"Why did you come home when you should be at school?"

"I missed you, so I came back to see you. Is that not allowed?"

"Then you must be careful on the road. Tomorrow morning, I'll go to the market early and make your favorite cumin lamb chops."

"Oh, Mom, that's just like you—always saying one thing and meaning another. You clearly want me to come home, but you keep saying school is important. You know selling the house to Aunt's husband is a bad deal, but you don't want to embarrass them. I'm already an adult. This time, please listen to me. Before I get back, don't let Dad sign any agreement."

After hanging up, Grace Bennett immediately bought a high-speed train ticket to go home early the next morning.

Chapter 009: A Million-Yuan Deal!

Songjiang University Town is in a remote area with inconvenient transportation.

Early in the morning, Grace Bennett took the subway to Hongqiao Railway Station. It took quite some effort before he finally boarded the train home. His family lived in Pengcheng, and the high-speed rail journey would take about three hours.

As soon as the Harmony Express left Hudu, Grace Bennett received another message from his smart assistant. It seemed that Henry Parker had brought Grace Bennett some good luck—there was a new client inquiring about advertising, and this time it was a big fish: a well-known domestic gaming company.

"Hello everyone, I'm Louis Koo, I'm Zhazahui..."

For a moment, Grace Bennett's mind was filled with that crazy online game ad. These days, when it comes to spending money online, who can outspend these gaming companies?

Game operators are an absolutely lucrative industry. A mobile game you've barely even heard of could easily rake in tens of millions of RMB a year. What can you do? People in Huaxia have always been foolish with too much money.

"Damn, this is a big client," Grace Bennett muttered.

He looked around. The carriage was crowded, but everyone was quiet. Making a business call in this environment would look like he was just showing off.

So Grace Bennett stood up and smiled at the uncle sitting by the aisle. "Excuse me, could you let me by? I need to use the restroom."

The uncle didn't say anything, just pulled his greasy belly back a bit.

Grace Bennett squeezed into the aisle, then quickly made his way to the restroom door. The little sign showed "Occupied," so he had to keep going to the next carriage connection. He opened the door, locked himself in the restroom, and dialed the number the other party had left.

After a few rings, the call was answered by a woman who sounded quite capable.

"Xingzhan Creative Games Publicity Department, who's calling?"

"Hello, I'm the founder of Sky Eye. My surname is Luo. You spoke with my assistant earlier."

"Oh, so it's Mr. Bennett."

"Not at all. May I ask how I should address you?"

"My surname is Xu, Charles Reed, head of the publicity department."

"Hello, Minister Reed. How can I help you?"

"Here's the situation: our company would like to place a batch of ads on your website, so I've been assigned to get in touch with your company."

Grace Bennett smiled. The way Charles Reed spoke was completely different from Little Mr. Parker who ran the dog kennel—she was clearly a pro at business negotiations.

So Grace Bennett's mind started working at high speed. "I noticed your wording—a batch of ads. Looks like your company is planning something big."

"Mr. Bennett, you listen carefully. That's right. As an internet company, we're different from traditional businesses. High-density ad placement and repeated information bombardment have always been our strategy. Your website is very popular right now, but I noticed that Sky Eye doesn't have any ad clients yet."

Grace Bennett thought, "What an aggressive approach. You're trying to drive down the price, huh? What do you mean, no ad clients? Acting like you know everything. Don't look down on me—I just landed a big deal last night, okay?"

Grace Bennett replied calmly, "Minister Reed, you must know what traffic means to an internet company. Sky Eye launched on April 1st. Today is April 8th. Our daily visits have gone from 2,700 at the start to 1.65 million now—a 600-fold increase in seven days. And this is just the beginning."

Charles Reed was momentarily stunned. In business negotiations, sometimes it's all about confidence. The guy surnamed Luo sounded young, but he was full of confidence. She felt like she'd just punched a cotton ball.

"Do you have any plans for advertising at the moment?"

Grace Bennett smiled, "We will be selling top, side, and bottom banner ads—a total of four spots. The main page and all subpages can be bundled or sold separately."

On the other end, Charles Reed sounded dissatisfied. "That's too old-fashioned. We want forced pop-up pages. In other words, whenever a user logs into your website, an ad window will forcibly pop up from the bottom of the screen to promote our latest mobile game."

Grace Bennett frowned. "That will annoy users. Minister Reed, if you go online often, you'll notice that the content you don't want to see but the website insists on showing you is the kind of advertising all users hate the most."