn't visited Wang since. He was unsure about his current situation.
"Big Brother, why didn't you look at the ledger just now?" Mad Dog asked Ye Qing curiously as he drove, "Don't we need to have a clear understanding in business, even if they' are cooking the books?"
"If we know they are false, what use is that understanding?" Ye Qing countered.
Mad Dog said, "But continuously ignoring the ledger isn't right, is it? You don't mean to let them keep messing around, do you?"
Ye Qing shook his head, saying, "On our side, there's no one who understands how to manage a nightclub right now. Even if we had Li Lianshan look at these ledgers, he wouldn't understand them. I need to find someone who understands management and can spot the issues in these accounts at a glance before we start dealing with the problems!"
"Oh." Mad Dog nodded but then strangely said, "If that's the case, then wasn't the meeting we had today a bit redundant? We might as well let them handle it until we find our person, then deal with the issues in the accounts!"
Ye Qing smiled lightly and said, "I held this meeting mainly to warn them not to tamper with the accounts."
"A warning?" Mad Dog was surprised, saying, "But you didn't even glance at the ledger. How did you warn them?"
"You forgot, I specifically stayed behind to speak a word with Huang Fei, which was my warning!" Ye Qing looked out the car window and spoke softly, "That word will surely be spread by Huang Fei, those managers will definitely hear it. I intentionally didn't look at the ledger to give them a chance to sort out the ledger properly.
Otherwise, once I find someone who understands the accounts and there are still issues, I won't be nice to them."
Mad Dog suddenly understood and admired Ye Qing even more. He had thought that Ye Qing was being fooled by these people, but realized that everything Ye Qing did had a deeper meaning.
"Stop for a moment!" Suddenly, Ye Qing, who was sitting in the back, shouted. Mad Dog immediately hit the brakes and looked around, "What happened?"
Ye Qing didn't speak, just leaned against the window, watching an alley outside.
The alley was a dilapidated street, filled mostly with small shops like hair salons. At the entrance of each shop, several scantily clad women lounged, making suggestive poses, and Ye Qing's eyes were fixed on one of the girls.